Page 1 of Cursed Evermore

Chapter 1

Elariya

“When the Dead Come Calling”

The Phantom Moon wasn't yet visible in the twilight sky, but I could feel its approach thrumming through my blood.

Its potent power whispered through the darkening forest, hissing with the wind that stirred the ancient oaks and mist surrounding me.

I clutched my satchel closer to my chest and crept along the dusty path, my steps carefully placed between fallen leaves and brittle twigs. Beneath my weathered boots the soil felt alive with the ominous feeling heavy in the air, pulsing in time with my racing heart.

All eyes would be turned toward the sky tonight. It had been six decades since the last Phantom Moon. Everyone would be eager to see it.

For me, though, this rare celestial event promised more than beauty. It promised salvation.

The Phantom Moon was my only hope of finding my father and breaking the curse that had consumed my life for the last five years.

So, I, Elariya Grayson—with my barely-there magical abilities—was setting out into the depths of Gryffyn Forest to cast a blood spell. The most forbidden of all things forbidden inallrealms and in the most dangerous of places.

Even in daylight, Gryffyn Forest was treacherous. At night, stepping inside was as good as digging your own grave. A fool’s last journey.

Everyone knew thieves and other unsavory characters who preyed on young women like me lurked in these woods. Not to mention the wolves and other predators that would welcome me as potential quarry.

Tonight was particularly bad because the witch hunters would be out in full force, eager to catch anyone who dared to use the magic from the Phantom Moon.

The use of magic in the mortal lands was one sure route to death. Yet here I was, testing fate. Wrapped in shadows and cloaked in disguise, but still utterly recognizable.

I'd abandoned my silk dresses for a worn pair of pants and a threadbare linen blouse. My tattered hooded cloak should have hidden me in plain sight, but it did little to mask my blood-red hair. One look at that telltale shade and anyone would know I was Lady Grayson's daughter.

People across all seven kingdoms in the mortal realm knew who my mother was. They also distrusted mages, my mother included.

From the instant they searched my bag and found the dead crow inside, they’d know I was out here to cast a spell. Then I’d be well and truly fucked.

They’d kill me. And to make an example out of my family, they’d kill them, too.

They wouldn’t care that my father, despite his disappearance, was still Lord of Stormfell, Warden of the South, and Ambassador of Realms for the King. And they wouldn’t carethat my family had tended to their sick and afflicted during the war with the North.

They’d see me as no different from the heretics whom they’d burned at the stake for being in league with the devil.

I couldn’t entirely blame their fears. I was a child of two worlds. Mage mother, human father. A mishmash hodgepodge that made people uneasy.

Even in my own mind I felt the divide. Caught between my mother's magical heritage and my father's mortal blood, I failed to fully belong to either world.

The whisper of my cloak against a thicket of low-hanging branches sounded impossibly loud in the silent forest. I flinched at the sound, cursing my carelessness and quickly drew the fabric tighter against my body with trembling fingers.

At least I’d made it this far unnoticed, and despite all the dangers of being out here, the risk was still worth it to me. I may not be as magically skilled as I needed to be to perform a blood spell, but in my heart, I felt it would work.

Something deep inside urged me to try. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.

After all my family had endured, I wouldnever, everrisk their safety—or venture into the forest after dark—unless I believed with absolute certainty that I could make this spell work.

It had to be performedhere,in this damned place,because it was in these very woods that my father had vanished. I was there when it happened.

I was there when that formidable mass of darkness devoured him.

It took him and leftmetrapped in a memory loop curse that reset every thirty days, on the rise of the new moon.

Five merciless years had crawled by since. Half a decade of emptiness and not knowing where my father went, with mymind condemned to relive his disappearance after witnessing what no other living soul was meant to see.