Her eyes shifted, morphing from icy blue to the warm aquamarine they’d been before. “Apology accepted,” she said.
She turned and started walking deeper into the trees again, her pace slower. When she looked back at him, Ronan found himself joining her.
“I meant what I said about the forest,” he stated. “It’s not safe here. Even in the daytime. You should head back to the castle.”
“If it’s so unsafe, why are you walking with me?” she asked.
“Because I don’t want you to be hurt.”
She sighed. “I promise I won’t go too much farther. I just needed…space.”
“From what?”
Dominique didn’t answer, her brow furrowed as she thought. She stopped abruptly. “Do you see that?” she asked.
Ronan shifted his weight, his head swiveling as he prepared for a possible attack. “What do you see?”
“Flowers,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen any that color before.”
The girl hurried ahead, Ronan jumping to keep up. But she didn’t walk much further, just twenty feet or so, and he decided not to complain. He would keep his guard up and his eye out.
“They’re so beautiful,” Dominique whispered, bending down next to one. “And look! The petals are iridescent!”
Ronan glanced down and saw that the flowers were the same pale blue that her eyes had been when she was angry before. And she was right. The petals were iridescent, shimmering in the muted light beneath the canopy of trees.
Just as she reached out to touch one, a voice rang out in the forest.
“Donottouch that!”
Ronan whirled to the left and saw Zephira standing among the trees. He felt Dominique straighten beside him, her body tense and still.
He started to take a step to the side, to stand in front of her, but Zephira flung out her hand. Her magic clutched them tightly and sent their feet skidding across the ground as they moved a distance away from the flowers.
Without thinking, Ronan retaliated, sending out his magic without strategy or clear thought. Dark tendrils of smoke and shadows unfurled as his power shot across the clearing. Histutor in the arts of combat with both weapons and magic would have been disgusted by the sloppy attack.
And because it was sloppy, the enchantress had no problem deflecting his power.
“You dare?” she hissed, lowering her chin as she stared at Ronan.
Her dark cloak seemed to billow around her, and suddenly, she seemed taller, broader. The dim light beneath the trees grew even darker, as though the sun was setting. Grey wings, tipped with black feathers, exploded behind her, spreading wide, and the whites of her eyes disappeared, turning black as pitch and glittering with blue light around the edges. The lights flickered like flames as though fire burned within the sorceress.
“For your insolence, I curse you both,” Zephira said, her voice becoming a thousand tiny whispers around them. “You will walk alone, never to love or marry until you are lucky enough to find your soul mate. But that soul mate will not recognize you in return. They will treat you only with distrust and anger. This curse will only be broken when your soulmate vows their love aloud and bestows their kiss upon you.”
The magic of her words twined around Ronan and Dominique, neither of them able to avoid it. It glowed like black fire, tinged in blue. A sharp pain bit into his left wrist and he cried out, hearing Dominique echo the sound beside him. He lifted his hand, looking down, and saw that a small black crescent moon was etched upon the inside of his left wrist.
At his side, he saw a movement and glanced over to see Dominique lifting her right hand. On the inside of her right wrist, she bore the same mark.
With another gesture of her hand and a crack of thunder, Ronan and Dominique were surrounded by Zephira’s magic. In a blink, they were back at the castle, in the garden where both Ronan and Dominique’s families were gathered.
As one, the adults turned toward them.
“What is the meaning of this?” Ronan’s father asked.
“Your son attacked me when I tried to save the girl from death by prism flower. As payment for his act, he and the girl are now cursed.”
There was stark silence around them before everyone began talking at once.
“Cursed? By whom?” the king roared.
