I hated the uncertainty twisting in my stomach, that insidious feeling telling me I was only forcing myself to believe. That maybe...maybe he hadn’t broken the curse after all.
“If we’re right, and Fate should have recognised his virtues, then what could have gone wrong?” I asked.
Finn stared at the worn wooden boards. Thinking. “I don’t know anything that could interfere with a curse. Malory said that nothing could.”
The judge was still speaking when I decided I’d had enough of this.
“...and the second-in-command, so there is a decision—”
“Is there another way to prove it?” I asked her.
Malory’s eyes narrowed, the only shift in her stoic mask, perhaps because I dared to interrupt her. Varian and Gwin turned their heads to me.
“We believe Reagan was about to break his curse, but something happened.” I glanced quickly at Varian, who watched with a sneer.
“If he had broken the curse, he would have been in his human form,” the judge replied.
I glanced at Finnegan, but he shook his head. There was nothing. No miracle, no revelation, no way out. Malory picked up where she had left off.
My leg bounced. “If there were a way to hear that damn curse again, we could try...”
Before I could finish, Finn’s hands moved to his temple. Blue light glowed faintly in the tendons of his hands, and then a sheer, phantom piece of parchment flowed out of his ear and landed in his palm. Bearing the words of the curse.
I didn’t waste time thinking about how incredible that was. I dipped my head toward the paper, reading all the words again. And again.
“It doesn’t specify what the trial was,” Finnegan said. “Maybe today, what he faced here, could be it...”
I heard Finn reaching the same conclusion I had a moment ago, but my eye caught another part of the text.
Receive now the tether for your curse, and what binds you shall yet free you.
I had missed that before, because of Reagan’s scream that had made all the blood run out of my body. But this...
“This part, ‘what binds you shall yet free you.’ What do you think it means?” I asked.
“I don’t know . . . his flaws? His nature?”
His nature.His essence.
Breath bloomed out of my mouth in the thick air, my eyes directed at Finn but not seeing him at all. I remembered his exact words to me.
If I were to become someone virtuous, more worthy, it’s said to turn ivory and bright. But it never has, not once.
He’d given me the other way, given me the answer he could without breaking his oath of silence to the curse. And it might just be enough.
“What?” Finn asked.
“The heartstone,” I whispered. “It’s supposed to turn ivory and bright when the curse breaks.”
Finn stiffened. “The gemstone in his chest? The one we can’t see?”
Right. I spun to look at the creature on the floor, still sprawled and unconscious. No sign of the heartstone.
“We need to see the stone. I’m sure it has changed now,” I said.
“How?”
My palms began to sweat. “Judge?”
