Page 8

Madison

I woke up with a start, my head pounding and my heart thundering.

Light filtered through a crack in the curtains, painting pale stripes across the wooden floor.

I lay perfectly still, trying to push away the fragments of my dream that clung like cobwebs to my consciousness. But flashes of Hugh's hands on my skin and his lips against mine refused to fade.

It had been five days since we'd been together in the conservatory.

Since that time, I'd refused to join him in our shared chambers and instead slept in the room I'd been allocated when I'd first arrived at Trent Manor.

But my body still hummed with the memory of our encounter. The heat of his mouth against my breasts, the delicious pressure of him moving inside me… the mingling of our emotions that had made me realise how completely I was his.

Until I wasn't.

I sat up and traced the cold band of my wedding ring.

That same hand had healed Margaret's burn the night before.

I think that the sight of her perfectly healed skin had shocked me more than it had shocked her.

“You're blessed with the healer's gift,”

she'd said, her voice filled with wonder and gratitude.

It felt strange to think of my abilities as a gift.

Aunt Elizabeth had always made me hide them, insisting they were dangerous, shameful.

I’d believed them a curse for so long. But perhaps I'd been wrong. I'd never healed anyone before last night, but with that gift, how many people could I help? The thought gave me a flicker of purpose I’d never felt before.

It played through my mind as I rose from the bed and dressed in a simple morning gown of pale blue cotton.

Not long after, a knock sounded at the door.

“Enter,”

I said, knowing it would be Olivia with my morning tea and toast.

“Good morning, my lady.”

She set the tray on the small table near the window; her movements precise as always.

Steam rose from the teapot, carrying the familiar scent of chamomile that reminded me of home.

“Thank you.”

I smiled and poured myself a cup of tea while Olivia drifted around the room, straightening things that hardly needed straightening.

Her hands smoothed coverlets and adjusted curtains that hung in perfect folds.

Olivia was normally such a confident and strong presence.

She always took pride in her work, carrying herself with the dignity of someone who knew her worth.

But this morning, that pride was tinged with worry, and beneath that, a resignation that weighed heavy in the air.

Her subtle emotions were far more distinct than anything I'd sensed before.

Since my time with Hugh in the conservatory, I'd noticed a sharpening of my senses.

Between this and the healing of Margaret… I sipped my tea and pondered these new developments.

Had my time with Hugh, our physical bonding, heightened my abilities? Or had they started to grow the moment I'd entered the manor?

I sighed and sipped at my tea, relishing the mild floral taste with notes of pear and apple.

Perhaps I'd simply started paying attention to them, and they were naturally evolving like a flower opening to sunlight.

I ate my light breakfast while remaining conscious of Olivia's emotional state as she busied herself around me.

Her worry pressed against my awareness, like fingers probing a tender wound.

I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but felt certain she wouldn't answer. In the end, I focused on seeing if I could block out her feelings as well as let them flow in. I could. But the effort left me exhausted and caused my temples to throb.

“Will you walk in the gardens this morning, my lady?”

she asked, her voice carefully neutral.

“The weather appears rather temperamental.”

I glanced out the window and noted the darkening clouds that hung low and threatening over the estate.

The air itself felt heavy with the promise of rain.

“I think I'll head straight to the library today,”

I said, setting down my teacup with a gentle clink.

It would be a shame not to spend time outdoors, but it looked as though a storm was brewing, and I had questions that demanded answers.

The library might offer books on healers and their powers, something to help me understand what was happening to me.

After breakfast, I made my way through the empty corridors to the library.

But my steps faltered when a wave of emotion washed over me as I took a shortcut through the great hall.

I glanced around, expecting to see a member of the household staff, but I was alone beneath the soaring ceiling.

Echoes of joy and triumph crashed over me, followed immediately by waves of sorrow and despair.

They came from the room itself, from stones that had absorbed centuries of human feeling.

I steadied myself against the wall, gasping as image after image flashed through my mind like pages turning in a book.

I saw a grand ball with ladies dressed in colourful gowns, their silk skirts rustling as they moved in perfect formation across the polished floor.

A young boy's laughter echoed through the space as he raced between marble pillars, his small feet pattering on stone while his nurse called after him in fond exasperation.

Then came the sorrowful gathering of a funeral procession, mourners dressed in deepest black while rain drummed against the windows.

My heart raced at these memories, at the history embedded in the walls around me.

Feeling a more urgent need for answers, I quickened my pace and hurried from the great hall to the library.

Dark clouds circled overhead like vultures, and the first drops of rain pattered against diamond-paned windows as I entered.

The library never failed to take my breath away.

Towering shelves stretched from floor to a vaulted ceiling, painted with constellations from the night sky.

The rich scent of aged leather and parchment, mixed with the fragrant beeswax from the candles and lanterns. The rain, drumming against the window, added a magical touch that made the room feel like it was cocooned away from the outside world… a place where I could sit and lose myself for hours, and I’d spent countless numbers of them here since I’d arrived.

