The Cursed Sea

by Lauren DeStefano

“Guest chambers,” Gerdie said, though his tone was grudging. He had never been especially fond of strangers, much less the children of the king who had attacked his home. But he hadn’t complained, and he hadn’t sent them away, though he could have. Wil trusted them, and that meant something to him.

  Loom and Espel had heard the shouting and they met them in the grand foyer. Loom regarded Wil with uncertainty and guilt; she hated to see him like this. Just as her memories of what happened the night before had returned to her slowly, so had his. She could see that much on his face. He remembered being unable to control his hand. He remembered plunging the dagger into her chest. And now he was faced with what he had done.

  Wil hadn’t seen her reflection, but she could guess at how she looked. She wanted to tell Loom that she had endured worse, but it wasn’t true. For all the attempts that had been made on her life—resulting in cracked ribs, broken bones, and endless blossoms of bruises—the worst had been sustained by the boy who loved her.

  No. It hadn’t been Loom, she reminded herself. It was Pahn. Pahn, who lay dead in the castle garden where he’d been slain, his body still, his robes fluttering in the illusion of breathing.

  Wil had grabbed the lantern that hung on a hook inside the servants’ kitchen, and now she held it up. The sharp blue glow highlighted Pahn’s corpse. He was on his back, gaping at the stars. It had taken a marveler to kill a marveler. King Zinil surely hadn’t anticipated that.

  It isn’t a trick, she tried to console herself, though it wasn’t working. He’s truly dead.

  She followed her brother to the group of soldiers standing at the gate. When she came to stand at Gerdie’s side, the foremost soldier dropped to a kneel. In a wave, the others followed.

  “Your highnesses,” the foremost soldier said. “We’ve come to serve you.”

  Wil recognized him. On the night she discovered her curse, she and Gerdie had returned to the castle, battle weary and limping, and this soldier had been the one to greet them.

  “Where have you been?” Wil asked, though she was a fine one to ask such a question, seeing as she’d been gone for nearly the entirety of Baren’s reign.

  The man rose to his feet, giving her another cordial bow of his head. He showed the same respect he had always offered to the princess of Northern Arrod, and Wil, for her part, looked as bedraggled as ever.

  “King Baren sent us to the outlying cities when he became king. He was certain that an attack was coming, and he wanted soldiers at all corners of the kingdom.”

  Wil and Gerdie exchanged a look. They had never known Baren to strategize. As king especially, he had been frenzied. Erratic. Sleepless. Did he have a plan all along?

  “We’ve been sent to escort you to him,” the man went on.

  This could have been a trap, Wil thought. But it didn’t seem likely. Her father’s soldiers had been loyal to the throne; many had served her family long before she or her brothers were born.

  Still, she kept her guard up. She switched off her lantern so that its glow would not give away their location—though it didn’t seem that enemy soldiers were coming.

  “How are you?” Loom whispered. His sudden closeness startled her; she hadn’t felt his presence or heard his approach.

  “Best I’ve ever been,” she said. “I’m thinking of running. Care to race me?”

  She’d meant to make him laugh, but his silence said that she had only made him feel that much more guilty.

  “You’re limping,” he said.

  “I’m all right.”

  “You’re going to pull your stitches,” he said. “That’s if you don’t collapse first. It would be easier if I carried you.”

  She glared. “Like a baby?”

  “No. On my back.”

  She scowled.

  “I promise you will look very gallant,” Loom went on. Wil didn’t reward him with a laugh, though she wanted to.

  It irritated her that he was right. But each step dizzied her. Against the darkness of night, her vision roiled with flashes of metallic brightness, and she knew that her blood pressure was dropping. Her stubbornness wouldn’t be productive, and there wasn’t the luxury of time.

  She conceded to his invitation, climbing onto his back and coiling her legs around his hips, her arms around his neck. She was surprised at what a relief this was. His hair was thick and heavy with sweat and grease, his skin had the bitter smell of blood, so heady she could taste it. But he was familiar to her. So warm and safe. She placed her head to the back of his neck and closed her eyes. It was dark. No one would notice if she rested. Just for a little while.

