I should be embarrassed, but I’m not. I sit a little taller, watching her. Dahlia pads lightly toward me and puts her hands on either side of my face. She tilts her head up toward me, staring deep into my eyes.
“Why in the world would you do that?” Her voice is husky, barely above a whisper.
My heart thumps. I shrug. “It’s the only way to think clearly when it all gets too much. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Oh, Damon,” she says softly. Sadness fills her eyes and I shake my head.
“That’s not why I told you. I didn’t tell you so that you’d feel sorry for me. I’ve never told anyone this, Dahlia, but I told you because I want you to trust me. When you walked away from me before…” I suck a breath in through my teeth. “…it nearly killed me. I can’t explain it. I know I’m coming on too strong. I don’t want to freak you out. I just…”
As I search for the right words, Dahlia presses her lips to mine. She sits down across my lap and pulls me closer, sighing against me.
All the confusion, the doubts, the fear—they all evaporate.
My heart soars.
I wrap her in my arms, holding her close to me as I claim her lips. She feels tiny in my lap—and so fucking perfect it shouldn’t even be possible.
I’ve never told anyone about my beatings before, and I’d never intended to. I thought when I stopped needing them, I’d stop going to see Nigel, and that would be the end of it. I thought I’d never be comfortable enough with a woman to tell her. I thought I’d live with my broken, dark heart forever.
Telling Dahlia the truth stitched a part of my heart back together.
She pulls away from me, her hands still resting on my face. Dahlia gazes deep into my eyes.
“I want you to stop doing that to yourself.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, it, Damon. This thing between us…” She takes a deep breath. “It shouldn’t feel so right, but it does. I want to keep seeing you, but I want you to stop hurting yourself.”
In this moment, I’d promise her anything. I’d say anything to taste her lips again—but the way she’s looking at me makes me pause.
For the first time in many, many years, I consider what she’s saying. What would happen if I were to stop? What would happen if I never went to Nigel again? What would happen if I had to deal with the Darkness on my own?
“Whatever it is inside you that makes you do that, I’ll help you with it,” Dahlia says softly, answering my unsaid questions. It’s like she can feel the buzzing in my head, and she knows exactly what to say to make it quiet down.
I gulp, and finally nod my head. “Okay.”
“You’ll stop?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” Dahlia rests her head on my shoulder and takes a deep breath. She melts into my arms, and we sit there for a few moments without saying anything.
It feels so good to have her here like this. This is where she’s supposed to be—where I’m supposed to be. I close my eyes and squeeze my arms around her, trying to understand these feelings inside me.
Whatever this is between us—this chemistry, this spark—it’s real. We can both feel it, and we both want to pursue it. Even after months apart, it feels like no time has passed at all.
That has to mean something, right? That has to be worth fighting for? Worth being honest for? Worth changing for?
I tilt her chin up toward me and I kiss her gently, feeling her body quiver against mine. As I kiss her there in the kitchen where I first met her, I know that there’s no turning back. Even if I wanted to leave, something has changed between us.
There’s no more running, no more secrets, no more tangled family pasts to keep us apart. For the first time, Dahlia and I can be open with each other. We can face our deepest fears—together. Me with my own demons, and Dahlia with her family’s past.
Everything clicks into place, and it’s not about crazy sex and burning passion—it’s about us, together. Nothing more, and nothing less.
23
DAHLIA
AUNT THERESA IS RIGHT. I can’t live my life in fear of some stupid, non-existent curse, or keep worrying about what my family thinks. I need to make decisions for myself—and not just my hair color. I need to decide how I want to live my life, and who I want to live it with.
Not to mention Prince Damon is very convincing. His kiss is, at least—and his touch. I rest my head against his shoulder and let out a sigh.
“So, we’re doing this?” I ask in a small voice.
“We’re doing this.”
“You’re not worried about dating a Raventhal?”
“Not in the slightest.” Damon chuckles, smoothing his hand over my hair. He kisses my forehead and I sigh into his chest. It feels good to be in his arms. It’s warm, safe, and comforting. It’s home.
I take a deep breath. I feel like I need to say it out loud to prove to myself that I can.
“What if I told you I’m cursed? That everything in my life ends up going wrong, and that it’s always been this way?”
“Maybe we’re both cursed, and our curses will cancel each other out,” Damon says. I can hear the grin in his voice. He kisses my forehead again and I lean back to stare into his eyes.
“This curse is no joke.” I say, keeping my face serious. “You could be getting yourself in a whole heap of trouble.”
“Maybe I like trouble.” The Prince’s eyes flash. He pauses, tilting his head. “Wait, are you being serious right now?”
I bite my lip, blushing. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“Is this why you didn’t want to see me before? Do you really think you’re cursed?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what I think anymore. My mother used to say it to me when I was younger. It just stayed with me, I guess.”
“That’s a bit…” He frowns.
“A bit what?”
“Well, manipulative.”
I frown, considering his words. “I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it manipulative.”
