Page 60 of The Rogue's Curse

Paris folded his arms and perched on a nearby chair. “It’s a bit of a story.”

Misha set the vial aside and continued to root through the boxes. One piece at a time, he laid out small metal appliances that looked like they would have been more at home in a chemistry lab than a witch’s workshop. “I’ve got time,” he said. “Do you mind if I keep sorting?”

“I’d prefer it to you staring at me in that way that makes me feel naked,” Paris said.

Misha raised his brows. “What way?”

“That way,” Paris insisted. He tried to imitate the gaze.

“You just look like you’re thinking about sex. Is that what my face looks like?” Misha teased.

Paris let out a weak laugh. “Go ahead and work.”

Misha dug through the boxes until he found a digital scale, which he laid out.

“Are you familiar with the Midnight War?” Paris asked.

“I wasn’t until I got assigned to come here, but I am now. The Auberon tangled with the Shieldsmen in Switzerland and Germany in the nineteenth century, yes?”

“That’s the quick version. We had tracked some of their leadership to a little Swiss village, and we cornered a dhampir hunter in charge. Tobias,” Paris said blankly. “We wanted their stronghold, and he didn’t want to tell us, naturally. So we hurt him until he did.”

“We…?” Misha asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

“Julian, Dominic, and I,” Paris said, lifting his eyes to Misha. “It was unfortunate. I wouldn’t say that I regret it, but I’m not proud of it, either. Tobias led the Shieldsmen, and they hurt and killed so many of our people just because we were vampires. Even after they attacked us unprovoked, we offered peace, and they spat in our faces. We eventually got a name out of Tobias, and Julian killed him to put him out of his misery. Unfortunately for us, Tobias was married to a witch named Armina Voss. A Night Weaver.”

Misha’s gaze snapped to him. “The same one Kristina mentioned.”

He hadn't spoken of the attack on Stillerwald since telling Shoshanna York all those months ago, back when he'd thought she was just a sweet human girl with dreams too big for her cauldron. Even then, he'd held back the full truth, not wanting to see the look of disapproval on her face or Alistair's when he told them how he had taken part in tormenting the truth out of Tobias Pfahler. That bloody night had been necessary but it was an ugly memory, the sort of thing they tucked away into shadow and silence where gentler souls like Shoshanna didn't have to see.

But Misha...he suspected Misha would better understand the blood on Paris’s hands. And if Misha turned away when he saw the ugliness, then perhaps that was for the best. Better to extinguish the flame now before he got too attached.

Paris nodded. “The same. We thought she’d cut ties or just fucked off to wherever horrible old hags go, but she’s still enmeshed with them, it seems.”

“And she cursed you?”

“Yes,” Paris said. A knot twisted in his belly. “It had been years since the war ended. Several of my brothers had been cursed by Armina’s apprentices, like Nikko and Sasha. And some of us had escaped unscathed. Dominic crossed Armina’s path, and she cursed him first. I remember thinking that I was glad it wasn’t me, because I didn’t want to suffer the way he did. But it was my turn soon enough. Life was simple back then. We’d dealt with the hunters, and those of us who weren’t cursed were free to simply enjoy our lives. I met a lovely vampire woman in Madrid, and we had a week of debauchery. And then she took me to a party, where I met her dear friend, Armina. I was trapped by her magic. The whole bloody building was a trap, and I knew that my dick had probably gotten me killed. Dominic had warned me for years that it would.”

Misha gaped at him, and Paris spared a smile. “It’s okay to laugh. It turns out that the pretty vampire I was cavorting with had been human not so long ago. She was at Stillerwald, the human wife to a Shieldsmen hunter. On our way into the village, I’d been hurt, so I bit her to recover some of my strength. But I let her live,” Paris said. He stared sadly at Misha. “Because she was a scared little woman who begged me to spare her because of her children. I couldn’t bear to kill her, even though she probably cooked dinner every night for a fucking vampire hunter.”

“And that’s why you’re sexist. You should have killed her,” Misha said.

Paris burst into laughter, breaking the tension. “That’s fair enough.” He rubbed his temples. “It might have been better if she killed me. Armina bound me with her magic, and not in a sexy way. She used a stake engraved with runes and put it here,” he said, pressing his fingers to the hollow of his throat. “I thought she might hurt me like Dominic, or take my memory like Sasha. But instead, she summoned…shadows, I suppose. The whole cage filled with them, so thick they were like smoke. And one by one, they were drawn into that stake, into here.”

It had felt like he was choking and drowning, though he hadn’t needed to breathe in over a century by then. They shoved at his ribs, swelled in his belly, wrapped around every bone and sinew and nerve until he thought he would go mad.

He lifted his eyes. “I had the first dream that afternoon, but I thought it was her demons chasing me. I woke up in a barn with a snarling abomination trying to eat my face. I ran from it, thought I had outsmarted her. But it happened again the next day and the next and every day after that. At least I was smart enough to notice a pattern, so I tried not to sleep, but I failed quite often. We tried rings of salt and holy water and candles and every bloody thing imaginable.” Paris threw up his hands. “Fast forward nearly two centuries, and here we are. I’m not sure I answered your question, but that’s what I know.”

Misha leaned over him and pressed his lips to his cheek. Then he returned to sniff the vial. “It’s much fainter in your blood. I should be able to ground it,” he said.

Paris raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t actually need to know all that, did you?” It surprised him to realize that he didn’t mind. Telling Misha his story was strangely cathartic.

“Who’s to say?” Misha said mildly. “So her curse was to punish you for killing her lover.”

Paris nodded. ‘That’s right. Some of the others just killed the wrong people. She had taught her apprentices how to create death curses. Sasha killed a witch that was helping turn pregnant women into vampires to produce more dhampir babies. She was assisting some of the men in…” He shook his head. “They did not want to have babies, and I’ll leave it at that. But it could have been anyone. If I’d cut her throat instead, I’d have lost my memory. But my curse…Dominic’s, and Julian’s too…they were all personal. Before I fell asleep with that stake in my throat, the witch told me that her husband’s last visions were of the three of us. She vowed that she would haunt my nightmares for the rest of time.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that’s been like,” Misha said.

His throat threatened to close. “Thank you.”

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