Withering Rose (Once Upon A Curse Book 2) (28 page)

Grow.

Heal.

Live.

Three thoughts are all I have left. And just
like a flower, the faerie blooms beneath the force of those
commands. The mildew staining her soul disappears. The rancid decay
destroying her from the inside out retreats, slips away. Her body
is like a tree that has decomposed under the passage of time and
I'm reviving it, digging the roots down deep, stretching the leaves
to the sky, pushing the slow assault of death away.

And then my pain strikes.

We switch places.

The flower at the center of my soul wilts.
The rosy hue turns darker, rotting at the edges. The petals widen,
drooping away from the core, peeling off one by one.

I couldn't stop even if I wanted to.

I'm too lost in the power and the pain.

The faerie pulls on my magic more and more,
growing stronger with every second that I grow weaker, yanking my
life away and burying it within her. My strength gives out. I
collapse against her.

Distantly, I feel arms shake me.

But I'm drowning.

Words are shouted. They don't reach me.

I'm slipping away, drifting deeper.

The end is near.

The golden aura of the faerie surrounds me,
burning so bright I can't escape the heat. My flower shrivels. The
rose, my namesake, is disappearing. There are only a few petals
left. Five. Then four.

A fist clenches my heart, wrapping tightly
around the bloom, stealing all my breath away. I'm suffocating. And
then that hand pulls, twists, yanks, doing whatever it can to leech
every last bit of magic I have.

Three.

The pressure mounts until I'm torn down the
middle.

Two.

I can't fight anymore. I'm about to shatter.
To break.

We snap apart.

I fly back, catapulting into the real world,
landing in arms I knew would be there to catch me.

"Omorose!" Cole shouts as he cradles me to
his chest.

I barely have the strength to keep my eyes
open.

His warm palm caresses my cheek, and looking
down with eyes as tumultuous as a thunderstorm, he whispers, "What
did you do?"

I want to answer him.

I want to explain.

But my tongue is heavy. My lips won't
open.

"She saved my life," a voice answers
slowly.

I smile because I know who that voice
belongs to, even if I can't find the energy to turn my head and
look upon her. The faerie. Awake. Alive. And with that small
validation that my sacrifice won’t be for naught, my soul lets
go.

The curse takes its final toll.

The last petal falls.

I thought death would be swift and quick.

But it's not.

It's painfully, achingly slow.

My eyes slip closed, surrounding me in
darkness. A wave of cold travels slowly up my skin, starting at my
fingertips and toes, creeping ever closer to my heart.

I can't move.

Can't speak.

I'm paralyzed, trapped in a world of
shadow.

But I can hear. And that's what hurts the
most.

"Do something! Help her!" Cole shouts.

I want to wince but I can’t. He still
doesn’t know what's happening. He still thinks he can save me.
Because he trusts me. He trusts that I always told him the
truth.

"There's nothing I can do." The voice is
cold and unkind, almost aggressive. It doesn’t match the beautiful
face I remember. "Besides," the faerie continues, "I wouldn't help
a human thief even if I could."

Cole snarls and his muscles clench tight.
His arms tremble beneath me, anger growing uncontrollable. It's
always been an easier emotion for him to handle than despair. He's
escaping into the rage, trying to lose himself within it. "You're
no better," he sneers. "You stole everything from me.
Everything."

"That wasn't personal," she snips, and then
sighs. Her voice grows softer for a moment. "And this isn't either.
There really is nothing I can do. I'm not strong enough to break
her curse, not by myself."

Cole stills. "What curse? Her curse is
pain."

The faerie laughs, a quiet smug sound, as
though she expects no better than a lie from a human, from someone
like me.

I want to hit her. I want to hug him. I want
to wake up and apologize. Anything but this horribly passive
participation.

"Dear prince," the faerie continues, "her
curse is death."

"No," Cole whispers. His arms tighten around
me, crushing me against his chest. "No!" he roars, anguish palpable
in the way the word rips from his throat, raw and torn. "There has
to be something, some way, some…"

I lay limp in his arms as he trails off.

He shifts. And even though I can't see, I
know his eyes are on me. His fingers brush against my cheek, ever
so softly, reminding me of that first night so long ago when he was
little more than an unknown stranger giving me hope that I might
find somewhere I belonged. And in his arms, I did.

"Please," Cole begs. "Please don't leave
me."

His voice in that moment is the most brutal
sound I've ever heard.

And it's the last.

My ears film over, and I'm left with the
haunting echo of Cole's hopeless plea, until everything fades away.
All my senses vanish. I no longer feel his arms around me, no
longer hear his heart thumping in my chest. He's gone. I'm
gone.

Is this death?

This endless night?

Will I just drift in this oblivion
forever?

My awareness shifts.

Bright lights spark in the distance, like
stars twinkling in the faraway sky. And then they widen, they grow.
My body is weightless and I'm floating, flying higher and
higher.

Suddenly the room pops back into view.

But I'm no longer Omorose.

