Page 41 of Heir to a Curse

Chapter 16

Iwoke up sometime later, alone, my heart giving a lurch of sadness that took me a few extra minutes to work through before I could get out of bed. I found my way to the bathroom. A long hot shower helped. A few more dredges of pain washed away. I brushed my teeth and tried to make myself feel somewhat human as I made my way to the kitchen to search for food. Montana had included a few containers full of cut up veggies and hard-boiled eggs, which I ate without thought, standing in front of the open fridge door, squinting at the bright light.

Crazy dreams. Though everything had felt so real. And I still felt raw. Not my head so much, though there were bits of the migraine still lingering as it often did when it came on as strong as it had. But all those things from the past. Finding him, helping imprison him, losing him, and again having his arms wrapped around me. Fuck, I had completely lost my mind.

The sound of a key in the lock of the cabin door should have been alarming, but when it opened to reveal Addy, I continued to stand there and devour everything in sight. She paused, a brow raised, but came inside and closed the door, blocking out fading sunlight. What time was it?

“You okay?” She asked, staying by the door. “The guys were worried you’d caught the plague.”

“Just a migraine,” I said. Overall I felt a bit like I had a hangover. If I’d been unfamiliar with migraines, I might have been worried I did have the virus. But since they’d been an occasional part of my life, I knew enough to know it was related. “Mostly gone now. Did I lose the whole day?”

Most of the time I would be down for a few hours. The worst had been almost a decade ago, which had been three days of lost time, and Sofia had insisted I visit the ER for a brain scan. No tumors or anything found, though I’d been low on iron and potassium. The iron likely due to a worksite injury that week that had bled more than anticipated, the potassium I didn’t know. But I’d watched the both since and minimized the attacks to an occasional few hours of misery every other month or so.

She shrugged. “It’s fine. You know the guys can take care of it. You don’t have a fever or anything?”

“No,” I promised. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d had a fever in my life. Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I held one out to her too. She accepted. I closed the fridge and found my way to the table. The dark of the room still soothing to the last march of pain in my temple. “You don’t have to stay.”

She joined me at the table, digging in her purse for a moment before pulling out a small glass votive and a candle. She lit it. “Not too bright?”

“No,” I said. “Crazy stuff you have in that purse of yours.”

She laughed lightly. “I’ve managed your migraines before. Usually they time themselves between jobs. Maybe this assignment is too much?”

I shrugged. It didn’t matter. I was here. The house was mine. Sofia had wanted it that way. So I would make it work. “It’s home now.” I glanced around the room, taking in the comforts of what now felt like home. Even when I was feeling a little shitty.

There was a tea cup on the nightstand beside the bed. I sucked in air. There was no way I’d made myself tea in my sleep. Had he really been there? The ache for him became almost visceral in that moment, like everything would be okay if I could just hold him for a while. Could I undo all the pain of the past? Find a way beyond it even if I was a completely different person now? And was I? Had I really changed, or was I only hoping I had?

“Do you believe in past lives?” I asked her.

“I guess anything is possible. Why do you ask?”

“I dreamt I was someone. But it didn’t feel like a dream, more like a memory.”

“Yeah?”

I rested my arms on the table and laid the weight of my head on them. “I think I was kind of an asshole.”

She laughed again. “You are kind of an asshole. You are also kind of great. We call that human nature.”

I sighed, the memory of emotions strong and lingering, leaving an uneasy feeling in my gut. “I left him behind. Went off to fight some war that had already been lost. Then betrayed him. Left him all alone, and led them back to kill him. Only he was already gone.”

“You’re dreaming of the prince again?”

He hadn’t been a prince. Of that I was certain. An orphan. Jerked around by fate. Used as a pawn by those with political power. He’d had some magic, though not the kind people had proclaimed. His had been of peace, all of the small things he did, from the protection talismans, to the soothing music and herbal teas, none of that power had ever been something destructive. I wondered if that was why they’d cursed him. How terrible. To be cursed for simply being who you are.

I sucked in a hard breath like I’d been hit in the chest. I’d had plenty of hardships in my life, not being from a solid family, not being completely white, not being straight, but all of that was not nearly the pain of being shunned, exiled, and abused for simply existing. Fuck.

Hard to see your own privilege until you stepped into someone else’s shoes.

“The Mandate,” I corrected. I took a long drink of water, letting the cool chill of it soothe my throat. “They did so many terrible things to him.Idid horrible things to him. Treated him like a thing instead of a person.” I didn’t even question that it was real. Itfeltreal. “I’m crazy.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Does it feel bad? The dreams? Being here? Does it feel wrong?”

“No.” It felt right. Like I was where I should have been all along. “I mean the dreams aren’t good. I dreamt of death, people murdered, and hell, my own death, but all that… it was faint. Memories long past. I can recall emotions.” Everything else had been eclipsed by those eyes, wide and innocent, and his hand in mine. All I’d really wanted was to protect him, and yet I’d failed at every turn. “I’m a simple man. I work with my hands,” I said staring at them as though they could hold the answers.

“But that doesn’t uncomplicate the heart,” Addy pointed out.

“There are so many unanswered questions.”