Page 96 of The Bones of the Cursed

Silence greets me, and I find both of them staring at me like I just sprouted a third eyeball.

“Come again?” Kailu rumbles.

“The God of Magic and the Land is her father. Alanis is part Witch and part Fae God.”

“Holy mother of the Gods. Her powers…” Kailu lets his sentence hang unfinished in the air.

I only hum and look back down at my drink. “If trained, she could become the most powerful person this world has seen since the Gods themselves. Viros all but confirmed it.”

Kailu lets out a bark of laughter, clapping his hands in glee. “That’s amazing news. I know she was worried this prophecy was tied to her, but with that type of power, she could easily break it without all that nonsense!”

His giddiness is short-lived when he notices my somber expression.

“Viros told us it is the only way,” I say. “If Iclas manages to get his hands on her and unlock his curse, the world will fall intoturmoil.”

The king stands before me, forcing me to meet his stare. “So the only way to end this conflict is for your mate to die?”

I nod. The emotions I have held at bay begin to seep through the cracks in the facade I carefully built. The second my father’s hand lands on my shoulder, the mask crumbles. Kailu falls to his knees, his pain palpable in the room around us.

“I…I just found her, and now I’m going to lose her,” My voice cracks, and if I was a lesser male I might feel self-conscious for crying. Good thing my parents taught me it was all right to show emotion.

“Malakai, we will find a way.” My father’s voice was always soothing to me, but I know he is just trying to placate me.

“Don’t you understand? There is no other way!” I scream, throwing my glass.

I feel the disturbance in the air before I see her. Her presence alters the space around me, almost as if cocooning me in her own personal bubble. Her smell has quickly become one of my favorite scents. Kailu glances up, tears falling down his face.

My father stands there for a second longer and then gives Alanis a small smile over my shoulder.

“There is always another way,” he whispers before he exits the room.

The tears still track down my face. I’m unable to stop them. When she kneels by Kailu, she holds her hand out to me. My knees hit the floor with a solidthud. And when she swipes tears from my cheeks, I have to squeeze my eyes shut.

My mate was sent to me, only to die.

“Tell me something about you. Your mother already told me you were a wild child, but tell me a story that nobody knows.”

She’s trying to distract me, to pull my mind from the place of panic and heartbreak it’s currently stuck in. But for once I’m happy to take the distraction.

“I bought the white house on main street during a time when I was not proud of who I was. I was known as a killer. Ruthless. Nobody could ever hold my attention for long. My mother became so worried for me that I decided to invite her to dinner at my new place, her and my father. Except I forgot. They showed up and I was in the Alpine Forest hunting.”

I give her a crooked smile, loving her sassy, raised eyebrow.

“What were you hunting?”

Kailu snorts. “I dared him to catch a Qilik.”

Her eyes grow wide. “Like the extremely large beast that smells like rotting flesh?”

I nod. “I sat in those freezing, snowy woods for a week before I spotted one. It was at least ten feet tall, its body skeletal. It had a wolflike head with yellow fangs. Antlers protruded from its skull in sharp points. Its claws could easily decapitate a human, but it was its sheer strength that shocked me. The thing was practically all bone, but where it had fur, you could see its muscles bulging. I watched it rip a tree from the frozen ground, even the roots. The things are demonic. Not many of them exist, and for good reason.”

“Did you catch it?”

I smile at her as she presses a soft kiss to Kailu’s hand.

“He didn’t,” Kai says at the same time I answer, “I did.”

Kailu raises an eyebrow at me.

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