Page 12 of Cursed (Court of Isles #1)

Chapter 12

We appeared in the blink of an eye somewhere else.

A place more beautiful, more exquisite than any I’d seen on this island yet, and that was saying something. There had been no tugging sensation this time, no tumultuous travel by pixie dust or spell or whatever else I’d already experienced.

“You can Phase too,” I surmised when we landed. “Just like Atlas.”

Silas gave me a succinct nod. I couldn’t get a read on his mood. He was still bloody and bruised and generally looking a wreck. A handsome, lovely wreck. My wreck.

I moved toward Silas, raised a hand. I wiped mud from beneath his eye.

“You’re back,” I whispered.

Silas raised a hand, pressed it to mine. We were both holding my hand to his cheek. His eyes filled with an emotion so big and vulnerable I felt my heart splintering into pieces.

He looked ashamed and hopeful and terrified and destroyed. I stepped closer to him, raised onto my toes. I let us hover there, inches apart, until he dipped his head to meet me halfway.

I pressed a whisper of a kiss to his lips. A brush that lasted only a split second, a nod to the fact that I was here with him. A promise that even if I couldn’t completely understand him, I’d be here trying. That I recognized what he’d done for me.

“What happened?” I asked him. “When we were traveling from the mainland, you were taken from me. I don’t understand how that happened.”

Silas nodded, his brow furrowing, like whoever had done the taking wasn’t going to be alive for a whole lot longer. Judging by the way Silas had gone at it with his own flesh and blood, I could only imagine what he might do to someone he truly disliked.

“You were Ripped from me,” Silas said. “Ripping is a way to strip someone of their destination when traveling by magical means. It’s an intensely difficult form of magic to master. Even harder to keep all parties alive.”

“Do you know who’s responsible for it?”

“No.” His answer was short, clipped, like there might be a little more to it, but not enough to say just yet. “But Fates help them when I find out.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Where were you? ”

Silas cocked his head to one side. “You tell me. You’re the one who found me and brought me back.”

“No, that was Atlas,” I said. “I just came up with the spell. It was the bond between brothers that allowed me to locate you.”

“A bond between brothers wouldn’t have been strong enough to locate me,” Silas said. “I think you know that.”

I did know that. I knew something had happened that had rendered Atlas’s help useless during the spell. He’d been physically blasted away from me. I’d been on my own. I knew it; I just couldn’t believe it.

“What sort of bond could we possibly have?” I asked in a small voice. “I barely know you. We’re strangers.”

“We are,” he said. “In some ways.”

“Atlas said it too—that he could see the bond between us. What was he talking about?”

“I have something for you,” Silas said shortly, cutting off my line of questioning. “Here.”

Silas fumbled in one of his pockets. He withdrew two bottles. One was antibiotics for Eloise. The other was a hot pink jar of Pepto Bismol.

“I got what you asked for on the mainland,” Silas said. “For Poppy’s heartburn and Eloise’s tick bite.”

I couldn’t help it. I threw my head back and laughed. My life was so out of this world bizarre that I had to find humor in these moments. Otherwise, I might check myself into treatment with Dr. Simmons. All this magic and wonder, and Silas had made sure to hold onto the Pepto through it all.

“Will you come with me?” Silas extended a hand.

I slid my fingers through his. We walked hand in hand down a path someone had cut through the middle of a breezy wildflower prairie. On either side of us, grasses loomed tall and willowy, peppered with airy cosmos and cut and come again zinnias, and teddy bear sunflowers sprouting in whimsical patches.

Ahead of us, something scampered across a path.

I blinked, stilled, then waited for it to come back.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Silas. “But I just thought I saw a unicorn.”

“You did,” he said. “A baby one.”

“A baby unicorn,” I whispered. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Silas’s head whipped around to face me in alarm.

“A baby unicorn?” I looked up at him, matching his gaze. “Say it’s not so. My heart cannot handle it.”

Silas gave me a crooked smile as I spoke, then he knelt, made a soft click with his tongue, like he was summoning a shy kitten. A few seconds later, a bolt of white energy shot from the grasses and skidded to a stop.

Slowly, with intense caution, a tiny unicorn barely as tall as my knee crept shyly toward Silas. He waited patiently, not moving for however long it took the little one to approach. The creature sniffed, turning a tiny horn in my direction, sizing me up.

