Page 33 of Heirs of the Cursed (A Curse for Two Souls #1)

32

Bellmare

Images of a fallen kingdom of stone overlapped with reality.

Naithea had fallen into a spiral of light and darkness and memories that intermingled with the present. As she clung to her mother, not wanting to leave her again, the painting spat her back into the store, confused and dazed. The old wizard’s warnings echoed in her ears, but all the same, she plunged into the blackness of the night and began to run through the city streets and beyond, where her instincts guided her.

The streets and structures of Bellmare vanished around her and a city of stone, dying plants and statues appeared in its place. Her eyes lifted to admire the boreal lights—the same ones that shone in her eyes—that had replaced the bright stars.

A soft, gentle voice whispered in her mind.

‘My Boreal Flame.’

Naithea held her head tightly and pulled her long, dark hair in search of the voice. She didn’t understand where it came from, for there was no one around her. The sound of thunder shattered the image of the kingdom and brought her back to the city, before the forgotten memories dragged her back to where she truly belonged.

A golden-haired, hazel-eyed woman lay sore on a wide bed. Her forehead was pearly with sweat, her chest heaved up and down from exhaustion. Despite her screams, the crown of dark iron, obsidian and gems resting on her head didn’t budge from its place.

Naithea advanced with unsteady steps across the wide room tinged by the boreal hues that leaked through the open windows. When she turned her gaze to the woman, she noticed that she was holding two babies, each wrapped in a blanket, looking completely identical. She rocked them in her arms, between whispers, sadness and regret.

Naithea couldn’t say aloud what it meant.

She didn’t want to.

Because if she did, she’d acknowledge that her whole life had been a lie.

She grew up believing that her family had abandoned her and thrown her in Salismar Ocean to get rid of her for being an abomination. Only to discover that she had a twin sister, a family.

Her mind shattered, her entire surroundings breaking apart. No, she had a family, and that was her mother and ten sisters she loved dearly.

Yet her chest tightened at the thought that there was someone somewhere in Laivalon of her own blood being hunted, about to be killed.

‘Find the path, Ra.’

What path? To where?

By the time tears soaked her cheeks and blurred her vision, Naithea found herself heading deeper into Pixies’ Forest. She fell to her knees, feeling the small stones and split branches embed into her skin. Trying to cling to reality, she sank her hands into the mud.

She wasn’t ready, not for this.

She might never be.

“Stop, stop,” she pleaded. “Please, stop!”

With a sigh, Naithea stood up again, fleeing from her past, from her future. She dashed through the forest’s soothing shadows, new images flashing through her mind—of her life, of her mother, and all the secrets Iseabail had kept hidden in order to protect her.

Naithea paused, holding onto the damp bark of a tree as a new wave of memories washed over her.

“I don’t understand what it means!”

The monster inside her growled in disapproval.

The rustle of branches breaking made Naithea press her body against the tree, fearful that she was being followed.

“Naithea,” the commander whispered.

Not the commander, but the Crown Prince.

Her heart pounded violently as her eyes set on the man clad in refined leather. Even in the darkness of the night, Naithea recognized that face. In the time the goddesses had granted them, she had memorized every inch of him.

The boreal colors rippling across the sky reflected on his white hair, even if he couldn’t see them. Naithea longed to run to him, to collapse into those strong arms that had comforted her so often, yet she didn’t. Fate had shown her the way to an undeniable truth, guiding her toward her end. If Killian ever found out who she truly was, he’d kill her for what her life posed to that of his father’s legacy.

“Prince Killian,” she said, trying to pull herself together.

Killian shook his head, as if such formality and distance hurt him. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what? Call you for what you are?”

“Please.”

Naithea’s heart skipped a beat at the pleading tone in his voice. She wished she could control her body enough to prevent herself from acting that way in his presence. Yet it was as if something ancestral bound them to one another.

“No.”

She turned on the tips of her boots to leave. But as soon as she moved, Naithea staggered. It had been a bad idea to move so fast. Her head was still spinning with the myriad of memories that had resurfaced in her mind, locked for decades under a dark spell.

Killian was there to catch her and held her tightly.

“Are you all right?” he asked with sincere concern.

No, she wasn’t.

“Let go of me.”

Naithea immediately pulled free to get away from the warmth of his hands. The hands that had explored her body a dozen times and could make her fall under his spell once more.

“Naithea . . .”

“No, don’t touch me!” she commanded, but without Killian’s support, she felt unsteady again.

“The bloody hands of a commander didn’t disgust you, but those of your prince do?” he asked.

“You are not my prince.”

“Some would say it’s your duty to respect your future king,” Killian said ironically.

“You lied to me!” she yelled and her head throbbed with pain. “What about the respect that I deserved?”

“I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice. And you chose to deceive me.”

“You have no idea the burden I carry with me for the life the goddesses had chosen for me. The things I’ve had to do for the title I was born with.”

