24. Chapter 24

Chapter twenty-four

I t had been days, and Emilia had yet to come out of her room. She would only allow Callum to leave food at her door but completely refused my company. Unless I wanted to force her to be around me, I would just have to respect her space and wait.

I loathed waiting.

And then there was Soren. The scholar who went on and on and on and fucking on about being obsessed with me, and now when I almost died, he was nowhere to be found. The least he could do was check on me, but nothing. Callum and Bastian had made excuses for him, but I didn’t want to hear it. I wouldn’t beg for his attention.

As much as I hated Bastian, at least he was trying.

My thoughts must have summoned Soren because he was standing next to his seat at the table awaiting my arrival.

“Your grace.” He gave me a small smile as he pulled out my chair. I walked over and sat down, ignoring him completely. I began to thrum my fingers against the arm of the chair while Bastian set down platters of food.

“Your grace?” Soren asked.

Something appeared in front of my eyes, and as I focused on it, I could see that it was a spoon filled with potatoes and meat from the stew Bastian made.

I narrowed my eyes at Bastian, and he rolled his. “Please give me the honor of feeding you.”

“I’m not particularly hungry.”

He cocked his head. “Then indulge me.”

He brought the spoon to my lips, and I swatted it away. “I am not in the mood to eat.”

“You are skin and bones.”

“I have never had anyone complain about that,” I spat out. “Your brother seemed delighted when I let him lick me from the inside.”

He blanched. “What did you just say?”

I raised an eyebrow, toying with his emotions, knowing full well that Soren wouldn’t have told him the naughty details about our night in the chapel. Bastian turned to Soren, who had straightened up at the admission.

“It was only the one time you already know about it,” Soren stated, matter of fact. “So, this shouldn’t be a surprise.”

A muscle feathered in his jaw. “Eat.” He grabbed his spoon, dipped it back in the soup, and brought it to my mouth more forcefully.

“No.”

“I won’t sit around while you waste away. Not after everything.”

“I’m not eating.”

“You’re stubborn,” he spat.

“You’re relentless and exhausting.”

Callum sighed. “Bastian, let her be. It’s been a long couple of weeks. Everyone is stressed.”

“Which is exactly why she needs to eat. She needs to keep her strength up so that she doesn’t die!”

“I told you that I am not hungry!” I turned my head away from the spoon. “I have gone longer without food or water.”

“Because of the curse, but now it’s different.”

I shrugged. It’s not that I didn’t want to eat, but I truly wasn’t hungry. Every time I thought of Emilia, my hunger dissipated.

“Fine. Then at least drink this.” He poured me something and held it out, wanting to help me, but I didn’t need his help. No matter how much it seemed as though he was trying to stick by his word to me. I smacked the cup away, spraying whatever was in it all over the ground and on him.

I could see Callum staring at the both of us, looking haggard and exhausted. For days, they had slaved over my every need. But it was Bastian’s fault; he kept me weak and I was so exhausted from everything that had happened that I simply stopped caring. I prayed that I would wither away to nothing, and that I would be past the point of no return.

Not even knowing that it would cause irreparable damage to Emilia could stop the thoughts from coming on.

Bastian and I stared each other down, and I waited for him to tire of me and leave. I saw his chest rapidly moving up and down as he fought through every retort I knew was on the tip of his tongue. But he didn’t say anything.

Instead, he drank whatever was left in the cup, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and yanked my head back. I began to protest, but the moment my mouth opened, he descended upon me, covered my mouth with his, and spit the drink into my mouth. I tried to fight him off, but he held strong and pinched my nose, forcing me to swallow.

The moment the liquid ran down my throat, I stood up and pushed him as hard as I could, but he didn’t move an inch.

Some of the liquid dripped down my chin as I seethed, “What do you think you are doing?”

“You’re right, I am relentless,” he ground out. “And you’re human again…at least for the moment. If you don’t eat and drink, I will make you.”

