“Standing back while that glashtin attacked you… I was screaming in my mind while it went after you. It felt like I’d had my soul ripped out once more.” His voice was so quiet and bleak. “I wanted to burn everything down. I wanted to ignite the glashtin first, then grip Lady Richelle by her throat and slowly roast her in the flames of the burning monster while the people of her court looked on.”
I cleared my throat. “That’s… that’s one way to do it.”
“But all I could do was stand there, flipping my blade through the air like an idiot.”
Up close, the gaping wound in his neck was shocking—I’d cut right through to the veins. If he was mortal, he’d be dead now. I glanced at his chest, where I’d sliced his shirt near his heart. His blood was pumping hard. It made my throat tighten. Anyone but him would’ve died from that.
“Lady Richelle said you can’t ascend to the heavens with this curse, and the only way you can remove your curse is to murder me,” I said. “I know she plays with words, but she was very clear on that point at the end there. This is the only way to achieve your destiny.”
Salem winced. “Aenor, I need to take us in for a landing. This isn’t the most comfortable of positions to fly in. Especially not with the damage you did to my neck and my heart. Not that I’m complaining.”
“Are you changing the subject on purpose?”
The rain was lashing us, but his firm body was so perfectly warm against mine. “When you leapt off the stone balcony soaked in blood… I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen such a beautiful vision.”
“You have interesting taste.”
“I’m still losing a lot of blood. I need to take us down somewhere to recover. Then I’ll fly us away.”
He was swerving through the air in an irregular path. I held on to him tightly, legs clamped around his waist just like they’d been around the bull. And I felt like I was clinging on for dear life.
I peered over my shoulder. We hadn’t made it far. In fact, we were still careening over Mag Mell. It looked like we were veering toward the enormous castle that crowned Mag Mell’s mount.
“Hold on,” Salem whispered in my ear. “I’m taking us inside.”
He angled his wings, and I gripped on to him as tight as I could while the stormy air whipped over us. My hair was slapping into my face, but I stole a look behind me at where we were heading—and it looked like we were flying right for one of the towers.
My stomach clenched as we rushed toward it. “Salem, are you in control of this flight?”
“I sure as fuck hope so.”
His wings shifted, his body tilting, and we swooped upward before we hit the tower. Clutching me hard, he swept above the parapet and just barely managed to bring us down to a graceful landing on the turret floor.
Rain slicked the stones around us. Still in his grasp, I caught my breath for a moment. He unclenched his arms from around me and let me down gently.
I couldn’t help but take a moment to soak in the view around us. From here, we had a view of all of Mag Mell: the craggy slopes curving down from the castle, the vast swaths of forest stretching out to the shorelines.
On one side of the castle was a village—one of steep-peaked wooden buildings crammed along winding roads. Flecks of light warmed the windows, and I felt a sharp pang of longing to be inside in a warm home, wrapped in a blanket.
When I leaned on my injured leg, I inhaled sharply, grimacing. Without all the adrenaline of the arena, pain bloomed in my thigh.
Salem frowned. “Is your leg broken?”
“I’m not sure. My thigh hurts like hell, but I’m not sure what’s going on with it. The glashtin crushed it against the stone.”
He reached down and scooped me up, carrying me bridal style across the parapet. “I can’t heal your divine hex, apparently, but I can heal your broken leg.”
We were crossing to a wooden door, and he shifted me a little in his arms to free one of his hands. He pressed it against the door, and warm magic beamed out from his fingertips.
The door swung open into a dark, dank stairwell. He carried me down one flight of stairs, into a corridor. Thin windows interrupted the stone walls. Lightning struck outside, flashing brightly through the windows. Dark, thorny vines climbed the stones, twining with moss. It looked like nature was starting to reclaim its domain inside the castle.
As Salem’s footfalls echoed off the stone, I had to wonder what would happen if the mad King Tethra discovered us.
