“Or I could kill you.” I lift my lips into an insincere smile.
“Ah, ah, ah.” She wags her at me. “You know the rules. If you kill me, your curse becomes permanent, and your precious little flower will never remember you, nor will you ever be able to win her love back. Not that you’re doing a great job anyway.” Dianthus crosses one of her slender legs over the other and leans back on her palms. The pose causes her breasts to press against the tight fabrics of her dress, pushing them out on display. I wrinkle my nose, wanting to show her exactly how disgusted I am by her.
“I know the parameters of the curse. A man can dream, though can’t he?”
“So you dream about me? Cute.” Drinking in my frustration for a moment longer, Dianthus suddenly hops to her feet. “Well, I have to go. Plenty of business to attend to. This was a fun chat, though.” She winks at me. “Oh, but before I forget. I got you a little something.”
She snaps her fingers, and a small pocket watch materializes in her hand.
“Keep it,” I say stiffly.
“No, I insist.” She tosses the item at me, and on instinct, my hand jumps up and my fingers wrap around it before it smashes into my face.
The metal is cool in my palm. Opening my hand, I see there are flowers engraved into the gold case that encases the dial inside. I click the button on top to open it, and find that it isn’t a regular watch. There isn’t a clock face that showcases the time. Instead, there is only one number in the center of the white circle. The number one.
“It’s a countdown for how many attempts you have left to free yourself from this little curse.” She scrunches her nose at me before lifting her hands and getting ready to snap herself away.
“You know it’s funny,” I say before she can slip away.
“What is?”
“You have all that magic and you still can’t do anything about that.” I gesture to her head.
“About what?” she asks, trying to act unbothered, but unable to stop her fingers from running through her smooth hair as if trying to tame something she can’t see.
“All your grey hairs.”
Her hand shoots to her scalp, and I watch as her chipper facade falters, momentarily allowing her features to slip so I can see the beast that lurks behind her mask of beauty. Blowing an aggravated puff of air through her flared nostrils, she vanishes from my study, leaving a howling wind in her wake that whips all the papers clean off my desk.
I chuckle under my breath. There is a small sense of victory in knowing that I got to her. Witches are notoriously vain since the strength of their magic is directly linked to their appearance. One of the key signs of their magic weakening is their beauty fading, which is why I find it incredibly interesting that I can see how her youthful appearance is slowly withering away.
She’s growing weaker. That’s the only explanation for how so much of this curse is being altered. I need to figure out how I can use this knowledge to my advantage.
One thing that I know for certain is that if Azalea is the rose, as the old crone so often liked to compare her to, that makes me the thorns. And I will do anything I have to in order to protect her.
36
Braxton
“Shedidn’trealizethatyou’ve noticed changes in the curse?” Gravesley sits beside me as I eat my breakfast.
“If she noticed, she didn’t bring it up.” I run my palm along my jaw, the pinpricks of stubble reminding me that I should shave before I see Azalea today. “It could be a trap.” I point out, knowing that Dianthus has tricked me before.
At one point, she went as far as to make me believe the curse was broken, so when I went to Azalea believing she knew and remembered everything it caused the very unbroken curse to reset, costing me one of my dwindling chances to win Azalea back.
I blow a frustrated breath through my teeth. I can feel an ache beginning along my neck and traveling up into my skull, switching off between pulsing and pounding.
“Have you considered telling her you’re cursed.”
I nearly spit out the potatoes in my mouth, and in an attempt to keep them from flying across my bedroom floor choke them down instead.
“Was that a serious suggestion?” I grunt, reaching for a glass of water and taking a hefty swig. Before Gravesley can respond, I continue, “Of course I haven’t. It could cause her memories to start leaking back in.”
“Not necessarily—”
Gravesley opens his mouth to say more, but I cut him off with a wave of my hand. “I only have one more chance to get her to fall in love with me. I’m not wasting it on a hunch.” My tone leaves no room for negotiation as I force another forkful of food into my mouth.
I haven’t been tasting any of the breakfast the chef had crafted for me this morning. Everything tastes as bland as a stale cracker, but it beats the sour taste that has been stuck in my mouth since my visit with Dianthus yesterday.
