Those glowing golden eyes had glared at me through the darkness. The beast’s head had been impossibly high, among the tree branches. I’d never seen its body. The night had consumed it.
That image still played on a loop in my nightmares all these long years later. Nine years of replays.
A ragged, wet cough brought me out of my panic. I pulled in a deep breath to ground myself in the moment. The hack sounded again. Father. He was getting worse.
I sighed wearily, pushing back my hair and then the covers.
My sister, Sable, jerked awake in the narrow bed beside mine in our tiny room. We didn’t have much, but at least we had a roof over our heads. For now, anyway.
Muted moonlight filtered through the threadbare curtains, and I could just make out her face turning to me, her eyes large with fear. She knew what that cough meant.
“It’s okay,” I told her, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. “It’s fine. I have more of the nulling elixir. We haven’t run out yet.”
She nodded, sitting up and bunching the sheets near her chest.
She was just fourteen, the age I’d been when I narrowly survived the beast only to lose Nana anyway.
It was different now, though. Since then, I’d worked diligently with the special everlass elixir I devised. It still didn’t cure the curse’s sickness, but it drastically slowed it down and nulled most of the effects. Because of it, and because I’d given the recipe to the village and helped them learn to make it, we’d only lost one person so far this year. If the winter would just let up already, spring would help us revitalize our gardens. The plants mostly went dormant in the winter, not growing many new leaves. The gardens in our small yards weren’t big enough to sustain us if we had someone on the brink. There were many on the brink.
My older brother, Hannon, pushed open the door and stuck his head in the room. His red hair swirled around his head like a tornado. A splash of freckles darkened his pale face. Unlike me, the guy didn’t tan for nothing. He came in two colors: white and red.
“Finley,” he said before realizing I was already up. He left the door open but stepped out, waiting for me.
“He’s deteriorating,” Hannon said softly when I was in the hall. “He doesn’t have long.”
“He’s lasted longer with the sickness than anyone else. And he’ll continue to last. I’ve made some recent improvements. It’ll be okay.”
I took a step toward Father’s room, just next to mine, but my brother stopped me with a hand to my arm. “He’s on borrowed time, Finley. How long can this go on? He’s suffering. The kids are watching him suffer.”
“That’s only because we’re down to the weak everlass leaves. As soon as the spring comes it’ll be better, Hannon, you’ll see. I’ll find a cure for him. He won’t join Nana and Mommy in the beyond. He won’t. I will find a cure. It must exist.”
“The only cure is breaking the curse, and no one knows how to do that.”
“Someone knows,” I said softly, opening Father’s door. “Someone in this goddess-ruined kingdom knows how to break that curse. I will find that person, and I will wring the truth out of them.”
A candle in a holder flickered on the table by the door. I picked it up and shielded the flame from the air as I hurried to Father’s side. Two chairs bracketed each side of the bed, always present. Sometimes we used them to gather around him when he was lucid. Lately, though, they were used for vigils, so we could watch with trepidation as he clung to life.
My father’s lined face was ashen within the candlelight. His eyelids trembled as though he were trapped in a nightmare.
He was, I supposed. We all were. The whole kingdom. Our mad king had used the demon king’s sly magic to settle a personal grudge, and we were all suffering the consequences. Actually, he wasn’t. He’d died and left us to rot. What a peach. They hadn’t said what he’d died from, but I hoped it was gangrene of the dick.
I set the candle on the bedside table before checking the fireplace at the other end of the room. The coals throbbed crimson then black, giving off enough heat to warm the kettle of water above it. We never knew when we’d need hot water. Given the curse had wiped out modern-day conveniences like electricity and running water, almost plunging us back into the Dark Ages, we needed to make do with what we had.
“Dash says we hardly have any usable leaves left, and the crop you planted isn’t ready yet,” Hannon said.
“I didn’t plant— Never mind.” I didn’t bother explaining that the everlass would spring up naturally every year if you coaxed it with good soil and rigorous maintenance. Hannon wasn’t much of a gardener. “Dash shouldn’t be telling stories.”