Page 105 of Cursed Crowns

Wren hesitated. “Banba, I—”

“I can sense the darkness,” Banba cut in. “It lingers on you like a second skin. It’s the same one that moves in the wind here. That lives in these mountains.” She inhaled through her teeth. “Now it moves in you, too.”

Wren scrunched her eyes shut. The hollowness inside her yawned, reminding her of what she had done. “I cast a blood spell,” she said, shame flooding her cheeks. “Ansel is alive again.”

Her grandmother cursed. “You foolish child.”

Wren flinched. “Only he’s not the same. He’s not as he was. He’s convinced that tomorrow is his wedding day, that I’m his bride. His skin is gray and his mouth is too wide, and he’s falling apart, bit by bit...” She shuddered. “There’s a wrongness to him.”

“What did you expect?” snapped Banba. “Prince Ansel is supposed to be dead.”

“Well, now I don’t know what he is,” said Wren with rising desperation. “I just know I have to fix him.”

“Wren. Look at me.”

Wren raised her chin, quailing at the judgment in her grandmother’s eyes. A long time ago, Wren had promised herself she would never lether grandmother down again, and here Banba was, looking at Wren like she didn’t even know her. “What you have done cannot be fixed. Not with natural magic or forbidden blood magic. The young prince will never return to who he once was. It is an impossibility far greater than any magic. Greater than the limits of our world. It must be undone.”

Wren frowned. “What do you mean ‘undone’?”

Banba leveled her with a hard look. “Ansel has to die again. And stay dead.”

“Hissing seaweed! I can’t killhim, Banba. Alarik will feed us to his beasts.”

“Then you must convince the king that it is the only way forward.” Banba’s face was grave, her green eyes haunted. “So long as blood magic moves within the prince, he will draw darkness down on Grinstad. And not even the king himself will be immune to it.”

Just then, the mountain released a rumbling groan. An icicle dropped from the ceiling and shattered across the stone, nicking them both.

Wren stared at the shards. “Why do I have a horrible feeling that you’re right?”

Banba snorted. “That is my eternal burden, little bird. To be right. Even when I wish I wasn’t.”

Wren sat back on her heels, looking at Banba through the iron bars. The sight of her grandmother, the only family she’d had for most of her life and the strongest witch she’d ever known, now cold and cowed on her knees in the dark, made her want to scream herself hoarse. “It feels like the world is falling down around us,” she whispered.

“Perhaps it is,” said Banba with a sigh. Her face crumpled, and for a moment, she looked impossibly old. “Go home to your throne,Wren. Your sister needs you. Eana needs you.” She rolled to her feet and turned from her granddaughter, the wheeze of her breath filling the silence as she retreated into the darkness. “Forget about saving the prince. There will be no redemption for us here in Gevra. Not for me. And not for you.”

For the first time in her life, Wren didn’t know what to say to her grandmother. And even if she did, Banba was done talking. As the mountains groaned above them, Wren got up and walked out of the dungeon, leaving her grandmother alone in the dark.

There was a time not long ago, before Wren set out for Anadawn to make the switch that would change everything, when she had knelt on the floor of her hut back in Ortha, vomiting until her stomach ached.

What if I can’t do it, Banba?she had cried, between retches.What if I get caught and we never see each other again?

Her grandmother had knelt on the floor beside her and held her to her chest, her words as warm and sure as the sun.There is nothing in this world strong enough to keep us apart, little bird. I will rip these cliffs apart if I have to. I will raze the white palace to the ground.She had squeezed Wren’s shoulders then, pressing a morsel of strength into her bones.No matter what happens, I promise you we will have the future we have been promised. It’s you and me, Wren. Always.

“Always,” said Wren as she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. “No matter what.”

And just as Banba had meant it, so, too, did Wren.

40

Rose

When the wind unraveled around Rose, she was kneeling in the palace courtyard. She looked up to find Lei Fan gaping at her.

“What just happened?” she said, waving around what appeared to be a slab of meat.

Rose retrieved the hand mirror and stood up. “I take it you met my sister, Wren.”

“She took your wolf.” Lei Fan dropped the meat with a splat. “Sorry. It all happened so fast.”

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