by Alisa Woods
He carried her up and away from the city, her still-smoking hair trailing behind them. His tears flowed free, and maybe those could heal her. Maybe she wasn’t too far gone. He found a farmer’s field on the outskirts of the city and touched down there, laying her gently in the straw not yet harvested. She wasn’t breathing—the smoke must have taken her before the flames could. Still, he spilled his tears on her cracked lips and whispered her name again and again, as if he could conjure her back to life that way.
Then she gasped and choked and opened her eyes!
He leaned back, startled, but then hovered over her again, searching her eyes for signs of life.
She blinked up at him. “You came for me.” Her voice rasped, then she was beset with coughing.
But he could already taste the death upon her, and no matter how many healing tears he shed, he could tell she was moments from leaving the world.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped.
Her face scrunched in pain, as her wounds had to be making themselves known. She flailed with charred hands, but when he tried to grasp them, she just cried out in more pain, so he let go and just remained kneeling next to her.
“A curse upon you!” she screamed in her agony, curled on the field’s straw, face wrenched as the pain must have fully come to her. She sobbed and cried, and he with her—he tried to touch her with his tears, but even that she shied away from. She whispered into the straw mashed against her face, “A curse upon you, Leonidas Smoke.” She gasped and cried and shook. “May you never love another,” she whispered more, to his growing horror. “May your love bring the true beast that lives in your heart.”
As she spoke, he felt the power of it blasting through him. A love curse—made powerful by the True Love she must have in her heart.
A coughing fit seized her, wracking her body and making her cry out more. Then suddenly, the tension went out of her body, and her breaths slowed to wheezing gasps. Her final ones were another whisper. “May a curse be upon you.”
Then she breathed no more.
A blast of magical energy boomed from her body and threw him back, laying him flat on the straw, its energy pervading every part of his body.
A death curse.
Holy mother of magic. He lay prone in the field, struck numb by its power. The slow realization of her words stole over him. May you never love another. He’d broken her heart, but she’d had her final revenge—he knew not much of curses, but those forged in love and death held a power all unto their own. Deep and ancient magic, they were. He knew this all too well—his own family, the House of Smoke, was forged from a similar curse ten thousand years ago when a Fae Queen fell in love with a dragon and paid for it with her life. Her curse was one of protection—to keep all of humanity and her dragon descendants safe—but it was given power when it was forged by the magic of her True Love and the sacrifice of her death.
Limply, Leonidas roused himself from the straw. His tears still flowed, although their healing properties had been no match for the death that took her. She loved him—he could feel the truth of that through the curse he now wore, shrouding him like a magical, smothering blanket. May your love bring the true beast that lives in your heart. Did she know of his wyvern form? The mindless dragon beast that would take him eventually, at the end of his time as a man? Then he remembered—it was him which told her, in a round about way. Or perhaps she just peered into his heart and saw the callousness that allowed this to happen.
Either way, he felt the certainty of her curse settle upon him.
He hadn’t loved her as he should… and now, he would never love another. For if he did, that precious life of his—the one he clung to with the selfishness becoming of a wyvern beast—would be over. And he would be deserving of it.
It was a righteous penance.
The tears were wretched and pitiful now, streaming down his face as he gathered her up. The church would never take her body for burial, so he carried her to the theatre, where they first met, and magically unearthed a small, bricked space in the ground beside it. There he lay her, conjuring flowers and a burial gown of the finest silks that could be had anywhere in the world. Then he sealed her body against the rats and other pests, so that she would be forever in this state, forever ravaged by the fire—by his mistake—but not by time.
Then he left London without a look back.
The flight was long and sodden with rain. When he arrived at his family’s keep, the House of Smoke glittered with midnight lamps, as it usually did. His brother, Lucian, awaited him in the common room, no doubt alerted by the perimeter spells that keep their home invisible to the mortal realm and impervious to the immortal one.
"Leonidas!” his brother proclaimed with a smile. “Jamais nous n'aurions pensé te voir revenir." (I thought we’d never see you return.)
Leonidas replied in their native French. "Vous me voyez las des scènes comme de la scène.” (I've had enough of drama and theatre.)
His brother was struck dumb by Leonidas’s downtrodden demeanor and the heaviness of his words. All the way back from London, he’d thought of how to tell the story of it. How to hide the shame of it, and the horror. But in the end, it would be more than apparent. And he could scarce hide this kind of burden from his brothers in any event.
Leonidas sighed and bid Lucian to sit. “Et j'ai un récit à vous conter.” (I have a tale to tell.) “Hélas, la fin n'en est guère heureuse.” (Sadly, it does not end well.)
Lucian frowned and sat. Leonidas remained standing and replayed the horror and woe of it. And by the end, it was clear—if Leonidas had been guarded with his heart before, now he must learn to lock it away with an iron box and bury it deep in the sea. For to love was like unto death for him. And while he’ll deserve that end when it comes, he still had no desire to hasten it.
Such was how the wretched live on and on.
Leonidas's story is far from done!
His story starts in...
CHOSEN BY A DRAGON
(Fallen Immortals 4)
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Check out all of Alisa's bestselling Paranormal Romance...
READING ORDER
Shifters in Seattle
True Alpha (Book 1)
Dark Alpha (Book 2)
A True Alpha Christmas (Book 3)
River Pack Wolves
Jaxson (Book 1)
Jace (Book 2)
Jared (Book 3)
Wilding Pack Wolves
Wild Game (Book 1)
Wild Love (Book 2)
Wild Heat (Book 3)
Wild One (Book 4)
Wild Fire (Book 5)
Wild Magic (Book 6)
Fallen Immortals
Kiss of a Dragon (Book 1)
Heart of a Dragon (Book 2)
Fire of a Dragon (Book 3)
Of Bards and Witches: Leonidas's Story (Book 3.5)
Chosen by a Dragon (Book 4)
Seduced by a Dragon (Book 5)
Touched by a Dragon (Book 6)
Loved by a Dragon (Book 7)
Marked by a Dragon (Book 8)
Claimed by a Dragon (Book 9)
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Alisa Woods lives in the Midwest with her husband and family, but her heart will always belong to the beaches and mountains where she grew up. She writes sexy paranormal romances about alpha men and the women who love them. She enjoys exploring the struggles we all have, where we resist—and succumb to—our most tempting vices as well as our greatest desires. She firmly believes that love triumphs over all.
All of Alisa's
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Alisa's website: www.AlisaWoodsAuthor.com