She Stole My Curse novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Ember Trench

I came out of the grotto so fast I hit Aurek in the chest.

He caught me by both arms.

"What did she do to you?"

"Nothing. It's Brannoch." I could barely get the words out. "Isveth bought a flask of black-urchin last week. Enough to kill him."

"Last week," he said. "The wedding feast was three nights ago."

"Then she's had three nights to use it."

He didn't ask anything else.

He turned south, and I went with him.

We swam a day and most of a night without stopping.

Past the Wreck Deep, past the Shallows, over the black drop where the reef ended.

The water warmed, and then it burned.

I didn't let myself think about the last time I'd come this way.

I thought about Brannoch laughing in his pillar garden, telling me to watch out for the hot rocks.

The Ember Lord's hold stood on a spire of black rock above the great vent.

Its dry hall was cut into the stone itself, lit red from below.

Two vent-folk guards at the gate crossed their spears when they saw us.

"Nobody's expected," one said.

"I'm his wife's sister," I said. "Tell him the princess who told him to watch his cup is here."

The guard looked at Aurek's scales. Then he went in.

He came back much faster than he'd gone.

"He says let you in. Both of you."

The hall was hot enough to dry my hair in a few breaths.

My tail parted on the warm stone and I walked in on bare legs, with Aurek one step behind me.

Brannoch lay on a long couch by the fire pit.

Eight of his captains stood around him in their dark red armor, all big, all scared.

I almost didn't know him.

His beard was the same.

The rest of him had gone the color of old ash.

His lips were gray. His big hands lay shaking on the blanket.

Isveth sat on the couch behind him with his head in her lap.

She was combing his long red hair with a silver comb, slowly, stroke after stroke.

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