Page 67 of Fate’s Sweetest Curse (Mirrors of Fate #2)

Nightmare

Hattie

H is transformation began with the sickening breaking of bone: gnarled antlers pushing through the skin at Noble’s temples and unfurling with a horrible cracking noise, like splitting wood.

He growled, seething through bared teeth that were already sharpening into points.

At his sides, his fingers splayed wide, revealing elongated claws.

His bare chest rose and fell with quick breaths, his beautiful body glistening with sweat as his muscles became more bulbous and his legs and torso stretched.

“ NOBLE! ” I screamed, breaking free of Brendan’s grip.

He didn’t hear me. His body was shaking violently with the disfigurement of his disease. A memory of the Morta flashed in my mind, showing me his eventual future: skinless, gaunt, a haunted creature of nightmares.

I stumbled forward, powerless as the man I loved gave into a curse that wasn’t him , that didn’t belong , that was everything wicked and awful—the opposite of his pure, inherent goodness.

“Noble, don’t do this!” I shouted. “Noble, listen to me!”

His legs cracked, bending backward sharply. I shrieked as he pitched onto his hands and knees, his shoulder blades rippling. The guards surrounding Noble were wide-eyed with terror, the chains rattling as they held on to the monster he was becoming.

I wheeled toward Brendan, shouting, “Hylder! He needs Hylder! ”

I expected Brendan to be pale in the face—shocked—but he was grinning .

The expression wasn’t just rage-inducing, it was cruel. I wrenched my wrist free of his grip and shoved his chest—hard—but he stood firm, spreading his arms helplessly.

“According to our intelligence, Hylder isn’t enough,” Brendan said. “He needs a cure.”

He gestured to our right, where the crowd of onlooking soldiers and knights had backed away, revealing a small table. A collection of bottles and jars were cluttered on the wooden surface, along with a lantern.

Help with what? I’d asked. I was afraid this was my answer.

“I’ll be honest with you, Hattie,” Brendan began, “General Asheren sent me here for the sole purpose of protecting Marona from Lord Haron’s nefarious adepts and wretched creatures.

The Order of knights under my purview—whom you so lovingly referred to as morons —have done their best to mitigate the risks, but Fenrir’s rot runs deep. ”

A guttural snarl came from Noble, making me shudder. A tear tracked down my face as Brendan continued.

“When I found Noble lurking a few miles from my camp, on his way to rescue the apprentice my knights had captured, I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d leverage his unexpected presence.

” His grin turned conniving. “But then you turned out to be that apprentice, and, well, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. ”

He gripped my upper arm—fingers pressing painfully into my flesh—and hauled me toward the table.

The makeshift lab table .

“You’ve always been obsessed with alchemy, haven’t you?

I used to think it uncouth for an otherwise lovely lady of court, but seeing as my knights have been so ineffective, I thought—with your help—I’d try a different tactic to protect Marona,” Brendan explained.

“Instead of working for Fenrir, why don’t you lend your talents to us , your home territory?

I had my men prepare this table with everything you might need.

Heal General Asheren’s son, or else you both die. ”

Brendan wanted me to uncover the cure. He wanted to force it out of me.

Tears blurred my vision. “Are you mad ?!” I boomed, shoving him again. “Researchers have been working on this for years! Noble has minutes!”

“Then you better get to work,” Brendan said.

Noble was still on his hands and knees, his skin webbed with black. Dread gripped me by the windpipe, strangling all thought except for the horror of what was happening to him.

The man I loved.

My future.

My everything .

I would not allow the Fates to forsake Noble like this.

“Go on,” Brendan taunted.

I wanted to throttle Brendan for this. Destroy him and everything he held dear, just as he was doing to me. But I didn’t have the means, and there wasn’t time.

I turned toward the worktable and took in the spread of ingredients.

The setup was strangely familiar—similar to the research benches in Phina’s lab.

There were three empty, wide-mouth pitchers and a quartz stirring spoon.

