He was quiet for a long time. She watched him weigh it, the way he weighed everything, calculating cost and risk with the mind of a captain who'd been making impossible decisions for half his life. She could see the moment he chose to stop protecting her from the information.
It looked like surrender.
"Sit down," he said.
She sat in the chair opposite the chart table. He remained standing, arms braced against the table's edge, head bowed. When he finally spoke, his voice had the flat quality of a man reciting something he'd carried alone for too long.
"The room holds the bodies of the brides. All six of them. Preserved by the curse, arranged as if they're sleeping. Marguerite is in the center, in the wedding dress she wore the night we married." A pause. "They don't decay. They don't change. They look exactly as they did the moment the room claimed them."
Jeanne's stomach turned. She thought of the rings in the chest. Marguerite. Celeste. Isabeau. Vivienne. Lucienne. Adele. Six names she'd read on gold and silver and copper, six women who had been real and alive and were now displayed like exhibits in a gallery of Morvenna's cruelty.
"What else?" she asked, because his silence told her he wasn't finished.
"A mirror. At the far wall, behind Marguerite. The curse's anchor." His knuckles were white where they gripped the table. "When an omega looks into it, she doesn't see her reflection. Shesees her own death. How the curse will take her, what it will do to her body, how many days she has left. And once she's seen it, the countdown begins."
"How many days?"
"Three."
Three. The word landed between them like a stone dropped into deep water. Three days between the seeing and death. Three days of fever and visions and the body failing while the bond turned to poison.
"Tell me the curse's words," she said. "The exact words. You know them."
He closed his eyes. When he recited them, each syllable had the weight of iron.
"You have stolen my daughter's heart without my blessing. Now hear my curse, wolf of the sea: Every omega who gives you her heart shall die by it. I bind this curse to your ship, to your blood, to your bond. The room I create shall hold your doom. Any omega who sees what lies within shall perish within three days. Only when true love, freely given, survives the seeing shall the curse be broken.”
The words hung in the air. She could almost hear them vibrating, the way the door's hum vibrated through the lower decks. Old magic, coded into language, given teeth and claws by a mother's grief and rage.
"True love, freely given, survives the seeing," Jeanne repeated. "That's the condition. Not just love. Not just choosing you. The omega has to see what's in the room and survive it."
"Yes."
"And none of them did."
"None of them did. The seeing triggered the three-day countdown, and by the end of the third day, they were dead." He opened his eyes. The blue was washed out, almost gray, as if reciting the curse had drained the color from him. "The cursewas designed to be unbreakable. Morvenna didn't just want to punish me. She wanted to ensure that love itself became the weapon. The stronger the bond, the faster the curse devoured it."
"But the condition is there. Morvenna included a way out. Why would she do that if she didn't believe it was possible?"
"Because curses require balance. Even a sea witch can't bind magic without offering an escape, however impossible. It's like a lock that requires a key no one can forge. The escape exists in theory. In practice, it's unreachable." He pushed off the table and turned to the porthole, staring out at the gray sea. "I've had many years to study those words. To turn them over and examine every possible interpretation. Whatever they saw in the mirror broke them."
"What did they see?”
“They either couldn’t tell me or they wouldn’t.”
"It only effects omegas.”
“Yes. To everyone other than myself and the omega it’s an empty room.”
“Maybe the mirror won’t show me anything because I’m human.”
“That’s the hope. But so far, the curse is acting as it always has.” He stared at her. She could see his mind working behind those washed-out blue eyes, turning her argument over the way he turned the curse's words, looking for the flaw, the weakness, the place where hope would crack and let reality flood in. "I don't know if I was wrong. I don't know if you'll survive. I don't know if your humanity or your love is different enough, strong enough, free enough to break what Morvenna built." His hand came up and cupped the side of her face.
She turned her face into his palm and kissed it.
"Then stop protecting me from the truth," she said against his skin. "Whatever comes next, I face it knowing everything. No more fragments. No more half-answers. I am not a tool forbreaking your curse and I am not a victim to be shielded from it. I am your mate, and I deserve to stand in this with you."
He breathed in. Breathed out. Then he pulled a chain from out of his pocket.