“Telling a small child that she’s cursed, to the point where she carries that shit into adulthood? That’s kind of fucked up, don’t you think? I don’t know. I’m no expert in healthy parent-child relationships, but that seems weird to me.”
I chew my lip, nodding. “Yeah.”
My instinct is to defend my mother—it’s what I always do. But when I stop and think about Damon’s words, it makes me realize that he might have a point. This curse has always hung over my head—just like my fear of Farcliff.
Damon chuckles and kisses the tip of my nose. “I’ll risk a curse if it means I get to be with you.” I yelp as he scoops me up and throws me over his shoulder. He carries me to my bedroom and kicks the door closed behind us.
Laughing, I wriggle in his arms until he drops me on the bed. His eyes are heady and his lips are too tempting to resist. I wrap my arms around him and melt into his embrace.
This time, we use protection, and I vow to go and pick up a new birth control prescription as soon as possible. Having unprotected sex in his study was irresponsible. I know it was, but I just can’t bring myself to regret it.
THE PRINCE SURPRISES me when he agrees to sleep over at my dumpy Grimdale house. I’m lying on his chest, drawing circles with my fingertips over his skin.
“Are you sure this is luxurious enough for you?” I ask, grinning.
“Being with you is luxurious, Dahlia. I don’t need a feather bed.”
I smile, inhaling the scent of his skin. “You could be the Prince and the Pea for all I know. Maybe you won’t be able to sleep a wink in this shack of mine. You’ll feel every spring in my old mattress.”
“I don’t intend on sleeping, but it won’t be because the mattress isn’t soft enough,” the Prince growls, flipping me onto my back.
I squeal and giggle, wrapping my arms around him. He props himself up on his elbows and strokes my hair, sighing.
“I’m happy when I’m with you, Dahlia.”
I stroke the side of his face. “‘One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the marketplace. One should direct them towards mutual affection.” I stretch my head up to kiss his neck. “A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.’”
Damon struggles to fight the smile off his face. “And which Russian novelist said that?”
“Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.”
“Well,” Damon says, sliding off to my side and lifting me up to straddle him. “Then, I feel affection for you, Dahlia, and I hope that the feeling is mutual. Does Alexander Whatshisname approve of that?”
“He’s dead, so I can’t ask him,” I grin, “but I’m sure he would.”
“How do you remember these quotes off the top of your head? Maybe you should be studying literature.”
I shrug. “Our brains just remember things we’re interested in.”
The Prince’s eyes soften, and his fingers sink into my thighs. My heart thumps.
Turns out, the Prince is right. Neither of us sleep a wink that night.
I SHOULD KNOW that something bad will happen. I should be prepared for it.
I’ve said it before—I’m cursed, even if I don’t quite believe it anymore.
But do I think of the curse when Damon sweeps me off my feet and makes me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world?
No, of course not.
I should know that anytime something good happens, something bad is sure to follow.
And things with Damon are very, very good. I can’t keep the smile off my face. I rush home after class and find him in my house, and then we fall into bed together. I wake up tangled in his arms, and my heart soars.
I forget about my past, about my family name, about the curse. I forget about my mother, and about the Queen.
I forget about everything except the Prince—the way he looks, the way he moves, the way he makes me feel.
It’s euphoric. It’s magic. He knows all my buttons, and pushes them gladly, as if we’ve lived a thousand lifetimes together.
In reality, it’s only been a couple of weeks. But Damon starts sleeping over at my place, and we fall into an easy routine. I’ve never had anything happen so easily. Once I let go of my fears, it just feels right.
My studies are going well, and my internship at the university lab is fascinating. I haven’t dropped anything, or slipped on any banana peels, or had any bad luck in weeks.
Even with precise lab work, I can pipette and decant and do everything with a steady hand. My first week at the lab, I smashed four glass beakers. Since I’ve been with Damon, I haven’t broken a single one.
He’s equally as busy with his residency, and I admire him for it. I know it’s not easy for him to give up his royal life in order to serve as a doctor—and he gets a lot of pushback for it both inside and outside the castle walls. To his credit, he keeps going.
Usually, Damon sleeps over at my place. He bought me some better pillows and fixed the leaky faucet in the bathroom.
It’s… nice. It’s natural. It’s easy. My heart beats for him, and I live two weeks in complete bliss.
BUT ALL GOOD things must come to an end. In my case, it’s not so much an end as a snap back to my eternally cursed reality.
Two weeks after Prince Damon moves in with me, I finally make it to the doctor to refill my birth control prescription.
Doctor Nokes leads me into her examination room and motions to a chair. She has bright blue-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose, and she always wears a kind smile. She’s never judged me or made me feel uncomfortable, which is why I’ve kept coming back to her. Today, though, my heart is beating a little faster than usual and I’m not sure why.
The doctor taps on her computer to pull up my file. “Okay, Dahlia, looks like it’s time for a pelvic exam. I’ll have to do one before I can give you a new prescription. We can do it right now, if you like.”
I smile. “Sure.”
Dr. Nokes gives me a couple of minutes to strip down and get ready. The examination table has white paper laid over it, and it crunches as I sit down. I lay the sheet she left for me over my lap and stare at the ceiling, waiting. A soft knock on the door sounds, and the doctor comes back in.