The tables had turned on me, and the vulnerability left me heated. “I will fucking kill you.”

“And cue the threats.” He raised his arms in the air. “You are becoming rather predictable.”

“Can you both please stop? I have something to say.” Soren raised his voice loud enough to cut through our bickering. We all turned to him. “That night, you never gave me a chance to explain that it was all a misunderstanding.”

A misunderstanding? Is that why he kept his distance? Because he thought I was still upset with him?

Soren was looking only at me. “Yes, I read some of your journal, but I stopped the moment I realized that it belonged to you. I only read that one passage, I swear it. I want to hear your story from you, not from this.” He slid the journal to me—a peace offering. I didn't know what to think of it, and after another few moments of silence, he said, “I knew the only useful thing I could do for you was research. That’s all I was trying to do.”

I flicked my eyes from the journal to him and sat back down. Bastian nodded to his brother to continue.

I sat up a little straighter. Was he about to tell me what I thought he was about to tell me?

“I was in the chapel reading.” I wondered why he read in there and not the library, when his cheeks reddened. I scoffed as he continued, “I stood and began to pace when I felt one of the floorboards give way, and when I lifted it, there was a book.”

He reached down onto the chair next to him and lifted an old leather-bound book in his hands. I paled at the familiar-looking book I hadn’t seen since I confronted Circe about her plans.

He flipped through a few pages before stopping on one and read, “Calathea is coming into her own. I have successfully ostracized her from her family, and she is ready to come with me. To her people. At times, I lose my conviction. She is a marvel, this girl, and knowing that I can free her from her father’s wrath and give her life where she can be truly herself…it’s all worth it.” He gently shut the book.

I shuddered at her words, feeling like I could hear her voice again, standing in front of me.

“I think it’s time we heard the truth. Your story.”

I looked around to find that they all wanted to hear it. But I wasn’t ready. “Who are you to order me?”

He sighed. “I am not ordering you to tell us, but if you want out of this curse, then I am your best bet.”

“I don’t want your help.”

That’s it. Push them away. You don’t need them. I couldn’t help hearing a slight inflection in her tone, as if she were worried.

“Yes, you do. I have been slaving away reading these texts to try and help you, but I can’t do anything unless I know the whole truth. Please…”

His tone was calm, his shoulders relaxed, and he gave me a smile that begged me to trust him.

He is only treating you this way so that you don’t explode again. He thinks you are fragile. You are anything but.

“I am not made of glass, Soren!”

“I wasn’t implying anything of the sort. You are anything but fragile, your grace.” Suddenly he was sounding too much like her…too smart for his own good. I looked around, and their faces changed. They weren’t my men anymore, but my mother, father, and Belle. My family stared me down, wondering how I could have betrayed them.

“Stop acting like you care for me—like you know me!” I screamed.

“Then tell us,” Soren begged.

“I can’t trust any of you. I can’t trust anyone.”

“Did you trust her?” Soren pointed to the book. “Is that why you think you can’t trust anyone? Because she made you believe in her, in whatever promises she made, and then she—”

He was getting too close. “Stop.”

“What did she do? Does she have something to do with the curse? Who is she to you?”

Too many questions. My head was starting to throb, the room spinning. “You will stop this research right now.”

He walked around the table until he was standing over me. “I have spent every moment that I could in the chapel reading through all of the books and documents at my disposal. I haven’t gotten through them all yet, and I haven’t found much of anything that could be of use, but some things might make more sense if I knew everything that happened.”

Tell him everything? I had never shared what happened all those years ago with anyone, and I wasn’t about to start.

“Your grace, I beg you to tell us what happened. Maybe there are clues in those memories that can help us break the curse,” Soren pleaded, his eyes urging me to not shut him down again.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, he was right. There could be something within those memories that could help. And I wanted out. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted my torment to come to an end.

“I don’t know what I could tell you that could possibly help. I’ve been through it all a thousand times. Don’t you think I would have found something? Or do you think your intellect is superior to mine?”

