Withering Rose (Once Upon A Curse Book 2) (17 page)

The look in his eyes takes my breath away.
"To remember that beautiful strangers who seem too good to be true
usually are."

I swallow, glancing at the floor. "I don't
understand."

"Omorose?" he asks, voice laced with regret
and resolve. "Do you know how your family first got its magic?"

My brows pull together. "It’s my
inheritance, passed down from generation to generation through an
eldest heir, just like my royal title."

He shakes his head. "But do you know how
they first got it?"

"We were born with it." I shrug.

He smiles grimly. "No, I was born with it.
Your ancestors, they stole it."

My face scrunches in confusion. "What do you
mean?"

He sighs. "I didn’t expect you to know the
truth. Thieves rarely recognize themselves for what they are, not
in the harsh light of day. Only the victims remember. Only the
victims keep the truth alive, passing it down from generation to
generation so one day when the time is right, their children will
remember and fight back."

"Cole, you're not making sense."

"I am," he challenges. "That's what scares
you."

I don't realize I'm trembling until he looks
pointedly at the goose bumps rising along my arms.

The cold.

It's just the cold.

So why do I feel nauseous? Why do I suddenly
feel sick?

In the back of my mind, something clicks
into place.

The magic has always felt like a foreign
soul trapped inside of me, constantly fighting for release, only
obeying when I'm pushing it back out into the world. That struggle
has only strengthened with time. These past few weeks are the only
ones where I haven’t felt at war with myself, and they're also the
only ones where I could use the magic freely, as often as I wanted,
as often as it demanded.

But Cole's magic is something different. It
belongs with him. Man and beast are two parts of one whole,
interchangeable, perfectly in tune. I've witnessed his
transformations. They are smooth, painless. The magic doesn’t come
with a price.

Cole runs his fingers down my arm, but even
the heat perpetually brewing beneath his skin doesn’t warm me. His
cloudy eyes are concerned. I exhale, releasing the breath I'd been
holding.

"They stole it?" I wonder aloud, fighting
the spinning wheels in my head, allowing doubt and disbelief to
color my admission. But Cole won't let me hide behind ignorance any
longer, and his next words stop my heart entirely.

"Haven't you ever wondered why your magic
comes with a curse?"

I'm paralyzed by his comment.

How does he know?

How could he possibly know?

"You're shivering," Cole murmurs. But I
can't move, not even to wrap my cloak tighter around my shoulders.
"We should go inside."

He takes me by the waist, leading me back to
the castle as though I'm a child who's barely learned to walk. I
don't say anything. I don't have the strength to say anything. I'm
mute as Cole brings me inside and gently deposits me in an
oversized armchair. I'm silent as he ushers a fire to life and
tucks a blanket around my shoulders. Then he sits opposite me. I'm
quiet as I watch the flames dance over his pale skin, mesmerized by
how they flicker warmly in irises that are usually so cool.

"Tell me everything," I finally whisper.

"I'll have to start at the very beginning,"
he murmurs, peering at me nervously, unsure of how I'll react.

I just nod. His eyes narrow with concern,
but I don’t want that right now. I don't want pity or comfort. All
I want is the truth. The complete story.

And he gives it to me.

"Hundreds of years ago, in our world, humans
didn’t have magic. There were no kings and queens. The magic was
concentrated in the earth and air, and in people like me, people
made of magic. The world was populated with shapeshifters and
faeries, centaurs and mermaids, even dragons. There were trees that
spoke, forests made of magic, waters that could cure any disease,
and spirits hidden within the ground, ready to grant small
miracles. In that world, humans were nothing. They had no power, no
strength. Legends say some were taken to be used as slaves, but
most were left alone and ignored, considered unworthy of
attention." He pauses.

"Until?" I prompt.

Cole glances at me, brows knotted together.
"Until everything changed." He sighs, turning his attention to the
fire, staring into its flames without blinking. "No one knows quite
how it happened, not anymore. The best theory my father was able to
uncover was that a human man somehow captured a faerie priestess
and tortured her until she finally confessed a spell to trap the
magic. He used the incantation and became the first human king,
trapping magic within his blood and bonding it to his soul. The
magic fused with his greatest desire, the wish to become
undefeatable, giving him the most unbeatable weapon of all—the
ability to control someone's mind. The priestess escaped, but no
matter how hard she or any other magical creature tried, he could
not be killed.

"Word of a human gaining magic spread, and
people bowed down to him. He made them see him as a god, he coerced
their loyalty, he controlled them. When his kingdom became so great
that even his magic couldn’t control everyone, he told his closest
advisors about the spell and gave them great power as well. But
once they had magic of their own, the king no longer had complete
control over their minds. Without his knowing, some of the advisors
plotted to overthrow him. They told their greatest warriors the
secret of the king's power, and more humans stole the magic from
the earth, trapping it and molding it to their souls, bringing
their deepest desires to life.

"But the magic had to come from somewhere.
And when the magic from the sea and sky was all taken, the humans
began stealing it from the other creatures. The faerie priestesses
watched in horror as the world they loved slowly fell to pieces.
Faeries turned to flowers as their magic was stolen. Shapeshifters
were trapped in their animal forms, no longer able to make the
change. Unicorns were killed for the power in their horns. All the
magical creatures left went into hiding, trying to escape the greed
of the humans. And then the wars began. The humans with magic
turned on each other. All the power had gone to their heads, and
they were no longer content to follow anyone, not even the man who
first gave them power. Battles broke out as they fought for
territories, for their own kingdoms, to steal each other's magic
and make themselves even stronger. Their children were born with
the stolen magic in their blood, becoming powerful too. And only
then did the first king realize his mistake, that power is a curse
just as much as it is a blessing. So he returned to the priestess
he once tortured and begged for her help to put an end to the
madness.