“Ready?”
“As ready as ever.” I force a smile, but my nerves are cranking tighter.
Dr. Nokes swings the stirrups over and directs me to scoot down to the edge of the table. I’ve done this dozens of times for Pap smears, and I shouldn’t be nervous—but when Dr. Nokes inserts the speculum, fear clenches in my stomach.
The doctor makes a soft noise, and my heart starts to thump. She pokes her eyes up above my knees and tilts her head.
“Dahlia, is there any chance that you’re pregnant?”
24
DAMON
MEDICAL RESIDENCY IS TOUGH. Add on top of that an inquest into my mother’s death, the disgrace of my father, a new monarch for the Kingdom of Farcliff, and a new girlfriend for me. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.
Maybe that’s why I don’t notice a change in Dahlia right away.
After two weeks together full of studying, sex, and very little sleep, I’m put on the night shift. I come back to her place—it’s starting to feel more like our place—and slump down on her sofa.
“I’m on a two-week night rotation at the hospital starting tomorrow,” I tell her. “After that, I’m back to days.”
“Night shift,” she says, sticking out her tongue. “That sucks.”
“We might not get to see very much of each other.”
“I feel like I’m on night shift already.” Dahlia laughs. “Haven’t had a full night’s sleep since you started staying here.”
Her face looks lined, and she glances away from me. Am I imagining things, or has something shifted between us?
Maybe she doesn’t want me to move in as quickly as I have. Maybe she wants some space. My chest tightens at the thought—irrationally, I know. Everyone needs space. The last thing I want to do is crowd her.
We’ve been spending every spare moment together, and I haven’t felt this good in years. Even a subtle shift in her demeanor is troubling to me. I open my mouth to ask her about it, but I don’t get the chance.
Dahlia takes a deep breath and stands up, brushing lint off her shirt and heading toward the kitchen. “You okay with leftovers tonight?”
“Yeah,” I answer, following her. “That’s fine.”
She opens the fridge without looking at me. There’s tightness in her shoulders, and I watch her avoid my gaze.
“Dahlia, is everything okay?”
She pauses what she’s doing and turns toward me. With a deep breath, she lifts her eyes up to me and opens her mouth.
Nothing comes out.
I wait for her to speak, and she finally sighs. “Yeah,” she says. “Everything’s fine.”
Dahlia walks up to me and wraps her arms around my waist. She buries her face in my chest and lets out a long breath. I squeeze my arms around her.
“Are you sure?”
She nods, saying a muffled ‘yes’ into my chest. When she pulls away again, the tightness is gone from her face and she nods toward the food.
“Let’s eat. I’m starving.”
I eat, and Dahlia pushes food around her plate. I frown, but I can tell she doesn’t want to talk to me about whatever is bothering her, so I don’t push it.
We’ve only really been together for a couple of weeks. I don’t know all her moods yet, or how to react when something is bothering her.
So, I do what I like people to do for me. I give her some space.
We don’t say much to each other that evening, and we go to bed early. She gives me a kiss before heading to her classes, and I hang around the house until it’s time for my shift in the evening.
I’m gone before she comes back, and then I’m too busy
at the hospital to think about what’s happening between us. Emergency medicine takes a lot more mental and physical energy than I ever would have imagined. I’m running around all night, trying my best to do whatever my attending physician needs of me.
When the sun comes up, I’m doing mountains of paperwork.
By the time I get home, Dahlia is already gone off to her classes. I collapse into bed and fall asleep.
I don’t see Dahlia for three days, because we’re always missing each other.
ON THE FOURTH DAY, I come home a bit earlier and catch Dahlia getting ready for her day. I wrap my arms around her and inhale the scent of her hair.
“I’ve missed you,” I groan.
“Me too,” she says, kissing me gently. She nods to her phone. “Elle just called. She gave birth to baby Charlie.”
My eyes widen. “Already?”
“Right on time,” Dahlia smiles. “Today was her due date. I’m skipping my morning classes to go see her.”
“Can you hold off for half an hour? I’ll come, too. Just have to shower and call Charlie.”
Dahlia nods. She has the same tightness around her eyes as she did early in the week, and her face is still shuttered. But she kisses me gently and wraps her arms around me, and my fears start to melt away. Maybe we’re both just tired.
The darkness in my heart loves to needle at my insecurities, though, and I wonder if there’s more to it than just fatigue. Maybe she’s second-guessing this relationship? Maybe she’s not happy with me after all?
I shake the thoughts away. I know what self-sabotage feels like.
We’re probably both just exhausted.
ELLE GIVES birth at the Farcliff Royal Hospital. It’s closer to the castle than Farcliff General, and is where all the monarchs have given birth in the past. Dahlia and I make our way to her room and are ushered in by a glowing midwife. “Congratulations, sir,” she says. “You’re an uncle.”
Dahlia goes to Elle, and Charlie stands up from a chair. I shake his hand, smiling. “Congrats, Your Majesty.”
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