Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Briar
Everywhere I looked, the kingdom of Wildwood held an unusually gray hue. I could tell the house to my right was once yellow with blue shutters, but it was faded and dull, just like the red brick road.
“Yes,” Knox replied.
“Has it always been like this?”
“No.”
I frowned as I stared at a kingdom that looked like it was once full of color and life but was strangely monochrome. “How long has it been like this?”
“Ten years.”
My head snapped around as the implication of his words, and the timeline sank in. “My mother.” His orange eyes burned into mine. He didn’t have to say anything, I knew what this was… “The curse.”
While I was still irate about him tying me to the saddle, my annoyance dissipated when I shifted my attention back to the kingdom. The horses’ hooves clicked against the bricks as they plodded down the road, past houses, and on toward the castle at the end of the road.
Despite the kingdom being eerily hushed, the noise didn’t draw shifters from their homes. Not only that, but no lanterns or candles burned within any of the homes. While the day wasn’t completely dark, it was dim enough to require some illumination indoors.
Wildwood could have an enchanted system of lights. The shifters didn’t possess any magical abilities beyond transforming, but the elves or day casters could have aided them in creating such a thing… for a price, of course.
I didn’t see lights anywhere in the village or the castle. Perhaps most of the shifters had gone to work or were gathered elsewhere, but someone would still be back in these homes, caring for children or attending to their daily chores.
There would be at least one shifter here, but I didn’t see any.
I was so busy looking at the houses and trying to discern if anyone was there that I didn’t notice the rose bush in the center of the road until Seth—no, Knox—steered around it.
Like the rose growing from the boulder, it had far more thorns than roses, as only one, faded red flower peeked out from the brambles. Also, like the rose in the boulder, this one grew somewhere that it never should have taken root, as bricks surrounded it.
What…?
The question faded from my mind as I studied the roads—more roses speckled yards, walkways, and a couple of gardens.
Some could have been intentionally planted in the gardens or grown there naturally, but others were clearly out of place. When I glanced down a side road, I spotted more of them in the roadway.
None of them was a deep red color, but they all held a hint of a reddish hue or faint red spots through the black they’d become. All of them were drooping or worse, as some had petals scattered beneath them.
When Knox’s arm moved beside me to navigate around a large cluster of bushes, his movement drew my attention to his forearms. I’d assumed he’d etched the thick, thorny vines onto himself as a reminder of the harem.
Looking at these roses, with thorns so similar to the ones in the harem and their assortment of faded red and black colors, I understood this was what he never intended to forget.
An unsettling feeling unfurled in my belly. “Where are the other shifters?”
“They’re all around us,” Knox replied. “Everywhere you look, you see one.”
I closed my eyes as his words confirmed my growing fears. Anguish radiated through me; I completely understood his hatred for me, and that it would never fade.
“The roses,” I whispered.
He leaned closer again; his breath tickled my hair when he whispered in my ear. “The roses.”
“My mother’s favorite flower.”
“So you told me.”
“How did she do this?”
“You tell me; your kind is the one who did this.”
I marveled at the amount of power it must have taken to unleash such a vicious curse on the shifters. They didn’t possess any magic, but they were still incredibly strong. No one chose to take a shifter on head-to-head; it was a good way to die.
But the night casters hadn’t taken them on in a fair fight.
They’d unleashed this curse on Wildwood instead, and for the past ten years, the shifter kingdom had been nothing but gloom and roses.
Were the shifters still alive? Was there a way to save them?
Or were they already dead? Were these four all that remained of their kind?
“She did this because of me,” I whispered.
I bent forward as sorrow clenched my heart and tears burned my eyes. If the shifters were aware of what they’d turned into, they’d endure endless suffering while trapped in these bushes. Oh, how I hoped they didn’t know what they’d become.
I’d never been to Wildwood, but shifters were notoriously prideful. For Seth to have been trapped in the harem and emerge to this must have been a devastating blow.
He blames himself.
I was as certain of that as I was of the saddle beneath me. He blames himself and me, and he hates us both because of it. My mother had really and truly forged him into Knox.
I squeezed my eyes shut. My mother was the cruelest woman I’d ever met; I’d endured her cruelty my whole life, but I’d never experienced this level of it. She was enraged when she caught me with Seth, but I never could have foreseen this level of vengeance from her.
“And me,” Knox said. “She did it because I was foolish enough to believe in you. My family and friends paid far worse for my stupidity than I did.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t tell her about us. I swear to you, I never breathed a word about us to her or anyone else.”
“And your mother wasn’t the first to rape me. See, we can both tell lies.”
I shuddered as a deep rending tore through my soul, robbed my breath, and seized my lungs.
Of course, I’d known what they did to him in that place, but hearing his confirmation and knowing my mother was the first to lead the degradation against him brought it sharply into focus. If she’d been standing in front of me and I had a knife, I’d cut the blackened heart from her chest.
I’d been stupid to hope that if I found him again, we could return to what we once were, flee the kingdoms, and never look back, but I’d make her pay for destroying us. Even if it killed me, she’d learn true suffering too.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed as I opened my eyes. A tear slid down my cheek and landed on the pommel. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you and all of them.”
He wouldn’t believe me, but I had to tell him that.
“How do we break the curse?” he demanded.