The Cursed Sea

by Lauren DeStefano

  Espel had never been afforded a true moment. She had always been exactly what their father demanded, and now Loom saw that he wasn’t the only one who had wanted to save his sister. She wanted to save herself.

  Loom lowered his hand to his side. So long as Espel had been the one to deal the final blow, she had won. She had earned it.

  Their father had taken a kingdom from his son, but he had taken something more valuable from his daughter.

  They stood over the king until his eyes went black and empty and his chest went still, and there in the quiet and dark of the mountains, Espel became queen.

  Zay found Loom after sunrise, when the first embers of the sun held their torches to the stars, taking their light.

  He was sitting on a jagged cliff that overlooked his bedchamber. Though he hadn’t been there in years, it still smelled like home, like incense and the fragrant soaps from his washroom.

  Or maybe it was just his memory.

  Zay dropped beside him, gracefully folding her legs and then handing him a flask filled with cold water.

  “I don’t want you to get dehydrated,” she said. “It’s hot as the hells.”

  “Thanks,” he managed. Only when the water touched his lips did he realize how thirsty he’d been all night. “I suppose you’ve met your new queen.”

  “Nearly scared me to death when she told me what happened,” Zay said. “I thought there was no way it could be true. I thought she must have killed you and tossed you into the Ancient Sea.”

  Loom turned his head to her and smirked. “For all else I’ve thought of Espel, I’ve never doubted she loves our home. I really believe she’ll fight for it.”

  Zay considered this, squinting to get a better look at the city in the distance. “Hm,” she finally said. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but I’ve never cared much for your sister.”

  That made Loom laugh, and Zay smiled, pleased with herself for coaxing it out of him; he’d been so serious for so long. “But,” she went on, “unlike your father, she understands that it takes more than a ruler to rule a kingdom. She’ll need your help just as much as you need hers.”

  “I’m sorry you’ll never be queen,” Loom said.

  “I think Masalee will make a better queen consort to Espel than I would have been to you,” Zay said. “Royal life never appealed to me.”

  Loom’s expression had turned grim again, and she bumped his shoulder. “This is still our kingdom,” she said. “And now we can form an alliance with Northern Arrod and start to heal from this war.”

  Loom shook his head. “I’m not asking anything more from Wil.”

  “Who says you’d have to ask?” Zay said. “The two of you have been planning an alliance for weeks.”

  “She should be far away from me,” Loom said. “After all I’ve caused her.”

  Zay rested her cheek on his shoulder. “Well, my dearest one,” she said, “I’m certain Wil would take offense at your telling her where to go.”

  “If she has any sense, she’ll never speak to me again.”

  “Sense has never been a strong suit for either of you,” Zay said. She laughed, and when he didn’t laugh with her, she wrapped an arm around his back. “Don’t sulk. There’s still far too much to do.”

  “An alliance requires her brother being dethroned,” Loom said.

  “Right. Wasn’t that already decided?”

  “Not exactly,” Loom said. “Wil was hoping for something else. She said there was something she couldn’t tell me yet.”

  “You’ll find a way,” Zay said. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re king. This kingdom still needs you.”

  Nothing was at all how he had planned, or hoped. But Zay was still the North Star unmoving in his sky. She always had been.

  “I suppose, since I’m not going to be king, there’s no useful reason to stay married to me,” he said, musing.

  Zay laughed. “Of all times, you want to talk about this now?”

  “Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I think Espel and I can come to an amicable place,” Loom said. “She isn’t going to execute you for setting foot in the palace.”

  Zay had begun patting his back absently, trying to soothe his anxieties. “Ours has only ever been a marriage in name,” she said. “It won’t change anything. Maybe it is time.”

  He sat upright, gently breaking out of her embrace. “It does feel strange to think about.”

  “Yeah.” She slid her joined hands between her knees. “Growing up knowing we would be married was the one constant in my life. It’s been fun.”

  “Banishment curses aside,” Loom said.

  She snorted, and with an amused smile still on her lips, she said, “You know that you and Ada are my world, don’t you? I’d do anything for you, and that won’t ever change.”

