Cursed: Briar Rose's Story (Destined Book 6)

by Kaylin Lee

  “No.” Raven studied me. “She’s trained daily under our watch for three years and never showed any sign of chest pain. She’s in astounding physical shape, Deacon. Stronger and faster than many of the male recruits. I don’t see how that’d be possible if she had a bad heart.”

  Deacon rubbed his beard. “You ever felt anything like this, Briar Rose?”

  “Never.” I did my best to look perplexed. “We were just sparring, and we’ve been going for a few hours. I haven’t had much water to drink. Maybe it was a muscle cramp.”

  Tavar’s shoulder’s slumped. “It’s probably my fault,” he said quietly. “I struck her on the back harder than I meant to a moment ago. Thought she would roll and block, but I should have seen her arm was pinned. Maybe that’s what caused the muscle cramp.”

  The guilt on his face made my throat tighten. This wasn’t his fault at all. If anything, it was mine. I’d been the one thinking such unprofessional thoughts in the middle of a training session. But why had the curse been so upset?

  Careful, the curse growled. You are on shaky ground.

  “It’s fine. I’m fine.” I rubbed my chest.

  Deacon stood and held out his hand to me. I took it but made a concerted effort to show I could stand without putting any weight on him.

  When he released me, I held up my hands. “See? I’m fine. I’ll go home and get some rest, and I’ll be good as new tomorrow. Sorry for the inconvenience, everyone.”

  “Take tomorrow off.” Raven was frowning. “Just in case.”

  I nodded confidently and ignored Tavar’s searching gaze. “Yes, Instructor. Will do.”

  Tavar walked me out of the training compound, but the curse wouldn’t let me look at him, much less speak to him. When we reached the corner where we went our separate ways, he paused. “Dinner some other time? When you’re … feeling better?”

  The curse shot a vindictive stab of pain into my chest but allowed me to glance over my shoulder at Tavar. “Don’t think so,” I mumbled.

  I walked home quickly, my legs jerky and exhausted from the curse’s attack. All I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and nurse my pain, but I could feel the curse hovering, waiting to resume its fury, and I knew that it would be a long time before I could rest tonight.

  Mom met me at the door, ever hopeful. “Good evening, Bri,” she said quietly.

  I nodded and passed her on the way to the kitchen, feeling sick with guilt, as usual. I hated seeing her hopeful face, hated knowing the Masters were using me against her. Hated the way the curse would be furious for hours after an interaction with her. I avoided her as much as I could.

  “You’re home early.”

  I didn’t look up from spreading butter on a crusty piece of rye bread for my dinner. “Finished up early.”

  “I’m sorry you missed dinner.” She moved closer. I could feel her warmth behind me, hear the swishing of the pretty, navy-blue dress she’d worn to teach at the Academy that day. “I could make you something now, if you’re hungry.”

  I turned to face her. “I’ll pass,” the curse spoke from my mouth, filling my mouth with bile.

  Mom nodded and strode toward the sink, where a pile of dinner dishes soaked in sudsy water.

  My throat tightened. I didn’t want dinner. I wanted her warm touch, her kind voice. I wanted her to look at me with approval and affection, not this ever-present, devastating disappointment.

  As if she’d sensed my thought, she paused mid-stride and turned to face me again. “I’ll always love you, Bri,” she said fiercely. She held my gaze, her green eyes steady and unflinching. “Always.”

  The curse sent a bolt of pain into my already sore heart. I clenched my fist at the stinging feeling, crushing the piece of bread in my hand. The curse snarled with rage, like it was a cornered animal and Mom a hunter. If only that were the case.

  Mom didn’t say anything else, but she waited silently, perhaps hoping for a response the curse wouldn’t allow me to give.

  I was the first to turn away. I went upstairs with my smushed piece of bread and ate it quickly, tears dribbling down my chin.

  The curse waited until I was done eating before it resumed the stabs of pain into my heart, the punishment for nearly kissing Tavar and for speaking to my mother. Wouldn’t want hunger to impede your performance, it murmured between pains, seeming calmer now that it could take its anger out on me without an audience.

