She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Tenth Cake
Nerys dies watching her twin push her into a vent after poisoning her ten children, wakes on Choosing morning, and takes the cursed dragon's pearl herself in front of the laughing court; at the feast Isveth whispers, "Ten, wasn't it?"
My twin sister fed my ten children poisoned cakes on their fifth Name Day.
Then she walked me to the edge of the great vent and pushed.
I remember the heat coming up through the water.
I remember the long table behind her, and the sugar tops of the pearl cakes.
I remember ten small tails gone still on the floor.
My youngest still had crumbs on her chin.
"You stole my blessing," Isveth said, with her hair floating violet around her face. "It should have been my crown."
Then the dark took me.
And then I opened my eyes.
The ceiling above me was pink coral, carved into roses.
It was the ceiling of my girlhood room in Pearlmere.
The room was a dry one, and my legs were tangled in a sheet.
The air pressed flat on my chest.
I put my hand over my heart.
The black-silver scale was there, cold and smooth, where it had always been.
But there was no scar on my belly from carrying ten eggs.
My hands were soft. No burns. No calluses from the hatchery ropes.
Outside my door somebody laughed, a lady's laugh, high and bright.
"Hurry, the Choosing starts at the turn of the tide!"
The Choosing.
I sat up so fast the sheet fell off the bed.
On the wall hung the gown my mother had sent up for me.
It was plain gray, the color the court gave to mourners and spare daughters.
I was twenty-one again.
It was the morning of the Choosing Tide, and everything I'd lost hadn't happened yet.
I didn't cry.
I had done all my crying the first time, on the floor of the Choosing Hall.
I had pressed my forehead to the shell tiles and begged my mother not to give me to the dragon.
I put on the gray gown.
Then I took my pearl strands out of the box and threaded every one into my hair.
That's how a princess wears them on a day she means to be seen.
The Choosing Hall was full to the ceiling.
Courtiers hung in the water in rows, tails slowly fanning, jewels catching the green light from the glass dome.
My mother, Queen Thalassa of Pearlmere, sat on the coral throne at the far end, her silver-blonde hair coiled under her crown.
She looked at my pearls and her mouth went thin.
Isveth was already at the front, in violet silk and amethysts, with her tail curled.
She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful.
The court sighed when she turned her head.
Two suitors waited on the dais.
On the right stood Lord Brannoch Ashvent of the Ember Trench, red-haired and broad.
Heat shimmered off his dark red armor, and twelve of his guards stood behind him.
On the left stood a man alone.
He had no guards and no gold.
He had long white-gold hair and a spiked gold guard on one shoulder.
Silver scales ran across his ribs where a man should have skin.
Aurek Vantide.
The last of the dragon kings.
The court had left a wide empty ring of water around him.
He wasn't looking at anyone.
He was looking at the dome.
My throat closed.
The last time I saw him, he was swimming out to hunt raiders on the morning of our children's Name Day.
He'd turned back at the gate to wave.
The herald blew the shell horn.
"The elder chooses first. Princess Isveth, the Blessed."
Isveth swam up the steps without hurrying.
She stopped in front of Brannoch and smiled up at him.
Then she plucked the red pearl from his palm.
"I choose you, my lord."
The hall burst into cheers.
My mother's face went soft with pride.
Brannoch looked a little stunned.
I knew exactly what was in it.
The horn blew again.
"The younger," the herald said, and didn't call me Princess. "The Ill-Starred."
My mother lifted one hand.
"By the Dragon Treaty, Pearlmere offers a bride to the dragon line at every Choosing," she said. "The ill-starred one goes to the dragon. As the treaty asks."
Nobody had asked me.
Nobody had asked me last time either.
Last time I had screamed.
Last time two guards had to swim me up the steps by my arms.
The whole court had laughed while I clung to the tiles.
I felt every eye in the hall turn to me, waiting for it.
The guards were already moving.
I swam past them.
I went down the center of the hall alone.
I passed the courtiers, and the ladies who'd been my friends until this morning, and my mother's throne.
I didn't stop until I was in front of Aurek.
He looked down at me for the first time.
His eyes were sea-green and cold, and he didn't know me at all.
"Your Highness," he said flatly. "You're early. Usually they drag them."
His black pearl lay in his open right hand, on its silver chain.
Across his knuckles ran the old white scar, from a net, he'd told me once, when he was nine.
I took the pearl.
Then I lifted his hand and kissed the scar.
The hall went silent.
"I choose you," I said. "Aurek Vantide."
He stared at me.
Somebody behind me snickered.
Then the whole hall was laughing, a roar of it, bouncing off the dome.
"She's lost her mind!"
"Fish food by the dark moon!"
My mother didn't laugh.
She looked at me.
I slipped the chain over my head. The black pearl settled cold against my throat.
Aurek bent his head close to mine.
"Whatever game this is," he said low, so only I could hear it, "you'll be gone by the dark moon."
"I'm not going anywhere," I said.
That night the binding feast was held in the great dry hall, with tables loaded with honeyed eel and sugared kelp.
Aurek sat beside me and ate nothing.
Isveth came down the table in her violet silk and leaned over my shoulder.
She put her lips against my ear.
"Ten, wasn't it?" she whispered. "Ten little eggs."
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