She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: The Truth

So I told him.

I told him there in the cage, with the bent bar beside us and the dawn coming gray through the cracks above.

I told him I had lived this life once already.

I told him about the Choosing, the first time, when I'd begged on the tiles and the guards dragged me up the steps.

I told him about six months of dark moons outside these bars. About the Blood Tide, and the curse I took half of, and the black-silver mark it left on my collarbone.

I told him about the Tide Crown. About the Wreck Deep full of light and food and children.

Then I told him about the ten eggs.

His face changed when I said that.

"Ten," he said.

"Five girls. Five boys. They hatched in the late summer. The littlest one was a girl. She bit everyone."

He didn't say anything.

I told him about the fifth Name Day.

The feast in the Ember Trench. Him gone south after raiders. The pearl cakes on the long table.

I told him how they fell. One after another.

I told him I had not been able to look away from her face.

When I finished, the cage was very quiet.

He sat back on his heels.

"Your sister," he said. "The one at the Choosing. The one who poured wine on me."

"Yes."

"She's the same as you? She remembers?"

"She told me so on the balcony. 'Ten little eggs.' She sent the cakes to tell me she hasn't changed her mind."

He looked down at his own hands.

"I believe that you believe it," he said slowly. "But Nerys. You could have dreamed it. Grief does strange things. Maybe the court, maybe your mother..."

"Your mother's pearl," I said.

He stopped.

"When you were seven," I said, "the winter before she died, she gave you a white pearl from her crown and told you to keep it safe. When she died you were so angry you didn't want anyone to see you cry over it."

He'd gone very pale.

"So you hid it in the hull," I said. "In a crack under the third rib on the port side, where the old cannon deck used to be. You pushed it in with a stick. You never took it out again."

He stood up.

He walked out of the cage without a word.

I followed him, up the ladder into the hull, through the empty early-morning corridors, down to the old cannon deck.

He followed the great curved ribs of the ship with one hand.

He knelt at the third.

He felt along the wood until his fingers found something.

A crack. Thin and black, packed with a hundred years of grime.

He pulled his little knife and dug at it.

Something rolled out into his palm.

A pearl, round and white, the size of a fingernail.

He knelt there holding it.

"Nobody knows about this," he said. "I never told anyone. I never even told Corwen."

"You told me," I said. "In the other life. On our first wedding anniversary. We were lying on the roof of the hull and you said you'd never told anyone else, ever, and you made me swear not to laugh."

"Did you laugh?"

"No. I cried."

He closed his hand around the pearl.

Then he turned and pulled me down onto the deck with him and wrapped his arms around me so tight I could hardly breathe.

He was shaking.

I put my arms around him too.

We stayed like that a long time, on the dirty boards of the old cannon deck, with the morning coming in through the gunports.

"Ten," he said into my hair. "We had ten."

← Chapter 10 · All chapters · Chapter 12 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend