Brutal Curse

by Casey Bond

  But if he and I were damned, at least we were damned to the same fate. And at least we could have each other for a short time before it all ended.

  Walking down the hallway, twin mirrors sat on either side of us. I looked to the left and Carden turned to the right.

  A child with dark, wavy hair ran through a field full of flowers and butterflies, pausing every so often to pluck a bloom and tuck it into her chubby palm. A woman with the same hair and eyes sat on a quilt beneath a shade tree, watching the girl. Tiny wrinkles fanned out from the corners of the woman’s eyes as she stared at the girl. “Arabella, come sit with me.”

  The woman patted a spot on the quilt beside her. The girl – me – ran to her and held a hand out for her. She took the half-wilted flowers from me and thanked me for them. “They’re beautiful, darling.” And then she hugged me, rocking back and forth for a moment, closing her eyes and inhaling the scent from my hair.

  I remembered the smell of her jasmine soap. The way she rocked me and how safe I felt in her arms. And how I felt loved.

  It hurt to see her like that, so I tore my eyes from the mirror. That was the mother I remembered, not the one who left us. Not the one who built a new life and begged me not to ruin it by making myself known to her new family.

  “Carden?”

  His eyes were fixed on the mirror behind us.

  A boy with dark hair and eyes sat at a table with a small crown perched on his head. An imposing man with a matching crown sat beside him. “This kingdom, this responsibility, will all be yours one day, son.”

  “What about William?” the boy asked innocently, fussing with his crown.

  “William is not heir to the throne. You are. You are my firstborn. My heir. And I am proud of the man you will one day become.”

  “How do you know who I’ll be, Father?”

  “Because I’ll mold you into that man,” he answered, draining a goblet and sitting it down on the table. “You want to make me proud, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy answered dutifully. The boy looked empty and sad and alone, despite his father sitting next to him. The boy looked like he didn’t like wearing a crown at all.

  “Then pay attention and keep quiet throughout the day.”

  “Carden,” I voiced quietly, giving him a nudge. He blinked rapidly, the clock in his pupils appearing and disappearing just as quickly, a reminder that we were on Coeur’s time and completely at her will.

  She wanted our pasts laid bare to one another; pasts best left where they lay.

  CARDEN

  Arabella pulled me into the space between mirror pairs and let me catch my breath.

  “I didn’t see yours.”

  She waved it off. “Wasn’t much to see. Just me picking flowers.”

  “For who?” I asked.

  She clutched her chest. “For my mother. I was only a child.”

  “Did you have a happy childhood?” I asked.

  “Until she left, I did. Afterward, everything crumbled.”

  “Mine was filled with expectations I couldn’t possibly live up to, and heavy disappointment when I didn’t.”

  “I know how that feels,” she admitted quietly, picking at her dress. The wounds on her shoulder had disappeared, but somehow, I could still sense them. I remembered the feel of her skin as it broke under the weight of my teeth and knew the taste of her blood.

  I shook my head to get rid of those thoughts. I didn’t bite her, the beast in the mirror did.

  But aren’t we one and the same?

  “We should keep going,” she declared reluctantly. “There’s only one way out of this game, and it’s down this hallway.” I didn’t want to keep going. Didn’t want to see what the next mirror would hold. “Carden, we should look at each mirror together.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were in a trance back there. I had to wake you up. I don’t want to risk losing you, or one of us getting stuck in there, thinking the memories were real and giving Coeur any more of an upper hand than she already has,” she urged.

  But that was part of the game. We had no upper hand. We never would. Slowly, we would lose the game. We would lose ourselves, and I would lose her in the end.

  “It felt real,” I confessed.

  “It did. I… for a moment, I thought I was there with her,” she confessed.

  I exhaled a shaky breath. Taking her hand in mine, I offered, “Together?”

  “Together,” she repeated, and together we walked forward. “Yours or mine first?” she asked, but I had already looked toward her mirror and was watching the scene unfold, because I was too big of a coward to see what mine held.

  Arabella’s mother stood in the doorway of a bedroom. Arabella was asleep under the covers, her face buried in them, but her hair spilled over the white pillow beneath her head. There were flowers all over the room. On the fabric that canopied her bed, on her blankets, painted onto the head and footboards and chest of drawers. Even sketched on the walls and carved into the wooden trunk beneath her window.

  The woman held her fingers to her mouth, tears falling from her eyes as she backed into the shadows and disappeared into the darkness.

  Beside me, Arabella cried. I put my hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. She blinked as if waking and turned to me. “I didn’t know she even looked back.”

  “She didn’t want to leave you.” That much was obvious.

  “Then why did she?” she yelled, quickly swiping away a tear.

  “I don’t know.”

  I opened my arms and she fell into my chest as I pulled her in close, holding her tight and letting her cry. It was torture to know she was in pain and not be able to stop it.

  She pulled away from me, eyes fixed on the mirror over my shoulder. I turned to watch.

  William and I sat in front of Father. He paced back and forth, the soles of his boots slapping the heavy stone floor with each step. It echoed over the room, the only noise allowed in it. “You will tell me the truth if we have to sit here all night. If I have to beat it out of you. I will not have my own sons, my own flesh and blood, lie to me!” Father roared.

