Cursed Read online

  “Greetings, Elea.” Her features were perfectly unreadable. Necromancers never showed emotion. Petra was so good at it, I sometimes wondered if she was human.

  “Greetings, Mother. Sorry if I woke you. I tried not to use too much power.”

  “Oh, I was already awake when I sensed your spell.” Her voice was so controlled, it was almost a monotone. “No one else noticed, I’m sure.” Her mouth thinned. “You worry far too much about your Sisters. They’re tougher than they look.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Petra was always warning me against emotional attachment. It wasn’t easy. After Rosie and Tristan died, the Sisters at the Zelle became my second family.

  “I came because I couldn’t help wondering what you were casting.” Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second before her face returned to its regular stony look. “Is that the Master Atlas?”

  I handed it to her, pride swelling through me. “Yes. I finally found it.”

  “Excellent work. You may just be the one to free us from Viktor.” As she said Viktor’s name, the rare spark of hatred gleamed in her features. Petra loathed the Tsar almost as much as I did.

  “I plan to, Mother.” Her faith in me meant the world.

  “You’ve been working on that spell for a week.” Petra sent a quizzical look to the Sentinel spirit. “Faith, has she been eating and sleeping?”

  I stepped between Petra and the Sentinel. “I’m fine,” I lied.

  Faith started mouthing a tirade while gesturing wildly. Clearly, she didn’t agree. Unfortunately, Petra was excellent at lip reading. “Faith says you’re in desperate need of a meal and sleep.” Faith waved her hand in front of her nose. “Oh, and a bath would be useful, as well.”

  Thank you for nothing, Faith. I steeled my features and addressed Petra with my best ‘I’m a tough Necromancer’ face. “I’m ready to go after the Tsar. If I leave right now, I’ll have almost a full week at the Midnight Cloister before he arrives.”

  Petra scanned me from head to toe. I knew what she saw. Tired face. Long snarled black hair. And my clothes? Grand Mistress robes were swaths of fabric held together by neatly tying hundreds of tiny ribbons. You were never supposed to have them be anything but perfect. I was a mess. Petra shook her head. “You aren’t leaving now, Elea.”

  I glared at my library Sentinel. “Faith is over-worrying, I don’t think—”

  Petra raised her hand and shot me a warning look. I quickly closed my mouth. “Why, Elea,” she said slowly. “You sounded a little irritated just then.”

  When it came to reading my moods, Petra was worse than Rosie, and that woman had raised me until I was fifteen. She was right, of course. I was tired and cranky. “Apologies, Mother.”

  “You need to keep a tighter rein on your feelings. I know you weren’t raised to our ways, but emotion is the enemy of a Necromancer. Remember that.”

  “I will, Mother.”

  Petra slowly lowered herself onto a bench made of rough-hewn wood. I swear, I could hear her bones creak with the movement. “Come here, show me your totem rings.”

  I obediently stepped before her and pointed out each ring in turn, beginning with my thumb. “This contains a spell to block Viktor’s magick.” I touched my fingers next. “Protection from harm, strength of stone, skeleton sword, and cluster of fireballs.”

  Petra eyed them all carefully. “They all look in order. You don’t need me to say this, but guard those with your life. If you lose them, they could be used to track you.” Petra drummed her nails on the bench beside her. I hoped that drill-time was over, but Petra kept going. “Recite to me what you know of the Tsar’s approach to battle.”

  I straightened my stance. “Viktor doesn’t like to fight. He had a few skirmishes right after he killed Tsar Dmitri. In those, Viktor mostly used fireball spells. Since that time, he’s kept legions of guards around, but they’ve never engaged any major enemy. His warriors have no magick, either.”

  This was something I hoped to find out more about at the Midnight Cloister. Viktor was oddly close with the Royals and their ruler, the Vicomte. In fact, Royals supplied most of the Tsar’s army. It was odd for Necromancers to form an alliance with those who didn’t have magick. Most of the Forgotten feared us, just like Wyatt had back on the farm.

  “And those who aren’t in his guard?” asked Petra. “What of the mages who wear his mark?”

