Page 48 of Unraveled
“Are you bored, dear sister?”
“If the curse doesn’t kill me, the monotony of every passing day in this place will.” Her mouth tilts into a slow smile, and she lowers her body into a chair beside me. The wood groans and bends. I hear a crack, but just as I expect Nera to fall to the ground, Ash waves a hand and gold magic shoots from his fingers, wrapping around the chair and preventing it from collapsing under her considerable weight.
“Please, stop destroying the little furniture we have left. Use your magic, Nera. It will help you maintain your sanity.”
“You know I can’t. Not anymore.”
“You’re just choosing not to because it’s difficult to accept the curse has dampened it and it’s not as it was.”
“You don’t know anything.” Nera’s nostrils flare ever so slightly, but a heartbeat later, a mask of indifference falls upon her face and the hurt is gone. She turns to me, rolling her rear over the chair to push it to its limits. “I admit, I’m curious how this will all pan out. I guess no human has survived in our kingdom as long as you, Mia. Not since the curse began. How are you planning on helping us?”
“Well, this is all new to me, and frankly, I didn’t think this through when I made the deal with your brother last night.”
“Shocking,” Ash says, tapping his fingers on his chin. “You don’t seem like an impulsive person at all.”
I glare at him. “Well, I don’t have a lot of choices, and I don’t like to not be in control over my future. So, please tell me more, anything I can use to break this, for example: Who cursed you? A warlock, a sorcerer—an angry family member?”
There is always a fail-safe woven into the layers of a curse so it can be broken. The laws of magic require balance. It must be the reason beasts come to Penumbra on every blood moon. They usually try to take a human away, so perhaps one of us is destined to break it. And here I am, in the perfect place at the perfect time.
Nera and Ash stop moving—stop breathing. They sit rigid in their chairs, stares burning a hole in my face. The intensity makes my skin crawl. Their lips remain shut tightly. Ash is pale, looking almost like his sister, another statue sitting in an ocean of books.
“You can’t talk about who put the curse on you, can you? That’s why you’ve been showing me clues. Perhaps if I figure out who did it, I can break it?” I study their shocked expressions and rejoice in this little win. “I take it I’m close to the truth?”
“Oh, she is good,” Nera croons in delight. “Let’s keep her.”
I frown at the white beast and her delicate features. “I’m not a pet for you to keep.”
She sobers and nods, her previous mocking expression gone, replaced by something more serious that makes her look much older. “You’re right. And we both know that. Isn’t that true, Ash?”
“What’s that you’re trying to accomplish, Nera? Perhaps you should go before I lose my temper and put you back to sleep.”
I blink, confused. Not sure if I should be offended, curious, or both. It’s probably best to not ask questions or get hung up on whatever silent conversation they’re having in front of me. Who cares if they don’t like me? The feeling’s mutual. This is nothing but a transitional place for me.
“Why do the lunargyres come to Penumbra? The city is far, at least a week away. I’m sure there are other towns near the castle that also house humans.”
Not that I want the beasts to torment and kill those humans like they have so many of us.
“The citizens of Penumbra have made it so. They stole from me, and the lunargyres can sense traces of fae magic in the city. A connection that perhaps feels like home and ties us to Penumbra. So they flock there and take humans to bring to me.”
I nod, opening the grimoire he handed me and feeling little fibers of magic cling to the palm of my hand. A soft, but somehow fiery, greeting. “They kill most of the people they take, though. Have they ever succeeded at delivering a human here?”
The siblings trade a sad look before Nera speaks. “They are mindless beasts by the time they get there. No human can survive a feral lunargyre.”
But they keep coming for more, and the bloodshed won’t end until the curse is broken. I don’t have a lot of time to help Penumbra, nor Nera, who is more beast than fae.
I page through the book and smile as its magic grips at my fingers. I’ve never seen this language before, but the parchment greets me. The aura hovering over the pages is light red.
“What do you see?” Ash asks, and the surrounding silence is almost absolute.
I drag my finger over the elegant swirls that make words I can’t discern. “Just letters...”
His sigh sounds distinctly relieved, and the wood of Nera’s chair groans under her weight as she leans over the table.
Well, this was uneventful. I move to close the grimoire, but its magic whispers. It asks me with a deeper voice if I want to know its secrets; it holds knowledge of passages inside the castle. Not this castle, but one across the continents, where the nights are long and large lizards breathe fire.
My eyes widen and I slam the grimoire closed, pushing it toward Ash while perspiration accumulates on my temples.
“What—what did you read?”