She is below me, deathly pale in Cole's arms
as he sways back and forth on his knees, clasping her tight,
burying his face in her neck. The faerie stands over them both,
expression hard, yet her eyes glisten with sympathy.

Am I a ghost?

A lingering spirit?

Before the answer comes, something grabs
hold of me, a force that wants to yank me away. I'm defenseless
against the pull. I soar backward, until I'm outside of the tent
looking down at an open field lit only by the glow of the moon. I
lift higher, until I can see every animal and every tree and every
snow patch in the valley.

A glimmer of golden light catches my
attention in the distance.

But the mysterious force tugs strongly, and
I'm whisked away on the wind, blown by a strong breeze, moving
faster and faster with each passing second, until tall peaks and
low dales blur into a carpet of black and white shadows. The ground
speeds by, giving way to boundless plains, expansive forests, and
rivers that flicker in and out of view. I shoot across an endless
sea that sparkles with starlight, and only when I see a dark patch
of land in the distance do I begin to slow.

I have no idea where I am.

Why I'm here.

A city larger than anything I ever knew
existed slips into view, alive with energy as lights pierce the
night, bright against the darkness. Electricity. An impossible
amount. Buildings stretch out before me, and I sink, dropping
closer to the winding streets, arriving at my unknown destination—a
large brick structure looking more like a castle than a home.

I slip inside, drifting right through the
closed wooden door, down an entrance hallway, across a giant
ballroom lined with beds. Children sleep beneath the covers, eyes
closed, faces peaceful if dirty and unclean. I fly over them
through another door.

Then I pause.

The force pulling on me stops.

At the end of the room, a girl sits close to
a crackling fire, face buried in the pages of a book. Rags hang off
her thin frame and hole-ridden socks cover her feet, offering a
glimpse of soot-stained toes. Beneath the grime, her skin is a rich
bronze. Her messy hair shines with the glow of the fire, a deep
chestnut brown.

There's something so familiar.

I drift closer.

As though sensing me, she looks up.

And everything becomes clear.

No!

I want to shout.

No!

Because beneath the cinders spotting her
cheeks, her face is my face. And those green eyes curiously
glancing around the room are golden at the core, just like the sun
on a spring day, just like my mother's eyes used to be.

I know why I'm here.

The curse.

Even in death I can't escape it.

My spirit lingers with the magic, and the
curse brought us here, to the heir I didn’t realize was somehow
still alive.

My sister.

My innocent little sister.

Her blood is my blood—the last of my
lineage.

I try to push against the curse, to turn
around and run away, but the hold is unbreakable, and I drift
closer to her, agonizingly slow.

She looks exactly how I imagined.

Just like Papa. Except for her eyes.

I drink her in, amazed by how mature she
seems, how much older than the little two-year-old I left behind.
What has her life been like these past ten years? How did she find
her way here, to a land across the sea, so far out of reach?

I'm right in front of her.

And then the magic brushes against her
skin.

Those green eyes widen. The book falls from
her hands.

Her brows come together.

"Ro Ro?" she whispers.

My old nickname.

Before she has time to say anything, the
magic latches on to her heart, tearing into her skin. She cries
out, falling to the cold ground. I try to stop it, to twist and
yank, to keep my hold on the magic, but it slips through my
invisible fingers like water, unstoppable.

Her small body trembles.

I want to hold her because I remember the
day not so long ago that I felt the magic burn my soul for the
first time. I'd never felt pain like that before. I want to tell
her everything will be all right, even though I know it won't. I
want to comfort her. Most of all, I want to tell her the same thing
my father told me so long ago.

Don’t use it.

No matter how hard the magic is to resist,
live.

Don’t give your years away.

Don’t let the curse own you.

But I can’t say any of those things because
as the magic sinks beneath her skin, the world fades. The light of
the fire dims and my awareness recedes.

I use these last few seconds of my life to
memorize every curve of her face, to silently apologize for never
finding her. My deepest regret will be that I stopped looking.
Because if I had known, I never would have condemned her to my
fate.

But now, there's nothing I can do.

The curse binds to her soul.

My sight goes black.

And I disappear into nothing.

Electric fire zaps my chest.

Am I in hell?

The pain strikes again, burning through
me.

And then there's pressure on my chest. One.
Two. Three. As though someone is dropping boulders on my heart,
trying to crush me. Cool air blows through my lips, filling me up.
Then the pounding weight returns.

I must be in hell.

Until right now, I never believed in those
Earthly gods. But where else could this place be? Trapped in the
dark, being poked and prodded by shadows, a cycle of never-ending
pain. For the first time, eternity stretches before me. The curse
is gone. And yet, I want it back because I can't spend the rest of
my afterlife like this.

"Come on," a voice urges.

The electric fire is back.

All of a sudden, my mouth opens, sucking in
a long, excruciating breath. Every inch of me prickles, stinging
back to life. I start to cough, choking on air, as my lungs blaze
with heat. Tears spring to my eyes, and I try to blink them away.
My vision is blurred and confused.