  “There are some that he allows to roam the continent, but only so they can act as agents and recruit fresh Necromancers for his Monasteries and Cloisters. Not that we see any of those recruits come out as trained. The Cloisters and Monasteries are so closed off, there’s no telling how many Necromancers are left. Viktor doesn’t ask them to do anything, and they certainly don’t volunteer, either. After a mage gets his mark, they pretty much disappear.”

  It was quite clever for the Tsar to hide the Monasteries and Cloisters. As much as Commoners fear mages, they’d be enraged if the Brothers and Sisters were in serious trouble. Mages were the only ones who could tackle tough problems. We’ve ended civil wars and stopped the spread of every plague. There’s always been a love-hate relationship between Necromancers and the Forgotten.

  Petra shook her head. “You missed the part about Viktor and his experimentation.”

  Damn, I always forgot to mention that. Petra was continually going on about it, too. She had all sorts of theories that I kept meaning to pay attention to.

  “That’s right, hybrid magick,” I said. “The Tsar likes to experiment with mixing Necromancer energy with that of Creation Casters, who are the mages that control nature. There have been some documented cases of other mages trying to combine magick, but none of those attempts have resulted in anything useful. We don’t know what the Tsar has been able to accomplish.”

  Petra sighed. “You always miss his obsession with hybrid magick. The mark, the Tsar’s power… Both could flow from combining Caster and Necromancer energy.”

  “I’ll try to remember that, truly.” I didn’t really understand her focus on this side of the Tsar. It was rarely ever mentioned in any writings on the man. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure that ‘obsession’ was the way to describe his interest. And there was no evidence to connect the mark, either.

  Petra’s face took on a faraway look. “Since you’re about to leave, I think I need to make that lesson a little clearer.” She started untying the ribbons by her waistline. I couldn’t believe it. Necromancers never exposed their flesh to each other.

  “You don’t need to do that, Petra.” Whatever ‘that’ is.

  “On the contrary, it’s beyond time that I did.” Petra opened her robes and exposed her stomach. My brows drew together as her skin came into focus.

  I fought the urge to gasp.

  Petra’s skin was pockmarked with scarred-over holes. The burrow-marks wound around her lower ribs as well. “Look on this carefully, Elea. It is Viktor’s handiwork. Before he became Tsar, he was a rogue mage. He abducted me from a Sanctuary Fair while I was still a Novice.”

  There were always rogue Necromancers around, even now. My old enemy Wyatt wasn’t wrong to fear them. They traveled in Sanctuary Fairs, selling their services to anyone with coin. If you wanted to find unusual spellwork, fairs were the place to look. It wasn’t somewhere to visit without a good reason, though.

  “Viktor put me in a blinding spell and secreted me into his study. There, he brought out these tools…” She shivered. “Bone hooks covered in snake scales. He wanted to see how they affected a Necromancer.”

  My eyes widened. “That’s why you fear hybrid magick.” Necromancers used bone hooks to hang skeletons out for certain spells. The instruments were laced through with our power—it should be impossible to layer a Caster skin on them. I tapped my chin and thought through this news. “Viktor might have created something hybrid to make his mark. But why?”

  Petra quickly redid her ties. “He uses that mark and its hybrid magick to control the Necromancers who pledge fealty to him, of that I’m cert
ain.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But there are easier ways to control someone. Viktor’s already proven that curses to get people to do his bidding. He must be trying to do something else with his hybrid magick. Something that regular spells can’t get him.”

  “Whatever it is, that’s what you need to discover before you attack on Sunday.”

  “You’re right, I can’t fight what I don’t know. I’ll use my time before Sunday to inspect the Cloister. Try to determine what he’s using hybrid magick for.”

  “Good.” Petra sighed. “I’m glad we understand each other about that, at last.”

  Petra looked so thin and frail on the bench. I had the urge to hug her. She’d worked incredibly hard to get me ready for this moment. All the Sisters had. The Tsar had overlooked them as old, weak, and not worth the trouble of threatening into taking his mark. But every one of them was sharp as Petra. They’d trained me well. I took a half step forward and then stopped myself. “Uh, thank you, Petra.”

