Chapter 50

50

Vega ran until her lungs begged for a break. She'd spent another sleepless night tossing and turning, fighting away nightmares and an insistent itch on her wrist.

When she wasn't training, she was reading through the books and tomes she and Arlet brought back. She'd learned more than she had in any other life on ways to trick curses, to bind them to someone else, but nothing about how to break them, nothing about how Remus cursed the original gods.

Vega finally got her way after weeks of arguing with Khort about being cooped up like a prisoner, and he allowed an hour of air time… but only if she agreed to a guard. Vega chose Leo, knowing at least he would make it seem like training time and not babysitting.

He turned backwards, continuing his jogging pace. "Oh, come on, Princess. You're not giving up so soon, are you?"

Vega's eyes shot daggers at Leo and the nickname he'd chosen for her. "Leo, I am going to drown you in that puddle." She pointed at the stagnant, muddy water behind him.

He laughed. "Okay, but that nickname makes sense. You were the daughter of the head Curia seat, kind of making you a princess to lowly families like mine."

"And now, I'm just like you, but cursed," Vega said while she shoved his shoulder, picking back up on her run. "Let's go, lowlife." She winked playfully.

Vega wasn't interested in Leo—sure, he was gorgeous. But her life was already too complicated without adding him into the mix. Vega's focus was on herself and the curse consuming her every single thought, and only that.

Leo's laugh followed her as she sprinted the last half mile. When they got back to the crumbled pile of buildings the hatch was hidden in, Vega sat down against a rock to catch her breath.

He checked the watch on his wrist, standing tall as he took in deep breaths. "You broke five minutes a mile until that last one." The abilities in Tolevarre made everything easier, faster.

When Vega returned, she couldn't run a mile in under ten. She was officially back at her old running speed. "Good, so I have a little time to read in the sun." She smiled, pulling her bag out of its hiding place.

Leo had learned not to argue with her anymore—Vega would do whatever she wanted and take whatever Khort wanted to throw at her later for being "late."

She didn't answer to Khort.

Vega guzzled water as Leo took up a spot to stretch in the shade. Her skin had begun to glow again, her porcelain complexion taking on a golden tan from her time above Castra.

She couldn't wait for the day she and her people didn't have to hide thousands of feet underwater, when they could all bask under the sunshine freely.

Winter was creeping in, and Imber was usually cold this time of the year, but it was unseasonably warm this week, and Vega wasn't complaining .

Unzipping her skintight black jacket, Vega slipped it off her shoulders, exposing a training suit with no sleeves underneath.

Her heart rate slowed by the time she opened the old tome she'd been reading through for the last five nights. Of course it had to be in Latin, a language rarely used here by anyone other than those in Littera. Vega had never been great at reading it… That was a skill her sister had mastered before Vega even learned to read a single book.

She translated words slowly.

Curses are fickle things, varying depending on the creator. All curses need a living thing to attach to.

Marlena mentioned she was the first of her kind to be able to curse non-living items, which was where the mirrors in her home came from. Could that mean her curse wasn't just linked to her? The mirrors weren't directly attached, she knew that much—Marlena said they were only pieces of it. Vega knew she'd be long dead if the mirrors were connected to her life. Marlena would have smashed them with her bare hands.

In some very rare occasions, a curse can hold someone to a specific location if the curse is created by blood.

Vega read that line again and again, her jaw dropping as she gasped, making Leo jump to his feet. She reread the line five more times before he made it to her.

"Leo, do you read Latin?" she asked, looking up at him, wide-eyed.

"Barely, but I can try," he said with an outstretched hand.

Vega passed the tome to him. "Careful. It's old." Leo cracked a smile, and Vega pointed out the line she needed him to read .

"Uh, so it's saying something about a curse being…" He pointed to a word he didn't know.

" Locus. Location," Vega translated.

"Tied to a location by blood?"

Speaking of blood, all of it seemed to rush to Vega's head.

"Oh my gods." She exhaled, snatching her bag and jacket off the ground. Vega gently grabbed the tome from his hands and put it back in her bag. "Let's go back down. Right now." Vega didn't wait for him, marching to the hidden hatch.

Leo's eyebrows creased in the middle of his forehead. "Is everything okay?"

Vega pulled the latch open. "I think I figured out how to break my curse."