CHAPTER 31 #2
“In the end, Lord of Mountheim, your salvation lies not in calculation, but in the virtues you manifest in your trial. Do not share, for this curse is yours to bear alone. Let it be your reckoning or your eternal reparation.”
The bright silver light shrank, fading away and leaving us in the dark. My palms were slick with sweat, my breathing shallow. Finnegan’s face had drained of colour. Gwin stared blankly at nothing.
“What was the final trial?” Finn asked.
Her focus shifted, and for the first time, I thought I saw something flicker in the judge’s icy gaze.
A hint of emotion, perhaps pity. “The trials are never known by anyone but the offender. His curse could only have been lifted if he proved his virtue. He should have been presented with an opportunity to show he’s learned. ”
“You make it sound like you did him a favour,” I said, forcing myself to keep an even tone. “Surely there were other options than damning him to a life like this.”
“I’m not a bestower of favours, Miss Darling,” Malory said, her hand clasped over her wrist, resting in front of her. “I’m a magister. I carry justice, but where the Fates decide, even I don’t have the power to stop it.”
Fear clawed at my throat. She isn’t helping, Caedmon, I said in my head, as if he could hear me.
“What does that mean for the estate?” Varian asked.
“Lord Reagan will be offered the opportunity to live among others of his kind,” Malory continued, addressing the staff coolly.
I wondered what kind that was.
“The lands will recover slowly. The harvests will improve, given time. Mountheim’s residents will retain their altered nature. But the next child born will not carry the curse, nor will their descendants.”
Her words rang hollow, empty. A punishment dressed as mercy.
Beside me, Varian stood motionless, listening intently to the judge. Gwinifer’s hands curled into a white-knuckled grip. Finn remained still, though his gaze flickered as if he were thinking, searching for a solution.
I racked my brain to remember what it said.
It spoke of compassion and responsibility, fortitude and restraint.
Trials of virtue, then—feats he might’ve performed years ago, a month ago, any time.
Perhaps even now. If something truly defined his fate—if Fate were an entity—I wondered if today could have been his final trial, and if this interference was . . . planned.
For he’d chosen a cursed existence over risking Gwin’s life, Finn’s life. My life. He chose to protect, not to avenge.
He’d chosen compassion—for all the sacrificed—for his people, for their safety, for the lands he tried to restore. Every choice he made was bound by duty to protect them, all the relentless searching, the ceaseless digging for solutions that wouldn’t impact the citizens.
For going against almost a hundred Wraiths. That had to be a trial. The kind of trial that would cower most men—perhaps even kill them—but not Reagan.
For all the three-hour Audiences he committed to, endless pleas to address. I had no doubt he’d accepted the responsibility long ago, accepted the burden.
For his fortitude when he endured the horrific loss of his parents. For perhaps seeing the drained shells they had become and having to end their existence.
And yet—
I lifted my gaze to Finnegan, whose eyes were on me, as if he could hear my thoughts. In a few swift strides, I led him just out of the others’ earshot. Gwinifer’s voice rang out in the background, narrating Varian’s actions to the judge.
“I can’t understand why the curse hasn’t broken. You?” The words spilled from me, sharp and urgent.
His brows furrowed. “I got nothing either.”
We couldn’t stop. No, this felt wrong. “The curse is tied to his virtues. The crucibles he faced and proved himself in, yes?”
Finn’s gaze dropped, and I saw the flicker of something in his eyes—the same struggle I felt between hope and fear. His voice was quieter now, almost reluctant. “Yes, but the crucibles were trials, and if the curse didn’t break . . .”
My chest tightened, but I kept my mind clear. Calm. “Maybe it’s not as simple as this. Maybe it should have been broken. I can’t think of anything that would have damned him so badly that he would be deemed someone lacking compassion, responsibility, restraint, or fortitude.”
The virtues of a ruler. Had every person been held to these standards of virtue, would anyone be deemed worthy? Would we all be cursed forever if it had been us, instead of him, who was born into a bloodline that required him to be almost flawless?
Finn’s eyes focused on the ground, his hand pressed against his temple.
“Mother . . .” He looked at me now, a quiet recognition in his eyes. “You think there is something wrong with the curse?” he asked, and I nodded.
I hated the uncertainty twisting in my stomach, that insidious feeling telling me I was only forcing myself to believe. That maybe . . . maybe he hadn’t broken the curse after all.
“If we’re right, and Fate should have recognised his virtues, then what could have gone wrong?” I asked.
Finn stared at the worn wooden boards. Thinking. “I don’t know anything that could interfere with a curse. Malory said that nothing could.”
The judge was still speaking when I decided I’d had enough of this.
“. . . and the second-in-command, so there is a decision—”
“Is there another way to prove it?” I asked her.
Malory’s eyes narrowed, the only shift in her stoic mask, perhaps because I dared to interrupt her. Varian and Gwin turned their heads to me.
“We believe Reagan was about to break his curse, but something happened.” I glanced quickly at Varian, who watched with a sneer.
“If he had broken the curse, he would have been in his human form,” the judge replied.
I glanced at Finnegan, but he shook his head. There was nothing. No miracle, no revelation, no way out. Malory picked up where she had left off.
My leg bounced. “If there were a way to hear that damn curse again, we could try . . .”
Before I could finish, Finn’s hands moved to his temple. Blue light glowed faintly in the tendons of his hands, and then a sheer, phantom piece of parchment flowed out of his ear and landed in his palm. Bearing the words of the curse.
I didn’t waste time thinking about how incredible that was. I dipped my head toward the paper, reading all the words again. And again.
“It doesn’t specify what the trial was,” Finnegan said. “Maybe today, what he faced here, could be it . . .”
I heard Finn reaching the same conclusion I had a moment ago, but my eye caught another part of the text.
Receive now the tether for your curse, and what binds you shall yet free you.
I had missed that before, because of Reagan’s scream that had made all the blood run out of my body. But this . . .
“This part, ‘what binds you shall yet free you.’ What do you think it means?” I asked.
“I don’t know . . . his flaws? His nature?”
His nature. His essence.
Breath bloomed out of my mouth in the thick air, my eyes directed at Finn but not seeing him at all. I remembered his exact words to me.
If I were to become someone virtuous, more worthy, it’s said to turn ivory and bright. But it never has, not once.
He’d given me the other way, given me the answer he could without breaking his oath of silence to the curse. And it might just be enough.
“What?” Finn asked.
“The heartstone,” I whispered. “It’s supposed to turn ivory and bright when the curse breaks.”
Finn stiffened. “The gemstone in his chest? The one we can’t see?”
Right. I spun to look at the creature on the floor, still sprawled and unconscious. No sign of the heartstone.
“We need to see the stone. I’m sure it has changed now,” I said.
“How?”
My palms began to sweat. “Judge?”
Malory looked up from the heated discussion with Gwinifer and Varian.
It seemed like they were trying to argue over which one of them should take over Mountheim.
I knew Gwinifer was only fighting for it because Varian was the last person Reagan would want ruling his estate. Or maybe she was stalling.
“What if there was a way to prove that the curse should have broken?”
I felt Finnegan’s gaze on the side of my face, but I couldn’t waste any more time. I didn’t know how long she would stay.
“What makes you think it’s broken?” she asked.
“Because all the virtues in this curse,” I said, lifting the paper in the air, “describe the man I love. We can argue for all of them. But if you won’t take our word for it, then allow us to show you.”
“Look at him, human,” Varian seethed.
I ignored him, keeping my gaze on her. The judge regarded me with that same frigid stare, yet she paused. “What is the way?”