In that split second of rage-fueled action, chaos has fallen. But not the loud kind. Not the busy kind.
It’s a quiet chaos, one so at odds with my whirling thoughts.
Thorne stands before me, hands behind his back, unperturbed by the blood dripping from the underside of his chin. His lips are pulled into a smug grin, like he expected my attack.
Like he wanted it.
And around us, in lifeless heaps, lies my family.
My breaths grow sharp, shallow. The knife slides from my fingers, clanging to the ground. I retreat a step back and nearly step on my mother’s wrist, her limp hand flung over her head on the floor. Aunt Cecily is draped over her legs, a broken wineglass at her feet. My father lies crumpled on the other side of me, eyes closed, mouth parted. Everyone else at the table is the same. My cousins. Uncles. Aunts. The rooster. Cousin Remus lies at the base of the piano, no longer a being of shadow but a slender man with dark hair. I would have expected him, out of everyone, to have been capable of fleeing undetected, but I recall what Mother told me during dinner.He only shifts into his seelie form when he’s startled.
Everyone…
My entire family…
They’re…dead?
“Princess.” Thorne’s voice has me whirling to face him, my lips peeled into a snarl.
“What did you do?”
He shakes his head, his countenance no longer brimming with the self-righteous arrogance it bore before. “You did this.”
“I didn’t.”
“You can remember everything now.”
A sharp pain pulses through my mind at the return of my memories. All of them. Every word Thorne made me forget.
I recall his tale of the Briars and the Lemurias, the mahrts versus the banshees.
The death of the Briars’ firstborn.
The revenge on Mrs. Lemuria’s young boy.
The violence that escalated thereafter.
The intervention of Queen Nyxia, who oversaw the punishments of both clans.
The two curses placed on each family’s nextborn.
And the sleeping spell that threatens both sides.
If a member of one family draws blood from a member of the rival family, their own clan will fall into one hundred years of deathlike sleep.
I’m granted only the slightest hint of relief at what this means for my family. They aren’t dead, they’re just…sleeping.
The one who initiates the curse by drawing blood from the rival family is spared from the sleeping spell.
Thorne is right. I did this. I drew blood from a member of the rival family and enacted the sleeping spell. My family shouted a warning just before they fell. They knew this would happen if I attacked him. I didn’t know! How could I have known? How could any of us have known?
The memory of Thorne’s voice as he whispered in my ear sends a shudder down my spine. My anger returns in full. “You tricked me. You wanted this to happen.”
“I did,” he said, tone as empty as his expression.
I’m tempted to retrieve the knife from the ground and try to finish what I started. What’s to stop me now? My family will slumber for the next hundred years. I…I’m alone. Without them.
Again.