I waited too, trying to mimic Silas’s stillness. I failed, but as I knelt next to him, the unicorn continued its forward progression toward us. Eventually, it reached Silas and gave an approving sniff of his hand first. The creature found obvious familiarity in Silas’s scent and gave a happy lick of greeting to his palm.

Then the baby turned to me, moving more cautiously. Until finally, she plopped into my lap. I choked out a strangled laugh that was also a cry of surprise.

Instead of hair like a horse, the unicorn had fluff. A spun-sugar ball of fluff and fur with a tiny horn that sparkled like sun crystals. Just sitting in my lap.

“I’m deceased,” I informed Silas.

Apparently, that phrase hadn’t worked its way to The Isle’s pop culture because Silas studied me curiously, as if checking for a pulse. Apparently he decided that I wasn’t, in fact, dead, and his lips curled into a real smile. He raised a hand, tucked hair behind my ear in a gentle way.

“Welcome to my life’s work,” he said. “It’s the Preserve of Wonders.”

“The Preserve of Wonders?” I asked. “Where are we?”

“We’re on the island, in the middle of my land. My family before me started this place—walled it off so completely that nobody knows it’s here. It’s warded as strong as I could manage.”

“Does Ranger X know about it?”

A guilty glint entered Silas’s eye. “No.”

“What about Atlas?”

Silas looked down. “I’m not sure. It’s hard to say exactly what he knows and what he doesn’t. He knows a lot, but he doesn’t see fit to inform me of it all.”

“I see.”

“We care for extraordinary animals here.” Silas ran a hand down the back of the fluffy unicorn. “I’ve seen too many species get killed off in my lifetime, and while it’s too late for them, it’s not too late for these guys.”

“You’re talking about the Fae Queens.”

“Among other things,” he said. “We offer a safe haven for animals and creatures and species that need help. For a while, certain breeds of mermaids were in danger of going extinct, so we’ve got a lagoon to house them. We’ve got a few unicorns. One breed of dragon. Phoenixes, a sphynx, you name it—we’ve got it. The ones we could save.”

My heart ached for this man. Even if Silas couldn’t see it, I could. He’d spent years living with the weight of what his people—the Hunters—had done to the beloved Fae Queens. The burden had been so intense that he’d bent over backwards, trying to save those creatures who couldn’t save themselves.

This man bled for me, bled for these creatures, bled for his island. The more I learned about the darkness around the storm, the more I saw the exquisite light hidden inside.

My fingers stroked over the fluff on the back of the baby unicorn. She settled into my lap, nestled her head on my knee. I waited, hoping Silas would continue to talk freely. About anything and everything. Maybe this was his safe space, as much as it was safe for the others, the animals.

“Tell me about Atlas,” I finally whispered.

Silas’s face was too pale, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t want to speak about his brother, or if something else was bothering him.

“He’s my half-brother,” Silas said. “We have the same father. Different mothers.”

“Is he also a Hunter?”

Silas shook his head. “The Hunter genes are said to be fickle, to only attach themselves to those who carry the darkness within. It can skip individual siblings, entire generations, and more. I was the lucky one who inherited it.”

“How do you find out you’ve got Hunter blood?”

“The first time you take a life.”

Silas met my gaze evenly as he shared this news, like he needed me to understand. Like he needed to bare all of himself before I got too attached. Little did he know, the more he shared, the more there was to love.

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked .

“No,” he said firmly. Then, softer, “Not yet.”

I nodded, stroked the purring baby in my lap.

“I’m the firstborn. Ten years older than Atlas. My father suspected I had the Hunter gene and was ashamed of it. Once my mother was out of the picture, he moved on, desperate for another son. Fortunately, he got his golden child.”

“Atlas,” I filled in.

“My father mated with an Olympian, and she gave him Atlas—a beautiful child. He was allowed within the doors of Olympus at birth. He was everything powerful and good and perfect.”

“Silas,” I said, desperate to touch him, but sensing he might recoil if I moved even a millimeter.

“It’s just a fact.” Silas spoke in a hard voice, like he’d worked this narrative into his head for so long and with such swift finality that he’d left no room for an alternative storyline.

