Page 58 of The Dark Prince
We went silent, each with our own thoughts. My mind continued to spin, and landed firmly on a point of the curse that didn’t fit with everything I’d been told so far.
“Wait, a moment. Has anyone else turned into a beast other than Tyr?” I asked. Tyr seemed older than me, and while young, he could have easily married a decade or more ago. Shouldn’t the curse be progressing, then?
Bessy frowned. “Er, no. Come to think of it. We just keep waiting for it to happen, though. We think marrying you delayed it.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. Think about it. What is the curse waiting for?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. But I do know that if anyone else beyond Tyr turns, I don’t doubt it would force the king to kill him. It’s why I think Tyr is so careless with himself. I think part of him believes that if someone kills him, it would free everyone.”
I growled in my throat, frustrated and heartbroken for Tyr. I felt like the missing piece was right in front of me, but I was simply blind to it.
“Go back to your rooms,” Bessy insisted. “Let Tyr heal and come to you. He will be ashamed of how he acted. He’s too noble for his own good,” Bessy assured me.
“What if he doesn’t?” I asked, feeling vulnerable. “What if he hates me now for disobeying him and going into the forest?”
Bessy took my hands in his and patted them. “He will forgive you. He hates himself too much to do otherwise.”
Twenty Seven
TYR
Ifelt worse than when I’d cut my face open. Isadora had only been trying to help me, and I’d frightened her away. I’d made her cry. I was lower than the slugs and worms that crawled underneath the dirt.
“Stay still,” Arne demanded, silver eyes unseeing as he went over the wound on my back. Normally, I refused to let him heal me, preferring to deal with the consequences of my actions on my own.
But this time, I needed to be up and mobile. The king’s men could come down on us. I was shifting more and more often.
I was running out of time.
And I’d made Isadora cry.
“Just kill me. Rub poison in the wound and sew it up.”
Arne grunted. “You did not save me from the fighting pits just to murder you in your bed. Besides, I am more afraid of your wife than I am of you.”
I twisted around to stare at him, stunned. “Excuse me?” I sputtered out. I knew Isadora was fierce, but Arne was a practitioner of the old black magicks, rumored to be a rare male blood witch by the man who’d owned him. That had been the same man I’d killed to free him.
Regardless, Arne had seen violence and terror on a scale I couldn’t comprehend. Even now, as he healed me, knicks and cuts opened along his upper arms and chest, bleeding freely. He was a better and braver man than I’d ever be, taking his own pain all at the expense of his own. Magick demanded balance, he’d told me once. You couldn’t get something for nothing, after all.
“I have advice for you, Dark Prince.” Arne narrowed his gaze at me, ensuring I was paying attention. I breathed out through my nose, losing my patience.
“Go on then,” I growled at him.
He grinned. “As my wife would say: try not to fuck this up.”
He wiped his brow and bowed, leaving to go to his own chambers. Healing always took a lot out of him, and he needed time afterwards to recover.
“Arne!” I called out, stopping him before he left. He turned with a questioning glance. “Thank you,” I mumbled.
He grinned again and left.
Left alone, it was a tough choice between curling up into a ball of shame to mope, or seeking Isadora immediately and pinning her to the wall.
The curse was getting worse, not better. I needed to get closer to her simply to impregnate her and pass it on. The alternative was to watch as everyone around me succumbed to the same curse.
Including Isadora.
I balled my fists into the bedsheets. Each choice was more impossible than the next. To keep my wife safe, I would have to betray her. If I refused, I’d likely end up shifting and killing her, eventually.
