She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: The Heir's Crowning

I had thought I'd shout at her.

I'd thought about it the whole night swim, every stroke.

Instead I just stood there in the doorway.

"Why?" I said.

My mother turned around on her stool.

"Because I was afraid," she said.

"Of a baby?"

"Of what the Court would do with you." Her hands were folded tight in her lap. "The dragon mark. The treaty. Do you know what my mother told me, when I was a girl? That if a princess of Pearlmere were ever born with that scale, she'd belong to the dragons from her first breath. That the Court would hand her over in her cradle."

"So you handed me over at twenty-one instead."

She flinched.

"I bought your sister a blessing so the Court would have someone to love," she said. "And I called you ill-starred so nobody would look closely enough to see what you were. I thought if I kept you gray and quiet and at the end of the table, they'd forget the scale. I thought..."

She stopped.

"You thought you were protecting me," I said.

"At first."

"And after?"

My mother looked at me for a long time.

"After, it was easier to love the one the Court loved," she said. "I'm not going to pretend it wasn't."

It was the most honest thing she'd ever said to me.

← Chapter 24 · All chapters · Chapter 26 →

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