Withering Rose (Once Upon A Curse Book 2) (20 page)

Immediately, my power aches to give her
life.

I drift along the edge of where our two
magics meet, holding mine back, exploring. And I realize that with
my eyes closed, she feels no different than a plant. With my eyes
closed, she is just another slice of nature yearning for my healing
touch. With my eyes closed, she could be a flower.

There's only one explanation.

"Cole, she's a faerie."

His brows scrunch. "No."

"Yes," I cut him off.

"But why would she take our power? Faeries
are born with magic, they don’t need to steal it."

"I don't know," I whisper, knowing there is
still a piece I'm missing. "But she's a faerie. Everything fits.
It's just like those flowers in the Grove of the Undying. Nothing
could destroy them. Haven't you ever wondered why the back end of
your city didn't disappear in the earthquake? Why all the grounds
within the wall were kept safe? Why the cliff edge curves in a
perfect arch around your home, as though something was protecting
it? I thought it was your magic when I first saw it, but you said
it yourself, you don't have magic like I have magic. But she does.
She stole all of the magic in this city. And she used some of that
stolen power to keep you safe ten years ago, to keep herself
safe."

Cole stops dead, face falling. "My
mother."

My brows curl in with empathy. "That
morning, your mother must have attacked her, and the magic lashed
out. I wonder if this woman is even aware of what is going on
around her or if the magic is just a protection spell guarding
her."

"Guarding her from what?"

"Anything and anyone who would harm
her."

"No, I mean why?" Cole snarls. His skin
begins to tremble, and I know he's losing control of himself. But
I'm not afraid of the fur and the claws. I grab his thick bicep,
turning him toward me. Beneath my fingers, his clenched muscles
relax and his thunderous expression clears. He takes a deep, uneven
breath. "Why would she come here, steal our magic, and destroy our
lives, all for a protection spell? Why would she trick us into
thinking she was one of us? Why go to so much trouble?"

"That's what we have to find out," I tell
him. "If we figure out why she was running, maybe we can figure out
how to wake her back up, how to release the magic."

Cole runs his hand through his hair,
scratching the back of his head. "I just." He pauses, dropping his
arm and turning to stare at her. "I always thought she was a human
queen. I always thought she stole our magic, and this was somehow
her curse, this endless sleep. For fifteen years, nothing has
changed. She just lies there, perfectly still like a painting,
while our magic glimmers around her. I used to get so angry every
time I walked by this room, every time I laid eyes on the glow
seeping underneath her door. That's why I closed all the curtains,
why I surrounded myself in darkness. Because even the sight of the
sun became an unbearable reminder of everything she stole."

"We'll undo it," I say softly. "Whatever she
did, we'll undo it."

He nods absently, silently raging at the
faerie woman.

And deep down, a small part of me wonders if
I deserve that hateful look too. Who did my magic once belong to? A
misty forest? An innocent town of shifters? My power is nature,
maybe it was stolen from a faerie? Is there someone, somewhere, who
might also breathe hate at the mere thought of me? Who would lock
himself in darkness just to keep from being reminded of me? Whose
eyes would fill with the same amount of fury now pouring out of
Cole's if they looked at me?

My skin grows itchy.

Uncomfortable.

I scratch at my arms, but the sensation
doesn't fade. It just grows stronger, until my fingernails are
digging into my skin, scraping it raw. I hardly feel the pain. Not
even as my eyes begin to blur. I think I draw blood.

"Omorose!"

Cole grips my hands, stopping me.

I begin to shake instead.

He draws me into his arms until I'm pressed
flat against his broad chest, unable to see or sense anything but
him. "Omorose," he purrs tenderly, placing a soft kiss against the
top of my head. The rumble in his voice touches me everywhere.
"What are you doing?"

"I don't know," I mumble.

But I do.

The itch wasn't skin deep. It was in my
soul. It was the tingle of my magic, the prickling of power, and I
was trying to claw it out of me.

This isn’t about my father anymore.

It’s not about Cole.

It’s about me.

Now that I know the magic doesn’t belong, I
want it out.

I want it gone.

I'm tired of watching my time dwindle away
to nothing. I'm tired of feeling the petals fall. I'm tired of
sacrificing so much for something that was never supposed to be
mine in the first place.

I step out of Cole's embrace, breathing
deeply, unable to meet his eyes. Instead, I glance at my arm, still
red and raw. There's one long gash from my nail, from that last
deep scrape. I wonder if it will scar.

At the thought, my eyes travel to Cole's
exposed forearm, to the ivory lines marring his firm skin. I always
thought they were marks from a life of living among wolves and
bears, but now I wonder if some of them are something else.

"Why don't we get some dinner?" he asks
gently, as though I'm fragile enough to break.

I nod. "And then back to the study."

His eyes darken. "Why don’t we take a
break?"

"No." I shake my head. "We're not done
yet."

"We can take one night off," he says
lightly.

"No, we can't," I murmur.

A glimmer of worry passes over Cole's
face.

But I don’t give myself the time to wonder
what it means.

I leave the room.

And I don't glance back to see if he
follows.

"I can't sit in this room anymore," Cole says
suddenly into the silence. "I'm going insane."

I hardly hear him, I'm too focused on
rereading a scroll I've already read twice, searching for any
hidden meaning I might have missed before.

Cole begins to pace.

A caged animal.

Every so often his feet walk through the
edges of my vision. The floor beneath us quakes with his heavy
footsteps. I ignore it, focus sharp as the edge of a blade. There
has to be more in this room. There has to be something we missed.
And I won't stop until I've found it.