A jar of powdered Gildium, sprigs of Common and Black Lace Hylder flowers, a bottle of pure Hylderberry syrup, a few dried leaves of other purification herbs, a mortar and pestle.

Plus, a series of half-pint bottles, clear glass, identical in shape, but filled with various shades of clear liquid.

I picked one up and examined its label: Water, River Gray .

I looked at another: Water, River Wynhaim .

Another: Water, Geothermal Pool #16.

Water, Geothermal Pool #39 .

Water, Geothermal Pool #7.

Water, Well of Fate .

I hesitated on that last one, lifting it up to the lantern light.

It was the color of a fresh sprig of sage, a translucent blue-green. Perhaps it was the exhaustion or my frantic nerves, but the water seemed to glow faintly, like starlight reflecting on a still pond.

How in the Fates had Brendan gotten his hands on such a sample? Anya had made it sound like no one had visited the Well of Fate in centuries. Except…well, except she and Idris hadn’t been alone in the Western Wood. A group of knights from Idris’s past had helped them escape.

A deep, guttural growl spilled through the camp like a landslide, rattling the glasses on my little table. Noble was rising from his hands and knees, and he was—

A sob escaped my lips.

—he was utterly changed .

His height now reaching at least nine feet, his body horrifically stretched.

Ribs poked out above an overly narrow, concave stomach; his knees were bent backward, his shins too long, extending from of his trousers much farther than they ought.

Antlers protruded from the soft waves of his hair and twisted toward the sky.

And his hands—hands that had touched every inch of me, that had cherished my body with reverence and care—were tipped with jagged black claws, meant to shred.

When he looked up, he looked right at me, and his eyes—once kind, observant, spring-green—glowed crimson.

Oh, I was going to kill Brendan.

That is, if Noble didn’t kill him, first.

Noble’s eyes slid to Brendan and narrowed.

He made to lunge at the captain, but the guards still holding onto the chains on his arms, legs, and neck pulled him back, preventing his progress.

He snarled at them, changing tactics. In a swift move, Noble rotated both wrists, looping the attached chains around his forearms. It took barely a tug to yank the guards holding his restraints off their feet.

Noble bent, picked up the chains attached to his ankles, and pulled those guards down, too.

The remaining man—who held the tether attached to Noble’s neck cuff—began to pull, shouting with admirable bravery.

Others jumped in to lend their strength, heaving against the remaining chain as Noble turned on them.

Then a lot of things happened in mere moments.

Claws swept out, slicing the guards with a shocking spray of blood.

All around me, soldiers and knights brandished their weapons with a chorus of ringing steel.

Noble met them with a low growl, pouncing on those nearest and taking them out with terrifying ease. Gore splattered the grass. Metal flashed in the torchlight. Men cried out in valiance, fear, and death.

I couldn’t watch. I didn’t have time to watch. If there was even a small chance that Noble could still be saved, I needed to alchemize.

And yet I sagged over my little worktable, overcome with a sickening despair.

How could Noble possibly come back from this?

How could tonight end with anything other than total carnage?

How could I make any difference?

Hope , I told myself. You don’t have to believe fully—you just have to hope .

I took in my spread of ingredients, thinking of the tapestry of theories I’d been weaving over the past few months.

Hurriedly, I dug into my satchel and pulled out my notebook to review where I’d left off: broken formulas, question marks, dead-ends.

My many failed experiments entered my mind’s eye, filling me with worry: visions of the black blood and Hylder bubbling, smoking, hardening.

The thought of any of that happening to Noble made me feel sick.

Judging by the chaos all around me, I had only one chance to administer the right potion—but what was it?

Men shouted, Noble snarled, the wet crunch of violence filled my ears, but I would not look up from my table and allow myself to be shaken.

I reached for the Black Lace Hylder blossoms, mashing them with the mortar and pestle.

By now, mixing Hylder tinctures was almost second nature, and in spite of being one-handed, I moved deftly.

A splash of the berry syrup to the crushed flowers, dried thistle to boost the Hylder’s effects.

I gave the paste a brief taste, making sure the balance was right; it was sweet, botanical, purifying.