  She kept her features cool and composed, but I didn’t miss the slight hitch in her voice when she next spoke. “Viktor will pay.” She pulled a small blue envelope from her pocket. “I brought you a letter of introduction. With any luck, Berta is still Mother Superior at the Midnight Cloister. We’d exchanged letters as Novices. I wrote in here that you were on a pilgrimage to meet the Tsar and asked for her help. That used to be a very common occurrence. It shouldn’t raise any suspicion.”

  No, it shouldn’t. But I didn’t know what truly awaited me in the Midnight Cloister. I took the letter from her palm, anyway. There was only so much we could know without any insight into the Cloister itself. “Thank you again. I don’t know how I could ever repay you.”

  “How about getting a good night’s sleep?”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “Excellent. Then you won’t summon him?”

  ‘Him’ as in Tristan. The way my curse worked, if I spoke Tristan’s name during the day, then that would summon him into my dreams at night. He was always in flames, tortured, and screaming. It never made for a good rest.

  “I have to. I’ve memorized the spell from the Atlas. I’m on my way. He needs some hope.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, but I won’t stop you, either. You’re moving beyond my care.” She sighed. “You may leave the Cloister at dawn. I’ll ask the Sisters to skip our morning casting, so there will be no interference. We don’t want your transport spell becoming entwined with someone else’s by mistake.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I’d heard horrible stories of Necromancers transporting themselves into a tree or down to the ocean floor. Still, there was no need to disrupt the Sisters. “I can step outside the Cloister grounds. It’s no problem. Please keep to your schedule. The Sisters need their routine.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I do, and I want you to know… I appreciate you…” I shifted my weight from foot to foot, unable to find the words. “By the Sire, I know I’m not supposed to say these things, but I’ll miss you terribly.”

  “And I will you.” She stood quickly and fixed me with a serious look. I’d never seen such raw emotion on her face before. “Promise me one thing.”

  “Anything you wish.”

  “When you kill that bastard, tell him I trained you.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Consider it done.”

  Once I curled into my tiny bed, I expected my dreams to be about Tristan. After all, I’d said his name before I fell asleep. Normally, he and I would meet in my old farmhouse. Instead, I dreamt that I sprouted wings and flew into the starry sky. Wind flowed over my body, and I hummed with pleasure as the cool air caressed me. A vast and empty desert rolled below, a vista of golden sand that was patterned in delicate ripples.

  All of which was very strange.

  Usually, if my dreams didn’t take me to Tristan, then they’d send me wandering aimlessly through the Zelle, worrying myself sick over some nonsense question like ‘why did I show up nude to breakfast?’ But tonight, I might as well have a rope about me, the pull across the desert was so strong. There would be no meandering this time, and my nonsense worries were gone as well. I only had a real concern for my friend.

  Why wasn’t I with Tristan right now? Was our bond broken?

  My wings kept driving me toward a lone figure crouched before a fire. As I flew in closer, I saw that it was a man dressed in Caster leathers. He was well over six feet tall with brown hair and broad shoulders. I wanted to touch the ropes of muscle that wound down his arms.

  Wait a minute. Where did that thought come from?

  Only Necromancers who’d renounced the cloth had the desire for a mate and children. Grand Mistresses weren’t supposed to be attracted to the opposite sex at all. I certainly never had been before, even before I joined the Zelle.

  This man was dangerous. I wanted to fly away from him, but my wings only brought me nearer. Firelight cast deep shadows over the man’s rugged face, highlighting his square jawline, light beard, and bright green eyes. He stared into the fire, repeating the words of an incantation.

  “I call upon you,” he said. The rest of his spell was lost on the wind. A haze of red mist swirled about the ground, the unmistakable sign of a Creation Caster spell. One word carried above the noise. “Viktor.”

  I gasped. What would this Caster want with our Tsar? The man glanced up, his green eyes looking straight at me.

  No, through me.

  The man spoke the last words of his incantation—“so mote it be”—and lowered his head once more. The red mist of his spell disappeared.

