Chapter 13
For a moment or two or possibly a hundred, Ryn forgot how to breathe.
She stood there in shock until something touched her—just a brief brush against her arm—and sent her reeling away.
In her haste to escape, she staggered, tripped, would have fallen, had her arm not been caught in a grip of unbreakable strength.
She hovered there, held as if she were weightless, before being set back on her feet by an expressionless Xaviel.
The very instant she regained her balance, she pulled away, and he let her go—clearly no more anxious to be touching her than she was to be touched.
Not by him.
Not when she finally understood.
“Tell me, Xaviel ven Arazul. How many brides have there been?”
“As I have already explained,” Xaviel said, in a voice so dead and empty it barely sounded like him. “I cannot remember. I remember almost nothing once I leave this place.”
At least one bride for every hundred years, or so Keldreth had told her.
But that was impossible. Not when she began to count the portraits painted on that wall by some unseen hand. How many years must have passed?
So many different faces, and there was no doubt in her mind what they portrayed. No doubt that each and every one of the women gazing down at her had walked this same hall, been caught in the toils of this same curse, and ended… how?
“What happens to them?” She heard her voice shaking and could not stop it.
When he said nothing, she turned, gripped his arms with all her strength, and shouted the question again.
“What happens to the brides?”
His silence seemed to last for an eternity before he finally answered.
“I do not know.”
“Not good enough,” she said fiercely. “You must have some idea. You convinced them to come here. Brought them to this cursed place. Watched as they took these same steps. And then what?”
His eyes were empty and bleak. “Even if I knew, do you think I would tell you the truth? Do you think I would risk you choosing to run, instead of saving the descendants of our people from destruction?”
She did not relent. “Well, now I can’t run, if what you say is true. So tell me anyway. Tell me what lies you’ve used to convince all of these women to throw away their lives. Tell me what made them willing to risk everything to break this curse.”
“I did not lie!” Xaviel’s voice cracked and echoed through the space, harsh with anger and frustration. “I told them no less than the truth. That my king is under an enchantment that requires a bride. The price for failure is a mystery even to me, but the prize for success…”
“What did you promise them?” Her grip tightened as her voice turned raw. Desperate. Demanding.
“Just as I told you before—time.”
A chill rippled from her head to her toes, and Ryn released Xaviel to wrap her arms around herself. “What does that mean?”
His tone went flat. “To become my king’s bride involves a soul bond. A deep magic only rarely practiced by our people. For a mortal, that bond would extend her life by hundreds of years.”
Hundreds of years. Almost a promise of immortality. Would that be enough? Enough to explain the portraits arrayed across the wall before her?
Perhaps not, but when she took the king himself into account…
How many women had sacrificed their youth and self-respect in an attempt to marry merely mortal kings?
The power that came with such a position was in itself a deeply seductive lure, and it was impossible to miss the kind of power this king represented.
To be chosen, immortal, married to magic that could fulfill every one of her heart’s desires…
Would she have been tempted, had she not first been seduced by the promise of knowledge?
But that, too, came only at a price.
“What is it that’s painted on the far wall?” she asked bluntly. “I think you know. Those aren’t just pretty pictures, are they?”
“No.” He clearly did not want to answer, but eventually he relented, as though the words had been dredged up from some place deep and painful. “They are my memories. Or Kel’s. Or both. We shared so many that there is little meaningful difference between the two.”
Memories…
He could not remember how many brides there had been, and his memories of his own past were strangely broken. That had to be a clue of some kind. A part of the curse, perhaps. Possibly even the source of its power?
“So you bring the brides here and hope the curse will accept them. And when it doesn’t? What then?”
“When the brides fail to provide whatever is needed to fulfill the enchantment, they vanish,” Xaviel said, his voice empty and echoing in that vast chamber. “I do not know where they go, but each of them chose to take the risk, knowing that this was possible.”
Each of them chose it. Ryn turned to scan the portraits, wondering what they must have felt. How desperate they must have been to stake their lives and futures on the hope of something a human mind could barely comprehend.