No room for my storyline. The side of Silas that I could see, one that he couldn’t. My heart broke, and I clutched the small creature closer to me, cherishing the warmth, her soft, sleepy breaths, her tiny head resting so vulnerably on my lap.

“What else are you?” I asked. “Do you have another half in your genetics that’s not Hunter blood?”

Silas’s gaze landed on me. “Yes. ”

“Will you tell me about it?” I asked. “You’re more than a Hunter, Silas. You are more than your darkest shadows. Look at this life you’ve saved.”

I nodded down at the completely still baby animal on my lap. She’d dozed off, completely comfortable around this man.

“You are good , Silas,” I told him. “I’ve always known it.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I know you have killed people.” My breath came in gasps. This was dangerous territory. I could push him away with one wrong word. “Tell me you didn’t have a good reason for it.”

I could see a multitude of reasons flashing across his face. Worlds of hurt and regret, the wish that things would have been different, even though they just weren’t.

“That’s what I thought.” I rested a hand on his leg.

But something was wrong. I looked down, feeling a sticky warmth.

Silas’s face had grown paler still. I no longer believed it to be something to do with Atlas.

“You’re hurt,” I said. “Terribly so.”

Silas gasped, as if I’d given him permission to crack. He reached toward his waist, lifted his shirt to reveal an abdomen so tightly muscled it looked cut from stone. Across those muscles, however, was a nasty gash as long as my arm.

“It should’ve healed,” Silas said. “It must be from when I was Ripped. When they took me away from you, it broke something. I can’t...”

Then Silas winced, gulped a shaky breath, and lurched forward. The small creature woke, leapt off my lap as I lunged for Silas. But it was too late. He was unconscious.

“Silas!”

The unicorn next to me made a small, panicked noise as if she, too, were worried about Silas. Then she darted off into the tall grasses and disappeared from sight.

“Help!” I called, but I had no idea if any other living thing could hear me.

According to Silas, the Preserve of Wonders was an uncharted oasis in the middle of his land. An oasis, a peaceful destination—that was completely abandoned except by supernatural creatures who couldn’t speak English.

My pleas for help fell on acres and acres of boundless wilderness. Prairies, lagoons, woods. Not another soul in sight.

I tore Silas’s shirt off, and sure enough, the wound on his stomach was leaking blood. The rest of him was already healing. His vicious tumble with Atlas had left him bruised and bloodied, but those marks were almost gone. He’d healed so rapidly, but this—the gash—was only getting worse.

I tried to find my magic to use it on him, but I had no potions, except for an antibiotic for a tick bite and Pepto Bismol, which wouldn’t do me any good right now. I was too panicked to get my magic to work, and even if I could summon it, I didn’t know how to mend a wound like this one. I didn’t even have a needle and thread to stitch him up.

I moved Silas so he laid gently on the ground, my heart racing as I put pressure on the wound. It would do nothing for him, but I had to try something.

I heard the worried bleat a moment later. The little unicorn had returned, looking at me, an almost eerie, understanding in its eye. Like she wanted me to follow her.

“I’m so sorry.” I kissed Silas on the forehead, briefly, a goodbye that I hoped was only temporary. “I need to find help.”

I stood, trusting my intuition. Silas had said that this island loved its inhabitants back, as if the relationship was symbiotic. I could only hope that was true, and that help would be provided to Silas when he needed it most.

The unicorn trotted ahead, coming to stop abruptly at the edge of the prairie where tall, skeletal loblolly pines stretched on for miles and miles. The creature stopped, signaling for me to go on without her.

“Thank you,” I whispered, completely unsure if she could understand.

I raced forward, eventually coming to a halt when a lagoon stretched before me. Except instead of blue water, the surface was so clear it was nearly invisible. It looked like a window laid over piles of sea glass stones, gems sparkling in shades of ruby and sapphire and emerald. On one side sat a mermaid, different than the one I’d seen before in The Forest, this one even more beautiful.

Long hair, so white it looked spun by starlight. Blue eyes so pale, deep as a cloudless sky. Shimmery scales so pearlescent I wasn’t sure if they contained every color in the universe, or no colors at all.

“He needs help,” the mermaid said softly. “Silas.”