  “Same, ansuh,” he said.

  “But sailing off in different directions once in a while would be good for us,” Zay said.

  Perhaps no one else in the world would catch the full meaning of those words, but Loom knew Zay. They were both staring at the Northern ship bobbing gently on the water’s surface. The world felt impossibly fragile in that moment. One stilled breath, one failed beat of one cursed heart, and everything would end.

  But Zay, in all her wisdom, was confident that there would be no endings. Only beginnings. And she was letting him go.

  They were letting each other go.

  Forty-One

  WIL HAD SPENT MONTHS IN relative seclusion, in the woods that surrounded Brayshire. As predicted, her curse returned shortly after her arrival. But it had changed. Just as she had changed after being brought back from death, her curse had also changed. Rather than rushing out of her all at once, it began as a warm buzz in her veins.

  For weeks, Wil concentrated on that buzz, until she saw it in her mind’s eye as a glowing line moving through her. After much concentration, she could draw it to her fingertips or push it back into the depths of her blood. She could turn leaves into gold when she was thinking of her faraway prince, grass into emerald, wild blossoms into sapphire and amber and diamond.

  After a month of this, she grew increasingly confident in her ability to control her curse. And it became less of a curse and more of a weapon, just as she had learned to wield a sword or shoot an arrow.

  Her ship appeared on Cannolay’s horizon four months into Espel’s reign. From Wil’s vantage point on the water, the mountain palace stood tall and shimmering as ever. What she could see of the city was bustling, and she even thought she could hear music reaching out across the Ancient Sea. The city was quite alive, and she felt the weight on her chest dissolving.

  And then she saw him.

  Loom emerged from the port entrance of the palace, his red satin tunic waving on a sudden gust of warm air. It was June, and the Southern air was thick and humid; already Wil could feel it weighing her limbs. But Loom was unbothered by the heat and had begun running toward the dock. Her breath caught in her throat.

  She would have to tell him that her curse was gone. She hadn’t been able to turn anything to stone in the months since she’d seen him; even the phantom urge in her muscles was long gone. Gerdie’s theory was that her birth curse was meant to plague her all her life. But her heart had stopped that night, and however briefly, her life had ended. Her heart was rather ordinary now.

  But her ordinary heart still went wild when it saw Loom. There was no curse to tether them, and yet she raced to the railing and clutched at it. She had to restrain herself from diving into the sea and swimming the distance between them.

  He had been in the palace. Not skirting dangerously close to its perimeter, but actually inside of it. His curse had been broken. Did this mean he was finally king?

  She had gone too long without speaking to him. Too many months spent repairing her own kingdom and wondering if he had even survived whatever showdown he’d had with his father, much less emerged the victor.

  He was already climbing the ladder of h
er ship before she’d finished docking, and just as she’d opened her mouth to laugh at his urgency, he caught that laughter on his tongue with a kiss.

  Her arms coiled around his neck and she smiled against his mouth. All her thousand questions died away. She forgot to ask if he was king. She forgot to ask if Cannolay was as well as it looked. She forgot to tell him how much she had missed him.

  When at last they drew apart, Loom said, “I wasn’t expecting you to come back.”

  “You weren’t?” Now she noticed his troubled expression.

  “I didn’t think I would ever see you again,” he said. “After everything—”

  “Of course you were going to see me. I promised you an alliance, remember?” She straightened. “I’m here on official business to inform you that Arrod has a new queen.”

  “A queen?” Loom’s voice trailed. He looked as perplexed as she had ever seen him. “You?”

  She shook her head, laughing. “Not me,” she said. “Addney, Owen’s widow, gave birth to her just last week. We’re all still getting to know her, but I think she’ll make an excellent queen.”

  “So that’s what you weren’t telling me,” Loom said.

  “I hope you can understand. I had a responsibility to my brother. To my kingdom. Addney has taken the throne as regent until her daughter is of age.”

  He traced his thumb around the slope of her cheek, under her eye. He had been worrying about ending this war and striking an alliance for months, but now that Wil was here, all he wanted to do was look at her.

