Page 24 of The Curse and the Silver Rose

“Alright if I join you?” asked Davron as he stood over her.

“Do as you please,” she said with a teasing shrug. “As long as you don’t get between me and the books.”

He shook his head and sat down. “Unbelievable. I’ve lost you already to a library.”

“I don’t know what you expected,” she murmured, leafing through the wafer-thin pages of the book. “I could stay here forever.”

“You promise?” he asked, half to himself.

“Mmm,” she replied absentmindedly, her eyes flying back and forth over the page.

She quickly became entranced by the stories. Though they were simple enough tales, clearly written for children, they contained touches of darkness and abstract meaning. There was a story of a man marooned on a desert island who died of madness when he forgot his own name. Another told of a family who abandoned a deformed baby in the woods, then he grew into a chimera that terrorized the land. The final story was about a girl who withered in a cave underground, until her friends brought her a candle in a jar to make her remember the sun.

Amelie and Davron stayed that way for some time, while the sunshine and shadows chased each other across the white marble floor. Her reading, him watching her intently. Now and then, she would smile or frown in response to the stories.

Eventually, she looked up. “I’m so sorry. I’m being rude.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I am.” She placed the ribbon bookmark on the page and closed the book. “Tell me, what is your favorite room in the castle?”

Davron frowned and rubbed his stubbled jawline. “I haven’t ever thought about it.”

“Really?”

The books were making her bold, as if she was inoculated against timidity by being among the thing she loved most. The joy given to her by the library outweighed any nerves.

“I suppose I like the piano room,” he said. “When I’m particularly troubled, I play. It seems to drive out the demons, at least for a while.”

Amelie raised her eyebrows, impressed. “You play piano?”

“I have a natural advantage.” He drummed the fingers of one hand on his knee. “Or, should I say, unnatural. Before the curse, I only had ten of these.”

Amelie tried not to let pity show on her face, because she knew he’d loathe it. As she watched him continue to drum his fingers, she realized that she needed to stop skirting around his differences. It only made both her and him more conscious of them.

And really, what was the difference between five and six fingers, when it came down to it? Humans might have just as easily had four—then she would be the beast, with five.

“How long ago did it happen?” she asked. “The curse.”

Davron took so long to answer that Amelie believed he might not. A series of complicated emotions passed over his face at whatever he was thinking. She wished she could read his mind as easily as she could read a book.

“Nearly a decade ago,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble. “I had just come of age. My parents were—” He glanced at her. “I suppose you do not know. But King Leonid Nikolaou of Zermes, who now sits on the throne across the sea in Klatos, is my uncle.”

Amelie raised a brow. She knew Davron was of noble birth, but she’d not guessed he was a royal, let alone a foreign one. King Leonid was sickly, she knew.

Davron continued. “My parents before him were queen and king. They had been a love match and enjoyed a happy marriage. But later in life, my father became unwell after an accidental injury to the skull. He was prone to bouts of delirium. On one such occasion, he became convinced his own guards were trying to murder him. He enlisted a great warrior named Malakai to stand sentinel outside his chambers during the night. My mother tried to dissuade him, but he would not listen. His guards did not know he’d hired Malakai. They rushed to defend my father against what they believed was an assassin sent to kill him in the dead of the night. After a long and bloody fight, Malakai died.”

Davron sighed heavily. “The next morning, my father couldn’t recall his delusions at all. He’d forgotten his suspicions about his guards. He’d forgotten enlisting Malakai. To his mind, his men had defended him, and he dismissed my mother’s insistence that the warrior was present on his orders. Thus, seen as an enemy of our people, Malakai did not receive—” Davron closed his eyes and shook his head, as if trying to unsee something. “He did not receive a burial befitting a hero of his stature.”

Amelie put her hand over her mouth.

He continued, opening his eyes and staring straight ahead. “His widow was a sorceress named Levissina. She and Malakai had a son together. My mother begged her forgiveness and handed over Malakai’s remains, hoping to avert further bloodshed. In response, Levissina murdered the head of our royal guard. We imprisoned her in the dungeon, but no cell could hold her for long. I can not imagine how the cell held her for any time at all. Indeed, she escaped the dungeons and disappeared with Malakai’s remains, and we thought that was the end. It was not.”

He looked at his mutilated hands. “Levissina traded any goodness she possessed for the darkest magic she could conjure, becoming a demon. She cursed my family. Any romantic love we shared with another soul doomed us. My father, weakened already, died almost immediately. My fiancée succumbed soon after.”

Amelie’s stomach dropped. Davron was engaged. He hadn’t just lost his parents to the curse but a fiancée, too.

He continued. “My mother, as you know, was a sorceress, too. She traveled by magic to the eternal afterlife—the Beyond—to augment Levissina’s curse, but she ultimately failed. Upon her immediate return, my mother died. The only thing she brought back from the Beyond was the Heartstone, clasped in her hand. Whatever she had been hoping the stone would do, it did not work.”

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