She did not shift her gaze from the wall when she asked for the most painful truth of all.
“You did not offer me power or immortality. So what did you assume I would be willing to risk my very life for?”
“This,” Xaviel stated coolly, unflinchingly, encompassing the whole of that cavern with a flick of his hand.
“Even before I knew of the paintings on these walls, it was an opportunity to see what you have only read about. To learn the truth about a legend and carry it back with you to the scholars whose opinions you so revere.”
Oh, dear gods, but he was not wrong. If the curse could be ended, perhaps the king’s memories would be returned. She could learn so much, and a part of her, even now, was tempted by the prospect.
“And,” he added softly, “I would have offered you the chance to not merely dream of stories, but to live one.”
“You know,” she admitted wearily, “that might have worked on me, once. Had you plucked me from my warm, comfortable bed only a few short years ago and promised me all this, I might have said yes.”
But now…
“I study legends and myths because I believe we can learn from them.
That we can grow by recognizing both the strengths and weaknesses of our heroes.
Come to understand hidden truths about others and ourselves.
Not because I desire adventure. Because behind all those adventures, I now know are agony and loss.
Painful trials and sacrifices that stretch their heroes beyond all imagining.
“And the chance to live in this story?” She shook her head.
“I thank you, but no. Whatever curse has entrapped you, whatever gods you have offended or enchantment has gone awry, it is beyond my experience, beyond my power, and far, far beyond my desire to become involved. I will not be one of your cursed brides, not for all the promises in the world.”
Her heart was hammering so fast, she’d begun to feel faint.
Or maybe that was the fact that she’d run off this morning without breakfast, like an absolute ninny.
Either way, as her words died into echoes, it seemed as if the torches around her flared brighter, leaving her to stare at the terrifying creature who had brought her to this place.
“And if I choose not to accept your refusal?” His tone was soft and deadly, and all at once Ryn was shaken by the reminder that she should indeed be afraid.
He seemed to have grown taller and broader—the planes of his face hewn from unyielding stone.
The strength in his arms could easily break her in half, and his hands—the ones that had held her up only a few moments ago—were scarred by a thousand battles.
The hands of a relentless warrior, committed to a cause he would neither abandon nor betray.
Especially not for the sake of a puny mortal girl with neither power nor weapons.
Indeed, she must never allow herself to forget that Xaviel ven Arazul had once been second-in-command to a king.
Led armies, ravaged his enemies, and wielded power beyond her comprehension.
And thanks to this curse, he had become something other—a strange and wild creature, filled with guile and magic.
Bereft of memories, reduced to a mere vessel for the geas that drove him.
Would he truly force her to do this thing? To become the sacrifice the curse demanded?
A tremor coursed down her limbs, and she took a step back, as if she could somehow escape this place, escape him…
But then she chanced to meet his eyes, and her fear inexplicably vanished. She should not have been able to tell. Should not have been able to read those eyes so easily, but despite their glow, she knew—the one standing before her now was not the same cursed trickster who had brought her here.
This was the immortal warrior whose memories were written on the wall behind her. And he was indeed angry, but the anger she read in that crimson gaze was not for her. Only for the curse.
And behind that anger lurked a bottomless well of pain, guilt, and devastation.
His hope long shattered. His memory a tattered and threadbare shroud, concealing losses she could not begin to imagine.
His heart crushed and splintered by the weight of years, and his very will subjugated by a curse he could not break.
A curse that was now determined to ensnare her as well.
A surging tide of wild rebellion swelled within her chest—an unquenchable desire to destroy whoever had brought this about.
But if these two unimaginably powerful immortals had not been able to break the curse, what chance did she have? She, a pitiful mortal scholar of no particular talent, except perhaps tenacity and dreams.
Perhaps she was doomed. Perhaps she had always been doomed. Perhaps the dreams that brought her here were shared by every woman whose picture graced these walls. But even so, she would not surrender herself without a fight, nor agree to be swallowed up by this curse without protest.