"But it was too late by then. There was
almost no magic left, too little for the priestesses to work with,
nothing except for the magic fused to their souls, the magic they
had been born with. And so, to save the world, they sacrificed
themselves. The priestesses gave up their own magic, killing
themselves so that with their dying breaths, they could put one
last spell on all the humans who had stolen the magic. They were
too weak to take the magic away or to kill them, so they did the
best they could. The priestesses tied the magic to each human's
blood in an unbreakable bond, sealing that union with a curse. Now,
instead of limitless power, the magic was bound. Only one human
could harness it at a time. New children weren't born with the
power already flowing through them, and only one heir could inherit
the magic. But whoever got the magic also got the burden of the
curse, one could no longer exist without the other. And the curse
gave the rest of us hope. If it was broken, the magic would be
released back into the world, returning to where it was supposed to
be. The first king spent the rest of his life traveling to the many
kings and queens, using his mind control to steal the spell from
their memory, until not a soul in the world remembered how to bind
magic to a human soul. And then he killed himself, releasing his
magic back into the world, confident that it would stay there.

"As time went on, some kings and queens died
without an heir, and their magic was released back into the world.
Some spent their lives figuring out how to break the curse,
voluntarily giving up the magic in order to rid themselves of the
burden. But many more decided the curse was a worthy sacrifice and
kept the magic for themselves. The memory of those early days and
early wars faded into myth. And eventually," Cole says, pausing to
finally look at me before softly finishing his story. "Eventually,
all human memory of how their royal families were created
disappeared entirely."

I flinch at those last words.

My family was part of the third group.

I'm part of the third group.

We forgot. We believed the magic was
rightfully ours. And every woman in my family made the choice that
the magic was worth dying for—we used it even as it killed us, and
we passed it on knowing it would kill our daughters too.

"Do you know my curse?" I murmur, eyes on
the floor.

"No," he responds slowly. "I just know you
have one."

I open my lips to tell him, but only air
comes out. How would he look at me if he knew I was killing myself
in order to use my magic? If he knew my curse was that the magic
stole a little part of my own life? Would those eyes ever clear of
clouds again? Would they harden against me forever?

So instead, I latch on to something else he
said. I hunt for more of his secrets so I don't have to confess my
own. "You said they stole the magic from the creatures and the
earth? That other shapeshifters were trapped in animal form? Is
that…?"

I trail off, glancing around.

We're alone at the moment, but Cole knows
what I mean. Is that why all of his people are wolves and bears and
leopards instead of people?

"No," he says after a drawn-out minute. He
knows I don't want to talk about my curse, and for the moment, he's
relenting. "What I just told you was only the beginning of my
story."

"What happened?"

Cole cups his forehead in his hands, resting
his elbows on his thighs. He runs his fingers through his thick
black hair, scratching the back of his head while he takes a long,
deep breath.

"I wasn't lying when I told you about the
solstice," he says, words followed by the crackling of the fire and
a permeating sort of silence. And when he looks up and meets my
gaze, I think I'm finally seeing him for the first time. Cole is
baring his soul. The storm is clearing. The beast is finally
breaking down his walls and letting me in. "The shapeshifters once
lived in segregated kingdoms, keeping to themselves, predators that
never mixed unless they happened to be hunting the same prey. We
numbered in the thousands. But when the magic started disappearing,
everything changed. The humans ambushed our kingdoms, using the
spell to steal our magic, leaving many of us trapped in our simpler
form, no more than animals. The survivors went into hiding, trying
to disguise the magic so humans wouldn't be able to take it away.
And in the end, after the wars and after the priestesses laid down
the curse, there were only a handful of our kind left behind. Most
of the magical creatures of the world had been destroyed, and we
decided that the only way to remain safe would be to create a
kingdom of our own, in a remote place in the world where we would
be left alone. My family has ruled that kingdom ever since the
first solstice, until fourteen years ago, when a stranger visited
and took it all away."

The golden woman.

My mind immediately drifts to her, to the
magic glowing beneath her skin, the power that called to me,
lulling me ever closer.

"She stole it?" I murmur.

Cole's expression breaks just a little
before he regains control, hardening his eyes to steel. "We were
celebrating the solstice as a kingdom, another year passed in
secrecy and safety, another year of peace. Everyone was in the
palace, drinking and dancing. Our joy as a people was palpable. I
was only five, but I'll never forget when she walked into the room.
Everything seemed to stop. No one had ever seen anyone quite so
beautiful as this stranger with golden hair who almost floated as
she passed us by. And then she paused before my parents, collapsing
to the ground, landing in the form of a beautiful striped tiger.
And only then did we all see her coat was stained with blood.
Immediately, we jumped into action. Every so often, shifters would
come from other parts of the world, looking for sanctuary. But no
one had seen a tiger in hundreds of years. We thought she might be
the last of her kind. We never doubted for a moment who or what she
was. Magic is what keeps us in human form, our animal forms are our
baser selves, and we all watched her shift before us. Why would we
doubt? Why would we question? We had been safe for a thousand
years, who would want to hurt us after so long?"