He loved you. I pleaded with her to believe me. For my own well-being, I had to believe that was true.
Perhaps, she conceded.
Mom, do you think the curse is already broken? I mean, the book has quit sending messages, and it’s not like we were ever hunted down by the Selene family. For years I’d been warned about the importance of keeping the book safe. The legend was that many years ago, in a land and time unknown, there had lived three families, all part of the Praeditus, or the Endowed. The Aelius family, the Tellus family, and the Selene family. Each family was blessed with powers and given a book.
The Aelius family received its powers from the sun. My family, the Tellus family, was given its powers from the earth. It allowed us to use the things from the planet to heal and help by pushing our energy into herbs and plants of all kinds. The Selene family was blessed by the moon. Though the families’ gifts came from different sources, they all worked in harmony just as the sun, earth, and moon do. As time went on, the Aelius family believed our families’ gifts should help all mankind, not just our kind. Then the Aelius queen fell in love with a mortal. Against the wishes of the other two families, she married the mortal and had children with him. The Tellus and Selene families feared this would expose them all and that mortals would exploit them. So they banded together to destroy the entire Aelius family.
As the last remaining member of her family, the Aelius queen sought her revenge by cursing the other two families, using the powers of the books. Since her line wasn’t allowed to continue, she would make sure the other two lines suffered the same fate. The Tellus family was limited to one daughter each generation, and for the Selene family, one son. In sweet revenge, each cursed son or daughter would be forced to marry a mortal. It was a double-edged sword. Not only did marrying a mortal mean they would be diluting their powers each generation, but it also shortened their life spans. No longer would they live for over a thousand years like their ancestors before them. As an added cruelty, it meant never knowing if the mortal they were bound to truly loved them, or vice versa, because the power of the curse brought them together. Regardless, each cursed child was forced to watch their mortal companion age and die while they stayed young for years and years.
The last part of the curse was that the remaining two lines would be sworn enemies from that time forward. Legend held that each ruling family from the Tellus and Selene sects went into hiding with the family books, while the remaining members hunted each other into oblivion. According to the legend, there was one way to break the curse. If either the Selene or Tellus family found the book of their enemy, they could destroy it, killing the remaining members of that line. For the curse dictated that, in the end, only one family would remain.
For all I knew, it was mostly all a fairy tale, reinvented as it was passed down from generation to generation. My mother couldn’t even tell me what powers the other lines supposedly possessed, other than that the Aelius family had something to do with light and life and the Selene family, darkness and death.
It’s dangerous to think the curse has been broken, Sorrel.
Why? We wouldn’t know how to destroy the other family’s book even if we did find it. Not like we had ever tried. I had no desire to.
Perhaps it’s like the binding ceremony: it only appears in the book once you’ve met the mortal you’re meant to marry.
You mean forced?
Yes, she let out a heavy breath.
My snow-white cat, Tara, jumped on my lap, pushing the book out of the way. She was an attention whore. I stroked her soft fur until she purred. Mom, even if I did find the other book, I could never destroy it. How could I kill anyone?
This is why I insist we stay apart. To lessen suspicion about who we really are. We don’t know the heart of the other family. What if they are willing to kill you . . . and me?
Why did she have to put it like that? How could I live with myself? Dad said I was meant to heal, not hurt.
And so you have, I’m sure to your detriment.
I curled up and held Tara close. There’s a man investigating me, a reporter, I admitted.
My mother went silent, but I felt the anger and worry inside of her. I told you to be careful.
I have been. I only help people when I feel like I’m supposed to. Which was pretty much all the time, but I hid that thought from her.