Wow, talk about being a Debbie Downer.
Not that I didn’t believe Kasia was capable of that sort of thing. If it were true and the Cursed One did somehow have the power to destroy us, and it was showing up now of all times, then you could bet Kasia would be trying to get her grubby fingers on it. Ever since her last failure to breach the Academy, I’d known it was only a matter of time before she tried again.
“How does that work?” Colson rumbled. “What can the Cursed One do to us?”
“It’s not what the Cursed One can do; rather, what the Society could do if they found it,” Master Deltroy said.
“You keep saying ‘it’,” I said, exasperated. “But again, what is it?”
“An excellent question, Skylar,” a familiar voice said behind me.
I spun to find Lucien—technically Headmaster Lucien, but since he was like a second father to me the title sounded weird—entering the classroom. It was easy to tell he was every bit Asher’s dad. Asher might have oozed charm and had (don’t tell him I said this) stunningly good looks, but Lucien was undoubtedly where he’d gotten both.
Lucien strode gracefully over to us like he was dancing rather than slipping between books and stepping over maps. Per usual, he wore an elegant robe that was completely impractical and way, way too colorful to be normal, yet it somehow completed his image. His shimmering blonde hair was swept back, his smile so bright I was sure astronomers had accidentally mistaken it for a star going supernova.
“Headmaster Lucien!” Master Deltroy said. “What a pleasant surprise!”
“The strangest thing happened,” Lucien said, giving each of us nods of greeting. “I was performing my normal headmasterly duties when I overheard something odd, a rumor from some of the students returning from practical hours: They said they saw a house, with a figure inside, showing up in the oddest places. While we’re all not strangers to the peculiarities of magic, this seemed strange even by magical standards. I figured I might wish to consult an expert.”
“Absolutely, Headmaster Lucien!” Master Deltroy said, blushing slightly from the praise. “As it happens, these forward-thinking youngsters just happened to be in here for the very same reason.”
Youngsters?
Lucien regarded each of us, one eyebrow slightly raised. “Is that so? Am I to assume, then, that you also saw this house and its occupant?”
“It was a ways off, but yeah,” I said.
“And it was…more like a mansion than a house,” Mia added.
“The appearance of the exterior is not important, so much as what it contains,” Master Deltroy said. “The Fae always seem to favor flashiness over anything that might be more practical.”
Lucien still hadn’t taken his eyes off us. “Of course you four saw it. If there’s one thing I’m quickly learning about this little posse, it’s that there’s not an ounce of potential trouble out there that you won’t somehow—often willingly—stumble into.”
Asher crossed his arms. “To be fair, that’s mostly Skylar.”
“Hey!”
The corner of Lucien’s mouth quirked up, though he was clearly trying his best to maintain a stoic expression. “Master Deltroy, care to enlighten us about what this architecturally pleasing anomaly manifesting itself in front of our students is?”
The pages of his books blurred as Master Deltroy enthusiastically flipped through them. “Yes, yes, absolutely! Let’s see…ah, here’s something at last. There isn’t much of our text on it, you understand. The Fae have been quite tight-lipped about the whole thing.”
“About an ancient, super destructive evil?” I said. “No way.”
Mia elbowed me.
“Yes, it’s rather aggravating,” Master Deltroy said, not paying a bit of attention. “But! Here we go…”
He pressed his fingers against a line of text.
“Let’s make this lesson a little more practical.” Lucien snapped his fingers. The air blurred with discharged magic and suddenly copies of the words were literally flying off the page, morphing into images and shapes that danced around our heads.
“Of course, of course! Marvelous!” Master Deltroy said. He started reading, and as he did, the images began to move, shaping themselves in line with his words.
“The Cursed One has been around for ages.” Master Deltroy’s voice dropped to that of a narrator telling a scary story around the campfire. I spun, taking in each of the new images as they appeared. There was one of a gothic-looking mansion, almost exactly like the one I’d seen, with a faded figure sketched inside. But as I continued turning, the mansion vanished, replaced by a smaller house, then a cabin, then a cave, then nothing at all except a snarl of thorns, all of them surrounding that same, eerily stoic figure in the center. “It has been around as long as the Fae, maybe as long as time. Some believe it was one of the original creations, a pure element that broke off during the universe’s birth and manifested itself into a being.”
The images began colliding together into one mass, the numerous dwellings vanishing but the figure remaining the same until there was nothing around it but cold blackness. The classroom had turned dark, the faintest light shining from the figure’s back, like the sun behind the moon. I peered closer at it, as though that might help me figure out what I was looking at. Strangely enough, the image looked…familiar. Call me crazy but the dark, empty space, the lone figure trapped all alone in a place cut off from everywhere else? It reminded me of the Prince.
I knew that wasn’t possible, but I couldn’t help thinking it. Not that I was sorry for the Prince or anything. The guy probably listed ‘Devilishly Evil’ at the top of his resume. However, what must it be like to be this way? To stay in a place, alone, while the world moved on without you?
What kind of power must a being have to get it sealed away like that?
“Alone it has stayed,” Master Deltroy said. “Alone it has waited, unable to take part in the onward march of the universe, doomed to remain the same for all time…”
“But what is it?” Asher said, his voice low, almost hesitant. “What does the Cursed One actually do?”
“Let’s see, let’s see…Ah! The Cursed One is believed to grant whomever finds it immense power, power that would be a force to be reckoned with, power that could potentially bring even the strongest to their knees.”
The light in the room suddenly turned red. The Cursed One began to shrink as, beside it, a new figure rose, this one looking suspiciously like Kasia, though that could have just been my overactive imagination.
