I ran to the wrecked section of the room and rifled through the papers and books. I searched desperately for anything to catch my eye. Anything about the curse. But it was all written in elvish. I was useless.
A loud scraping sound echoed through the chamber behind me, and I jumped, grabbing my saucepan for another go. A battered and bleeding form slumped onto the floor with a groan.
“Elden!” I cried as I ran to him.
He was no longer in beast form. His golden white hair hung from his scalp in braids, bloody in several patches. He coughed and reached out a hand to me. I grasped him and helped him over to the large red couch before the roaring fire.
“It ran off,” Elden said through strained lips as he laid in the couch with a hiss. “If I had known you were so fierce with that saucepan, I would have let you lead. As soon as it got a glimpse of you, it tried all it could to be free of me.”
I blinked. It hadn’t been frightened by me, a small human girl, no. But there had been something in its eyes when it’d seen me. I was certain of that.
Elden coughed again, and I worked to open his shirt. I needed to see his wounds.
“I-I’m fine,” Elden said through clenched teeth. “I just need a moment to allow my body to heal.”
Elves healed faster than humans, but how much faster? Elden looked to have damaged several ribs, and could add a few more claw marks and bites to his growing list of injuries. It would easily take a human several weeks to even start to recover from this. But beyond that, I saw through the tears in his tunic, the inky blackness of the poison spreading closer and closer to his heart.
“Drink this.” I offered a swig of Jel’s potion to Elden which he received with a gulp and a hiss.
“It is spreading,” Elden said. “I have felt it for weeks, but now I know that I will not last the night.”
“Yes, of course you will!” I ripped the hem of my tunic and pressed it into a wound beside his chest. “Don’t talk like that.” My chin trembled as I took in the slumped but beautiful form of the king. My heart burned within me as a tear streaked down my cheek. This was not how our story would end. It couldn’t. We were here in this enchanted palace. We’d made it past the mighty shade monster that guarded the castle. We would find a cure. We just needed time.
Elden coughed again as I pressed my tunic harder into his wound as if willing it to heal by sheer force. He’d always been so strong, almost fearless, as we’d made this journey. But now I saw the true panic in his eyes.
“Please, Noelle.” Elden placed his hand over mine. “Leave me now before it is too late.”
Elden’s words echoed through my mind over and over.Leave me. Leave me.I shook my head, my eyes burning with fresh tears.
“No,” I said with all the strength I could muster. With that strength, I spoke the words in my heart without fear, though I did whisper them. “I need you.”
“Need me?” Elden raised a white eyebrow, a ghost of that slight smile on his face. “So you have decidednotto greatly dislike me?”
I cleared my throat and smiled. “Of course not. I just need help getting home. I was too busy trying not to be thrown from that beast of a horse that I could not pay attention to directions half the time.”
Elden chuckled. “Are you sure you weren’t just taken with your extremely handsome company?”
I blinked in surprise, but smiled. He was teasing me. I could do that. I could tease him back. “Oh dear. It seems you are under theunexpectedeffects of too much potion.”
Elden grasped onto my hands and placed them over his heart, with all hints of teasing gone from his gaze as he looked at me. Straight into my eyes. His words almost pleading like a prayer. “I was cruel to you when we first met, Little Baker. Cold. Because I knew that if I let you, you would claim my heart.”
Elden’s molten gold eyes met mine, and he held my hands fast. “You have warmed my heart little by little every day until I no longer know myself. I no longer see myself alone, but with you”—he swallowed— “forever.”
Heat filled my cheeks and my insides melted as easily as an icicle in hot tea. The fire blazed beside us in a steady column of flames. The Christmas mural wrapped around us in a peaceful embrace. I stared into the golden eyes of the king, my heart quickening.
All words fled my mind, but I smiled and nodded, “then I will make sure you live long enough to hold true to that promise.”
He loved me. Truly loved me. The Elf King. The fierce male who trusted in my magic, who taught me all he could, who kept me warm through the cold winter’s night. He loved me. My heart pounded in my chest, and I knew beyond any doubt that I loved him, too. The power of that love threatened to undo everything I’d ever known.
I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do, so I busied myself with helping the king stay alive. I peeled back his bloody shirt and pressed at the wounds, which were already sealing shut with whatever superior healing the potion and elves possessed. But the black poison running through his veins, spidering out from his wounds, both new and old, covered his entire back. The black lines twisted a geometrical line across his chest.
He didn’t have days, but mere hours before the blackness reached its destination.
The heart of the king.
“I will become a shade monster like my father and grandfather before me. You must go now. Get clear of this place before I forget your lovely face and hunt you down,” Elden said through clenched teeth. “I brought you here to find a cure, but I think now it was to find a place far away that I could roam with a lesser chance of hurting my own people. Leave me. Go.”
“I will not leave you, Elden,” I said firmly. “We came here to find a cure, and I will have it.”