No, she didn’t understand.

But she would soon.

“Rot in the Akhirat!” she spat with anger and sadness and love. For what she felt for the man before her was all that and more. “You were born swimming in riches and lands. You watched your people starve and did nothing to change it! It must have been so hard to be you.”

Killian recoiled at her words. “As much as I would like to change what happens in the kingdom, I don’t have the power to do so,” he excused himself. “I’m not the one who makes the decisions.”

“But you help enforce them, don’t you? You’re the monster that the king releases when he must discipline his people. Is that why you created this facade?”

“Yes,” he sighed with shame.

“Ward never existed.”

“He and I are the same person.”

She laughed wryly, turning to leave.

Another lousy idea.

A sequence of images of Ro’i Rājya unsettled her and Naithea gasped for air as she saw fragments of the dark castle beginning to be consumed by the holly of death.

She reached for a tree trunk to avoid the fall. The prince’s arm around her didn’t falter, determined not to let go of her. Still, it was Killian’s low sneeze that led Naithea to widen her eyes and stare at his hand.

There, along his palm and floating around them, was the familiar pixie dust. Behind him, the blue flowers growing on the bark of the tree had crushed under the weight of his body.

“Shit,” she whispered.

“That’s not a good sign.”

“Of course it’s not, prince ,” she replied sarcastically as she dusted off her body and face. “Now let me go.”

“Stop.” Killian shook out his jacket, bluish dust flying around him. “I’m the same man you met that day in the market. The same man who told you about the punishments of a cruel father and the neglect of an absent mother. The same man who fell in love with you because of your audacity,” he said, lowering his gaze to her swollen lips, “and that big mouth that makes me lose my mind.”

His words echoed through Naithea’s bones.

Love , he had said.

Killian was in love with her, even when he played her all along. In another time, where the lies didn’t tear them apart and the weight of their own loyalties didn’t threaten to consume them, she’d have cried in joy and kissed him. But that was a life the goddesses had stolen from them.

“I don’t care to know that I’ve shared nights with a man who lied to me from the beginning.”

“I never meant to deceive you.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me,” Naithea growled close to his face. “I gave you all of me! Every part that wasn’t already broken . . . And you decided to take that from me. Was it a game for you? I’m sure you and your soldiers enjoyed your evenings as you told them how easy it was to charm the most famous whore of Bellmare.”

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Just . . . Shut up.” Killian took a step forward and cupped her face in his hands, inhaling her fragrance. “You’re driving me crazy.”

“I could murder you right now,” she warned with a grunt.

“That’s not what your body is telling me, love.”

Her eyes widened at his words, but Naithea didn’t need to see the tiny grains of pixie dust under his nose to know that Killian wasn’t himself. The only reason she was still fully self-aware was because, after years of consumption, she’d built up a little resistance.

“Killian, don’t.”

The prince’s breath crashed against her lips. “I’ve waited for the day you would speak my true name for months,” he admitted, pinning Naithea against the trunk of a tree. “I could make you mine right here if you’d let me. I could wed you and make you my queen for all I care.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” she whispered.

“I may be intoxicated with pixie dust, Naithea, but my senses are still as sharp as an arrow. And I can hear your heart begging me to do it. I’d bet my own throne you want that too.”

Naithea gasped breathlessly, frozen in place as Killian’s hand trailed down her body, sending her nipples pressing firmly against the fabric of her shirt. He rubbed her flat stomach, which sank under his caresses, and squeezed her hip bone before continuing his path to that sensitive spot.

She wanted to close her eyes and let go for a second. To forget his deception, his betrayal, and the truth that had unfolded before her eyes.

But she couldn’t.

Before his fingers brushed the stiff fabric of her pants, right between her legs where he’d find the wetness he so desperately sought, Naithea caught his hand. She turned with one of the maneuvers Leonel had taught her, until Killian’s back bumped against the trunk.

A look of satisfaction and pleasure softened his features, as though her dominant side only fueled his desire for her.

Naithea didn’t dare to look him in the eye. She feared that, in doing so, she’d give in. And the images that kept replaying in her mind were enough to show her that there was no salvation for them. That they would never see each other again after that night.

Instead, she lowered her gaze to the ground, to the damp earth where a dark, unfamiliar stone lay. Naithea took it in her hand, feeling a strange warmth, before slamming it against Killian’s chest with pain coursing in her own.

“This is yours,” she declared. She looked at him for long seconds, knowing it was the last time their paths would cross, and then said, “Goodbye, Your Highness.”

Without another word, Naithea staggered away, ignoring the pixies flying above them, out of the hiding places in which they used to shelter, and what that meant.

But it was Prince Killian Allencort who came back to his senses when he noticed that the stone he now held in his hand, the one that had been recovered from the Fallen Kingdom and had been covered with traces of the holly of death, was now completely clean.