  It was several minutes before I heard the clink of dishes being washed in the sink downstairs.

  My last thought before I fell asleep was that I’d do anything to keep my mother out of Elektra’s grasp. Anything at all.

  Chapter 10

  “Consider this.” Dad’s voice was cold and clear, harsher than I’d ever heard it. “The penalty for treason is stiff. Likely death or lifetime imprisonment. But if you cooperate with our investigation, the judge may give you favor. There’s a good possibility that your sentencing hour will end in mercy, not execution. Do you understand?”

  I held my breath as I watched from the back of the room, my attention stretched between the horrifying interrogation unfolding before us and Tavar’s stiff, silent presence beside me.

  The man and woman sitting across the table from my father seemed to shrink in size, as if growing smaller might make their treason diminish. “Yes,” the man whispered. “We’ll consider it.”

  Dad set his hands on the table. “You’ve admitted to plotting to collaborate with those who call themselves Masters,” he said slowly. “Have you had contact with them, or are you working alone?”

  “For the last time,” the disheveled gate guard said, his voice high, “we aren’t collaborating with them. It was simply a thought— A discussion— Perhaps a bit of planning, yes. But it’s just what anyone else would—”

  He broke off stammering when his wife nudged him with her elbow, her cuffs clanking against the table where they’d been chained. “We just want to survive,” she said, raising her chin defiantly. “Just like anyone would want.”

  “And if your survival requires collaboration with a group of mass murderers?”

  “The Masters are stronger than we are,” the gate guard interjected. “Everyone knows that. And we’re just sitting here, helpless in this forsaken city, behind walls that won’t even stop them, waiting for their next attack. They’re stronger than us!” He straightened, seeming to forget his fear in a moment of frustration. “What I don’t understand is why you Sentinels won’t accept that.”

  Dad leaned back in his chair. “Have you had any contact with the Masters?” he repeated stonily. “Or are you working alone?”

  The couple glanced at each other, then shook their heads. “No contact,” the man said. “We sent out messengers with a plea for mercy, but we couldn’t find them.”

  “So you won’t be any help in the investigation, then?” My father’s voice was deceptively calm, almost bored.

  They paled. “We just want to live.” The wife’s nostrils flared. “We shouldn’t be punished for that.”

  “Not for wanting to live, no.” Dad stood. “But for plotting to use your fellow gate guards to help the Masters invade the city? For setting a plan into motion to assist the Masters as they enslave or kill your fellow citizens, in exchange for your own survival?” He pushed his chair in and gestured to a heavily armed Sentinel nearby. “The law has a thing or two to say about that.”

  It was all I could do not to look at Tavar when we filed out of the room to debrief with Raven. I’d heard whispers of a movement in Asylia to collaborate with the Masters, but this was the first time Raven and my father had allowed us to see the investigation at work.

  The ugliness turned my stomach. These people had a choice, unlike me, and yet they still wanted to give up?

  “There are more like them.” Raven led us to the meeting room down the hall. She shut the door behind her, then crossed her arms. “We don’t have many names. Mainly rumors. But we’ve gotten our hands on a few written plans, if you
can believe it.” She shook her head, her eyes shutting briefly. “They think there will be mercy for collaborators. Willing to sell the rest of us out to save their own skin.”

  Mercy, the curse purred, is simply not our way. But we do enjoy hearing them beg for it.

  “How dangerous are they?” Tavar’s tone was dark. “How big of a threat?”

  “Not as big as they think,” Raven said, her shoulders dropping as she sighed. “The Masters aren’t going to collaborate with their victims in any meaningful way. The closest they came to that was backing the clan-born Praetors of Draicia—first, Drusilla of the Wasps, and then, Demetrius of the Wolves. But as far as we can tell, they never intended to spare their helpers.” She narrowed her eyes. “The greatest danger these collaborators pose is to our fellow citizens. Convincing them that things will go better for them the sooner they give up. If they succeed, the Masters will win without deploying a single curse.”

