I scoff, annoyed to my marrow that his words are true. At least half of them. He has done it before. And I offered very little fight.
He narrows his eyes, and I note a glint there as he cocks his head. “Wait. Was that a challenge?” He smiles with one side of his perfect mouth, the effort carving a dimple deep into his cheek. “Because I’m taking it as a challenge,” he says before his smile spreads, and he walks away. On the wind, I hear him say, “One I bet I win.”
40
RAINA
The waters are uneventful today. I see Colden and Fleurie chatting, and then Colden and the prince’s red cloud together, possibly chatting, but when I think to look for Vexx or Gavril, I simply can’t make myself do it yet.
I also can’t sit and mourn, though I feel like maybe I need to grieve. It’s strange to lose something your mind tells you was precious when another part of your mind screams that it wasn’t.
Instead, I decide to lie on the beach and read from the second book I found in Zahira’s library on curses again. Reading is an escape, a way to keep worry and negative thoughts at bay, a comfort the Collector provided until now. I promise myself that when all of this has passed, I will curate my own little library and read to my heart’s content.
In my few short sittings with Curses of a Lorian Age, I’ve already made it to the halfway mark. I shield the sunlight as I focus on the words, having finally found a tidbit that connects with something buried in my mind.
After being turned, Soul Eaters consumed souls for nourishment. Food from field and meat from forest, river, and sea were acceptable means of sustaining life if more preferred provisions were not available. Curiously, there seems to be consistent record of these cursed creatures tasting the souls which they consumed, suggesting that souls possess flavor analogous to their life and living conditions. Many Soul Eaters were said to have developed particular tastes over their long years. Their kills were often selected using this one determining factor.
I cringe and try to scrub the thoughts from my mind that these words conjure: the prince eating souls in the wood. “At least your soul will restore me,” he had said to me. “I bet it tastes like smoke and starlight.”
I also can’t help but re-read those first two words: After being turned.
He is still my enemy, and I still want to feel his life slip through my hands for what he did in the valley. He chose the path that led to me.
But he didn’t choose the path of a Soul Eater. He was made.
He was cursed.
It makes me think of my father and the God Knife. He was cursed as its Keeper, and now so am I. But why? Who would do such a thing to a reaper from Silver Hollow?
That question seems so innocuous, and yet now it holds deeper meaning. Because my father was something more than a reaper from the vale. He was a Head Sentry for the Northland Watch, though I can’t piece together how that could’ve connected him to the God Knife.
Too tired to think on it anymore, I close the book and slide it aside, folding my hands under my cheek. With the sound of the waves, and the sun on my back, and the cool wind racing over me, I close my eyes and hope for a little sleep.
“Raina, we need more water. Come on, little one.”
Father extends his marked hand, and I take it, my tanned skin against his pink skin. At his side, I toddle toward the shore’s edge and squat low as he collects the sea into our pail. I smile and wiggle my bottom when the foam tickles my toes, and Father laughs, the sound so bright, his eyes clear as the summer sky.
He swoops me up in his arms and carries me back to the sandcastle we’ve been building all morning. It’s a massive playground. I walk through the path my father built into the middle, a moat we will soon fill.
“Go dig for seashells, little one.” Father tugs his straw hat down over his blond hair to shield his sunburned face. “We’ll use them to make your castle so beautiful.” He scrapes his hand—covered in lines like tree branches—through the wet sand to show me the seashells buried there, and I head back toward the waves with a small trowel that’s still too big for my grasp.
“Not too far, love,” Father says, and I listen, pausing just where the water slinks back to the sea.
Squatting again, I start digging. Shiny shells. That’s what I want. Big ones. But shiny. One by one, I rescue them, setting each one carefully in a pile.
But then I see something different. Something darker, yet shinier than any shell.
Sunlight glints off the amber stone as I push the sand back, trying so hard with my too-little hands to dig it out. There’s more. Something white and smooth and long. I can barely fold my hand around it, but I tug and yank and pull and dig some more. I don’t want to stop. I need to reach it. To make it mine.
I don’t have a name for the thing I free from the sand. It’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Nothing my Mother or Father or sister have ever named. The stone is cold, but it feels right in my hand.
Suddenly, my father calls for me. He comes running and falls to his knees, grabbing the thing from my grip. It passes to him easily, though its absence makes me sad.
He holds the thing up to the sunlight, panting, his eyes wide and glassy as he studies it closely, his chin trembling as he swallows hard.
“No,” he whispers, face blanched. “You were just a dream,” he says to the thing in his hand. “A nightmare.” But then his voice gets louder. “No!” And he slings the thing into the sea.
It returns on a wave, the sea leaving it at my feet.
