It took Beau three days to get over the shock of watching Beth fall prey to the curse. He hadn’t ever seen it happen up close before—perhaps from a distance, when we were at the market or a crowded area and someone was struck. But never right before his eyes. Never someone he knew.
I’d witnessed it four times now. Five, if I counted Beth. And I remembered each as vividly as if it happened yesterday.
Once when I was seven, a group of girls were playing a ways from me in the schoolyard, and one of their toys landed at my feet. When I picked it up and walked it over to the little girl, her limbs suddenly locked and she crashed to the ground, unable to be roused.
Again when I was ten—I was racing through the forest near our house and came upon our neighbor collecting various herbs for spells. He smiled and waved cordially, but before I could return the sentiment, he froze and collapsed. I remembered fleeing back to my uncle so he could retrieve the body.
Several years later, on my first date, the boy was escorting me home when he stumbled and fell face first into the snow. I had to scream for someone to come help carry his limp body to his family.
This was when the quiet whispers of the town turned to ferocious gossip. That madethreetimes I’d been with someone when they were cursed. One or two they could overlook, but three was no longer a coincidence.
The fourth time was a year ago. An elderly gentleman and his wife had come to the Arcane looking for a pain remedy for his arthritis. I turned to grab a vial, and when I looked back, his wife was slumped over the counter, unresponsive.
That was the nail in my metaphorical coffin. Nobody wanted anything to do with the Arcane after that, if they could help it.
Each time someone fell to the curse, it was the same. They collapsed as if in a deep slumber, their blood-red eyes the only sign of the Somnivae Curse. Not dead.Asleep.
There was no warning. It could take any of us in an instant, in a single breath. There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think I might be next. Or Beau, Morgana, Ragnar.
It started twenty-seven years ago, before I was born. This curse, this fear…it was all I’d ever known. I couldn’t even imagine a timebefore, when the empire didn’t have this heavy weight looming overhead.
According to those who had lived through it, the night the royal Aris twins had been born to the former Emperor Branock Aris and his wife, a curse had descended upon the entire land like a bright red plague. Some said it was because the royal family was cursed by the Fates, or the twins were an abomination, or Emperor Aris had sold his soul to amass his wealth and this was the punishment.
Our world was forever changed in that single night. Emperor Aris’ empire crumbled and he was unable to face the growing insurrection, choosing instead to abdicate and hole himself and his family away, hoping his penance was enough to stop the curse from ravaging his people.
That had been over two decades ago. And still, the curse raged on.
In the beginning, it had started slowly, claiming a handful ofvictims across the provinces every few months. With time, however, it grew greedier. Hungrier. More and more cases popped up all over the empire. This past year alone, almost a hundred people from Feywood had fallen to it.
Not a soul had been able to figure out how to counteract it. Even here in Feywood, where curses and charms were in our Alchemist blood. The Somnivae curse didn’tkill—it didn’t seem to do any bodily harm, as far as we could tell. The victims simply fell into a deep sleep. Their bodies stayed preserved and healthy, even the ones who had been cursed decades ago. They didn’t age, didn’t need food or water or medicine. It was as if they were frozen in a moment in time.
Forever alive, forever asleep.
And now, it had claimed Beth. My closest friend—myonlyfriend. Seeing her normal lively, excited features turn motionless and ashen had been like looking into the face of a complete stranger. I may only see her a handful of times a year, but she knew me better than anyone. I would never get to laugh with her again, to trade stories and gossip of our provinces, to hear her go on about her latest flame back in Celestria.
Another person taken from me.
More pain to hide beneath my layers.
Uncle Ragnar and I had argued over what to do with her—he insisted she would be better cared for at the local infirmary since we were about to be gone for an entire month, but I feared what the people of Feywood would do to her, an outsider in their midst. Plenty of locals wouldn’t shop at the Arcane because of my reputation and because they knew we sourced many of our herbs from Celestria. How would they react to a Strider kept tucked away in the Feywood infirmary, vulnerable and unable to defend herself?
“There’s nothing else that can be done, Rose,” Uncle Ragnar had told me. “Until we can find a way to contact her family in Celestria, we’re unable to cross the border. You have to let her go. She’ll be safe with the healers—that’s their job.”
His words did little to quell my anxieties. But I’d done what hesaid and let her go, silently promising to visit her every day until we left.
And I did. I sat by her side for half an hour each afternoon, reading her bits and pieces of our favorite books and shouldering the gossip and bitter stares that followed my every move.
I was walking home from the infirmary a week after Beth had been cursed, the brisk wind nipping at my nose and cheeks as I pulled my cloak tighter over my hunter green dress, when I saw Uncle Ragnar’s hulking frame coming toward me on the street. He was the spitting image of what I imagined Beau would look like in thirty years—the same light brown hair and silver eyes, with a clean-cut beard and wrinkles gracing his strong features.
He waved to passersby as he made his way to me, stopping every few feet to say hello to a familiar face or shake someone’s hand as they undoubtedly offered their well wishes for his impending trip to the capital.
My uncle was a cornerstone of this province. He inspired respect and admiration among the citizens—it was why he’d been chosen as the Feywood challenger. One year before every Decemvirate, each province held an election for who would be the lucky pick. I’d heard stories of how the other provinces selected—in Drakorum, where they held the power of shifting, there were rumors that the nominees had to fight to the death in their animal forms. And in Tenebra, the province with the power to wield shadows, their competitors were forced to spend weeks in the isolated, cursed Shadowmere wastelands, where shadows and spirits of the dead roamed the twisted branches and howling mountains. Whoever emerged with their sanity still intact proceeded to the Decemvirate.
If all of that was true, it made me thankful my province wasn’t full of masochists.
Here, the nominees had to attend a festival in central Feywood to present their talents. A series of tests, both in skill and knowledge, and a showcase among the governor of the province and his council.
It was a glorifiedpopularitycontest.