Aenor
“Do you remember your way around?” I asked.
“I think so. Sort of,” he muttered, turning off into a spiral stairwell. We descended for what felt like ages. “I’m just looking for my old bedchamber.”
“What if King Tethra is lurking around here?”
“Well, I’ll just have to put the enfeebled twat out of his misery, then.”
When he reached a mossy door inset into the stairwell, he stopped and pressed his hand against it. In the next moment, the door creaked open. I could hardly see in the dark of this new space, until another flash of lightning lit up the surroundings.
In that flash, I got a glimpse of towering windows and stone columns. In here, the air smelled of soil, moss, and oak, and above those earthy scents, the sweet perfume of bluebells. When lightning flashed outside again, I saw that wildflowers and ferns carpeted some of the floor.
Salem set me down on an enormous four-poster bed blanketed with moss. I leaned back against the headboard, and he sat on the edge, one hand planted by my hip. He pressed his other hand against my chest, and hot magic beamed from his palm, winding through my ribs.
Leaning in closer, he pressed his forehead against mine. “I like having you in my old home, even if it needs a bit of work here.”
His soothing magic coiled through my body, and I felt myself unfurling with relaxation for the first time in a while. He was heating the air around me, and it warmed the rainwater on my skin. I wanted to ask him why he was so determined to leave if he liked having me here. But there was that phantom woman between us, still. The secret wife.
“It looks like we need to find you a new witch, since you slaughtered the old one,” he said.
“She got what was coming to her.”
“I’d say so. Pity I wasn’t controlling her mind instead of the other way around. You’d be healed by now.” He lifted his hand from beside my hip and traced his fingers up my forearm. “But the hex looks a little better. She slowed its progress, and now we know that it’s possible for a witch to heal it. We just need to find another who is equally powerful.”
“It bought us more time.”
A crease had formed between his eyebrows. “I think you should be queen again, Aenor.”
“You’re really into this idea, aren’t you?”
“I’d know you were protected.”
I’d thought of it many times. I’d imagined the ceremony. “In my family, the Meriadoc family, there was a legend. There’s an old statue—old as Ys itself. It’s a stone carving of the first king of Ys, Caradoc of Cornwall. The legend was that anyone who could lift the statue’s crown from its head and place it on hers would be acknowledged as the rightful ruler of Ys. No one ever tried it, but I always imagined myself plucking the stone crown off the statue, resting it on my head, and then parading through the streets of Ys. Except Ys was no more.”
“And what about Nova Ys?”
I narrowed my eyes. “You turned the statue into rubble. I’d searched the ruins of Ys for Caradoc’s stony visage, over and over, but it was gone. My legacy was turned into dust. And they think I’m the reason Ys drowned.”
His eyes flashed with a deep blue. “Oh.” The wind rustled his dark hair. “And when you were a little girl,” he said quietly, “did you want to rule Ys?”
“Yes, when I was a kid.” My mind flashed with the image of myself standing by the side of a cliff back in Ys. “I made myself wildflower crowns, and I threaded them with seashells. And I told the other kids they had to
serve me. Gods, no wonder I didn’t have any real friends.” I sighed. “I’d ask you what you wanted when you were a boy, except you never were one.”
“No. I started my life on Earth as a grown, broken man.” His eyes met mine, bright with fiery hues in the darkness. “Queen Aenor… Well, you’ll be my queen until my last days.”
“Is that so?” I shook my head as another old memory blossomed in my mind. “You know what? I don’t think I wanted to be queen. I thought I should want it, so I played the part. I wanted peace and quiet. I wasn’t perfect enough to be queen. I had lots of things wrong with me; I liked being around other flawed things.”
“Like what?”
“There was a Cornish oak by one of the cliffs. It was a crooked and gnarled thing, bent by the wind, and I loved it. On one side were jagged rocks overlooking the sea, but on the other was soft grass. I used to crawl under it for peace and quiet, and I’d bring a book. I fell asleep there more often than not.”