I turned to the shelves containing magical texts and scanned the titles with growing excitement.

Some bore titles in languages I didn’t understand, others were decorated with intricate symbols.

So many displayed familiar words in elegant script, their bindings worn smooth by the touch of generation, hands seeking, just as mine did now.

The Quiet Gift: An Intuitive Guide to Power caught my attention immediately.

I was about to pull it from the shelf when I felt a pull from another part of the library.

Not the aggressive compulsion I'd felt in the great hall, more like a whisper of curiosity that drew me like a moth to flame.

The floorboards creaked softly beneath my feet as I moved instantly towards the sensation, and ran my fingers along the spines of ancient leather-bound texts, hoping I'd find whatever called to me.

Mistfall Abbey: The Complete History, Trent Family Chronicles… The Cursed King.

My hand froze on the slim volume tucked between the two larger tomes.

Its binding was old, but the book remained as perfect as the day it was printed, as if it had never been read by human eyes.

The leather was supple beneath my fingertips, unmarked by time or wear. I pulled it from the shelf, noting the gold embossing on the cover that seemed to shimmer in the grey light.

“The Cursed King,”

I read the title aloud, my voice barely above a whisper.

“By Queen Charlotte of Trimortha.”

The name was ancient but familiar.

Everyone knew the romantic fairy tale of how Queen Charlotte had married King Astor and saved him from madness through the power of true love.

But I'd never seen a book purported to have been written by the Queen herself. The story we all knew was sweet and touching, a version told to children alongside Beauty and the Beast and tales from the Pentamerone, like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. This looked different. More serious… more real.

I moved to the long table by the window where I liked to study and watch the birds as they hopped between the branches of the great oak.

Rain streaked the glass now, creating rivulets that distorted the view of the gardens beyond.

I ran my fingers over the gleaming embossing before carefully opening the book.

The front page declared it as being written over two hundred and fifty years ago, but the ink was still dark against cream-coloured paper that should have yellowed with age.

“A True Account of the Curse Upon King Astor,”

I read aloud before continuing in my head.

When I arrived at Castle Ragmore, I believed I was marrying a man broken by grief and responsibility.

Whispers called him the Cursed King.

I thought them to be cruel gossip about his affliction. I was wrong.

I sat back in my chair, immediately entranced by Charlotte's forthright tone.

Her account was remarkable, written with the precision of a scholar rather than the flowery language I'd expected from royal correspondence.

She described the king as being trapped in 'a prison of the mind, a crumbling tower where Astor's true self was conscious and aware, watching helplessly as his body moved without his will.' She claimed it was a curse, brought on by the crown placed upon his head during his coronation.

A shiver ran down my spine as I read, my eyes glued to each word.

Charlotte recounted visions of a woman with silver-white hair, a face untouched by age, and eyes that carried the weight of the world…

The silver-haired woman.

My mind flashed back to my first day at the manor.

I'd seen her in my chambers, hadn't I? She'd smiled at me and whispered my name before vanishing like morning mist. How could I have forgotten such a vivid encounter?

I kept reading, desperate to know more.

Charlotte had researched the origins of the crown with the thoroughness of a historian, tracing it back to Ravina, a Witch-Queen who’d ruled from Castle Brennus in the ancient province of Emmadra.

Both names were lost to modern memory, forgotten by time, but Charlotte detailed them as being in the Northern Realm, which I recognised as the old name for the place we now called Noram.

Charlotte had found a legend that spoke of Ravina's downfall at the hands of a single man where armies had failed.

Through her visions, she discovered that Ravina had been murdered by Daruis, a man she loved and trusted above all others.

The curse had been born from that ultimate betrayal, designed around the expectation that love would always lead to destruction.

My hands trembled as I turned the pages, drinking in every word.

The parallels to my own situation were impossible to ignore.

A cursed ruler, whispers of madness, a wife trying to understand the supernatural forces arrayed against her marriage.

At the end of her account, Charlotte had written a warning that made my blood run cold.

I do not know if other artefacts exist or what forms they might take, but I fear some may be out there, carrying curses designed to test and corrupt those who encounter them.

To those who may face such darkness, remember that curses born from betrayal can only be broken by the opposite. Love.

I stared at the ring on my finger, always cold, always heavy against my skin.

The gold band that had felt wrong from the moment Hugh had slipped it onto my finger during our wedding ceremony.

Did it carry with it the weight of another curse? Were Hugh and I trapped in the same web that ensnared Astor and Charlotte centuries before?

Thunder crashed overhead, making me jump, as the storm had arrived in earnest.

Rain lashed against the windows with increasing fury.

But I paid no heed to the weather. My mind was too absorbed by the possibility that my marriage was doomed before it had even begun.