Page 48 of The Curse of Ophelia

I had been about to give in to Jez’s persuasion when the pain in my wrist flared, the countdown on my life ticking toward zero. No, we had to keep moving.

Besides, my friends were right—I would be too noticeable in the town. The citizens of Turren were a mix of Mystique Warriors and the humans we harbored in our lands, like Rina’s family. I had an inclination that fact alone was enough to make her want to explore the village below. She had but a few hours, though.

I huffed, dropping down in the tall grass and pulling a stretch of rope from my pack to distract me. My fingers traveled along the length of coarse material, tying it and untying it in intricate knots as my father taught me.

Normally, I would have turned to swords to expel this frustrated tension knotting itself behind my ribs, but I didn’t feel up to the fight with how empty my stomach had grown and how weak my Cursed arm was. Not to mention the lack of sleep I’d had. The hallucinations kept plaguing my nightmares, waking me during the few hours each night that I’d drifted off on hard forest floors, forgetting the threats awaiting us for a moment.

The Curse was certainly not making my final days any easier. I worked the rope, hoping the repetitive motion of the configurations would spell me into a calm focus.

Tolek scooted across the ground to join me, watching my fingers as I tangled and untangled the same piece of rope.

“I’m surprised you agreed,” he said.

I smacked his arm. “Shut up, Vincienzo.” But it drew a laugh from me as he’d intended.

He wasn’t wrong, though. Allowing Santorina and Cypherion to go without me went against every instinct in my body. But I was dying, and those instincts—that desperate need to protect everyone—would go with me. Letting them do this on their own was proving to myself that they’d be okay when I went. Still, I hated it.

“How’s your leg feeling?” I asked him, without looking away from my new task—looping the rope around itself, recreating one of the stronger knots I knew.

“It’s fine,” he said. I narrowed my eyes. I did not believe an injury that deep was fine.

He laughed at my expression, the sound unknotting a bit of the tension within me. “I swear it, Ophelia. It hurts but it’s not unbearable. I am fine.”

My fingers continued to tie and untie as his words sank in. The image of him hitting the ground, Victious’s blade embedded in his leg, flashed through my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut against it. Fear coursed through me. I took a deep breath over the pain and let the rough material of the rope slide through my palms.

“You’ll have a horrible scar,” I whispered. The realization hurt me. “Good luck explaining that to your parents when we return.”

Tolek’s chuckle mixed with the breeze, but the sound was much more pleasant than his tone as he said, “They won’t care.”

“Of course, they will,” I responded without looking up.

“No.” He shook his head. “My family doesn’t care what happens to me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I dismissed.

“It’s true. The Vincienzos care about wealth and power more than anything. I’m not the heir.” As firstborn, his sister would be his parents’ heir. The one whose success weighed most heavily for their family’s trajectory.

“That means nothing,” I said, looking from him to where my sister organized our remaining supplies, much quieter than she usually was. Plenty of families had more than one child to carry on their name.

“To them it does. I’m only the reckless secondborn whose birth almost killed his mother.” He swallowed, but no emotion seeped into his voice. “They see me as the one always stirring up trouble or hiding away in a book, never doing anything productive toward their reputation. Truly, they probably have not even noticed my absence. I’m sure it’s more peaceful without me.”

My hands froze. An undercurrent of pain slipped into his words at the end, and that twisted a knife into my heart. How had I known Tolek for my entire life and never known the way his family viewed him? I’d grown to depend on him so thoroughly these past two years as he helped me fight my darkness, yet I had no idea of his own ghosts.

The thought of his parents treating him in such a way heated my blood, but I knew him well enough to know he did not want pity. Instead, I tied another knot and asked, “What about your younger siblings? Do your parents treat them as they do you?”

“Those three?” He scoffed at the mention of the triplets born twelve years after us. I supposed it made sense why his parents had waited to have more children. “They are viewed as gifts after their blissfully easy births. No, it is only I given the honor of being the family disappointment, but I suppose someone has to set the bar low so others may surpass it.”

I looked at him, taking in the slight downturn of his lips and the way he would not meet my eyes, and reached for his hand. “Please don’t think of yourself that way. I don’t care what your parents say—it’s not true.” Knowing they had planted this idea in his head, their names were quickly added to my list of those I sought revenge against.

“It’s okay, Ophelia,” Tolek whispered. “I’m used to being the least favored.”

I was about to argue when Jezebel sat down next to me. Tolek dropped my hand, and I understood it as his signal that the conversation was over. I went back to my knots. “None of this is okay.” One more swoop of the ends of rope around each other.

“No, nothing has been right for a long time. But it is, and it will be, okay,” Tolek said.

“You know you don’t always need to protect us,” Jezebel added.

There it was—the guilt for their suffering, threatening to overwhelm me despite their words.

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