  Later, she would never admit to falling asleep, jostled by his deft and quick steps. She didn’t mean to. She shouldn’t have. But for a few fleeting moments, the entire kingdom just . . . fell away.

  “I love you,” she whispered, half dreaming. He kissed her arm that was draped over his shoulder.

  But the time to rest was short-lived. Soon they arrived at the mouth of the abandoned train tunnel. Wil could not sense her brother’s marvelry as she had once been able to. She couldn’t even sense Loom’s cursed heart beating beside her own. This last thing caused a panic that she pushed to the back of her mind.

  There was no buzz in the air; there was no glow. Baren had made himself wholly invisible to the outside world.

  Wil slid to her feet. Winds, she was exhausted. But as before, she was determined to face Baren standing. Masalee was nearby, casting gentle, healing threads through Wil’s blood. It did little for the pain, but it gave her the strength to keep going.

  One of the soldiers lit a lantern and headed the charge into the tunnel, but Wil said, “Stop.”

  The soldier turned to face her.

  “Your Highness?”

  “He’s our brother. We should be the ones to speak to him.” Wil looked to Gerdie, who hesitated for a beat, then nodded.

  Wil and Gerdie took a step forward. When Loom moved to follow, Wil stayed him. She brought herself close to him and said in a low voice, “We should go alone.”

  She could see that he was uneasy, but he didn’t try to protest. “I’ll be right here,” he said. “In case anything goes wrong.”

  She laughed without any humor. “What could possibly go right?”

  She lit her lantern and turned for the tunnel, Gerdie at her side. “Do you have any idea what we should expect?” she asked.

  “None whatsoever.” At least he was honest.

  Wil felt the energy before she saw it. A faint glow identical to the one she had seen the first time she encountered the marveler woman. It was a pulsing, nauseating hum.

  It didn’t have the effect on her that it had when she met the old woman for the first time, and now Wil thought it strange that her fatigue only came from her physical wounds; she didn’t feel the strain of the kingdom’s curse countering her own.

  She saw Baren, and if the way Gerdie grabbed her wrist was any indication, he had seen him, too. Baren knelt in the dirt, at the heart of the purple glow, which flashed with thin, webbed flashes of brightness, like lightning in a bottle. His head was down, his golden hair covering his expression.

  Slowly, he tilted his face up to meet them. His eyes were eerily bright, not the shade of blue he shared with his mother and brothers, but more electric, like the street lanterns Wil had seen dotting the Eastern cityscape.

  His mouth curled into a sneer, revealing his teeth.

  Gerdie drew his weapon. It was Owen’s long sword, slim and light, and so all the more deadly. But Gerdie didn’t raise it against his brother. Not yet. Instead, he extended his arm, shielding Wil. Baren’s gaze was undoubtedly fixed on her, and she was no match for him now. She might not have been a match for him even at her best, she realized. He had grown stronger.

  Baren had always been a bumbling child. Never quick or clever. It wasn’t his shortcomings that made him mean; it was their father’s disdain. What use did their father have for a spare who could scarcely shoot an arrow at a target? If he had n
ot been born the son of a king, Baren would have been a softer sort of boy. He would have found his talents. Wil wasn’t sure what made her think this now, standing here. She had never thought it before. But in Baren’s merciless stare, she saw more in her second-eldest brother than she ever had in nearly sixteen years of living down the hall from him. Baren had not been allowed to pick up an instrument, or a paintbrush, or a book; he was deprived of the frivolous and yet essential element of pleasure, all his life. Instead, he was given swords and arrows and chains; his wrists were slapped by impatient instructors when he couldn’t properly wield them. He was always a failure, because he was only allowed to attempt things at which he would fail.

  And in this same moment that seemed to contain a lifetime, Wil thought of her own lessons on comportment and sewing and plaiting her hair. If those frivolous things had been all she was ever taught, it would have been a miserable childhood of glaring in jealousy as her brothers pursued their weapons training and their world history lessons.

  Baren—was he telling her this? It was all so clear.