“Well…” he reasoned, and Bast coughed. Soren took the hint and instead said, “I have found that a fresh pair of eyes and ears can make a tremendous difference. Just humor me.”

I rested my head in my hand and leaned against the side of the chair. I was calming down, my heart returning to a steady pace.

“It is a rather boring story.” Maybe it was time to tell them, get it all out in the open. “Once upon a time, there lived a princess who was loved by all who met her. She was the perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect princess. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Though, what they didn’t know was that she held a dark secret. A secret that would get her killed if anyone were to find out.”

I looked around, and everyone was leaning in, waiting to hear more. “She was born with magic. It didn’t begin to manifest until she was at the young age of seven. She was scared and didn’t understand what was happening to her. She was aware that magic once flourished, but was hunted to near extinction over the last few hundred years. She was also taught that having magic flow through your veins meant you were evil. Tainted. So, even though she was young, she knew that she needed to keep it a secret.”

Soren’s eyes brightened. “The purges,” he said to Bast. “The one's mother talked about it. Kings all over the realm banded together to purge their kingdoms of magic. Thousands died. Your father, he was one of those kings.”

I continued on, “The princess had successfully kept her powers a secret until she hit puberty, and that, coupled with her hormones, was almost too much to bear. She had many governesses come in and out of her life, and she made their lives miserable because she thought that she would be found out. That was until she met Circe. Circe changed everything.”

I reached forward and grabbed Bastian’s cup, brought it to my lips, and drank the entire thing. I lifted the cup toward him, and he refilled it. His features softened, obviously relieved that I was finally drinking something.

“Circe became her lifeline in a world where she felt like she was drowning. She was the only one who understood her because she, too, was born with magic.” I gripped the cup hard. “They spent years together. She taught the princess how to control her magic and fight, and…” I looked up at Soren, “as you have read, ostracized the princess from everyone she loved. She took the position to kill the king, but when Circe found that the princess was like her, her plans changed. Circe wished to make the girl a queen who would save her people.”

I took a breath, changing the narrative. “My people. What I didn’t know was that it would be at the expense of their killers—my father, my family.”

Soren sank down into his seat, the story weighing on him.

“I wanted it for a moment,” I told them, my vision grew cloudy. “After seeing all the people…the women and children he murdered, I wanted him dead. Circe told me he’d burn me with all the others if he knew, and to this day, I still think there might have been truth to that.”

I felt a hand being placed on mine. Callum. My rock. He nodded, showing me that he was here, they all were. That I could take all the time in the world if I needed it.

I held his stare. “But I always suspected she had a hand in killing my sister, and now she was going to kill my father, so I told my mother. I told her of Circe’s plan, knowing it was going to be a death sentence.”

I pulled my hand from Callum’s and wiped away the tears that had collected, but had yet to escape.

How did it feel betraying me, Callie? Did it feel good to finally enact your revenge?

I yelled, “You got exactly what you deserved.”

As did you!

Before anyone could ask me what was wrong, our setting changed. We were no longer in the dining hall, but at the town square, outside the boundaries that I had been contained in. I was turning around in circles, looking at everything. A visual memory had never been this vast before.

“What is this?” Bastian whispered. “Where are we?”

I spun around to him. “You can see this?”

They all nodded, wide-eyed.

“The execution of the enchantress Circe will commence for the crimes against the kingdom!”

We all turned to where Circe was tied to a wooden pole, standing on a pile of large pieces of wood. She was struggling against the ropes that held her, biting harshly into her skin. Her eyes were full of rage.

My breathing turned erratic. No.

Now everyone will know the truth about you.

“No!”

But there was no stopping the memory.

I saw my father and mother seated off to the side so everyone could view her. The entire kingdom gathered around the raised platform for miles. Some were even hanging out of windows to get a good view of the spectacle.