I nodded, swallowed.

“You helped Melodia.” The mermaid said it evenly, coolly. “Why?”

“I—” I hesitated. “I don’t know. She needed help.”

“Our blood heals,” the mermaid said finally. “That’s why they drain us. Bad men, bad women. We do not share our blood willingly.”

“I understand,” I said. “I don’t blame you.”

“She let you live.”

“Melodia, the siren?” I nodded. “Yes, she did. Probably because I helped her. ”

“No, that’s not why.” The mermaid slid into the water, swam over to me, her tail flicking so seamlessly it was like she floated on the glassy surface. She pulled up onto a rock in front of me. Inches away.

I studied her, waiting—would she show me her teeth?

“I’m not a siren,” she said. “But I feel for my sister. You showed her kindness when everyone else cast her aside.”

“I was just trying to help,” I said. “Silas is in trouble. He needs your help. Is there someone I can barter with for assistance? I don’t even know where we are, or—”

“You will use this on Silas,” the mermaid said. “Only Silas. The call of our blood is strong. Do not let it lead you astray.”

“Never,” I said. “I only want Silas to live. I need him to live. You need him to live, too, because he’s the only one keeping this preserve alive and well.”

She nodded, her silvery hair cascading over her back like a waterfall. Then she reached into the water, took a jagged rock, and dragged it across her wrist. Blood the color of rubies poured from her arm.

She lifted a seashell from the water, let her blood trickle into it. Then she passed the shell along to me.

“She’s right. My sister knew it,” the mermaid said. “You have returned.”

“Me?” I asked. “What do you mean? ”

“Hurry, for Silas’s time grows short,” she urged, and then she was gone—slid into the water and vanished like a mirage.

I raced back to Silas, found him right where I left him. As I knelt by his side, I felt it—the gentle pull of the mermaid blood. A lustful sense of betrayal, a cry from the depths of my soul. Those black parts of everyone that we tried to keep hidden.

Drink me , the blood whispered. I shall give you power .

I can be yours, and nobody will ever know.

I gently angled Silas’s mouth, then I lifted the shell and let the blood roll into his mouth.

“Please,” I said, dropping the shell next to me. “Please, Silas. Wake up.”

I moved his head into my lap, wondering what the mermaid had meant.

You have returned.

It was a similar sentiment as the words in the sky the other night outside of Lily’s bungalow. Except those words had been full of terror. The mermaid’s had been full of awe.

For what, I was still clueless.

Silas’s wound started mending itself in minutes. Apparently the rumors were true—mermaid blood was downright miraculous. I thought of the siren, of her teeth, of the way the mermaid had spoken of her fallen sister—like what had befallen her was the ultimate tragedy, a fate worse than death.

I considered the way mermaids had learned to protect themselves, their blood. I thought of the love they must have for Silas to offer it so freely and willingly. This place, the Preserve of Wonders, this island—it watched out for its beloved inhabitants, and Silas was one of them.

He stirred awake slowly, gently, almost reluctantly—like he couldn’t believe it.

“Alessia,” he murmured, his eyes flickering open.

“Oh, thank god,” I blurted. “I thought you were dead. ”

Silas rose to a seated position. His wound was healing faster now, a faded pink line on his countless abs. He reached for me, his face worn and mud-streaked, the exhaustion evident on every level.

His hand snaked around my neck as he pulled me toward him. Then he kissed me, freely and hungrily, like I was his reason for existing. His lips met mine with the gentle fury of a man returning from the verge of death. Like he knew we’d been seconds away from ever getting to experience this moment, this rightness. I savored the dark and powerful taste of him. The sharp, earthy tones of his scent, the freshness of his breath that hinted of mint and saltwater and destiny.

When we parted, I felt like my breath had vanished. Like I wasn’t technically breathing, just floating along and existing because my reality had been shattered .

“I couldn’t...” Silas looked down, almost apologetic. “I couldn’t die without doing that.”

“Silas.” I moved closer to him, a hand resting on his cheek. “What bond was Atlas talking about?”

Silas stood, pulled me to my feet. His hands clasped in mine as we stood chest to chest.

“You need to understand, Alessia, this will change everything.” His gaze met mine, our fingers, minds, souls linked. “You are Fae.”