Bonds that Burn and Bind

Chapter 9 Part 3

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"Let's sit," Ceno said, pushing me towards an empty chair. I resisted at first but complied after a firm hand on my shoulder and a stern.

I sank into the wooden chair elaborately carved with forest creatures. Ceno took a seat to my left while Rosa claimed a chair on my right, the portrait back in her hands.

The room rapidly dropped in temperature until my breath came out as puffs of fog. I wrapped my arms around myself and rubbed my hands over my sleeves, which were doing nothing to stop the sudden chill from creeping under my skin.

I kept most of my attention on the black thing, which had grown to the size of a horse and had started drifting towards the ground.

A ferocious wind began screaming outside, like a banshee predicting an upcoming death. The smoke mass landed right beside the Fae Prince's chair and dissipated to reveal a woman dressed in a black gown. Her loose, dark, wavy hair framed an eerily beautiful face. And her full red lips pulled into a sensual smile. I realized with a start that she was the woman from the painting. But how was that possible if she was over two hundred years old? Unless I had mistaken the two girls for humans when they were anything but.

She leaned her body against Prince Derion's chair as lingering tendrils of darkness curled from her.
She looked straight at me. "Hello, bride," she said. Her accent sounded a lot like my mother's, the way she elongated some syllables but shortened others, but a bit heavier, which made sense if they originated from the same place.
I glanced at Prince Derion, and our gazes collided, and I glimpsed a sorrow so deep, it would be easy to drown in it before it receded into a glare.

Alma ran her long, pale fingers down his cheek, and he turned towards her. Jealousy flooded my veins, as did more disgust and confusion for these strange feelings.

Why did I care that she touched him?
And as if she sensed the conflicting emotions thrashing within me, Alma met my gaze and smirked, and my fingernails dug into the palms of my hands.

Alma's black skirts whispered together like dead leaves rustling in the wind as she glided around the table to loom over me, strengthening my desire to stand. But Ceno's hand kept me seated, even when I strained against him.

"She is not a threat," Ceno soothed, but every one of my instincts screamed:
Danger! Predator!

"Do you know why the prince is taking you for his wife? It's not because of love or desire, it's part of his punishment for killing me," she drawled.

The Fae Prince murdered her? Then was she a spirit?

But Spirits could only normally muster up a phrase or two—plucked from conversations they had right before dying. Nothing like this. And there was that oddity of her looking alive, the same oddity Winnie's spirit had, but something about her felt different.

"The first part of his punishment is to watch his people suffer at the hands of the curse he brought down upon them," she continued. "When the Prince murdered me, Inanna lost the only constant in her life, so she stripped away all consistency in the lives of the citizens of these lands. Their homes, their feeling, their forest, even the length of their days—constantly shifting and changing in ways that disorientate and devastate. But there is hope that this fate may be escaped. Because the despair each time that hope is crushed is so delicious," her grin widened.
"Only a mortal girl who enters into the Prince Derion's kingdom and becomes his bride, just like I once was, can break the curse. She will be bound to this land by the same ring Prince Derion gave me when he asked me to be his wife," I glanced at the ruby ring gleaming on my finger, like a congealed clump of blood. "She can break the curse by passing the three tests Inanna has created."