She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 18 of 32

Chapter 18: The Queens' Garden

"You can't give it now," I said. "It won't come loose."

"Then when?"

"Only once. At the Blood Tide, when it comes to keep you, it opens like a door. That's when you give."

"How?"

"You let go," I said. "That's all. You stop holding on to it."

He laughed, a cracked, tired laugh.

"I've been holding on to it since I was a boy."

"I know. That's why it's hard."

He looked down at our hands.

"And your sister's thorn is waiting for exactly that moment."

"Yes."

"Then we'll have to be faster than her," he said.

We practiced all summer.

It wasn't much to look at.

Every evening he sat on the hull roof with his eyes shut, and I sang.

He tried to find the place in himself where the curse lived.

"It's like a fist," he told me once. "Behind my ribs. It's always been closed."

"Then open your hand."

"I don't know how."

"Yes, you do. You did it at the Choosing. You let me take your pearl."

He opened his eyes and looked at me.

"I didn't let you. You just took it."

"You could have closed your hand," I said.

He didn't answer that.

But the next night he said the fist felt smaller.

The dark moons kept coming.

In early summer the dragon held him until dusk.

In high summer it held him a night, a day, and half the next night.

The whole Wreck Deep took turns singing to it through the bars so my voice could rest.

Corwen sang too.

The dragon put its head under its tail.

By late summer Aurek had lines around his eyes I didn't remember from my first life.

The old nurse watched him over the soup and said nothing, which frightened me more than anything she could have said.

One morning, three weeks before the Blood Tide, he woke me before dawn.

"Come with me," he said. "Bring nothing."

We swam north and west, past the edge of the old city, into water I'd never seen in either life.

The seabed rose in long terraces of white stone.

Every terrace was covered in sea gardens gone wild, red fans and gold anemones and kelp the color of wine.

← Chapter 17 · All chapters · Chapter 19 →

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