  “Baren.” She spoke in the same tone she would afford a feral wolf whose den she had just encountered. “Did you kill Papa for what he did to you?”

  Baren rose to his feet. Gerdie readjusted his grip on the sword hilt. Wil put her hand over Gerdie’s, staying his hand as she stepped in front of his sword. It would only provoke Baren’s anger. No one had ever protected him.

  She stepped forward. “Answer me.” Her tone was gentle. She wouldn’t have hated him for the truth; she believed that. “Papa wasn’t a perfect man, Baren. I know that. He was often cruel.”

  “If he was cruel, it was your fault,” Baren said. “You did this to our family.”

  This was a sentiment Wil had forced herself to face since the night of Owen’s death, and especially after she learned the truth of what had happened to Aleen. It was her fault the kingdom had lost its heir. Her fault her father had been so tormented by the love he felt for his children that he hid it even from himself. She had said this to Gerdie and her mother, to Loom, and countless times to herself. She should have said it to Baren also. She should have been able to agree.

  But what she said was, “I was just a baby, Baren.”

  “You were evil before you were out of the womb,” he seethed. “You should never have been born.”

  “And then what?” Wil countered. “If I had never been born, someone else eventually would have been. Is it so inconceivable that a queen might love someone just a little bit more than her king?”

  “Our mother had three other children, and she doesn’t love any of us more,” Baren said. “Just you.”

  “I know,” Wil said. She took a step closer, and Baren bristled, as though he were the one afraid of her. For a blink he looked truly terrified of his little sister, who was bloodied, and small by comparison. Her mother had always favored her; Wil knew that. She also knew that she was no more worthy of love than her brothers. Being born a girl had been the only thing to set her apart.

  Her mother had wanted a daughter the way that some people wanted diamonds and gold—all the things Wil had been cursed to create with a touch. And wanting anything so much was an irrational thing. Wil would never understand it. Perhaps her mother had expected her daughter to be a piece of herself that she could keep and admire, like a jeweled comb. Like a song.

  “But I’m not your enemy,” Wil said. “You know that or you would have let Pahn kill me.”

  Baren laughed, and it came out like there were two voices in his throat. It was not a human sound. “You think I did that to spare you? I killed Pahn to stop him from bringing your ugly, cursed heart to our enemy king. I don’t want our kingdom destroyed.”

  Wil heard Gerdie breathing behind her. The damp had cast a rattle to his lungs. She heard, too, his sword tip dragging against the dirt, a subtle reminder that he was still holding it.

  “I believe you,” Wil said. “But you have to let go of the curse you’ve placed over it.”

  “The curse was to keep you out.” Baren’s voice was strange. It no longer sounded like him. He stood tall and his shadow grew behind him. With a cry that no living thing should make, he charged at her.

  Wil was thrown to the ground before she knew what happened. She pushed herself upright, quickly scanning her body. No new wounds.

  Gerdie stood where she had been a moment ago, his sword poised to strike. He’d pushed her out of the way, and though Wil knew this was a sensible thing for him to do given the state of her, she was furious.

  She struggled upright just in time to see Baren throw the sword from Gerdie’s grasp. Tendrils of the strange purple-pink smoke coiled Gerdie’s wrists like cuffs, shackling him to the dirt.

  Gerdie gritted his teeth, and when he struggled, the restraints tightened. But the object of this was not to hurt him, Wil realized; it was to keep him out of the way.

  Baren was not himself. Wil knew his outrage; just as she stole the lion’s share of their mother’s love, she bore the burden of Baren’s hatred. And this was not the same brother who had taunted her, who had smashed her things and poured ink over her calligraphy and dangled her from her bedroom window.

  This was something far darker than that. He ran at her, and she saw the old marveler woman’s eyes where his should have been. It was the old marveler woman’s voice, not Baren’s, that screamed as his body charged at her.

  “Wil!” Gerdie cried, but he couldn’t reach her. That was for the best. This was not his battle.

  Wil drew her gun and fired a shot right into Baren’s chest. But the bullet tore through him as though he were air.

