Page 133 of Her Dark Promise

“I wasn’t implying anything of the sort. You are anything but fragile, your grace.” Suddenly he was sounding too much like her…too smart for his own good. I looked around, and their faces changed. They weren’t my men anymore, but my mother, father, and Belle. My family stared me down, wondering how I could have betrayed them.

“Stop acting like you care for me—like you know me!” I screamed.

“Then tell us,” Soren begged.

“I can’t trust any of you. I can’t trust anyone.”

“Did you trust her?” Soren pointed to the book. “Is that why you think you can’t trust anyone? Because she made you believe in her, in whatever promises she made, and then she—”

He was getting too close. “Stop.”

“What did she do? Does she have something to do with the curse? Who is she to you?”

Too many questions. My head was starting to throb, the room spinning. “You will stop this research right now.”

He walked around the table until he was standing over me. “I have spent every moment that I could in the chapel reading through all of the books and documents at my disposal. I haven’t gotten through them all yet, and I haven’t found much of anything that could be of use, but some things might make more sense if I knew everything that happened.”

Tell him everything? I had never shared what happened all those years ago with anyone, and I wasn’t about to start.

“Your grace, I beg you to tell us what happened. Maybe there are clues in those memories that can help us break the curse,” Soren pleaded, his eyes urging me to not shut him down again.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, he was right. There could be something within those memories that could help. And I wanted out. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted my torment to come to an end.

“I don’t know what I could tell you that could possibly help. I’ve been through it all a thousand times. Don’t you think I would have found something? Or do you think your intellect is superior to mine?”

“Well…” he reasoned, and Bast coughed. Soren took the hint and instead said, “I have found that a fresh pair of eyes and ears can make a tremendous difference. Just humor me.”

I rested my head in my hand and leaned against the side of the chair. I was calming down, my heart returning to a steady pace.

“It is a rather boring story.” Maybe it was time to tell them, get it all out in the open. “Once upon a time, there lived a princess who was loved by all who met her. She was the perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect princess. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Though, what they didn’t know was that she held a dark secret. A secret that would get her killed if anyone were to find out.”

I looked around, and everyone was leaning in, waiting to hear more. “She was born with magic. It didn’t begin to manifest until she was at the young age of seven. She was scared and didn’t understand what was happening to her. She was aware that magic once flourished, but was hunted to near extinction over the last few hundred years. She was also taught that having magic flow through your veins meant you were evil. Tainted. So, even though she was young, she knew that she needed to keep it a secret.”

Soren’s eyes brightened. “The purges,” he said to Bast. “The one's mother talked about it. Kings all over the realm banded together to purge their kingdoms of magic. Thousands died. Your father, he was one of those kings.”

I continued on, “The princess had successfully kept her powers a secret until she hit puberty, and that, coupled with her hormones, was almost too much to bear. She had many governesses come in and out of her life, and she made their lives miserable because she thought that she would be found out. That was until she met Circe. Circe changed everything.”

I reached forward and grabbed Bastian’s cup, brought it to my lips, and drank the entire thing. I lifted the cup toward him, andhe refilled it. His features softened, obviously relieved that I was finally drinking something.

“Circe became her lifeline in a world where she felt like she was drowning. She was the only one who understood her because she, too, was born with magic.” I gripped the cup hard. “They spent years together. She taught the princess how to control her magic and fight, and…” I looked up at Soren, “as you have read, ostracized the princess from everyone she loved. She took the position to kill the king, but when Circe found that the princess was like her, her plans changed. Circe wished to make the girl a queen who would save her people.”

I took a breath, changing the narrative. “My people. What I didn’t know was that it would be at the expense of their killers—my father, my family.”

Soren sank down into his seat, the story weighing on him.

“I wanted it for a moment,” I told them, my vision grew cloudy. “After seeing all the people…the women and children he murdered, I wanted him dead. Circe told me he’d burn me with all the others if he knew, and to this day, I still think there might have been truth to that.”

I felt a hand being placed on mine. Callum. My rock. He nodded, showing me that he was here, they all were. That I could take all the time in the world if I needed it.

I held his stare. “But I always suspected she had a hand in killing my sister, and now she was going to kill my father, so I told my mother. I told her of Circe’s plan, knowing it was going to be a death sentence.”

I pulled my hand from Callum’s and wiped away the tears that had collected, but had yet to escape.

How did it feel betraying me, Callie? Did it feel good to finally enact your revenge?

I yelled, “You got exactly what you deserved.”

As did you!

---