“So instead of being a queen, you wanted to tend to gnarled trees?”
“I would have. And I remember wanting to be a baker. I would have baked the most wonderful, misshapen cakes.”
As my eyes started to adjust to the dark, I could make out the perfect contours of his face, and the faint smile on his lips. “I think the only absurd thing about what you said is your notion that a sovereign should be perfect. They’re more often the opposite.”
“I suppose.”
“So, have you been baking your lumpy cakes over the years?”
His healing magic streamed along my limbs, tingling and hot. My neck arched as I gave in to its pleasure. “Not yet. There’s still time to learn, Salem. When I reach a hundred sixty, I will make the finest, messiest cake the world has ever seen. I’ll decorate it with buttercups and beautiful indigo monkshood.”
“Both poisonous. I like your style—beauty and death all in one.”
“Oh. I should probably get a book on wildflowers before I cook with them.” Warm euphoria spread through my muscles. I didn’t want the healing to end.
“I don’t understand, exactly, why you wouldn’t want to reign.”
“Because that was Mama’s job. Reigning would have meant my mother was dead, and I never wanted that.”
His fingers twitched on my chest. “Ah… well.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to handle remorse. It’s like a dark claw in my chest. Things were easier when I felt nothing.” He pulled his hand away, and the warmth of his magic left me. My leg felt completely healed now, but when he moved away, a chill of dank castle air rushed over my skin.
A sliver of moonlight pierced the windows, highlighting an empty fireplace across from us, its stone mantle carved with gargoyles. For a moment, I envisioned Salem calling forth fire in there. Imagined us creating a warm home in a place like this.
But even without the fire, Salem made it cozy.
I took a deep breath, trying to process everything that had happened, and he crossed to the windows. Rain still hammered against them.
Salem glanced at the panes and went still for a moment. His mood had shifted into something dark, anguished. The stream of moonlight outlined his broad form. His shoulders looked slumped, and he stared down at his hands. I’d never seen him look defeated before.
“You’re still losing blood,” I pointed out. “Let me try to heal you.”
He didn’t move, just kept staring down at his hands. “I think Richelle was right. That I can’t ascend to the heavens as I am. It makes sense with everything I know…” The torment of a thousand years underscored his low voice.
I inhaled sharply. “You can’t give up on the idea just because of one prophetess.”
“I won’t hurt you of my own volition. I couldn’t. And yet I will be your death, because there is someone very powerful who wants that to happen. We will find a cure for the poison in your blood. I’m sure of it. We can find a witch to heal you. But if I don’t leave this world, I will be your death. It’s the way the story is written, because our story is a tragedy.”
“You don’t know that yet. It’s not over.” The light in the room took on a cold gleam, and a cage of dread closed around my chest. “Who is your wife?”
My words sounded distant, echoing off the stone walls. I knew that his wife was at the heart of all this, but I still didn’t know what the story was.
He was still staring out the window. Then he pulled off his bloodstained shirt and dropped it on the floor. “There are things I can’t talk about.”
“I know. Your curse stops you from telling me about it.” I sighed. “But please tell me that you’re not still married.”
I waited, my heart thumping against my ribs, for him to answer.
Aenor
The world seemed to be holding its breath.
“Of course I’m not.”
“Good, and that’s all you can say, I suppose. The star was called Wormwood, a cursed man cast out of the heavens, leaving you in the dark. Unable to speak or tell your own story. And it seems your former wife had something to do with it, and she’s super into the idea of you killing me.”
I remembered Mama saying long ago that it didn’t matter who you were—men would write their own stories about you. You could be cast in one of several roles: a girl who needed teaching, a hysteric who needed calming, a whore…
But it wasn’t always men telling stories about women, was it? No—it was bigger than that. It was that old adage: history was written by the victors.
“The winners get to write the stories,” I said.