It tasted, inexplicably, like hope.

I shifted focus to the Gildium rods and powders provided. I didn’t have blood to experiment with, nor did I know how to alchemize the metal, so I’d have to dissolve the powder in water as Noble had suggested, and hope he’d been right about that being a viable option.

Which left me with the water itself, the varying sources.

I braved a quick glance at clearing in front of me.

Bodies were slumped all around, heaped in burgundy pools of blood.

White tents were splattered with red and black, and one was collapsed and aflame.

Noble was free of his chains, speckled with gore, a slash of black blood across his right pectoral.

His face—pulled into an unrecognizably cruel snarl—was not his anymore, and it made me afraid. Not just for him, but of him.

Knights came at Noble with determination, breaking on his body like waves on stone. A blood-curdling scream vibrated my ear drums as one of Brendan’s Mighty Knights—her sword brandished with the red fire of her Oath magic—fell.

“Work faster,” Brendan urged.

He was hovering over my shoulder, and he looked scared now, his face pale.

“Fuck you,” I spat, but I did as I was told .

I stared down at the water samples again, examining the bottles in the yellow glow of the lantern.

Brendan, to his credit, had supplied me with numerous options—but which one was the answer?

The samples labeled with the rivers Gray and Wynhaim, as well as the numbered geothermal pools all seemed too far off—my gut told me they weren’t worth exploring.

With care, I lifted the Well of Fate bottle to the light. Even through the glass, I sensed its power; my magic purred in its presence, but it seemed too potent, too powerful, too volatile on its own.

I set it back down.

There was a source missing, I realized. One I should’ve considered long ago. Because while my tinctures from Waldron were alcohol-based, the Hylder I gathered there had absorbed into its roots a potent water: the River Wend.

Removing my birthday necklace, I placed the vial of Wend water next to the other bottles.

“ Hurry ,” Brendan hissed.

“I can’t think with you whispering in my ear,” I bit out.

“Hattie…” This time, the warning in his voice made me look up.

Noble was stalking toward us, his red-ringed eyes fixated on me. He was predatory, focused, and I didn’t want to believe it, but—

I have dreams sometimes , Noble had told me the first night we made love. Nightmares. You’re in them, and I’m half-turned…stalking you.

Do you harm me in your nightmares? I’d asked.

No , he’d said. I always stop myself and wake up .

Brendan dropped to the ground, cowering behind my table.

I straightened and raised a palm. “Noble, stop.”

Miraculously, he did as I asked, halting perhaps fifteen feet away from my makeshift workbench.

His body was twisted and broken, his skin veined with black, diseased—but I saw a semblance of him still there.

The shape of his jaw. The waves in his hair.

A flicker of green remaining in his red-ringed eyes.

He reminded me of a frightened animal, overtaken by instinct. But it wasn’t his instinct taking over. It was his curse. It overwhelmed whatever sense of self was still inside him. His eyes narrowed, and then he was stalking closer, closer, closer—

A flash of blue caught my eye to the left.

“No!” I screamed.

Noble turned, evading Mariana’s blue-blazing sword moments before she could cut him down.

She’d come to do her duty—but he wasn’t a lost cause yet.

“Don’t harm him!” I shrieked.

Mariana gave me a wild look, like I was deranged. “Hattie, he’s gone—”

“No, he’s not,” I insisted—not just to Mariana, but to myself. “Hold him off. Give me time.”

Her brown eyes dipped to my table of alchemy bottles, and perhaps I saw a quick nod of agreement—but then Noble was swiping at her, and her focus shifted to her charge.

No time to waste.

I stared down at my table of ingredients. The Wend water and the bottle labeled Well of Fate were the most viable sources, I was sure of it. I had to decide, but I felt immobilized. Ill-equipped. I didn’t have my books. I didn’t have a lab. I didn’t have—

I blinked.

The bottles, the ingredients, the tools, my notebook—the spread wasn’t just familiar because it resembled Phina’s lab.

I had seen this exact tabletop before: in my Mirror of Fortune.