“Vi.” I can’t take my eyes off her, letting my gaze run hungrily over her.
I can’t see any sign of bruising, but there’s no smile on her face. Only dark circles beneath her eyes, and the same starburst gown she wore the first time we met.
I start toward her, but Eris plants a hand in the center of my chest. “Wait.”
“I’ve waited long enough.”
“Then look at her,” my general snaps. “There’s something wrong. That doesn’t look like Vi anymore. Adaia’s done something to her.”
My heart starts to sink like a lead weight. No. Adaia promised she wouldn’t harm her. She swore she wouldn’t threaten her or punish her in any way….
“Vi.” I push past Eris’s restraining grip, intent on only one thing: taking my wife in my arms and ensuring Adaia hasn’t hurt her.
“Mother.” Vi’s face pales and she curls her fingers into her fist as she turns to her mother imploringly. “Please. Please don’t do this—”
“That’s enough.” Adaia jerks her arm out of Vi’s reach, her lip curling. “You will do your country proud. You will sacrifice yourself as tribute to keep the peace.” Her smile turns sinister. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Peace?”
The words are a blow.
I slam to a halt, barely feet away from my wife.
But she’s not looking at me the way she always has.
Vi’s shoulders straighten and she clearly forces herself to meet my stare, but nothing has changed. She looks as if she’s steeling herself.
She looks at me as if I’m a monster.
What in the Underworld has Adaia done to her?
“Yes,” she whispers, and swallows hard. “I… I want peace.”
“Vi?” I don’t understand. There’s no spell that could have hardened her heart against me. Adaia swore she wouldn’t turn her heart to ice. She swore.
Drawing her hood over her dark hair Iskvien glides toward me like a queen walking toward her doom. It’s what I’ve been dreaming of all these months, and yet the tension in my gut knots tight.
This isn’t a dream.
This isn’t my wife, the woman I fell in love with.
This is… some sort of nightmare, conjured out of Adaia’s cruelty and malice.
“Vi, you’re finally here.” I capture her cold hands. “You’re—"
Vi wrenches her fingers from mine. “Get your hands off me, you monster. I may be forced into this little bargain between you and my mother, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight you at every moment.”
Monster.
This cannot be happening. The world reels around me.
“What did you do to her?” I demand of Adaia.
“A little wedding gift, Your Highness.” Adaia smirks. “I was remiss in providing one last time.”
“You swore you would not—”
“Hurt her, kill her, turn her heart to ice, or deny her the ability to tell you she loves you,” Adaia says with a sneer. “And I haven’t. Perhaps she has finally opened her eyes to the truth?”
“Mother.” Vi looks between us. She shakes her head as if she can hear something we can’t. “What is going on?”
“You are to be given as tribute to the Prince of Evernight for three months in order to uphold a treaty,” Adaia says. “As always, Asturia honors its word.”
You fucking bitch.
“Vi.” I reach for her again. “Vi, come here. What has she done to you? What’s wrong? Tell me and I’ll fix it.”
“Don’t touch me!”
“Vi, you’re my wife. We were married at last year’s Queensmoot. You’re my wife. I love you.”
“Your wife?” Her eyes go wide. But it’s the sudden surge of lightning I see in her dark irises that makes my breath catch. Magic breaking. I swear I’ve seen something like that before…. In Unseelie.
“Vi?”
She moans and staggers to the side, pressing her fingers to her temple. “Stop it. I don’t want to do this. Mother.” She digs her nails into her hair. “Mother, make it stop. It’s hurting. It’s hurting. Please don’t make me do this.”
“What’s hurting?” I try to touch her again, but she lashes out, staggering back.
And then her eyes roll back in her head—
I catch her as she falls, cradling her against my chest. Blood drips from her nose and she groans, her eyes fluttering as they roll up in her head.
“Thalia!”
Thalia captures Vi’s face in her hands, her thumbs caressing her cheeks. She has some small abilities with healing. She bites her lip. “Call for the medic! Her brain is bleeding, I think.”
Bleeding— I shoot her a horrified look.
“It’s bad,” Thalia whispers, reading my mind. “A thousand tiny little bleeds as if something tore through her mind.”
I seek and find Adaia’s merciless gaze and my words come out hoarsely. “What did you do to her?”
The queen smiles malevolently. “Me? I did nothing. This is all your doing, you wretched prick. You think you can steal from me and remain unpunished—?”
“I stole nothing that wasn’t given freely.” Hot fury leeches through my brain. Vi looked at me as if I was a stranger, a monster. She didn’t recognize me.
And now there’s blood dripping from her nose, and she’s unconscious.
“You cursed her.”
It’s the only explanation.
Cursing is a form of magic that’s most commonly found in Unseelie. The Seelie kingdoms generally abhor it as something that their darker, blighted brethren might conjure, and they keep their fingers well clear of it.
But I spent years in Unseelie.
I know what a curse looks like.
Adaia cursed her to forget me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t fucking breathe. The daemons inside me howl and scream. And for a second my vision goes black.
Curses are borne of magic, but they’re twined of hatred.
It doesn't matter how much power you have when you lay a curse. A common hag can spit a curse so powerful it withers the ground around her for fifty miles, if she’s emotionally connected to the curse she speaks.
Curses brew in hate. They smolder with resentment. And they find fertile ground in feelings of betrayal.
The angrier you are when you speak the curse, the stronger it is. The more you hate the person you curse, the more it lingers. The death of the curser can undo a