I can't.

My back aches. My eyes burn. I'm not even
sure how much time I've spent crouched over these old papers,
scratching out notes, trying to solve this puzzle in my head. How
can I get rid of my magic?

Break the curse.

That's the only answer I find over and over
again. Break the curse, and the magic will be released back into
the world. But my curse is time. How do I break that?

It's impossible.

And the only other option I've found is
death.

"Omorose," Cole whispers into my ear, breath
tickling my skin.

I didn’t even realize he had crouched down
beside me.

"One second," I murmur, not pausing as I
continue to scan the page for any desperate clue.

His fingers drift slowly from my wrist, all
the way up my arm. Tantalizing.

I force the shiver away. Now isn't the
time.

"Omorose," he repeats tenderly.

I don't acknowledge that I've heard him. I'm
reviewing the tale of a king who died hundreds of years ago, one of
the first to rerelease his magic into the world. Weather was his
power. Storms raged with just the twitch of his fingers. But
insanity was his curse. The winds he controlled were wild and
untamed, just as his mind slowly became. Using his magic stripped a
little part away, a memory, an emotion, an ounce of control.
Something about it eerily reminds me of myself, of time slowly
stripping, of the way my father desperately urged me to get rid of
my magic, how he said my mother began to change, how little pieces
of her began to fall away.

The king killed his entire castle in a fit
of madness.

Murdering his children. His servants.

And when he came to, when he realized the
toll of his curse, he put a knife in his own heart to finally end
it.

For some reason, the story has stuck with
me.

For some reason, I can't get it out of my
mind. When I close my eyes, I see him. The mad king, covered in
blood, clawing at his own skin when he realized what he'd done. The
knife glinting in candlelight as it sank deep into his chest. The
flicker of relief that must have passed over his eyes in those last
few minutes of life, to know that he was finally free from the
magic, the curse, and the trap it had all become.

Where did his magic go when he died?

Who had it belonged to?

"You're scaring me," Cole confesses,
latching onto my shoulder, tugging me away from the paper in my
hands.

I meet his cloudy eyes.

But all I can think is, how much time do I
have left before my curse claims me?

How much time do I have left to find the
answers I need?

How much time do I have left with Cole?

How much time do I have left, period?

Not enough.

"I have to keep working," I mumble.

"No," he interrupts. "You don't."

I try to shake out of his grip, but he's too
strong. My heart begins to beat rapidly. I'm suffocating beneath
his stare. "I need to, Cole. You don't understand. I need to do
something."

"I know exactly what you need."

That stops me. I find his concerned stare.
"What?"

"You need to let it out."

"Let what out?"

His thumb brushes across my cheek. "Whatever
it is that's eating you up inside."

"How?" I sigh.

Cole grins. A wild streak burns across his
smoky eyes. And then he takes my hand and pulls me quickly to my
feet. "I have an idea."

I'm dragged from the study and across the
library to a pair of doors leading out to the balcony. Cole pulls
them wide open. A cold breeze stings my cheeks, forces me to take a
deep, shocked breath. My lungs awaken at the touch of that frozen
air. Every nerve in my body comes alert in a single moment.

"Yell," Cole says.

I glance at him. "What?"

His eyes twinkle like the stars just
beginning to sparkle in the evening sky. "You heard me. Yell.
Shout. Scream. Anything."

"No," I snort.

He deepens his gaze. "Do you trust me?"

A simple question, maybe, but for the two of
us it holds profound meaning.

"Of course," I say without hesitating.

"Then do it."

I eye him warily as I follow him into the
night, putting my hands right beside his on the railing. But I
can't do it. I feel way too ridiculous.

"Cole," I murmur.

But he shakes his head and turns his face
toward the rising moon, letting the silver glow brush over his
skin. He glances at me one last time, before he lets everything
holding him back go, throwing it out into the never-ending sky.
When Cole screams, he roars, and the whole earth seems to tremble
before him.

I laugh nervously when he's finished,
knowing it's my turn.

But he turns to look at me, urging me.
"Don’t be embarrassed, not in front of me."

I inhale for a long time, trying to build up
my courage.

Then I shout.

It's a pathetic little noise that trails off
after an instant.

Cole raises his eyebrows pointedly. "Come
on, Omorose. I know there's some she-wolf inside of you. I've seen
her. You can't hide from me."

And he's right.

Because that first little scream unleashed
something in me. Something wild. Something that doesn't give a
damn. Something that just wants to lose control for a moment.

Memories start to surge to the surface.
Memories of all the times I bowed my head back at the base,
pretending to be someone I wasn't. Memories of all the times the
magic owned me, all the times it took over and took a piece of me
away. All of the times I've ever felt trapped and afraid, alone and
unsure, like a coward. All of my anger, all of my rage, all of my
frustration, all of it bubbles to the surface until my skin begins
to hum, coming alive.

I take a deep breath.

And I scream.

And scream.

And scream.

The sound wraps around me, going on and
on.

I release everything.

I force it out, banishing all the doubts and
all the negativity.

I throw it into the night and let it
disappear.

And when I'm done, I'm heaving in air, but
my heart feels open, my head feels lighter. I feel powerful. Almost
dangerous.

"Nicely done," Cole remarks and I turn to
find him grinning down at me.

But I don't want this feeling to end. I
pause as an idea springs. Tentatively, I ask, "Do you think I could
maybe break something?"