Page 7 of The Prince's Curse

He took the glass but didn’t drink. “And if it fails?”

“If it fails, we are not any worse off than we are now,” Paris said, accepting another glass from Alistair. He swirled it thoughtfully before taking a sip.

“We?”

“Yes, we,” Paris said. “We, as in the ones who love you and do not want to see you suffer. None of us have been freed from the curses of our own cleverness or stubbornness.”

Just leave me alone, he thought, and for a moment, he wondered if Paris might have developed some degree of psychic power. His head cocked as if he’d heard the words.

Julian raised the glass and took a long sip, gathering his thoughts for a while before he spoke. “All right,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to her.”

The triumphant look between Alistair and Paris warmed his heart despite everything, and he finished off the glass before answering Shoshanna’s call to come upstairs. At the landing was a framed picture of Alistair and Shoshanna; not a stiff oil portrait, but a candid black and white photo of them staring at each other like the rest of the world had fallen away. The sight of it stopped him dead in his tracks.

Everything was different because of her. The gloomy weight that had once filled the entire mansion was gone. It felt as if flickering candles burned in every corner, casting a hazy glow that made it feel safe.

Like home.

As he walked down the upstairs hall, he caught the familiar scent of Misha Volkov. Not only was he Paris’s mate, but he was a powerful blood witch who served the Sanguine Crown. They had let him relocate here to Atlanta, traveling overseas as needed to carry out Crown business.

Tonight, he was here with Shoshanna, sitting on the polished wooden floor and holding out little trays of ground herbs. She wore a loose linen tunic stained with streaks of earthy red and green. The witch beckoned him in and said, “Please, sit. Did you eat already? Allie was warming something for you.”

“I did,” he said hesitantly, letting her take his hand before he sat on a soft blue cushion. Dimly, he thought, My pants will wrinkle, as if that was some real concern in the grand scheme of the curse looming over him.

“Sorry for the trickery,” she said. “Paris thought you wouldn’t want to come.”

“I wouldn’t,” he admitted.

Her smile faltered, but she nodded. “Misha, the door.”

Julian chuckled as the other vampire closed the door. “With our hearing, nothing’s a secret here. Even if your partners weren’t both a couple of gossipy hens.”

Misha just smirked and glanced at Shoshanna, clearly waiting for her to take the lead.

Shoshanna tucked a stray curl behind her ear and met his gaze. “I know her birthday is coming, and I want to help,” she said.

“How will you help? I’m not cursed,” he said. “Not literally, at least.”

“I can see that. I’ve watched you closely every time we’ve spent time together. But you’re also still bonded to her. I can see that, too,” she said gently.

“She’s my soulmate,” he said quietly. Unlike the others, there was no mystery, no wondering who might be bearing the other half of his aching heart.

The young witch held out her hands to him. Loose sleeves revealed the fine markings swirling over the backs of her hands and arms like black lace gloves. Without speaking, he put his hands in hers, and she squeezed them together. Warmth surged from his palms, up his arms, and into his chest. Then, with a firm shove, something shoved him backward out of his body.

In a split second, he was walking through a busy crowd dancing beneath the stars. The clothing, the smells… He was back in Europe, when he was a younger man who had not yet had all the hope scraped out of him. And there ahead of him was a flash of red hair spinning and bobbing through the bustle.

“Brigitte?” he murmured.

At his word, thunder rolled across the heavens, and the crowd parted. She turned, green eyes glinting up at him as she smiled. That smile was like she was seeing an old friend. It said, You’re finally here. I missed you, even when they did not know each other’s names.

She held out her hand and said, “Dance with me.”

Chest tightening, he darted forward and took her hand. His vision faltered, and instead of Brigitte, he saw a red cord, a thousand ribbons and threads braided together in a gleaming cord that trailed off into the distance. A shock rolled down his spine, and he startled himself awake.

Warmth streaked his cheeks as he opened his eyes to see Shoshanna smiling at him. Instinctively, he closed his eyes, trying to catch one last glimpse of her, trying to find her scent on the wind. But there was only black, tinged with the afterimage of two concerned witches.

Finally, he opened his eyes to see the human woman. Pleasant as her scent was, it masked that ghost of Brigitte. “Alistair told me that when you first knew Brigitte and then lost her, you didn’t know the word soulmate. The same with Kova,” she said.

He could only nod. His words were caught behind a lump of ice in his throat, and he wasn’t sure if he would be more embarrassed to weep in front of the plucky human witch or the powerful Sanguine Crown witch.

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