  William cowered beside me. I didn’t know what he’d done or what he was lying about, but William was to blame. He was always getting into mischief. His face always turned pink when he lied, like the lie was leaking out of his pores just to defy him. But tonight, his face was cherry-red. Whatever it was, it must have been big.

  William shook beside me. He was terrified of our father, but I learned a long time ago that if you showed fear, the punishment would be worse, and I’d be damned if I let him hurt my brother again. The last time, he couldn’t walk for four days.

  “I am to blame.” The words spilled out of my mouth. Barely a teenager, I stood as my father approached. My stomach ached with the blow he dealt, knocking me to the ground. I gasped for air, wincing and knowing he hadn’t even gotten started yet. Father wasn’t a man who dealt punishments for those who didn’t deserve them. But if you did deserve one, he wasn’t about to let someone else do the dirty work.

  He spoke to my brother, but kept his angry eyes fixed on me. “William, you are to return to your room.”

  A war raged on my brother’s face. He didn’t want me to take the blame, but he wasn’t brave enough to accept it, either. “Go,” I mouthed.

  William didn’t need much coaxing. He ran from the room, leaving me alone with our father. The door slammed closed in his wake.

  She pulled me back to reality, her hands on either side of my face. “Carden. Look at me. It’s not real.”

  “I know it isn’t. I’m here,” I told her. But it was only half true. I was still there, too. Still wishing my brother would behave, yet knowing he wouldn’t. Still wanting to protect him when I knew I shouldn’t. Knowing he’d never do the same for me. He was a spoiled brat, but I
loved him too much. Much more than he ever loved me.

  “My father never struck me,” she admitted. “Even when he was drunk out of his mind, he didn’t do that.”

  “Good. I’d hate to have to kill him,” I joked, only half teasing.

  “I’m sorry yours did.”

  “I asked for it. I lied for my brother.”

  She nodded. “I know you did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He hesitated. If he hadn’t felt guilty about it, he would have run out of that room, but William paused. He was probably considering telling your father the truth.”

  I laughed. “That would have meant both of us would’ve been in trouble. He for hiding the truth, and me for lying for him.”

  “I wonder how much longer until sunset?” she asked, looking down the long hallway. We’d barely gotten started. If we had to make our way through each of these mirrors, I wasn’t sure we’d still be ourselves at the end of the hallway. Reliving the past was like scratching an old wound and expecting it not to bleed.

  “I’ll go first this time,” I offered.

  “Are you sure? I don’t mind.”

  We strolled to the next pair of mirrors and paused in front of mine. “It doesn’t matter who goes first or last, we both have to take a turn, right?”

  Father clapped a hand on my shoulder and bent to whisper in my ear. The nobility had gathered to celebrate Tierney’s victory over Aelawyn and the end of their tyrant king. But the girl that sat across the table from me was a puzzle I didn’t understand. I’d heard stories of how barbaric even the royals were in Aelawyn, but she seemed delicate and feminine, not wild at all. “Don’t stare too long. She’ll be gone before dawn.”

  Would he have her killed? I glanced back at Father, who just winked at me before descending the dais. The people loved him. They showered him with attention and compliments for a job well done, on his saving them from the oppression Aelawyn dealt our people. As if Father himself had ridden to our neighboring kingdom, slain their king, and saved the day. As if our soldiers hadn’t slaughtered anyone they could find inside the kingdom and castle—man, woman, and child alike—because he ordered it.

  This girl was the only thing they hadn’t gutted. Piers told his wife they spared her because the battle was over. They found her cowering in her room, and he could neither ask his men to kill her, nor bring himself to raise his own sword against the girl. She was young. She was innocent. And it would’ve sent him over the edge of conscience he barely teetered on already.

  Ella Carina of Aelawyn would be better off dead. And she would be soon, unless she proved to hold some value to him. Father would end her, and he would make a spectacle of it.

  She glanced up at me like she could read my thoughts. Like she knew I was right. And I hated myself for it. I looked away from her and kept my eyes on my plate the rest of the night.

  I was standing in the corridor again, the scene gone, and only mine and Arabella’s reflections staring back at me.

  She was lost in her own mirror.

  The scene made my stomach turn.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ARABELLA

  “Why are you covered in blood?” My stomach turned somersaults as he tried to scrub the specks from his face and beard, to loosen the crimson caked around his fingernails. He sat on his knees just outside the cabin, where even the shadows couldn’t hide what mired his skin and clothes.

  “You know why, Bells.” He glared at the basin water that turned pink, then red, and then thickened to the point where it wasn’t able to get him clean, but instead only made it worse.

  “Where’s the animal?” Some of the blood was fresh. “We need the meat, Oryn. We’re starving. Did you bring any home for us at all?”

  He shook his head, bracing his hands on his thighs. “Why do you have to ask so many damned questions?”

  “Why can’t you answer any of them?” I fired back.

