Page 179 of Suncursed

It’s not real.

Hector’s journal. According to him, the curse wasn’t real. There was something else stuck in the chaos of my mind, waiting for me to find it. To figure out what wasn’t sitting right with me, and why it was critical in this moment that I remember.

The curse. The apostai. Both intertwined somehow—by the brand, the bracelets, by…

Stones.

Seven bell tolls.Rahzlyn’s underwater struggles gave way to violent, sobbing chokes.

I couldn’t stand here and listen to another second of her torment.

It’s not real.

Gemini sent Gregorios a message about the Black Rose,notRahzlyn.

Eight bell tolls.

I begged my intuition to chime in at any fucking time now.

It was all connected somehow. Rahzlyn had been dancing as the Black Rose when I saved her from the apostai’s grasp. If King Zephyr was there that night, I couldn’t detect him the way I normally could because of some effect the bracelets had. And if I hadn’t been there, Rahzlyn would have gone through with seducing him and stealing his talisman, and…

And replacing it with a fake.

Nine bell tolls.

My knees buckled.

Kole never revealed what they intended to do with his agate, but it would have rendered King Zephyr powerless.

It’s not real.

The stone on Rahzlyn’s royal necklace wasn’t real. Someone successfully did what Markus had wanted Rahzlyn to do to King Zephyr. Only somehow, they’d gotten away with it for twelve years.

No wonder the past twelve Chosens all drowned. They had no way to harness their powers to save them. Not without the real topaz to wield. There was no fucking curse.

It took everything I had to restrain myself in place. To keep my knees bent, my head bowed. I shook with the blinding clarity bearing down on me.

I’d always walked the line between what I thought was right and the actual law. But that was always for my own self-interest. Whatever I needed to do to prove I had a purpose, that surviving my childhood to protect others, to protect this queendom, had been my guiding star.

Ten bell tolls.Rahzlyn convulsed, any remaining air gone.

My obsession had robbed me of so much, rendering me down the path of isolation. Now I knew it wasn’t for nothing. I’d willingly broken more than one decree of the Treaty already. For the first time, I was willing to break the law not for myself or what I deemed the good of the queendom—but for her.

Follow,my intuition had instructed upon first seeing her.

So I did.

Eleven bell tolls. I could get to her in time?—

Felaf gripped my arm, holding me back. “What the bloody stars do you think you’re doing?”

I tried to pull away. “Saving her.”

“It’streasonto interfere?—”

“I don’t fucking care!” I roared, yanking myself from Felaf’s grasp.

Twelve bell tolls.