CHAPTER 53: CURSE

ERIS

If there had ever been a heart built for ruin... it had been mine.

It was almost cruel, how the mind insisted on remembering what the heart had long begged to forget. One moment I was in the ballroom, turning in Caelen’s arms like a specter bound by ceremony, and the next... I was elsewhere. Back then. Back when his eyes still looked at me like I was something worth saving.

He had been just a boy then. Dirt-streaked, starved, wild. I had found him crouched by my carriage, a hand in the fruit basket and the other frozen mid-theft. The guards had him by the collar, ready to drag him away.

And I, foolish, curious creature that I was, had told them to wait.

He had lifted his head then.

Gods, those eyes. Defiant, frightened, and yet... steady. No trembling, no flinching from my gaze. I was Eris Igniva, the cursed child, the fireborn disaster. Men older and braver had bowed, trembling, before me. But he... he had looked straight into me.

And for the first time in my miserable life, I hadn’t been a monster. I had been seen.

I thought that was when it began. The slow, inevitable undoing of me.

I remembered the shift as clearly as if it had still been happening. The way admiration in his eyes had softened, then curdled.

First had come wariness, that quiet distance that lived between two people who had once shared warmth. Then fear... that quick, sharp recoil when my temper slipped, when the fire licked too close.

And then had come hate.

Each shift had cracked me a little more, splintered something I had foolishly thought unbreakable. And yet, gods help me, the more he had pulled away, the more desperate my love had become. The more he had feared me, the harder I had clung.

I should have known better. But when had love ever been reasonable?

I had been born with too much of everything... too much power, too much flame, too much grief. My first lullaby had been my mother’s death cry. She had burned as she gave me life; I had been told the fire had leapt from her body into mine. My father as far as my memories allowed, had never forgiven me for surviving.

He would not hold me. Could not. His eyes were ice despite being a vessel of flame, and mine were embers, so of course, we had destroyed each other by simply existing. Though if I were more honest with myself. He destroyed me first. But that is a tale for another moment.

I had been raised in silence and shadow, reminded daily that I was unnatural, dangerous, wrong.

So when a boy with ash-streaked hands had dared to meet my gaze without trembling, I had mistaken it for salvation. I had mistaken it for love.

He had been the first person who hadn’t flinched. And that, I thought, had been all it had taken to damn us both.

But people change.

And I had learned that love did not always survive the sight of one’s true self.

The more Caelen had seen of me, the more he had recoiled. The fire in me that had once fascinated him had become the thing he learned to fear. He had started to whisper words like monster when he had thought I couldn’t hear. And I... desperate, pathetic thing that I was... had kept trying to prove him wrong.

When fear had failed to bring him back, I had tried tenderness. When tenderness had failed, I had tried power. When power had failed... well, that was when madness had begun to take root.

And then she had appeared.

Ophelia.

Grace wrapped in sunlight. Soft where I had been sharp. Gentle where I had burned. Everything I had once wanted to be.

I had watched him fall for her as though it had been the easiest thing in the world. His smile for her had been effortless, the same one I had begged for years to see.

I had told myself I could fix it. That if I just removed her, if I just erased the threat... he would see me again.

So I had.

Her family... gone. Her name... tarnished. Her safety... shattered.

And yet, the more I had destroyed her world, the more he had loved her. He had protected her with a fervor I had only ever dreamed of inspiring.

Each time I had hurt her, he had held her closer.

Each time he had held her, I had come apart a little more.

I had become a creature of contradictions. I had loved him enough to ruin him, and hated myself enough to think it was mercy.

When he had tried to leave, I couldn’t let him.

When he had begged for distance, I had offered devotion.

When he had said he couldn’t love me, I had vowed he never would love anyone else.

Even then, at the end, when my pride had finally been in tatters and I had dropped to my knees before him, I still couldn’t make him look at me the way he once had.

He had given me a single condition: let Ophelia stay.

I had agreed.

And gods help me, I had meant it. I had thought love could still be salvaged.

Even as recklessly as I burned, I was still a fool for love.

I had given him everything I could... my name, my body. I had borne him a child.

A child I had thought would bind us together.

But when Rael had been born, he hadn’t seen us. He had seen her. He had handed our son to Ophelia like a gift I wasn’t fit to hold.

And once again, I had been left to watch. To burn silently behind my crown.

To watch my husband love another woman.

To watch my son think of her as a mother.

To watch my own heart turn to ash, and still beat.

So I had done nothing.

Because if I had destroyed them, I would have destroyed what little had remained of me.

And so I had watched. And I had broken.

And I had watched some more.

Did you see now?

The curse had never been the fire.

The curse had been love.

And no one had survived loving me.