“And that’s why I’m the devil, Aenor, reviled for all of history.” His voice carried with it an ancient pain. “But there’s not much more I can tell you about that.”
“I’m sure there’s more than one way to break your curse. There must be.”
He sat on the edge of the bed again, forearms resting on his knees. “I’m not lying when I say I will be your death.” His voice was as cold and quiet as wind through the leaves. “What did you do with the sea glass?”
“I jammed it into your neck and nearly slit your throat. Remember? Now, you need to let me heal you.”
He touched his neck, shifting away from me as I reached for his heart.
“I think I pulled it out, and I dropped it.” Frustration tinged his voice. “I pulled it from my throat and dropped it in the amphitheater.”
“So? We don’t need it.”
“We need to find it, Aenor.” His voice had the ragged edge of desperation.
“It’s the only thing that can kill you. What exactly do you have planned, Salem?” Maybe he thought he was destined to kill me, but I didn’t believe it.
“It keeps replaying in my mind—my elbow hitting the side of your skull. I can hear the crack of bone against bone, and then you fell in the water. And I could barely stop myself as my hands were around your throat. Do you know how close that was, Aenor? This is the way our story has been written since the beginning of time.”
I crawled closer to him, then slid into his lap, straddling him. One of his hands moved to my waist. He was looking at me with an intense expression, like I was his salvation.
I pressed my palm over the dagger wound in his chest and let my forehead rest against his. The strength of our bond pulled us closer—but I didn’t feel the flow of magic like I normally would. Just a little trickle, and that was all.
I heaved a sigh. “It’s not working. The divine hex is stopping the flow of magic.”
He reached up for the side of my face. “I heal fast. I like your hand where it is, even if it’s not working.” That deep, rich, velvety tone had returned to his voice. “If I could, I would carry you back with me to beginning of the world, when I first fell. There would be no curses, no lost crowns, no drowned sisters. There would be no burning in caves, no hexes. It would just be me, alone with you.”
I breathed in his warm scent. “There’s still time.”
I wasn’t even sure what I meant by that. Maybe another plea for
him to stay. The air warmed around me, and my thumb moved back and forth on his bare chest. The slanting light sculpted his thickly corded body. I stared at him, trying to memorize every shadow, every curve of his biceps and shoulders.
But I was avoiding looking into his eyes. I’d feel too much with his intense gaze burning me up. “I’ll miss you when you go. I can look after myself, but for a little while, it was nice having someone else looking after me, too.”
“We only have a little time left.”
I frowned at him. The sea glass, the short amount of time… I had a sense of what he was thinking. “A moment ago, you said that the only way to remove the curse was to kill me, and that you wouldn’t do it. So what, exactly, are you planning? I’m not going to kill you, if that’s what you think. I know you think you’ll be the death of me for some reason you can’t explain, but I don’t believe it. Not all prophecies come true. Just look at all the bullshit Beira shouted.”
Heat flashed off his body, and he tucked his finger under my chin, lifting my face to his. His expression was scorching, and my heart splintered for a moment. It was too much, too intense, like looking right into the setting sun.
“I take back what I said before, about how our bond was a mistake or a trick of fate,” he said, his voice whispering over my skin. “It isn’t. There were reasons I had to say that to you. The truth is, we are meant to be together, even if just for a short time.”
“I know.”
He traced one fingertip down my throat, leaving a trail of shivering warmth. “Our union is a brief, blinding explosion of light in the darkness. It’s a star bursting into life and dying in the vast expanse of eternity. It’s perfect, even if it’s not forever. And there will never be another moment like this, Aenor, with you sitting in my lap, and the rain hitting the windows, and the feel of your hand on my chest. There will never again be two powers like us, joining together. We are two beautiful and broken souls perfectly made for each other.”
But under all his beautiful words, there was that dark undertone of what would happen next. “What is it that you think should happen? What exactly is the nature of this impermanence if you can’t ascend to the heavens?”
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