Every day, I rose and reviewed my training on curses. Every day, I met with Master Aynia.
Every day, there was no change in my husband, who’d almost drowned in the bay after my sleeping curse overtook him. Even now, the splinter of wood from the pier was lodged in his finger, refusing all attempts by the healers to remove it.
Every day, I wondered how this could’ve happened. I was supposed to be a master of curses. They were my specialty. I was the caster. So why couldn’t I remove this sleeping spell from Jax? And what did it have to do with the ring still stuck on my finger? I had gone from being afraid to try removing it to testing it every hour. Even now, it would not slide over the joint.
After a week without progress, Master Aynia fetched me and brought me to the restricted section of the Library. There, wesettled into one of the enchanted reading rooms, designed to protect the readers from any harm contained on the pages.
We read about death magic, the very stuff the Bride had used to curse Jax and his crew. And so it was I learned of my mistake.
My sleeping curse had been warped by the more powerful magic already placed on Jax.Thatwas the backlash I had felt after casting it. A piece of the Bride’s curse still lived in him thanks to me, bound up in the curse I’d angrily cast on him the morning after we’d wed.
Our studies took another week—long enough for unexpected visitors to arrive at Dewspell’s gates.
My vision was blurry from hours of reading when a paper messenger bird summoned me from within the Library. Master Aynia had to read it for me as I fought to re-focus my eyes.
“Your parents are here,” she said, sounding as surprised as I instantly felt.
“That’s impossible.” I cleared my throat, then said it with more conviction, as if that would change anything. “That’s impossible!”
Master Aynia shrugged. “We do the impossible here every day. Why shouldn’t your parents have sailed from Aegle? And it looks as though they’ve brought friends.”
“But how? The naval blockade is still keeping any ships from entering. Did they slip by somehow?” They were good enough sailors to do it. But something told me the navy of Endergeist wouldn’t have been that easy to get by—something like the three dozen mages that were estimated to be on board.
The last ship that tried to sail by them was at the bottom of the bay, the merchants now captives of King Venet of Endergeist.
“I’ll keep reading,” Master Aynia promised. “You need a break anyway.”
She wasn’t wrong. Still, I couldn’t stand the thought of not doingsomethingto clear up my mess. And since all attempts atnegotiating with King Venet had failed, and Jax still lay in the healing ward next to a slowly mending Oasis and Omar, his body as still as in death…
I couldn’t picture a worse time for my parents to finally show themselves here. Not once had they both come to Dewspell. Not even when I graduated!
As the note promised, they were waiting for me in the visitors’ lounge, along with a score of anxious merchants whose ships were trapped in the bay.
When I walked in, I found my parents a little grayer than the last time I saw them, and as industrious as ever.
“Of course we can get you out,” my father said, shrugging out of a fur lined vest that was unsuited to the season this far south. “The same way we got in.”
“But how?” the merchant pressed.
My mother gave him a forbidding look, her shoulders flexing in a way that drew attention to the axe on her back.
The merchant backpeddled so quickly, I’m surprised he didn’t fall off his chair. “Ah, yes. Proprietary knowledge.”
“Do you want to hire us or not?” my father demanded, before my mother nudged him. His face lit up, no longer forbidding as he noticed me. He switched into our northern tongue at once. “Sofie, my girl! How good it is to see you!”
Vester Ul’Garen was the only person I’d ever met who was taller than Jax. The moment he stood, he seemed to fill up the room—what space my mother didn’t occupy by sheer personality, that is. Her personality, of course, was terrifying.
My father scooped me up in a huge hug, while my mother remained at a distance.
“You don’t visit enough,” my father whispered.
“I think mum prefers it that way,” I whispered back.
I chanced a glance at her, the child inside of me still worried she’d heard.
My father raised his voice to booming. “Nonsense,” he said, to my horror. “Your mother is very proud of you, even if she can’t quite get over that you’re not a shield-maiden.”
I offered her a weak smile. “You’ll be pleased then, mother. At least I’m a captain’s wife now.”