The Cursed One melted away like a candle placed too close to an open flame. The new figure began to glow, waves of energy emanating off them. The red color deepened. Red like a sunset. Then red like blood. My eyes were starting to water, as though I was staring directly into the sun. I wanted to look away but found myself mesmerized.
“Power that could bring destruction,” Master Deltroy’s voice rose. “Power to end life. Power that—”
“Lots of power, it seems,” Lucien said. He stepped forward and sifted through each image with a flick of his hand. I didn’t really see the point. All of them were pretty crudely drawn, like something you might find on the wall of a cave, and it wasn’t like they told us anything, anyway.
“What do we do?” Mia said, voice small. The whole thing about ‘immense power’ must have freaked her out. “Is there a way to stop it?”
“Not without finding it,” Lucien said. “Which, with the way it’s playing international hide and seek, seems to be what it’s wanting us to do. Master Deltroy, do you have anything else for us?”
“There is…uh…” Master Deltroy flipped to the end of his book. “I’m afraid not. Not in this text. I’ve begun checking the Masters’ section in the library, but as I said before there is very little we have on it. I’m doubtful I’ll find any more.”
“The Fae were trying to hide it,” Colson said. “This is probably all we’re going to get.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mia said, face scrunched in thought. “If the Fae knew it was such a horrible thing, why didn’t they just kill it when they had the chance? The longer it’s kept alive the bigger chance it has at being used by the wrong people.”
“I believe I might have an answer to that.” Master Deltroy had pulled out another slender volume. “It seems there’s a reason it’s called the Cursed One.”
“You mean besides being locked up in a variety of different places for thousands of years?” I said.
“It seems,” Master Deltroy went on, ignoring me (as most Masters did), “that the Cursed One is neither wholly good nor wholly bad.”
“I thought you said it was evil?” Asher said.
“That’s how the Fae records describe it,” Master Deltroy said, growing excited once more. “There are other secondhand accounts such as this that describe its nature as neutral. How fascinating! It has the potential to be one of the worst evils imaginable, but hasn’t yet become so.”
“Which means the Fae probably didn’t feel right killing it,” Colson said.
“But they were fine with locking it away forever,” I snapped. “That doesn’t make any sense. It has the power to grant someone all this power, but it’s not bad? If it hasn’t done anything wrong then why keep it locked up in the first place?”
“Because the potential’s there,” Asher said. He’d crossed his arms, turning from each of the different images still floating around our heads.
“But it hasn’t done anything,” I insisted.
He finally looked at me, a look that told me I was saying something that didn’t make a lot of sense. “If you had something that could potentially end the entire world—or at least give someone else the ability to—would you wait around to see what it turned into?”
“I would at least give it the benefit of the doubt!”
“The benefit to become—”
“While philosophizing is fun to do in your free time, the fact remains clear,” Lucien said, stepping between us. He lay a gentle hand on Master Deltroy’s shoulder. “Do you think the Cursed One will continue to show up?”
“Undoubtedly,” Master Deltroy said without missing a beat. “I don’t know whether it’s because of these Society people, or that the Fae’s charms have begun to fade once more, but the Cursed One knows it’s being sought. It wants to be free.”
“Almost like it was locked up for no good reason,” I muttered. Asher shot me an annoyed look.
“That settles it, then,” Lucien said, brushing the hem of his robe aside as he swept around to face us. “I’ll assign the Masters to begin searching right away, starting with places of high magic concentration. That seems to be what draws it. With any luck, we can find it before the Society does.”
“Wait—you mean—” I looked between my friends and Lucien as he began to walk out of the classroom. “We’ll look too!”
Lucien paused. He sighed. I braced myself for an argument. I was kind of an expert of getting told I couldn’t do things, that dealing with dangers like the Society were too big for me to handle. As though we weren’t being sent all over the world already to deal with things like giant boars.
Okay, so giant boars weren’t exactly the same thing as a murderous Society with a possible psychopath at the helm, but whatever.
Lucien sighed again. “If your mother were back at the Academy right now I’d tell her to try to talk some sense into you.”
“I don’t need sense—”
“That you don’t. You wouldn’t take it anyway.”
I frowned as Lucien’s eyes glittered mischievously. “I agree, Skylar, that you and Asher—all of you, in fact—are getting stronger. Dare I say even more mature. I won’t be naïve enough to claim that, after the events of a few months ago, you aren’t capable of handling whatever danger is thrown your way. But there’s a very real difference between being forced to handle danger and actively seeking it out.”
“I don’t seek it out,” I protested.
Lucien cocked an eyebrow.
“Okay, maybe I did. Still sometimes do,” I conceded.
“You do but, perhaps, more often danger finds you first. After all,” —he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder— “your mother made many enemies. With that fact, you’re more prone to attracting the less desirable sort of people than most.”
I had to agree with him there. My famous mom, Aspen Rivest, the co-savior, co-founder, False Mage, Null, whatever you wanted to call her, was about as much of a celebrity as you could get in the supernatural world without being Bigfoot or Puff the Magic Dragon. However, even as her daughter, I hadn’t had any major issues with being targeted until Kasia came along, but boy had that woman made up for it in droves.
“I—we—want to help find it, Lucien,” I said.
“Right now, I don’t think any of us are going to find it,” Lucien said. “Hopefully it’ll come to us.”
“Right. Sure. As long as we keep it away from the Society. No matter what.”
Lucien nodded. “On that we agree. We’ll have to, because it sounds like if they get their hands on the Cursed One we’ll all be in a whole lot of danger.”