  After that, the man, desert, and night sky all vanished. I found myself back in my old farmhouse. Now, this dream was familiar territory. I huffed out a relieved breath, knowing that Tristan would be here soon. Our connection was still intact.

  My kitchen looked the same, which was even more reassuring. Everything was neat and clean with bare plaster walls and simple wooden furniture. Tristan instantly materialized before the hearth. My soul warmed to see him. Like always, he wore his Captain’s uniform of a long blue coat with bright copper buttons over short trousers and tall boots. The flames licked about him, close enough to warm him, but not enough to burn.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Gods-damned curse. Every time I’d see Tristan, my dreams would always start off this way. My friend would look fine and healthy, but all too soon, the flames from the hearth would turn deadly. A bitter taste filled my mouth. This was my friend’s afterlife—burning to death, only to regenerate and burn again.

  We didn’t have long before the fire took hold.

  “Elea?” Tristan’s voice was low and ragged. “Are you really here?” His once-bright eyes stared blankly across the room.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  The flames from the hearth burned hotter, setting the back of Tristan’s coat on fire. On instinct, I reached toward him.

  “No,” Tristan said. “It’s bad enough that I have to suffer. I won’t have you burning yourself again.” He gritted his teeth against the pain. My hands curled into useless fists. I wanted to take all his agony away, but there was only one kind of comfort that I could offer.

  “I found the Master Atlas of Magick. I’ll be with Viktor soon.”

  His shoulders slumped with relief. “Thank the—”

  Suddenly, fire burst out from the hearth and enveloped Tristan whole. Every muscle in my body tightened. Tristan cried out, the pitiful sound slicing through the roaring flames. His flesh melted off in strips, exposing the bone underneath. My eyes stung.

  “I’ll kill the Tsar, Tristan.” I hoped he could still hear me. “You can count on it.”

  The fire and smoke grew thicker. Tears streamed down my cheeks as all too soon, Tristan was burned away.

  Chapter Three

  I woke up the next morning in my cramped cot. Like most places in the Cloister, the Sister’s dormitory was a snug and dark space that had been dug out of the mountainside. A single wooden wall block
ed out the elements while providing a window-hole for air and light. An external covered stairway connected this place to other rooms in the Zelle.

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to get my wits about me again. That dream with Tristan had been rough. It was hard to see in the dim light, but all the other beds in the dormitory looked empty. The Sisters must have left for morning spell-work already. My brows lifted with surprise. Most days, I was the first one awake. A gray-haired Sister stepped out of the shadows.

  “Ah, you’re up,” said Sister Constance. She had once been tall, but now her shoulders were hunched with age. Her long silver hair hung low over her black robes. Like all the Sisters, she moved and spoke like an emotionless statue come to life.

  “I overslept,” I said.

  “You summoned that Tristan. You shouldn’t have tired yourself, today of all days.”

  The rooms in the Zelle were always chilly, but even so, the temperature seemed to drop another twenty degrees. “Petra told you that I was leaving?” I’d hoped to sneak out without any goodbyes. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure if I could go.

  “We all know,” said Constance in her monotone. “We’re casting spells for you this morning. Strength and wisdom. I was only to stay until I saw you off.” A flicker of sadness tightened her face. “Good luck.” For a moment, I thought she might say something more, but she turned on her heel and strode away.

  “Thank you.” My voice wobbled with emotion. I didn’t want to leave my Sisters. They appeared detached and stiff, but underneath that, I knew any one of them would lay down her life for mine.

  I watched Constance march down the outer staircase and my heart sank. Time to kill the Tsar. I’d dreamed of this morning, expecting it to be a triumphal day where I smiled from ear to ear. After all, I was a Grand Mistress Necromancer now. I’d tracked down the Tsar. I had a fistful of totem rings that were loaded with spells to destroy him.

  But actually living this moment? Turns out, it was a lot harder than I thought. What I really wanted to do was crawl under my covers and hope everything went away on its own. Maybe another hero would take on Viktor. Maybe my curse would just spontaneously end.