Page 148 of A Curse of Hope and Shadows: Part I
Dimitri froze, words turning to dust. His heart thumped in his ears. He tried to arrange his thoughts in some coherent manner, but they refused to be ordered.
“Ah.” The Duke smiled. “That got your attention.”
Dimitri forced himself to speak. “The last time you tried to break my curse, it didn’t exactly go well for me.”
“That’s because I went to the wrong person,” he said. “This time… I have found us an enchantress.”
Dimitri’s heart pounded even harder, but he pushed his features into a mask of indifference. “And what, pray tell, does she want for her extreme act of generosity?”
His father smiled. It was not a kind one. “Nothing she hasn’t already taken from our guests.”
Coldness flooded Dimitri’s veins. The final, mysterious guest. What had she taken from them? He knew little of magic, but he was certain it could not be good.
“Don’t worry your sensitive soul.” The Duke waved a hand. “She promised no harm would come to them.”
Dimitri doubted that. There would be a cost. There was always a cost. Had his father not learnedanything? Bad things happened when mortals messed with magic.
And yet…
The cost, whatever it was, had already been paid. And there was someone here who could take away his curse. No more transformations, no more pain, no more stiff limbs and splitting headaches.
No more living in the dark.
Adeline would tell him not to risk it. She’d tell him there were worse things.
But she didn’t have to live with the pain, the stares, the taunts.
And she was going to leave him. It was only a matter of time.
What was the worst that could happen? Nothing could be worse than the future mapped out ahead of him. A future of shadows and darkness, of loneliness, a future where Adeline never looked him in the eye. However could he have been so foolish to imagine they could be together?
Hope is a curse, and I am done with it.
“All right, Father,” he said. “What would I have to do?”
Even though the rest of the guests had gone and the Duke’s presence had shrunk to an easily-contained size, Adeline could not bring herself to talk to Dimitri again. One way or another, he would want an answer, and she wasn’t ready to give it.
It was like watching a person die, watch everything that they were trickling away from them. A palpable grief surrounded her, like a fog. She could not see through it.
“No one would think poorly of you if you decided to leave,” said Posey one evening, watching Adeline sit in silence beside the fire, pretending to sew.
“Iwould think less of me,” she replied.I just don’t want to leave him alone. I don’t want tobealone.
But another, darker voice told her that perhaps she was built for shadows too, that it was her job to make others happy while never quite feeling it for herself.
She turned back to her sewing.Whatever you have to do, you can do it. You have survived worse.
Heartbreak was a strange monster, though, its grief like nothing else she knew.
Saturday night, she found herself in the library, stacking books in the gathering gloom. It was hard to read the pages in the low light, but the task occupied her as well as any. It was her day off tomorrow and Minty had given her permission to return home for the night, but she didn’t want to go, not just yet. She would only be trading one distraction for another. She’d go just before Edie’s bedtime. Have a nice cuddle, just the two of them, maybe let her fall asleep in her arms like she used to when she was a baby.
Maybe leaving this place wouldn’t be too awful. She’d have her family back, more time to spend with her little sister. She’d long forgotten how exhausting it was.
But then, one day, Edie would not want to spend so much time with her.
One day, she would grow and leave.
All of them would.
