She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Ten Little Eggs

Isveth admits she's reborn too and gloats, Nerys threatens her and is slapped by her mother, and she leaves that night with Aurek, only to find ten pearl cakes waiting at the Wreck Deep gate.

I set my cup down very carefully, so it wouldn't shake.

Isveth straightened up and smiled at the table.

"I'm stealing my sister for a moment," she told everyone. "Twin secrets."

The ladies cooed.

Aurek didn't look up from his empty plate.

She led me out onto the dry balcony, where the dome curved low and the reef glowed blue beyond the glass.

The second the door closed, her smile dropped off.

"You should see your face," she said.

"When did you wake up?"

"Same as you. This morning." She leaned on the rail. "I heard you'd gone quiet in your room. No crying. No begging Mother through the door. I knew right away."

"How did you die?"

She laughed.

"That's none of your business, sister."

She turned a ring on her finger, an amethyst the size of a sea grape.

"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the dragon was the prize. That's what everyone thought, after. The ill-starred girl who got lucky."

"I didn't get lucky. I bled for it."

"You got the Tide Crown." Her voice went hard. "Currents bending for you. Ten eggs in one clutch, when the dragon line hadn't bred in a hundred years. The whole sea bowing to the girl Mother gave away like a broken comb."

"So you killed my children."

She didn't even blink.

"This time I'm doing it properly. I take Brannoch's gold now. The Ember Trench, the vent-forges, the armies. And when the time comes, I take everything you had."

"He's not yours to take."

"I don't want him." She wrinkled her nose. "Scales on his ribs and fits every dark moon. You can keep him, and you can keep the chains."

She patted my cheek.

"You'll get the chains, Nerys. That's all you'll get."

I had her against the rail before I knew I'd moved.

My forearm was across her collarbone and her amethysts were digging into my wrist.

She was laughing, but her eyes had gone wide.

"Listen to me," I said. "If you touch anyone of mine, anyone at all, I will hold you under until you stop kicking."

"We breathe water, you idiot."

"Then I'll find something that works."

The balcony door slammed open.

My mother stood there with two ladies behind her.

Isveth's face crumpled instantly. Tears filled her violet eyes.

"Mother, she said she'd drown me."

My mother crossed the balcony in three steps and slapped me across the face.

My head rang.

"On her binding night," she said. "On your sister's binding night."

"Ask her what she said first."

"I don't care what she said." My mother's voice was cold enough to freeze the reef. "You've been jealous of her since you could swim. You disgraced me in the hall today, kissing that creature's hand in front of the whole court. And now this."

She took Isveth's face in her hands.

"Are you hurt, my pearl?"

Isveth shook her head bravely.

Behind my mother's back, she smiled at me.

"There are seven days of binding feasts," my mother said, without looking at me. "You'll attend every one of them. You'll sit where I put you, and you'll smile."

"No," I said.

She turned.

"No?"

"I'm leaving tonight. With my husband."

The ladies at the door gasped.

Nobody left before the seventh feast. It wasn't done.

"You'll leave when I permit it," my mother said.

"I'm bound to the dragon line now. The treaty says so. You said so, in front of the whole court." I touched the black pearl at my throat. "I'm not yours to permit anymore."

I walked past her, back into the hall.

Aurek was standing at the end of our table with his arms folded, watching the balcony door.

He'd heard the slap. Half the hall had.

"Are we leaving?" I said.

His eyebrows went up a fraction.

"We?"

"You were going to leave anyway. I saw you counting the minutes."

Something almost like a smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"Get your things."

I didn't have any things.

I went with him exactly as I was, in the gray mourning gown, with the pearls in my hair.

The sea road west ran along the edge of the reef, then out over the drop where the water went from blue to black.

Aurek swam ahead of me with long strokes of his white tail.

He didn't speak for an hour.

Then he stopped above a ridge of dead coral and turned to face me.

"Terms," he said.

"Go on."

"You'll have your own rooms. Locked from your side. Nobody comes in."

"Fine."

"You can leave whenever you like. I'll give you an escort back to Pearlmere. Nobody will stop you."

"I'm not leaving."

"They all say that," he said. "Then they see the chain room."

"How many have there been?"

He looked away.

"Pearlmere offers a bride every Choosing. No one's ever taken one. The Court sends a girl anyway, every few years, to spy on me. Most last a week."

"I'm not a spy."

"You're a princess who kissed my hand in front of a laughing court." His eyes narrowed. "Nobody does that unless they want something."

"I want dinner," I said. "You didn't eat a thing at that feast. Neither did I. Do you have food in the Wreck Deep, or do I have to catch it?"

He stared at me.

Then he laughed, short and surprised.

"You're very strange," he said.

"You have no idea."

The Wreck Deep rose out of the dark an hour before dawn.

Broken towers. The ribs of drowned ships, huge as hills. And in the middle, the great hull of the old flagship, lying on its side, with lamps glowing in its portholes.

Home.

My chest ached at the sight of it.

There was a crowd at the gate. Thin faces, scarred tails, a man with one arm waving.

And on the gate stone, in the middle of them, sat a box tied with violet ribbon.

"Came an hour ago," the one-armed man called. "Royal courier. Says it's a wedding gift for the new bride."

My hands were cold as I untied the ribbon.

Inside, in a nest of sugared kelp, sat ten pearl cakes.

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