I purse my lips, finding it hard to pity him when his own negligence brought about his fate. “All right, so you took unlawful vengeance on a pack of hunters and were cursed for it. Is that…normal for fae punishment?”
He shrugs. “Curses and bargains are what fae specialize in, especially when it comes to punishments doled out by the Alpha Council.”
“How long have you been under this curse?”
Closing his eyes, he rubs his brow with his thumb and forefinger. “This is the fifth year. The year it will claim my life if it isn’t broken.” His voice is laced with equal parts exhaustion and irritation.
“How so? Does the curse take more than just your memories?”
He opens his eyes and looks at me from beneath the wisps of his tangled mane of hair, so unlike the white of his wolf form. Barking a laugh, he shakes his head. “Memories,” he echoes. “I wish it would only take my memories. The curse can have them all, for all I care.”
“What else does it take?”
He rises to stand, bringing his staff beneath his arm, then hobbles to the window. I remain in place, watching as he gazes out the same glass pane I watched him from not long ago.
“Almost five years ago,” the king says, “I was condemned to serve a sentence of one year for every life I’d taken, for a total of five. At the end of the sentence, the curse is set to claim me, and I will be permanently stripped of four things: my memories, my magic, my immortality, and my unseelie form. In essence, I’ll be mortal, human, and without any idea of who I am. But none of that matters, for when mortality catches up to my age, I will have but seconds to live. I’ve seen similar curses doled out before. It isn’t a kind punishment.”
Terrible images course through my mind, of a man aging right before my eyes, the flesh wrinkling and melting from his bones. I swallow hard. “What about now? The curse already affects you, does it not?”
He nods. “During my five-year sentence, I’ve been forced to suffer a taste of the curse to come. First, I was stripped from both my magic and my unseelie form outside every full moon. During the full moon, I can use my magic to become a wolf again. Every other moment, however, I am trapped in a human body. No connection to magic.”
I furrow my brow, recalling the horrifying novels I’ve read about lycanthropes who shift when the light of the full moon touches them. Could these gruesome tales hold a kernel of truth? “But you were a wolf this morning,” I say. “The moon was not out.”
“Day or night, it doesn’t matter,” he says, almost too quiet to hear. “So long as the moon is full, I can shift, but only once. If I don’t shift back to my seelie form on my own, I’m forced out of my wolf form against my will once the moon begins to wane.”
I study him for a moment, eyes falling on his wooden staff. “Did you lose your leg as part of the curse?”
He shakes his head, still staring wistfully out the window. “I lost it in the war. The second one, that is. Anyway, after I was robbed of my magic and my unseelie form, I began to age like a human. Hurt like a human. Then I began to lose my memories. It started with my name. It continued with small things. Other names. Faces. Sometimes, I can’t even recall the way a frozen wind feels blowing through my fur.” He grips the edge of the windowsill until his knuckles turn white.
I pause, going over everything he’s told me so far. Nothing seems useful as leverage to bargain my way out of here. There must be something. Something he hasn’t told me yet. “You said the curse will claim you this year. Do you know when?”
He nods. “The roses tell me it will be soon.”
“The roses?”
He presses his head to the glass and releases a grumbling sigh. “Since I had no palace, I was given this manor, abandoned by the humans who once lived here. It acts as my gilded cage, containing me and my pack within the boundaries of the curse. We can only travel within a small radius outside the manor, and any fae who steps within the radius is plagued by my curse, forced into seelie form. For visitors, however, the curse is temporary and allows them free passage in or out of my manor. For myself and all those who remained at my side when the curse was delivered, it is permanent.”
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with roses, but I decide to keep quiet. More questions sprout up alongside this new information. Why did some of his subjects choose to stay with him when his curse was delivered? Why didn’t everyone flee?
He continues. “Along with this manor, I was given twenty roses, each bearing nearly a hundred petals—some more, some less. One petal has fallen every day since the curse began, robbing one rose of life at a time. As each rose falls, brambles take its place, smothering the life that once bloomed. Today, I watched the second-to-last rose lose its final petal. There is one rose left in the garden. Perhaps one hundred petals. One hundred days at most. Then the curse will take me.”
I ponder this. That’s approximately three months from now. If he plans on holding me captive until he gets his way, that’s the longest I’ll have to wait. Then, if what he says is true, he’ll die and I’ll be free.
“Don’t look so hopeful,” he says, gaze narrowed at me. “For Iwillbreak this curse.”
I lift my chin, hiding my calculations behind a stoic mask. “And how do you expect to do that?”
He moves away from the window and takes a few steps toward me. “I’ve been given two ways to be free of this curse. The first way is this: of the four things I stand to lose, if I sacrifice the one I value most, I will be returned those which I value less.”
My eyes go wide, my mouth falling open. “Wait, you’re telling me you have the power to break your own curse? And instead, you’re kidnapping people and holding them for ransom?”
“Did you not hear a word I said? To break the curse myself, I must sacrifice that which I value most to gain what I value less. Besides, it is but a partial breaking, not a true one.”
I burn him with a glare. “And what is this great value of yours that is so much more important than breaking your curse?”
He gestures toward himself. “Isn’t it obvious? My unseelie form. To break the curse myself, I’d have to sacrifice my wolf body and accept a human form for the rest of my life, just to reclaim my immortality, magic, and memories.”
“And that’s somehow a bad thing?”