  “Fine.” He smiled cruelly over his shoulder, hands braced on his knees. “You want to know what I really hunt, Bells? I hunt men. Fugitives. Debtors. I don’t care who they are, as long as I collect the rewards.”

  “You sell your soul for money?” I spat.

  “Haven’t you?” he asked, leveling me with a knowing glare. I froze, blinking rapidly. How did he find out? He was never here anymore. Always hunting in the woods, never able to stay or help. And the money he earned, which must be a good amount, we never saw so much as a coin of it.

  He handed me the basin of water, filled with a man’s blood. My reflection rippled in the copper-scented water. I hated that I’d given my own blood for the same reason my brother took someone else’s. Money. I hated it. I hated everything about it. It wasn’t Mother who ruined us by taking off with our things. It was our love of money that rotted us from the inside.

  Others had it worse than we did and managed to make due.

  Oryn started laughing and gave me a meaningful look. Gripping the bowl tight, I threw the water in his face. The bloody water hit him square in the face and he closed his eyes, silent for a moment before letting out a guttural growl that made the hair on my arms stand up straight. Then he was on his feet, launching himself at me. I hit the ground with an oof, the air pushing out of my lungs, unable to take in more. He grabbed his favorite knife and I couldn’t stop the tear that fell out of my eye or the wobbling of my chin.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he enunciated, holding the blade to my throat. “And if I hear of you taking a trip to Brookhaven again by yourself, you’ll regret it. Understand? I’m humiliated enough by him. I won’t be humiliated by you. Not you, Bells.”

  I managed to nod and it calmed him. He exhaled deeply and took the knife away from my skin; a small sliver of which stung beneath my palm as he stood and walked back toward our cabin, still coated in the blood of a man he didn’t even know, wiping the blood of his only sister onto his filthy breeches.

  The moon was full, its light pale blue and bright enough to show the stains he left on my clothes. I ran to the river to see if the fresh water could take the stains away before they set in for good.

  CARDEN

  “Arabella!” I screamed into her face, but she wasn’t waking up. No matter what I did – shaking her, putting myself between her and the damned mirror – nothing pulled her out of the memory. She stared through me, past me, into a different place and time.

  “You need assistance, I see,” purred a panther, black as night, as he prowled from deep within the shadowed corridor.

  I pushed Arabella behind me protectively. “Who are you?”

  “She is lost in her own mind,” the feline tsked. “Such a terrible thing to experience. She believes it’s real; that it’s happening right now. She doesn’t remember you or this place, least of all this game. She’s in grave danger. Sadly, some don’t come back from these unfortunate events.”

  “How can I help her?” I pleaded.

  “Silly human, you can’t help her. You will only hurt her if you keep screaming and jostling her about.”

  “Can you help her?”

  “Of course, I can,” he answered. His enormous front paws stopped on a piece of pale tile. “The question is, will I help her?”

  “Will you?”

  “Tell me why I should,” he challenged.

  “It’s why you came here, isn’t it? Why you helped yesterday… You want her to win.”

  The cat yawned, showing his incisors. “I want her to live.”

  “Why?”

  “Because life has become much more interesting with her in it,” he replied.

  The cat turned to the mirror and his eyes flashed for a moment as he watched her desperately scrubbing at the stains on her dress, sobbing on the bank of a wide river. Splinters of water, painted silver by the moon, danced in front of her as she scooped her hands full, trying to scrub aw
ay the truth, to tamp it down where no one would see it, where no one would know.

  The panther stared quietly, not moving a muscle.

  There was only one person I knew who watched her so feverishly, and I suddenly realized who he was. “Rule?”

  The panther bared its teeth at me and jumped into the mirror, the surface rippling like water in a still pond before settling and hardening. My hand felt nothing but cold, smooth glass in his wake.

  He approached her image in the mirror gently. She barely noticed him through her tears, but when she did, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Warily, she let him come close. Arabella’s current body was still frozen beside me and I wished it was I who could wake her, that it was I who could save her and she had no need for Rule or his vexatious fae power.

  “Arabella,” Rule finally spoke softly.

  “Who are you?” she asked through her sniffles.

  “A friend.”

  “I have no friends,” she replied angrily, wiping another tear away.

  “This is nothing more than a memory,” Rule soothed. “You are with Carden.” The panther continued, “You are in the hall of mirrors. Do you remember being there with him? Do you remember the game and Queen Coeur?”

  She pressed her eyes closed for several beats and then opened them. “I think I remember, but…”

  “But what?” He laid on his side, placing his paw in front of her knees. With one finger, she stroked his fur and he began to purr, staring at me through the mirror. The beast in me stirred, as Rule knew it would. His lips curled up on one side, snide as ever, even in feline form.

  “You’re soft,” she remarked gently.

  “I know.”

  “I know who you are,” she replied.

  The great cat grinned. “You’ve always known.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you’re smart, Arabella.”

  “Not smart enough to not get stuck in a memory,” she sighed.

  “Some memories are difficult to escape. But I’m not sure you’re truly stuck. I thought you were. While watching from the throne room, I saw Carden trying to bring you back and imagined you were caught in your own mind, but you aren’t stuck at all, are you? You’re trying to control the memory.”