Chapter 4: : Chapter 3

EMBARRASSMENT burned in Eric’s chest, and Max let out a low whine as he fled. He could still see the embarrassment and confusion on Angelina’s face, Luna’s red eyes, and their father’s anger. The mem-ory carried him through the quiet hallways of the castle until he was far away from the dining hall. It had been too much to hope for a normal meal.

Even if Grimsby offered a good enough explanation and Angelina and Eric came to an agreement, any hope for a friendship was strained. It wasn’t as if he could blame the curse; they had no idea about it. Angelina would want nothing to do with him now.

No, now there was simply another noble on the council who thought Eric was an odd one. Too odd to rule, certainly.

Eric finally came to a stop. He looked around, spied no one, and let his forehead onto the wall.

“Go find Carlotta. Go.” Eric nudged Max, but the dog didn’t budge. Eric sighed.

He wasn’t even sure what part of the castle he was in, but he needed to be alone.

His mother had been scared of someone finding out about his curse, but wasn’t that why he was in this situation? He was so afraid of letting anyone near that he could barely handle normal situations. What was the point of anything if he didn’t have anyone to share it with?

It wasn’t fair. He had liked the dinner with Angelina more than any of the others and enjoyed her company. His curse had ruined any hopes he had of getting to know her.

Eric laid his head against the door in the hall and brought his hand to the bronze plate upon the door.

It was his mother’s old study. He hadn’t touched it. Not since—

“What would you do?” Eric asked, staring at his mother’s familiar name.

Not be afraid to enter a study. Well, he had probably ruined his last chance at finding a queen. If he had ever needed his mother, now was the time.

He pushed open the door and braced himself for the heavy wave of grief, but it didn’t hit. Only a dull ache flared in his chest. Eric rubbed his heart.

It still smelled like her, tuberose and plum with ambergris beneath. He shut the door, taking a deep breath, and made his way to her desk. Grimsby had retrieved all of Eleanora’s important notes on ruling Vellona, leaving the top of the desk nearly empty.

His fingers skimmed the edges of the wood, feeling the slight dents from her chair and scratches from constant use. Here she had nicked a drawer with her penknife, and there she had banged her staff against the edge when sparring with him. His mother had never let anyone clean or repair this desk; it had been his father’s. Carlotta even kept the little bowl of licorice full.

Eric took one of the licorice candies and sucked on it, sinking into her old chair. His knees shook.

“How could you leave?” he asked his mother’s empty desk. “Some nonsense journey to verify reports about Sait, and a storm kills you? After everything, a storm?”

A few half-finished letters stuck out of the top drawer. Eric ripped the drawer from its slot and dumped out the contents. None of the letters were for him and most were reports made irrelevant by the last two years. He tore the second drawer from its place, pocketing a bundle of notes from his father to his mother, and tossed it aside. He moved on to the third. Two old forks with the tines bent to make them look like dog ears and painted-on eyes courtesy of four-year-old Eric. Dozens of old drawings from Eric to his mother over the years. A quill with the tip nearly chewed off.

“Nothing.”

Max let out a low huff and wiggled his way beneath the desk. Eric patted his head.

“Not that I expected anything, but it would’ve been nice,” he said. His fingers traced the lines of the desk. The shutters clattered in the breeze, and gulls cried from the towers. Waves crashed against the cliffs below. He felt as worn as the rocks.

“She was checking on the northern holdings and trying to spy on the ships attacking them,” he told Max. “You remember her talk?”

Eric hadn’t been paying attention the last time he’d spoken with his mother. It had been a normal day, and Eleanora had moved as if to hug him but held back.

“She said she’d be back,” Eric told Max. “I don’t know if I can do this. I couldn’t even get through a meal. How am I supposed to be king?

It had never been fair, and it wasn’t now. He didn’t want a crown and responsibilities; he wanted to remember his father’s voice and wake up to breakfast with his mother still here, alive and well. He wanted a coronation only when his mother was old and ready to step aside. He wanted and wanted, and it was never enough. He had so much.

Guilt gnawed at his stomach. He had everything. He shouldn’t want.

“Why couldn’t you have left me something to help?” The licorice left a bittersweet taste in his mouth, and Eric leaned his forehead against her desk. “Anything would’ve done.”

Lightning flashed outside, and Max yelped, leaping up. He smacked his head against the bottom of the desk and scrambled away. Something thunked against the floor.

“Max,” Eric grumbled and peeked under the desk, “if you broke anything…”

A needle was on the floor that hadn’t been there before. The wrinkled corner of a scrap of paper hung down from the underside of the desk, and Eric knelt for a better look. Pinned underneath the desk by three other needles, far away from prying eyes, was a piece of paper with his name written across it. Eric ran his hand over his mother’s slanted script.

“You’re joking,” he whispered.

Eric yanked the needles free and caught the letter. His breath hitched.

“Mother,” he whispered, eyes burning.

Oh, he was so thoughtless. Of course she had left something. Secrets were as common to her as breathing. He should’ve known she had saved one more.

With a deep, steadying breath, he opened the letter and began to read.

Eric traced the looping lines of her handwriting. The ink was smeared near the bottom, water damage marring the paper. He buried his face in his hands.

He wasn’t sure if her traveling to find the witch and kill her made him feel worse or better. His curse had taken so much from him, and now he knew it had taken his mother, too. But this was the most he had ever known about it—a pure voice and the name of the witch’s home.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and tucked the paper into his chest pocket. “Thank you.”

Lightning flashed again outside, and rain pattered against the windows. Max whined.

“It’s all right, boy.” Eric dragged his hands from his face. “Better, really.”

A pure voice wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was more than nothing. Eric had never had even a hint of how to find his true love, but now he knew two things about them—they had a good soul and a good voice. Both attributes he could find out about someone with enough effort.

In the hidden compartment his mother had mentioned, he found maps pocked with patches of corrections. There was even a list of the greatest singers around Eric’s age. He found a journal full of stories about sea witches, weather witches, and magical dealmakers. There were dozens of legends and rumors about people being forced to do terrible things against their wills, and that terrified Eric. In one, a mermaid implied the witch was beautiful but not as lovely as the mermaid’s wife, so the witch took her wife’s beauty for her own and then took her soul. The sheer needless cruelty of it made Eric shudder.

With every story, this witch degraded people’s very sense of self until they were unrecognizable. Apathetic. Wretched. More like sea grass caught in the current than people. She ruined them.

And the area around Vellona was her hunting ground. If she was so cruel and so active to have all of these stories about her, then some of the missing and dead had to be her fault. Many people from Vellona had been lost in pirate attacks and storms recently, but many of them were just to have been lost to them. If the witch was responsible, it might have been even worse than his mother had thought.

“Mother is right,” Eric said aloud, trying to sound braver than he felt. He tucked several of the stories into his pocket to make sure he always remembered why he had to finish what she had started. It wasn’t just for him. “She has to be killed.”

Grimsby was going to hate it, but without his curse, Eric would be free. He could befriend people without fear and let his feelings take him where they might. He could marry without having to worry about his true love. Or he could find his true love, this person with a pure voice and soul who somewhere out there.

Intimacy and falling in love had always terrified him, and he had resisted it for so long to save himself from other’s expectations—how could he prove to friends, families, and lovers he loved them if he couldn’t express it in a way they wanted? If he did this, he wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.

“The Isle of Serein,” Eric said. He took Max’s face in his hands and kissed his nose. “You ready to go on a trip?”

Max licked Eric’s mouth.

“Gross,” he said, “but I’ll take that as a yes.”