  In a moment, Wil would ask him about his throne. She would tell him that her curse had been temporarily broken, and while it had been gone, she could be certain every bit of what she felt for him was real. In a moment, there would be bridges to build and kingdoms to aid and an entire world left to see. But for now, she closed her eyes as he kissed her.

  It was an eager, honest kiss, and it bridged two kingdoms.

  Epilogue

  THE NEW QUEEN OF ARROD was born on the first day of June, on a day so hot the sun was singing in its cerulean sky.

  It wasn’t a glamorous birth. Addney had labored for three days in a cottage in Southern Arrod, with the queen regent and an elderly nanny with kind eyes to help her.

  So began the journey back to the castle, in a wanderer’s caravan among bottles that sang against each other as the cart moved. Raya, hours old, didn’t sleep for the entire voyage. It was as though she knew she was on her way to claim her throne.

  One day, when she grew into a wise and lovely girl with light brown skin and her father’s defiant kindness, she would learn all the ugly shadows of her family’s story. She would know of a curse that had been broken when a dagger caused her aunt’s heart to stop beating, only to return in a new way. She would want to hear every word of these stories, so that she might carry them in her chest because they belonged to her as much as the bright spots in her world.

  For now, though, she would only know pretty things. The prisms of light on her father’s chamber walls when the sunlight hit his abandoned treasures. Stories and songs. Soldiers who came one at a time to bow before her bassinet and all its white ribbons. She would know an uncle who always smelled of magic and smoke. She would know an aunt who left for long stretches of time and always came back with stories on her tongue and a Southern prince wound around her arm as though he were tethered to her heart.

  In the years to come, Raya would evade her mentors and climb the castle walls when she knew her aunt’s ship was due to arrive.

  She would run to greet her at the Port Capital with wildflowers in her pockets. She would beg her to turn them into stone.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks as always to my family for all of their love and for believing in me; you’re all the best.

  A big huge basket of flower-lined thanks to Aprilynne Pike, who’s been on this journey with me since before I wrote the first page. Huge thanks are also due to Beth Revis, who made me actually sit down and write it, and who always knows what to say.

  Thank you to everyone who has been willing to hear my ideas over the years and offer their feedback: Harry Lam, who knows All The Things. Jodi Meadows, who has been such a source of encouragement. C. J. Redwine, my gem of a friend, for picking up the pieces and gluing me back together so many times. Thank you to Randi Oomens, who’s been on this journey with Wil since nearly the beginning. Thank you to Sona Charaipotra, Natasha Razi, and Tara Sim for your continued hard work and brilliance. Enormous and cake-filled thanks to Sabaa Tahir, whose skill for commiserating is unrivaled. Huge thanks to Laini Taylor, for all of the love and magic she brings.

  Thanks to my cats for doing absolutely nothing to aid in the writing process whatsoever, and for sitting on my manuscript, meowing through my writing sprints, and spilling water on my laptop; you were all very helpful.

  Thanks as ever to my amazing agent, Barbara Poelle; here’s to the next ten amazing years on this journey together. I can’t wait to see what the next ten will bring.

  Thank you to my editor, Kristin Rens, for continuing to believe in this story and for putting so much heart and care into making it shine. Thank you to the entire team at Balzer + Bray for their hard work, creative genius, patience, love, generosity of time and spirit, and for giving this story a place in the world.

  Last but never least, thank you to my readers for following my stories for all these years, or for just now cracking open one of their spines. I wouldn’t be here without all of your support and love.

  About the Author

  LAUREN DESTEFANO earned her BA in English with a concentration in creative writing from Albertus Magnus College in Connecticut in 2007. She is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Spare, as well as Wither, Fever, Sever, the Internment Chronicles, and A Curious Tale of the In-Between. You can find her online at www.laurendestefano.com.

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  Copyright

  Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE CURSED SEA. Copyright © 2018 by Lauren DeStefano. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Cover art by Billelis

  Cover design and typography by Jenna Stempel-Lobell

  * * *

  Digital Edition DECEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-249141-1

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-249135-0

  * * *

  1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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