She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: The Second Dark Moon

"Look at me," I said.

He was pressed against the far wall of the gallery with his curling hands held away from his body.

"Get away from me, Nerys."

"Look at me. Breathe."

"I can't stop it."

"You don't have to stop it. You have to slow it down. Breathe with me."

I didn't go closer. I stood where I was, in his mother's gown, with pearls all over the floor around my feet.

I breathed in, slowly, so he could see it.

He watched my mouth.

He breathed in too.

Out. In.

I hummed the first line of the lullaby, very quietly, so nobody in the hall below could hear.

The scales on the backs of his hands stopped spreading.

Slowly, slowly, they sank back into his skin.

His fingers uncurled.

He slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor with his head in his hands.

"It's never come early before," he said. "Not once."

"It's getting stronger," I said. "It will, until the Blood Tide."

He lifted his head.

"How do you know that?"

"We need to go home," I said. "Now. Tonight. Before it tries again."

We left the palace by the servants' door.

We swam all night, hard, through the black water west.

He didn't speak. Every so often he stopped and flexed his hands, and looked at them.

We reached the Wreck Deep at dawn.

He slept a few hours. I didn't.

At sunset the old nurse brought him a bowl of broth and he couldn't eat it.

"It's worse," she said to me in the kitchen, in a low voice. "I've seen this coming on him for fifteen years. Tonight's worse. I can smell it."

"I know."

"Go and sleep in the stern, child. With the door locked."

"I'm going down to the chain room."

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she reached up and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, the way she used to in my first life when I was sick with the eggs.

"Then sing loud," she said.

He didn't tell me to leave this time.

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