I smiled lightly. “I don’t know about that.”
“I do.” His hand played with the bottom of my shirt, fingers grazing my skin as he spoke. “Look at you. Refusing to accept the way we’ve known Alchemy to work for centuries just to find a way to keep me from my fate. Your determination inspires me, Rose. Ithumblesme. To think that you believe I’m worth all of this…” He let out a soft breath that washed over my cheeks and made my heart constrict.
“Zareleon Aris,” I said firmly, setting the book down and turning to face him. “You’re wrong. This is not your fate. We make ourownfate. There are no laws of magic I won’t push, no boundaries I won’t cross to prove it. I think there’s a reason Gayl has wanted you to stay hidden. I don’t understand why he’s known the truth this whole time and has let you live. I was so blinded by my connection to him and the world he showed me that I believed his motives were altruistic, but now…” I exhaled loudly, my forehead scrunching as I tried to put my jumbled thoughts to words.
It had been nagging at the back of my mind, but my yearning to prove myself worthy of my father’s past had made me ignore the warnings. Made me far too trusting of the emperor’s words.
“I think there’s more we don’t know,” I finished. “More he’s hiding from us. And protecting you, not allowingGayl to keep ruling this empire with his secrets…that’swortheverything.” I put both hands on the sides of Leo’s face. “You’reworth everything.”
His gaze burned into me, swallowing me. Slowly, he lowered his forehead to mine, his shoulders releasing tension as we stood there.
“Thank you,” he finally murmured.
My lips quirked up. “You don’t have to thank me,” I said, repeating the sentiment he’d shared with me multiple times now. “That’s what friends do.”
He laughed and took a breath. “So these ideas of yours. Where do we start?”
“Well, are you up for some light reading?”
“The night is young. Put me to work, little wolf.”
We grabbed my packs of charms and climbed onto the bed with the Grimoire resting between us. “Back to the basics,” I started. “Curses. What do we know about them?” I thought about my first conversation with Lark and how she’d interrogated me over this. Maybe she’d been on the right path after all.
“They’re spells that cause harm,” Leo said. “Or are accidental consequences of powerful magic. Either way, the results are damaging.”
“What are some you can think of?” I asked, flipping through the pages.
“The sleeping curse, of course. There are many others that inflict physical pain. Blindness, skin afflictions like boils, breaking bones, suffocating.”
I eyed him. “You seemed to think of those pretty quickly.”
“I have to use what’s at my disposal when stopping attacks in the capital,” he said, his lips set in a grim line.
I contemplated the examples he gave. “Some of them are temporary and will go away after a while, but some of them have to be stopped by the person who cast it,” I mused. “Such as when I cast the spell to steal the breath from Callum’s lungs. Technically, that was a curse. And if I hadn’t banished it, he would have died.”
“We know Gayl isn’t going to banish it,” Leo said. “Either because he can’t or doesn’t want to.”
“No, but there are other ways to stop a curse.”
“Are you suggesting we kill him?”
The thought had crossed my mind, but I remembered what Rissa had said when I brought it up in their cottage. That was no way to start a new dynasty focused on peace. It was an option, though.
Then, Leo said something that made the wheels in my head start to turn faster.
“What if it’s not thecasterwho has to die, but the magic?”
My eyes snapped to his. “The magic?”
He nodded. “That’s what’s holding the curse in place, not his physical body. If we can stop his magic, either pause it somehow or—or take it away, its hold would break, wouldn’t it?”
That wasgenius. I leaned forward over the Grimoire and grabbed the back of his neck, hauling his lips to mine. “You’re not just a handsome face, are you, Leo Aris?”
His hands gripped my waist and I toppled on top of him, his back hitting the bed. “Do you want to find out?” he murmured against me.
Fates, yes. I stifled a groan. “I’d love to, but you know what I’d rather do more?” I kissed him again. “Figure out how to keep you alive and break this curse.”
He sighed, his breath sending heat to my core. “And here I thoughtIwas the responsible one.”