  We’ve already won. I could feel the curse’s smirk. We’ve already won. Forever, for all eternity, we have won.

  A light, spring rain cooled my overheated skin as we followed Raven and the other recruits across the campus.

  Tavar and I hadn’t spoken in a full year since the curse had cut me off from him, so it wasn’t surprising that he ignored me as we returned to the training building. Still, some part of me wondered if he sensed my guilt, my betrayal.

  Maybe that was why, once the curse had made me stop speaking to him after our almost-kiss, he hadn’t made any effort to push for friendship. He must have sensed that a traitor wasn’t worth fighting for.

  ~

  The curse was pleased with my shame after we witnessed the interrogation, crowing endlessly about mercy as I drilled hand-to-hand combat with the other recruits.

  When Raven called an end to practice at the sound of the dinner bell, it gave me a benevolent nudge to approach Tavar. Go to him, the curse said imperiously as boisterous recruits brushed past me toward the door. But do not speak to him. We will see if he can help you, since your skill in combat is still insufficient. You always seem to be yawning these days.

  I approached Tavar slowly, my stomach in knots. It had been a year since I’d nearly kissed him. I still didn’t know why that moment had bothered the curse so much, and so far, it hadn’t given me a clue.

  I’d worked hard to avoid thinking of Tavar all year, but the curse remained vigilant and suspicious. Not once, since that moment, had the curse uttered its previously beloved phrase, West is worthless.

  It had been a soul-crushing year of silence and isolation. A year of missing Tavar, throwing myself into every menial task I could find to keep the curse from realizing how deeply I felt the loss.

  And now, it seemed my punishment was over.

  Tavar stretched his legs by the side of the mat, the only recruit—besides me—not engaged in any post-practice banter.

  He lifted his head up when I was a few steps away. His expression was guarded. “Hello, Bri,” he said when I stopped awkwardly on the mat in front of him.

  I held myself still at first, hyper-aware of my sweaty, disheveled appearance and the way the curse had frozen my vocal cords in a vice-like grip. When the curse showed no sign of relinquishing control, I lifted one shoulder in a small shrug and gestured toward the mat.

  Tavar studied me for a long moment.

  I felt like a bug—unappealing, ugly, a nuisance.

  Unfathomably, Tavar nodded and stood. “We can spar.”

  Was I forgiven?

  The match began, slow and jerky at first, then smoother as we both seemed to remember how to move together.

  The penalty for treason is stiff, Dad had said. Likely death. I turned his words over in my mind as Tavar and I danced across the mat, dodging strikes and attempted takedowns. I struggled to keep my mind on the movements as thoughts of the interrogation rushed through my head.

  Treason. Dad could just as easily have been talking to me. I was the real collaborator. I wasn’t planning to bring the Masters into the city, but I was going to bring Mom and the Sentinels to them. Good people would suffer and die because of me. That was the same thing.

  I wiped the sweat beading on my forehead and shot back from Tavar as he darted forward, but my thoughts were still on justice.

  Mom and the Sentinels wouldn’t die because of me, exactly. It was because of the curse, wasn’t it? Because of Elektra. Her choices, not mine. Her guilt. Some part of me wanted to hold on to innocence, and for a moment, I almost let it. There was no way I could have predicted I would leave that crater under the Master’s control, under a curse that could never be broken.

  Tavar increased the speed of the fight. He struck my side. I attempted a take-down, but he blocked it. We circled each other, both out of breath now. At some level, my body reveled in the relief of sparring with my friend again at last, but guilt and shame smothered the feeling of relief every time it surfaced.

  I couldn’t claim innocence.

  I was the one who’d chosen to enter the palace and attack the Masters in a moment of ill-thought-out, childish bravado.

  I was the one who’d run away from home in the first place, arrogant enough to think I could survive on my own in the Badlands, wanting to hurt my parents for hurting me instead of letting them in and admitting to my pain.

  My mistakes had led to this ugly, evil circumstance. My mistakes would cause Mom and the Sentinels to fall into the Masters’ hands.

  If anyone deserved a death sentence, it was me.

