Page 20 of The Royal Curse

Everyone knew what dawn mages needed, because it was the most salacious detail in the Temple texts. All human magic had been gifted to us by Dromos, god of the night, as a way to gain more followers and increase his own power compared to Ennolu, ruler of the daytime sky. Ennolu had been less than pleased, and he took his revenge by cursing mages born at the times of transition between his power and Dromos’s. All mages were born at night, but those born just at dawn, as Dromos yielded, were doomed to yield themselves, and their magic, in order to survive. And those born at dusk could only control their magic through accepting the surrender of another.

When I’d been younger, I’d wished with all my heart that if I couldn’t have been born a normal mage or without any magic at all, I could at least have been a dusk mage. With maturity had come the realization that it might be even worse in some ways.

In the end, all of us were Ennolu’s cursed playthings.

And anyone literate, devout, interested in sex, or any combination knew all about it. The Temple published their doctrines widely. Besides, almost everyone was interested in sex.

“Yes,” Andreas said, still unblinking, still unmoving, still implacably focused on me. His voice dipped to a deep, rumbling register that spread through every part of me. “I’ve read everything the Temple’s published about it, and I’ve heard all the rumors.” Hopefully they weren’t rumors specifically about me. “I wasn’t sure if that—if you felt it like that, and I didn’t want to assume. Now I know. But that’s not all, is it? Tell me the rest.”

It was not all, and I couldn’t possibly look him in the eyes while I told him. I stared down at the table, tracing the grain of the wood with a finger. He had to know. His job, generally speaking, was to protect me from anyone else who might want to hurt me.

Tonight, and until the potion arrived, his job would be to protect me from myself.

Gods, the thought of Andreas seeing me like that, of what he’d have to do, made my flesh try to crawl off my bones and jump out the window. How much would he despise me?

“You don’t have to do this,” I blurted out, meeting his eyes at last. “This is going to be horrible. For both of us. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing to do with it. With me.” I sucked in a deep breath and dug my fingertips into the table to brace myself. There wasn’t any way to say this but bluntly. “It’s an irresistible compulsion, to try to have someone relieve the pain. If you stay, I’ll beg you to fuck me. When you refuse, then I’ll try to get out of the room and go find someone who will. You’ll need to restrain me. You’ll probably need to gag me, too, because I’ll be screaming the house down.”

Andreas frowned and pushed off the door, uncrossing his arms and advancing on me, a slow prowl that nearly had all of me trying to leap out the window. He stopped a foot away, head cocked, examining my face. The metallic glint in his eyes mesmerized me.

“Your Highness,” he said at last, after the sound of my own rough breaths had started to drive me mad, “there’s no power on this earth or above it that could make me abandon you. Do you understand?” He leaned down a little, and said, almost roughly, “I’m sworn to protect you and I fucking will. And—I promised the queen, but she’s not the one who matters right now. So I’m promising you. I’m yours. I’ll take care of you no matter what. You have my word.”

I gazed up into his eyes. The rest of the world, outside of Andreas, faded away. His breath warmed my face and his body’s nearness warmed mine all the way down.

I’m yours.There’s no power on this earth or above it that could make me abandon you. No one could doubt his sincerity. And no one had ever spoken to me like that. I could almost believe it had more to do with me, Nikola, a mage and a man, than with my title or my mother’s authority.

Besieged by that earnest promise, my defenses crumbled into dust.

“You’ll be so disgusted, Andreas,” I whispered. “You’ll hate me. And then I’d—”

“Never,” he said, without any hesitation, saving me from whatever folly might have tripped off my tongue next.

“But—”

“Never,” he repeated. “No, shut your mouth—with all respect, Your Highness. Enough. You can’t get rid of me. Now I’m going to go downstairs and send up a maid with a tea tray and another chair, if you don’t mind, and I’m going to clear as many guests out of this wing of the building as I can with persuasion, intimidation, and bribery. All right? And then I’ll be back. And I’ll take care of you.”

I opened my mouth, and Andreas added, “If you’re not about to say, ‘Yes, Andreas, I’ll drink my tea and calm down until you come back,’ don’t say anything at all.”

The hot tightness in my chest and my belly almost didn’t allow me to say anything at all, but I managed, “Yes, Andreas.”

He nodded. “Good. I’ll be back soon.”

When he’d left, I stood staring at the empty air where he’d been a moment ago. My mind seemed to have gone blank; it had so much to do that it’d stopped working entirely.

At last I shook my head and took out my watch. Four o’clock. By my best estimate, I had barely an hour until the potion wore off completely.

Too soon.

Chapter Eight

It’d occurred to me once or twice, in particularly morbid moods, to wonder how a condemned prisoner felt in those last few minutes before the axe fell: kneeling on the scaffold, each breath too fast and too slow all at once, the anticipation possibly worse than the event.

This couldn’t compare, of course. I knew, logically, that sitting across a tray of sandwiches and a pot of tea from Andreas and waiting for my body and mind to betray me couldn’t be as bad as anticipating a violent death.

But tell that to my galloping heart, my clammy palms, and my roiling nausea.

Fear or the beginning of my symptoms? I couldn’t tell, and that made me sicker still.

Andreas picked up another sandwich and took a giant bite, more than half of it disappearing into his mouth. Fuck. It wasn’t fair at all, but I wanted to shove it down his throat until he choked on it. Despite my own hunger, I couldn’t eat a single bite. I drank more tea instead, the cup clattering betrayingly against the saucer as I set it down again.

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