She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: The Sea Witch

In the morning he brought me breakfast in bed, and then we had the worst fight of either of our lives.

It started quietly.

He sat on the edge of the bed with a bowl of oat porridge, sea-grape sugar on top, from his mother's little painted jars.

He'd put it on in the shape of a fish.

"You made me a fish," I said.

"Corwen says I have no romance in me. I'm trying."

I laughed and pulled him down and kissed him, and the porridge nearly went on the floor.

Then he said, "I've been thinking about the Blood Tide."

I set the bowl down.

"I'll go to the abyss," he said. "Before the moon rises. The deep trench, past the Wreck Deep, where nobody lives. If the dragon keeps me, it keeps me there. It can't reach anyone."

"No."

"Nerys, listen."

"No. You listen." I sat up. "I've already watched you do the noble thing once. You threw the key to the girl before me and let her swim away. You've been throwing keys at people your whole life."

"It's my curse."

"It's our life!"

"It's your body." His voice rose. "You told me what it did to you. You screamed for an hour. I could feel you not saying it. I'm not doing that to you."

"You don't get to decide that for me."

"I'm the one it's coming out of."

"And I'm the one who'll have to watch the Court hunt a mad dragon through the abyss for the rest of my life!"

We were both on our feet now, on either side of the bed.

"There has to be another way," he said.

"There isn't."

"You don't know that. You only lived it once. You only know the way you did it."

That stopped me.

He was right.

I'd only ever known one way.

"Fine," I said. "Then I'll go and ask."

"Ask who?"

"The only person alive who knows more about your curse than I do."

He went white.

"Nerys. No."

I was already pulling my gown on over my head.

The sea witch lived in the north, in a grotto under a cliff of black rock, where the cold currents came down from the ice.

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