Page 31 of The Curse of a Kingdom
That was, until the ghost of the queen had haunted him for the first time. It had begun when he entered this very same library three months ago. She’d been standing by the window. A woman wearing a black dress, with a full skirt and a tight corset. Her hair had billowed in the air, as if submerged in water. The crown had been barely visible between the strands, and he hadn’t realized who she really was, until she’d shown up in his nightmares days later.
After that, he’d learned quickly that no one spoke of the queen. The kingdom believed she had died in a fire, in this very same library. Orion had believed the same, but the nightmares had shown him otherwise.
It hadn’t been ideal to alternate dreams of Nava—a woman he knew nothing of—with nightmares of his mother dying in a fire. Confusing didn’t begin to cover it; he didn’t know what was real or a figment of his imagination.
Now that Nava had turned out to be real, he couldn’t ignore the nightmares any longer. There was something larger hidden here, and he was being asked in a not-subtle way to find it.
Orion wasn’t afraid of spirits; as a matter of fact, they constantly haunted him. It came with being a Dark One. This ghost of bones and ashes, however, had had him freezing in true fear the first time he’d seen her.
That day, many months ago, he had questioned the keeper of the library if he knew a ghost haunted the space. The old man had actually laughed in his face, clearly unable to see the figure of said queen standing a few feet away by the window.
Orion’s mixed feelings of whether he should be resentful toward the woman who had birthed and abandoned him pulled him in a different direction. He hadn’t wanted to learn anything more about her at first. Still, seeing her suffering, nightmare after nightmare, and the ghostly remnants of silent sorrow that followed him around the castle, had taken down brick by brick the wall he’d put up throughout his life.
The guardian of this place claimed all records of the queen had been burned when she died. The man had expected Orion to blindly believe the tale everyone else did. That she had taken him away, then returned to burn all records and killed herself in the same fire.
No one needed to know that he didn’t trust much of what anyone around here told him, not when everything sounded like a lie.
Much less now that Nava and Devon had landed in the castle, claiming something was off—or at least she claimed. He had to find time to talk to his brother about it.
Tucking his wings closer to his body, Orion scanned the shelves for anything that would call to him. Searching for a name, feeling for a pull of magic.
Why had the queen been killed? She’d stolen the heir away. However, according to the king, he would never order such a thing. She had been treasured by him. Orion brought his hand to his temples, trying to massage away the pounding headache that kept building up as the hours passed.
It was a fool's errand to return to this place every night when, for the past three months, he had found nothing other than growing frustration. It didn’t help that all he wanted to do in this particular moment was go and see if Nava was, in fact, safe.
She was a magic wielder who had bewitched him from across an ocean and was engaged to his brother. A bitter laugh escaped his lips as he shook his head and walked deeper into the ruins that once had been a guarded part of his family's library.
The worst damage of the fire lay ahead, leading him to areas he hadn’t fully explored yet. He wondered if the ghost of his mother would await him in the shadows of this place.
He closed his eyes and let his magic pull him forward, following the instinctive pressure forming in his stomach as the scent of mold and ashes wrapped around him. Destruction often spoke the same language.
The moans and whispers of those he’d taken long ago stirred to life in dark, misty shapes. His power consumed kernels of other people’s souls if he ever took their lives. It didn’t matter if it was for self-defense or if he had been forced to do so.
An echo of a soul, forever bound to him.
The king had been teaching him to block them out, and hehadlearned. He was able to block them for the most part these days, but every time he stepped foot inside this place, they came back with a vengeance.
“There is nothing here, other than filth,”one cackling voice whispered, angry and disgusted.
“A waste of time, really,” said another.
The debris crunched under his weight, and the heavy scent of burnt matter had his eyes watering in response. It was even more unsettling that all the voices sounded alike these days; he had forgotten who they came from. His mother, however, never spoke to him. But it wasn’t like he was an expert on how spirits worked. Unlike the ones who followed him around, this was the first time he’d been chased by an actual ghost.
He traced a gloved finger over the decaying ledge in front of him and wondered if he would be escorted out of this place once again. If he would leave empty-handed. The deeper he went into the darkness, the more his chest tightened with the wrongness of it all. He knew she was around when the icy whisper of a touch of bone crawled down the back of his neck.
Goose bumps awakened, and he turned his gaze, searching. It was dark like a moonless night, but his fae eyes never disappointed, and even this remote, lonely space still looked bright to him.
The drumming inside his skull intensified as he walked deeper into the shadows, his own power blending into his surroundings as he followed a sinking feeling in his gut.
The scent of pepper lingered in the air, faint enough that most wouldn't notice it. A spell likely to disorient and push people away. Orion was close to findingsomething.
The ghost appeared then, snapping movements of charred skin over bones and empty holes where eyes had once been. He had to fight his innate reaction to flee. She raised her hand, bone pointing toward the case to his right.
Sweat beaded on his brow as he reached for one of the books, his fingertip tracing over the spine of it, and just like that, it disintegrated under his touch. Orion’s wary gaze flashed to the spirit, who preserved her pose, floating in the air with teeth showing behind worn lips.
He continued, touching books here and there; his shallow breaths had him on the edge of hyperventilating when one book didn’t fall into a pile of mush and ashes, and an embossed gold letter peeked out from behind charcoal.
"There."The three voices of his mist perked up, but the ghost of the queen disappeared in an instant.
