Seven Sinful Crowns

Pria

Pria followed her sister through the winding halls of the castle Tareen. In all the decades since her sister had lived here, ruling over these lands, she had only been within its walls a handful of times. Less, perhaps. It was no secret that the sisters, though bound by blood, did not hold the within their hearts the same devotion to one another as most. In fact, they held none. Not really, and Pria did not know when they had fallen apart.

As children they had been closer, though not as close as the other siblings she often sees on the streets of her kingdom. Her sisters and her played together, but their games most often held an underlying sense of malice. Helina had pushed her into a well once. She had never seen her within the quiet wood behind the castle she often sat in, until it was too late. That was the first time she revealed herself as a Sparrow, and their father, the king, came for her hours later when she was missing from the dinner table. And Pria's hands were not clean, either. As a girl, she had often used the curses she held on her sisters malleable minds. She had plagued Gillian with nightmares for an entire year, before she was cured by another caller who had to work endlessly before she was able to break Pria's control.

Grisha's castle was open to the world around it, much like her fathers, and as they walked the echoing halls lit by the floating spheres of stormglow, she could smell the ocean before she could hear it.

"It's not much further," Griesha said from ahead, her gown floating behind her on the sea salt wind. She didnt respond, just followed through the halls until they came to the grand arch of the throne room, the pile of discarded humans laying carelessly about in a heap of cold, stiff flesh. When Griesha stopped, Pria continued, inching closer to the bodies as she gazed down.

"Their eyes?"

Griesha smiled, a slick, ironic twist of the lips, and spoke. "I took them."

Pria didn't respond. She was not surprised.

"They said nothing?"

"Not a word."

Pria walked circles around the heap, stepping unceremoniously over outstretched limbs as she sent her senses out into the minds that rested behind the empty sockets, searching for the last flickers of thought, but they were gone. They had been empty for too long. When she stopped, she could feel Grisha's eyes burning into her, curious.

She bent down, placing her fingers into the blood that pooled along the floor, mixing life with life, and then she spoke, her voice low and commanding.

"Twist and turn, bend and burn,

Unwravel now the will you churn.

Reveal to me from whom you came.

I am Curse Caller. Know my name."

And Pria felt it, the sudden crushing within her body as the curse responded, rising from the still flesh before her in a wave of darkness and plummeting into her soul. Her head snapped back, eyes wide, but it was not the crystal chandelier shaking above their heads, light bouncing through the room in rainbows, but a mirror, and within it, Helina. She was laying with a man, their bodies intertwined and their chests rose and fell in the slow, rhythmic dance of sleep.

"She's in love, how marvelous," said a voice Pria had never heard before, and then the image changed to the dark, gloomy dungeons she assumed to be below Greishas castle. She didn't see the prisoners...not exactly. She saw a set of hands, bound before her, and the guards and the exact layout of the foundation from which the castle rose. And then she watched as the silent prisoners moved about, through the halls, capturing memories of everything they saw, before Griesha stood before them, pressing cheese, and then water, and then plucking the eyes from their skulls. And then...she saw Griesha, sitting in a green, velvet chair, through the delicate glass of a goblet, and it was over. As quickly as the curse had rushed her senses, it had been captured, and Pria sucked in a quick breath, falling back. No matter how many times she had done this, it had never gotten easier.

"Griesha, where are the eyes?"

"In my bedchamber."

"Burn them. Quickly,"