Page 31 of Dragon Cursed
"Your line."
"My family.My sister and I were the youngest of our line.The last."
"The figure on the wall."
"My sister.Mairin.She was the keeper of the relic."
"What relic?"
"At the heart of the wood.It holds the magic of the land — the green of the trees, the clean of the rivers, the small lives in the moss.Mairin was bound to it.She wasn’t just its keeper.She was the forest in a way that I am not."
"What happened to her?"
He couldn’t answer at once.Poppy waited.
"Something came for the relic."His voice went flat.Emotionless.It was the only way to survive the retelling of the story."It corrupted the relic before we knew it was there.The corruption took my sister first because she was bound so closely to it.She died in my arms on the floor of that shrine."
"Alsander —" Her voice was full of compassion.
"The forest was dying with her.I should have died with her.The vow held me.The vow holds me still.It is the curse."
"What vow?What curse?"
"I made it to her as she was dying.I swore on my blood, all that was magic inside me, that I would keep this forest alive until I found a way to undo what had been done."His jaw locked."My blood is the only thing keeping the forest alive now.Every season I bleed and pour all my magic into the roots and the roots take it, and the trees stand one more year, and the rot at the heart of the wood does not spread quite as fast as it would.It is not enough.It has never been enough.The curse is winning."
Tears flowed freely down her cheeks and her eyes were full of sympathy, but she didn’t interrupt.She waited patiently for him to finish.
He made himself say the worst part.
"The pull you followed yesterday.That was the vow.The curse.It is in the trees and in the water and it is inme, and now —"
He could barely make himself finish."Now, I think it is inyou."
Poppy didn’t move.
"The garden at your cottage is dying because I kissed you in it.The bee on your doorstep died because I lay with you in the moss.I should have had the courage to come and tell you to run when I realized the truth."
There.
He had said it.
He waited for her eyes to fill with fear, for her hand to fall from his cheek.He waited, with dread in his heart, for her to stand and back away from him and run for the entrance of his lair like every cell of her sensible mortal body should be screaming at her to do.
She was crying.He expected the crying, and her tears twisted something in his gut.
Jaw clenched, he prepared himself for the worst.Crying wasn’t the same as being afraid.Fear would be next.Then rejection.
He watched.Waited.Braced for the inevitable.
But she didn’t do either.She looked at him with the same tenderness she had used on his books, on his table, on the dragon.Not with pity.Not horror.Something underneath that he had no word for.
He had told her every black thing.Stood in front of her as a beast and as a man.Laid out the curse, the killing law, the dead sister, the failed vow.
And she was kneeling in front of him on the floor of his lair with her hand still on his face.
Looking at him likethat.
With acceptance.Love.Devotion.Not pity.Not fear.Want.For a beast.For a curse.For a man who had just told her he was killing her with every breath he took in her direction.
