Page 5 of Heirs of the Cursed (A Curse for Two Souls #1)

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Bellmare

Naithea hated it when men thought they had the right to embrace her after tasting every inch of her body. But the soldier had paid twenty gold vramnias, so he’d certainly earned such a luxury.

After a long night of trying to get information by all sorts of persuasions, the soldier had fallen limp upon fucking her against the bed and cleaning up the mess he’d made on her stomach. The arrogance she thought to have seen on Leonel’s face had rapidly disappeared when she closed the bedroom door and tossed her dress aside to reveal her figure.

“So . . .” Naithea plopped down on the mattress with her breasts bouncing and attracting the soldier’s attention.

Perfect , she thought with a haughty smile.

“Unsatisfied, sweetheart?” Leonel raised an eyebrow and hurriedly kicked the sheets off his body, ready to climb on top of her again. “Do you want more?”

Naithea laughed, disguising the sarcasm in her voice. The hours they’d shared had been better than she’d expected, but none she wished to repeat.

“No, sir.” She stopped him with one hand on his chest and dug her fingers into the blonde hairs. “You pleased me well enough.”

She batted her eyelashes as she drew her lips closer to the skin of his chest. The lump in Leonel’s throat rose and fell repeatedly, as if he wondered to himself what he’d done to deserve her attention.

“I did,” he replied, his eyes lost in her body.

“It’s my turn to please you.”

Leonel’s head fell back on the feather pillows, yielding to the seductive caresses of the hetaira.

“I would like to see you again, if the feeling is mutual,” Naithea whispered against his manhood. Her breath made the soldier shiver and groan in response, and only then did Naithea dare to ask, “How long will the Royal Army delight us with its presence?”

“It’s difficult to say. It depends on the time it takes to accomplish the mission.”

Mission .

The word echoed in Naithea’s mind.

She rewarded him with a gentle caress of her tongue over his manhood, and Leonel gasped in response.

“That sounds intriguing,” she purred and closed her hand around his shaft to make him moan again.

The soldier plunged his hand into Naithea’s raven mane, intensifying the moment. “Sometimes intrigue can cause the darkest nightmares of all, Ausra.”

“Test me.”

His body tensed at her words, and Naithea cursed herself inwardly for being so blatant.

She didn’t want to think of the kind of punishments they could inflict upon her if anyone found out she was snooping. One hesitation and the Royal Army would be knocking on her door. They would beat her, hang her, or worse, disfigure her face so that no man would pay for her and doom her to slavery forever since Madame Dimond would never let her leave if her debt wasn’t settled.

Naithea lowered her mouth again over his erection and increased the movement of her hand to distract him.

“Ausra . . .” Leonel moaned.

“You’re so ready for me,” she said in a seductive voice.

She traced a path of kisses up his thighs until she reached his mouth. As she kissed him, the salty taste of his manhood seeped between their tongues. Leonel wrapped his arms around her and sweetly thrust into her, letting out a sigh of infinite pleasure.

Just like Madame Dimond had taught her, Naithea took him to the edge of the abyss as she rode him, gasping his name with feigned pleasure. It was in moments of ecstasy, when her victims were exposed and vulnerable, that the hetaira found it easiest to discover the deepest secrets of their minds.

Not with questions, but with magic.

Naithea externalized her power, a melodic song that hypnotized her victims and lured them into her trap. The voice of a mermaid who had sunk ships and doomed their crewmen to a terribly beautiful death. Her boreal gaze was bathed in light, like an explosion of cursed stars.

She knew how dangerous and dark her power was. It had manifested after her mother’s death, while she was begging for vramnias to subsist and pay for the burial. Her soft, mesmerizing voice had bewitched an old sailor on his way back to his ship. Although the man had given her a bag of silver vramnias and his expensive watch, her magic hadn’t been satisfied. It’d plunged the sailor so deeply into her spell that he’d been unable to emerge back to the surface.

Naithea had blamed herself ever since. Not only for taking a life, but for her magic’s late appearance. She had had no one to guide her, and now, she lacked control over it. Perhaps, had her powers appeared earlier, she could have compelled the healers to help her mother despite being unable to pay their high prices.

She could have saved her.

If only her mother could see her now, selling her body for warm food and stale wine . . .

She pushed those thoughts to the darkest part of her mind. If she didn’t focus on her magic, she could very well turn Leonel into another corpse.

Despite her countless attempts to master it, the siren song still controlled her, and Naithea hadn’t dared to use it for fear of the many consequences it would bring. Some would pay for her magic, others would kill.

Yet, she’d become a bloody coward.

“Tell me about the mission, Leonel.”

“Leonel.” He savored his own name and the waves of power rooted within him. His gaze turned white as well when Naithea reached deep into his soul.

“I need you to focus,” she asked gently. “Why is the Royal Army here?”

“The king ordered our troops to be deployed throughout the cities of Lên Rājya after discovering . . .” The soldier began but stopped immediately.

“After discovering what, Leonel?”

There was power in knowledge and Naithea was thirsty for it.

“The holly of death,” he concluded.

Naithea frowned in confusion. The legends of the cursed plant that only equally dark magic could create had been lost over the years. But the world knew its influence: to destroy the world as they knew it.

Her spell tightened like a brittle thread and tugged at her; a warning that it would soon consume her victim utterly. She continued to weave her web of power, reveling in the sensation as pieces of Leonel’s soul began to coalesce with her own.

“Where?” she inquired. Her heart pounded harder with every little piece of information. “Where is the holly of death?”

“There, where monsters and nightmares reign.” Leonel paused again, as if fighting her power. “Down, down, down. In the depths of the Fallen Kingdom.”

Ro’i Rājya.

The kingdom that had been turned to stone. The kingdom that would never be what it could have been.

Naithea focused again. “Tell me what you saw,” she commanded.

Leonel began to cry. A fearsome and formidable soldier of the Royal Army crying like a child scared of the dark. It must have been horrible if it had caused such a reaction in him, not to mention that the king had sent them to solve the problem urgently.

The question was why .

“Two doomed souls who should be locked away have vanished.”

“That’s impossible,” she gasped, stunned. “All the people were locked up in the kingdom along with their monarchs.”

Leonel shook his head, still crying. He looked so vulnerable, so exposed, and Naithea wished she could stop and free him from his torment, but the soldier had to relive every second of that nightmare for her to have the information her soul craved.

“That’s why you’re here,” Naithea surmised, then. “You’re looking for them.”

“Prince Killian must find them if he is to keep his claim to the throne,” Leonel sighed, choking on his words. “He has to find them and . . . finish them off before . . . it’s too late.”

She wanted time to study the information, to keep pushing her power within him, on his memories. But if she didn’t rid her power from his body, she’d never get answers.

Naithea leaned forward, sealing Leonel’s lips with her own to absorb the magic. She could feel it struggling, nestled in the deepest places of his heart, but she fought harder.

When Naithea pushed away the rot and death that had begun to eat away at Leonel, she dropped onto her back, savoring the traces of the soul she’d stolen and claimed as her own.

Savoring the sweet guilt that came with power.