Page 12 of Heirs of the Cursed

“You’re so ready for me,” she said in a seductive voice.

She traced a path of kisses up his thighs until she reached his mouth. As she kissed him, the salty taste of his manhood seeped between their tongues. Leonel wrapped his arms around her and sweetly thrust into her, letting out a sigh of infinite pleasure.

Just like Madame Dimond had taught her, Naithea took him to the edge of the abyss as she rode him, gasping his name with feigned pleasure. It was in moments of ecstasy, when her victimswere exposed and vulnerable, that the hetaira found it easiest to discover the deepest secrets of their minds.

Not with questions, but with magic.

Naithea externalized her power, a melodic song that hypnotized her victims and lured them into her trap. The voice of a mermaid who had sunk ships and doomed their crewmen to a terribly beautiful death. Her boreal gaze was bathed in light, like an explosion of cursed stars.

She knew how dangerous and dark her power was. It had manifested after her mother’s death, while she was begging for vramnias to subsist and pay for the burial. Her soft, mesmerizing voice had bewitched an old sailor on his way back to his ship. Although the man had given her a bag of silver vramnias and his expensive watch, her magic hadn’t been satisfied. It’d plunged the sailor so deeply into her spell that he’d been unable to emerge back to the surface.

Naithea had blamed herself ever since. Not only for taking a life, but for her magic’s late appearance. She had had no one to guide her, and now, she lacked control over it. Perhaps, had her powers appeared earlier, she could have compelled the healers to help her mother despite being unable to pay their high prices.

She could havesavedher.

If only her mother could see her now, selling her body for warm food and stale wine . . .

She pushed those thoughts to the darkest part of her mind. If she didn’t focus on her magic, she could very well turn Leonel into another corpse.

Despite her countless attempts to master it, the siren song still controlled her, and Naithea hadn’t dared to use it for fear of the many consequences it would bring. Some would pay for her magic, others would kill.

Yet, she’d become a bloody coward.

“Tell me about the mission, Leonel.”

“Leonel.” He savored his own name and the waves of power rooted within him. His gaze turned white as well when Naithea reached deep into his soul.

“I need you to focus,” she asked gently. “Why is the Royal Army here?”

“The king ordered our troops to be deployed throughout the cities of Lên Rajya after discovering . . .” The soldier began but stopped immediately.

“After discovering what, Leonel?”

There was power in knowledge and Naithea was thirsty for it.

“The holly of death,” he concluded.

Naithea frowned in confusion. The legends of the cursed plant that only equally dark magic could create had been lost over the years. But the world knew its influence: to destroy the world as they knew it.

Her spell tightened like a brittle thread and tugged at her; a warning that it would soon consume her victim utterly. She continued to weave her web of power, reveling in the sensation as pieces of Leonel’s soul began to coalesce with her own.

“Where?” she inquired. Her heart pounded harder with every little piece of information. “Where is the holly of death?”

“There, where monsters and nightmares reign.” Leonel paused again, as if fighting her power. “Down, down, down. In the depths of the Fallen Kingdom.”

Ro’i Rajya.

The kingdom that had been turned to stone. The kingdom that would never be what it could have been.

Naithea focused again. “Tell me what you saw,” she commanded.

Leonel began to cry. A fearsome and formidable soldier of the Royal Army crying like a child scared of the dark. It must have been horrible if it had caused such a reaction in him, notto mention that the king had sent them to solve the problem urgently.

The question waswhy.

“Two doomed souls who should be locked away have vanished.”

“That’s impossible,” she gasped, stunned. “All the people were locked up in the kingdom along with their monarchs.”

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