“Your power is mine to control,” he says. “You must break the curse willingly, or so help me, I’ll have no choice but to break you.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thyra
My mouth forms the word I can’t yet utter as the hatred in Antony’s eyes threatens to consume me:Why?
But before he can speak again, an answering rage pours through me. “Why do you hate me? I’ve done nothing to you.”
“Nothing?” His anger doesn’t lessen. “You—she—destroyed us.”
He hasn’t taken his eyes off me, but the only other female figure in this room is the statue, so I can only assume he’s talking about her.
“I don’t know who she is,” I grind out. “I don’t know what she did. Even if I did know, I am not her.”
Antony’s eyes search mine, the hatred draining from them, leaving a shocking emptiness behind. “No, you aren’t her.”
But he immediately shakes his head, his anger seeming to re-surge. “How can I believe you’re ignorant of the curse that broke the kingdoms into three?”
It’s my turn to shake my head, my brow deeply furrowed,because he isn’t making sense to me. “That wasn’t a curse. That was greed.”
He scoffs. “Greed?”
“Yes, greed,” I snap, because I know this story well.
I heard it over and over from the villagers. Every village my father and I lived in repeated the same story of how the three kingdoms came to be. My father never corrected it.
“The Serulian King’s three generals rose up against him, killed both him and his heir, and then started a war with each other, each vying for ultimate power.”
“Such a simple story.” Antony laughs, a cruel sound. “Is that what you believe?”
I glare at him. “It’s what happened.”
“No,” he says, his voice chilling me. “It isn’t.”
Slowly, he slides me back to the ground. Until this moment, he was holding me so tightly that I was barely aware he’d suspended me off the floor against his body.
His left hand tangles in my hair, gently tugging my head back as he continues to search my eyes.
Again, he shakes his head, as if he doesn’t find what he seeks. “You’re either the most skilled liar I’ve ever encountered, or you really don’t know what the first female Oracle did.”
I try to find a way forward. “What can it hurt to tell me?”
His eyes narrow, and I wish I could see more of his face to understand his true thoughts.
“You’re right. It only costs time, and we have all night.” He slides his hand away from my head, and I’m surprised by how carefully he moves so he doesn’t pull my hair.
The circlet clanks softly as he raises that same arm to point at the statue of the woman.
“The False Queen, a female Oracle—your ancestor—seduced the Serulian King into her bed and gave him a son. Patiently, she waited until her son came ofage. When he reached his twentieth year, she convinced the Serulian King to cross the border into the east, where the lands were bountiful, not dust as they are now.
“Before the army left, she gave her son the Dragonstone Blade. Unknown to him, she had tainted the blade with her blood, drawing dark magic and malice to it, creating in it a murderous desire.
“In the middle of the battle, the prince turned on his father and killed him. The three generals tried to stop the prince, and in the fight that followed, the prince, too, was mortally wounded.
“When the army returned to Serulia, the Oracle tried to claim power. It was her plan all along.” Antony’s voice conveys the twist in his lips. “But the three generals sensed the dark magic on the blade. They refused to endorse the Oracle’s claim to power.
“In a rage, she snatched up the blade and cursed it. This time, her curse was powered by the royal blood of both the Serulian King and the Slain Prince, binding the curse to their kingdom.
