Page 36 of Cursed Evermore
Chapter 7
Elariya
“Bound to One, Called by Another”
My fingertips skimmed over the worn black leather of my father's high-backed chair as I drifted around it like a ghost.
Tucked behind the mahogany desk, surrounded by his meticulously stacked files and books, the chair waited, still and expectant, as if it believed my father would walk through the door at any moment.
Everything in this study felt that way. As if, like me, they’d been suspended in time. Frozen.Waiting. Destined to remain that way until my father returned. But now, the truth had settled in like dust. Father wasn’t coming home.
I often came in here when I wanted to feel closer to him. This was his sanctuary, a place where thoughts became action and the world outside fell quiet.
The scent of him, and the vibrant presence he once carried, had clung to the air like memory.
From the half-finished maps rolled carefully at the edges of his desk to the collection of rare quills he'd gathered on histravels across realms, everything in this room was an extension of him. Sometimes I could pretend he was still here.
Tonight, I felt no such thing. That comfort was gone. The room held the hollow, breathless silence of a home where someone had died. No more hope. No more warmth. No more life.
My desolation wasn’t just because my family had given up on searching for my father. Or because Thayden had asked to see me in here before we presented ourselves to our guests.
I’d simply reached that stage of hopeless acceptance, and the emptiness in my heart had expanded like hoarfrost on the oaks in the heart of a bitter winter.
My father wasn’t coming home. And I would never be normal again.
The curse had dug its claws in, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
All I had left was forwards, wherever that would lead.
I moved to the tall window and rested my hand against the frame. Against the dark mahogany wood, my fingers looked as pale as the moonlight spilling through the glass.
Thayden would be here in mere minutes. I still didn’t know what in the hells we were even supposed to talk about.
There was no shortage of things to discuss. I just didn’t want to say any of them. I didn’t want to speak to him at all.
This was definitely not the best way to start a marriage.
He’d arrived two hours ago while I was still getting dressed. Emabelle told me a crowd of women had gathered along the roadside to see him. They’d cheered as he rode by, tossing flowers at his horse’s feet.
How ridiculous.
I wished I could tell him he was welcome to them. Then again, how foolish of me, what made me think he hadn’t already had his fill? My only other memory of him was walking in on himgetting his cock sucked by a servant girl the last time we visited Zyvaris.
Those women wouldn’t have lined up if they didn’t think he might notice them.
And it didn’t take two hours to unload a carriage and unbridle a horse. His men would’ve handled that in half the time.
This was the prelude to how life would be from now on—me, stuck at home wondering where he was, or whose bed he was sleeping in, while he lived his life.
How fun.
Foolishly, I let my mind drift back to the Fae male I’d conjured up in my head.
He’d been perfect,magical, andattractive as sin.
Of course, he hadn’t been real.
My brain probably conjured him because Emabelle had reminded me that my days of freedom were numbered.