  But with the curse controlling my every moment and driving me toward eternal sleep, the only death I’d die would be the one Elektra had planned for me.

  At least it would come eventually. Someday, I’d finally get what I deserved.

  There was a blur of movement. Tavar took me down with a jerk on my arm, tripping me so I fell backward. I hit the ground and rolled, quickly transitioned to wrestling as he dove to the ground after me.

  I let the pressure and strategy of our fight quiet the spiral of shame in my thoughts. An hour later, when we were done for the evening, training with Tavar felt so natural I’d nearly forgotten that it had been a year since we’d spoken.

  I slumped on the bench at the edge of the mat and drank from my canteen. I clutched my canteen, desperately holding back thoughts of begging the curse to let me spend more time with him. I didn’t know what it would do if it sensed my hunger for Tavar.

  Tavar took a quick swig of his own water, then nodded to me as he threw on his jacket. “Good work, Bri,” he said gruffly, meeting my eyes and then looking away. His accent had faded in the last year. “See you tomorrow.”

  He was gone before the curse would let me reply. Our friendship had resumed, but it was a cool, unsatisfying shell of what it had been.

  Chapter 11

  The oath-swearing ceremony one year later was held at the newly built Sentinels’ compound on the other side of the Royal Precinct. I adjusted the collar of my crisp, black dress uniform, then checked my braid in the large mirror just outside the entrance to the large auditorium in the main building.

  “You look nice.” Tavar stepped to my side, then met my eyes in the mirror. “How does it feel to turn eighteen and become a Sentinel on the same day?”

  For the last year, other than hours of quiet, efficient sparring in the Sentinels’ training compound or quizzing each other before a written test, we’d had little meaningful interaction—nothing like the cozy evenings we’d once spent around his grandfather’s kitchen table. But we’d had a friendship, of sorts, and he’d helped me prepare for the Sentinel’s test we’d both just passed. The curse had to give him that, at least.

  I jerked my gaze away from Tavar’s, wary of the curse’s watchful posture. “Can’t believe it’s finally happening,” I replied, staring at my reflection in the mirror.

  “We made it. Told you we would.” Tavar turned away from the mirror, then leaned back against it. I focused on the tiny details of my uniform, making sure they were all w
ithin the guidelines Raven had given us, in order to keep from noticing with too much interest the way Tavar’s long, lean form had filled out with an impossible amount of muscle in the past year.

  Collar—should be higher. I rolled my shoulders, cracked my knuckles before pulling the starched collar up. This shiny dress uniform was far less comfortable than the plain, matte-black ones we wore for training.

  Somehow, while I’d been studying into the late hours of each night and trying to convince the curse that I had no intention of kissing Tavar, my friend had grown up. His austere, freckle-dusted face was perfectly still as he lounged calmly with his back to the mirror, like he refused to bother with wasting energy on changing his expression.

  Braid—should be neater. I undid the looser bottom portion, then re-braided it, yanking the chunks of my braid so tightly the tips of my fingers burned. I glanced at Tavar, who was watching me braid my hair, his expression oddly intent. His eyes were a clear, deep blue, but they were impossible to read these days. And his jaw was harder than ever.

  The curse stirred. I was noticing too much again.

  Buttons—should be straighter. I adjusted the line of buttons that ran down my chest, doing all I could not to notice Tavar studying me like I was the hardest problem on his Sentinels’ written exam. Buttons, buttons, buttons—

  GO! The curse growled wordlessly at Tavar, then forced my legs away from the mirror, not giving me a chance to say goodbye. Get to your seat. I don’t like the way he looks at you.

  I sat alone in the back corner and focused on counting the chairs in the auditorium so I wouldn’t think about how Tavar had taken a seat alone on the other side of the room, his gaze locked on the stage, like I didn’t exist.

  My stomach soured at my own self-pity. Wouldn’t that be better for him, for everyone in the Sentinels? Whoever ended up on my team would be accompanying me to the Masters’ palace to fulfill my curse. I only had one hope now—that Tavar wouldn’t be on my team. At least he’d be spared that fate.