  Baren grabbed her arms, his grip so tight that she was lifted from the ground. These were not his eyes. This was not him. And for a moment, the cavern disappeared. Wil saw her grandmother screaming over Aleen’s body. She saw her grandmother fleeing the castle in the dead of night and throwing herself into the sea. She saw her grandmother’s body wash up along the jagged rocks on the city’s outskirts. She saw the body convulse and cough up water, and grapple for hand- and footholds.

  Her grandmother had not killed herself in despair. She had meant to, but she’d lived. It was pure chance that had saved her, but in that moment, awakening on the rocks, Wil’s grandmother had believed herself invincible. She stood, blood running down her shredded palms and knees, and she looked toward the Port Capital in the distance. She wasn’t thinking of the son who still lived, but of the daughter she had lost. Of her traitorous husband; while she was underwater, any love she had left for him turned black and rotted inside her.

  There was nothing left for her here. When she boarded a ship that evening, she was not the queen of Arrod. She was not the mother of two children, or the wife of a king. She was nothing and no one, and it was a relief.

  In her world travels, she would go on to discover marvelry. She would discover that she still wanted revenge. Even before her granddaughter was born, she sensed the time was drawing near. The moment Wil’s heart came alive in the womb, her grandmother felt the curse, as she’d come to feel a great many of the world’s little tragedies.

  And the once-queen of Arrod wanted to have her revenge now, though her body had been irreparably destroyed when Wil’s mother killed it. She was inside Baren. Baren. The most vulnerable of all the royal children. The one who was so desperate to belong, so alone in his hatred of his cursed sibling, had been the easiest to manipulate.

  “How long have you had this hold on him?” Wil spat. Her chest ached so much that she thought her wound must surely have torn open. “Since he was a child?”

  Baren laughed. Again, it was not his laugh.

  Through Baren’s mouth, the old marveler woman answered, “Since the day you were born.”

  Wil felt her mind starting to fog. Not with delirium or even with pain, but something that resembled wisps of cauldron smoke. She saw Baren on the day she was born. He had been a pretty, elegant child with large eyes and a willowy stance. His expression was sour, th
ough, his eyes brimming with tears.

  He was running away. No one in the castle truly loved him. There was no place for him there. No place for him anywhere.

  He ran until he’d gotten lost in the forest, and only when he realized that he no longer knew where he was did he stop.

  The old woman, trapped in Baren’s body, let out a scream that awoke Wil from her trance. She was pinned against the dirt wall of the tunnel now. The lantern had fallen from her grasp and shattered, leaving only the purple glow. It waned and then flared with brightness. “Once you’re gone, the curse will be broken,” the old woman’s voice and Baren’s spoke in unison.

  Gerdie was shouting, but Wil couldn’t hear what he was saying. Her ears filled with the rush of blood. All the strength was draining from her heart, down her limbs and through her skin like blood through a wound. Her lungs constricted. She struggled but found she could scarcely move. The old woman in Baren’s body was draining the life out of her.

  With what was left of her strength, Wil screamed. She screamed until her voice sounded very far away and faded.

  Everything went dark and silent. The wisps of bright smoke were gone, and Wil would have believed she was dead if not for the drip of water falling into a puddle somewhere.

  Heat swelled behind her rib cage, right where her heart lay, still beating. The heat turned into a fire, and the fire flooded her veins and she came alive again with a scream as she released it.

  Light filled the space again, but it was not a marveler’s unnatural light. It was the lanterns of a dozen soldiers running toward her. They skidded to a halt when they saw the hold she had on Baren.

  Only it wasn’t Baren at all. Wil saw the eyes of the old woman—her grandmother—in her brother’s face. “I may be a curse,” Wil said through gritted teeth as she struggled to maintain whatever force had filled her with the surge of power she felt now, “but I will never cower in the shadows as you have.”

  She was struggling with her own curse, Wil realized. All those weeks of fighting Masalee for control over it had given her a new strength. She could draw upon her curse, like a current in her blood. She could mold it, twist it, summon it to her fingertips and call it back.