Father stood and raised his hands in the air, and a hush fell over the crowd. “The enchantress has been accused of being born with magic. But worse, she has committed a crime like no other…she lied to gain our trust and acquire knowledge to bring down this kingdom! She aided in my daughter’s teachings, and we treated her like family.” A roar erupted, and my father spoke above the ever-growing mob. “Had she succeeded, she’d have murdered the entire royal family, and for that, she will pay.”

Cheers were heard all around. Food and rocks were thrown at Circe. The chaos was a blurry mess, a looming mist in the background encroaching upon us.

She held her head up high and stared straight ahead as Father asked her, “Do you have anything to say?”

She snarled, “You murdered my entire clan…but worse, you’ve murdered innocent people who had not one drop of magic in them! Just because they were different.”

Her eyes found mine as I sat next to Mother, and a wicked smile spread across her lips. I could see myself shaking my head in quick, deliberate movements. Don’t say it, don’t tell him.

Father’s face twisted to that of disgust. “Your ancestors all deserved to die for their treasonous actions!”

“You killed children!” She screeched. “You would kill your own if they were like me.”

I could see myself straightening in my chair, attempting to put on a brave face in front of her, knowing what she was telling me. My father would kill me if he knew. I’d burn with her if he knew. My entire body began to shake under her hardened gaze.

I could see myself standing. “Father, we can end this now… All the death and bloodshed. We can end it.”

“Silence,” he roared, and I sucked in a fast breath. He turned just enough so I could hear him, his voice a spiteful whisper. “How long did you know, Callie? How long did you know she was a witch and kept it from me?”

I looked to my mother for comfort, but she looked down at her lap.

“I will deal with you later,” Father said with so much venom that I flinched under his heated gaze.

Further words and pleas died in my throat as I raised my eyes to Circe who was staring right back at me. Her gaze held a sense of longing, a desperate plea, one last attempt to make me see what I should have always known—the truth behind everything she tried to teach me, the sincerity of her tries to save me. To save me from my own father. Maybe I should have done the same for her—maybe I should have tried harder to stop him, to make him see reason, to do something. But I didn't. I couldn't.

I sank down back in my seat.

Circe’s eyes darkened, and with it, the fog grew closer. “How does it feel, my king, hunting down magic borns, killing witches, all the while you have sired one?”

The blood in Father’s face drained when Circe’s words sunk in. He hesitated and turned to look at me. His eyes took me in, and for the first time in my life, he didn’t see me as someone he loved, but as an enemy.

The crowd went silent before my mother stood, and ordered, “Burn her now!”

Whispers erupted among the crowd as they wondered if Circe's words held any truth, as the executioner held the torch to the stake until it slowly caught on fire. The flames slowly made their way to Circe, who had the biggest smile on her face despite her body being claimed by the flames.

“You have chosen your fate. Remember that, when everyone you love is gone. This was your choice. Your blood took everything from me, and now I will leave it with nothing,” Circe said as she glared at my broken form next to my mother.

The fire raged around her, trying to consume her, and her voice—distorted and horrifying—chanted the words that would come to haunt me. “All you know will fade like mist. As you have shown the heart of a beast, so shall you live as one. Silence your prison, loneliness your true companion. Isolated. Unloved. Cursed. Only when our tangled thread unbinds, can you reclaim what was lost.” As the curse ended, the fog closed in.

Watching myself clutching my chest and crumbling to the ground, was a physical reminder of the pain I felt that night. I covered my ears as I couldn’t stand to listen to my scream from so long ago; remembering how it felt as though molten lava was being poured into me. The pain was worse than anything that I had ever felt before. I could see Mother kneeling beside me, doing her best to help me, but nothing lessened my torment.

I was on the ground, writhing in pain, but my eyes were on Circe, who looked at me with pure disgust in her eyes. No—not just disgust, but something deeper.

She taunted, “Let’s see how you fare alone with not one person who loves you.”

I looked up to see my mother gasping for air, and then my father followed suit. It was excruciating watching this, reliving it after all these years. The fog was killing them. I didn’t know it at the time, but now knowing what was about to happen did nothing to ease the grief I felt.

