Page 129 of Revenge of the Forgotten

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.”

51

“No fucking way.”

It was Arlet who spoke up, vetoing her idea immediately.

Khort chimed in with a furious look, his eyes shifting between slits and normal pupils.

“You guys—” Vega began.

“Absolutely not, Vega. I haven’t worked tirelessly for fifty-five years, traveling back and forth from Earth twenty times for you to purposely send yourself back there.” It’d been a long time since Vega had seen Arlet this pissed.

“Khort!” Vega stomped her foot like a child who’d been told she wasn’t allowed ice cream after dinner.

“Don’t look at me. I’m with her. We’ve worked too hard to get you back.” Khort leaned against the wall of the meeting room, an angry frown sagging his face.

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