“And if we’re successful in finding her? What then? She hates us.”
“She’s confused,” Magnus said, an image of his younger sister appearing in his mind. “Grieving. She feels betrayed and lied to. If she knew that her home was in trouble, she would help us.”
“Are you sure about that?”
If Magnus were honest with himself, he’d have to admit he wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
“You must go to Auranos without me,” he spat out the words, as distasteful as they were necessary. “I can’t leave yet. I need to see this through to the end.”
She nodded. “That sounds like a good plan.”
His heart twisted into a vicious knot. “I’m glad you agree.”
“You are, are you?” Cleo’s cerulean eyes flashed with cold fire, and Magnus almost started at her harsh words. “You think that after all of this . . . ?” She threw her hands up in the air in lieu of finishing her sentence. “You are completely impossible, do you know that? I’m not leaving here without you, you idiot—”
His brows shot up. “Idiot?”
“—and that’s the end of this discussion. Got it?”
He stared at her, once again stunned by this girl and everything she said. “Cleo—”
“No, no more arguments,” she cut him off harshly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to clear my head. Away from him.” She tossed the last word at the king and, with a glare, marched away, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“I see such passion between you now,” the king said as he drew closer to his son, his lips twisting with distaste. “How terribly sweet.”
“Shut your mouth,” Magnus growled.
The king kept his gaze on the princess as she paced angrily nearby. Then he turned toward the guards. “I need to speak to my son in private. Give us space.”
All four guards immediately did as requested and moved away from Magnus and his father.
“Privacy?” Magnus scoffed. “I don’t think anything you have to say to me anymore warrants that.”
“No? Not even if it’s about your golden princess?”
Magnus’s hand was on the hilt of his sword in an instant, fury rising within him. “If you dare threaten her life again—”
“A warning, not a threat.” His father regarded his outrage with only weary patience. “The girl is cursed.”
Magnus was sure he hadn’t heard him correctly. “Cursed?”
“Many years ago, her father was involved with a powerful witch—a witch who didn’t take the news of his marriage to Elena Corso well, so she cursed Elena and any future offspring that they would die in childbirth. Elena nearly died giving her firstborn life.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No, she died with her second.”
Of course Magnus had heard about the former queen of Auranos’s tragic fate and had seen the portraits of Cleo’s beautiful mother in the hallways of the golden palace. But this couldn’t possibly be true.
“It’s said she suffered greatly before she finally passed.” The king’s voice had become not much more than a rasp. “But she was strong enough to see her newborn daughter’s face—and to name her after a wretched, hedonistic goddess—before death finally claimed her. And now this witch’s curse has surely been passed to that daughter.”
Magnus regarded his father with utter disbelief. “You’re lying.”
The king sent a fierce frown at Magnus. “Why would I lie?”
“Why would you lie?” he repeated, a dry laugh rising in his throat. “Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because you wish to manipulate me at every turn for your own amusement?”
“If that’s what you think . . .” The king flicked his wrist toward Cleo, who was speaking with Enzo now and sending impatient looks toward Magnus and his father. The hem of the scarlet gown she wore peeked out from beneath the dark green fabric of the cloak she’d stolen the night before from a Kraeshian guard. “Get her pregnant and you’ll witness her die in anguish, lying in a deep pool of her own blood as she brings your spawn into this world.”
Magnus had all but stopped breathing. What his father claimed couldn’t possibly be true.
But if it was . . .
Cleo began to close the distance between them, her hood down, her long blond hair fanned over her shoulders.
“Witches casts curses,” Gaius said to Magnus quietly. “Witches are also known to break curses. All the more reason for you to come with me to see your grandmother.”
“You tried to kill me and the princess.”
“Yes, I did. So the decision of how you’ll proceed lies with you now.”
Cleo reached Magnus’s side with Enzo behind her, and she frowned as she looked between father and son. “What is it? Not more plans for me to hide myself away in Auranos, I hope.”
The horrific image of Cleo lying dead on bloody sheets was now locked in Magnus’s mind, her eyes glazed and lifeless while nearby a baby with cerulean eyes cried endlessly for its mother.