Bodies began to drop. Screams filled the air as the people ran, trying to outrun their fate. Women and children weren’t spared as they dropped, their eyes not even having time to close.

I watched myself screaming for everything to stop. Pleading with Circe to take it all back. To take me instead, but it was too late.

I dropped to the floor. My legs could no longer hold me up as I watched myself reach for my mother with trembling hands, holding her close to me as her vacant eyes stared straight ahead. Mother was dead. Father had collapsed in front of Circe, his sword in his outstretched hand as he ceased to move. Circe laughed hysterically, knowing she had won.

When the only noise that was left was the crackling of the fire as it engulfed Circe, I finally looked back toward the raised platform and found that Circe wasn’t looking toward a broken, newly cursed Calathea, but at me…in the crowd.

A chill ran down my spine. I didn’t remember this.

Her mouth continued to rise, her eyes widening as she opened her mouth and screamed.

The image faded, and we were back in the dining hall. I didn’t look at their faces; I couldn’t. I felt something drop onto my arm. My hand shook as I reached up and wiped away tears. I was crying. I stood up abruptly and felt my head swim from lack of food and drink. Soren stepped forward and lifted me into his arms.

My arms felt heavy, and my head fell against Soren’s chest. I guess that took more out of me than I thought. I closed my eyes because everything was spinning, and if I kept them open any longer, I would expel everything that I had just consumed.

I could hear Bastian order to Soren, “Give her to me.”

Soren's chest rumbled as he replied, “You aren’t the only one who cares for her, Bast. Now get out of the way.”

Bastian growled, but he must have listened because Soren was moving.

I could feel Soren’s mouth close to my ear as he whispered, “Thank you for telling me.” He kissed the top of my head, and I let him, because, for the moment, I was that scared girl clutching her dead mother’s body.

I felt my body being laid on the bed and ointment being applied to the sides of my head. It smelled of lavender and something else familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Not long after, the pain began to subside, and I opened my eyes.

Soren was sitting in Bastian’s chair, writing in his journal. Bastian was pacing behind his brother, and Callum was on the edge of the bed, massaging my feet.

I laid there just watching them all, as I took a moment to gather myself. I couldn’t stop shaking after what everyone just witnessed. I wasn’t sure if I felt embarrassed or relieved that it was all out in the open. What I was sure of was that it felt as though a small weight was lifted from my shoulders.

I still didn’t understand how the memories manifested; it didn’t matter at this point. I wanted to forget it ever happened. Wanted to do my best to erase the look of disgust my father gave me before he died.

And I knew just how to do that.

I moaned, which caught all of their attention, and they looked at me with lust in their eyes.

I sat up in bed slowly, not wanting to feel dizzy again when each one of them lurched forward to help me, fighting amongst themselves as I leaned back against the pillows. It would have been comical if I wasn’t annoyed and exhausted.

I looked up to the ceiling and closed my eyes, knowing what to do. I opened my eyes and looked at Bastian.

“Hunter,” he narrowed his eyes at the name, and I pressed on, “I will make another deal with you. Stop cutting my arm with that knife. Let me heal fully, and I promise to allow Soren to find a way to break the curse.”

“Why now?” He was skeptical, understandably.

“Because I don’t know how much longer I can go without having sex.” I tried to say as nonchalantly as possible, as I looked at Callum and smirked, his cheeks reddening.

“How can you jest after everything we just saw?” Bastian asked incredulously, gaining my attention once more. “So you want your powers back and are willing to allow us to find a way to break the curse, just so you can have sex?”

“You won’t break my curse,” I told him, certain of it. I shrugged. “What do I have to lose? We all have our vices, and Callum is mine.”

I could see the look of disappointment on both of their faces because I didn’t include them.

“You need to also promise that you won’t use your magic to find the blade and try to kill yourself again.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

He looked at his brother, who nodded and then looked back at me. “Deal.”