SWNOVELXO Chapter 10: Chapter 10: The Curse Wears My Face
Kaelith moved through the palace with purpose.
Not the kind of royal procession people bowed for-this was different. His steps were quick, his eyes sharper than usual. He didn't wait for guards to follow. He didn't speak to servants. He ignored his steward calling his name from the end of the corridor.
He didn't have time for rituals.
He needed truth.
There were only two people in this palace who knew anything about ancient magic-the kind that lived in bloodlines and burned through dreams. One of them was the Royal Historian, a recluse named Sareth who hadn't left the east tower in five years.
And Kaelith was on his way there now.
In the lower library, Elara stood in front of a wall that shouldn't exist.
She had returned to the Volundari chamber-but now something was different.
The wall behind the pedestal rippled like a curtain. She pressed her hand to it.
Warm.
Then cold.
Then nothing.
A single phrase echoed in her mind.
"The curse is older than the palace. Older than the name Kaelith. It wears your face because it was written in your blood."
She didn't know where the voice came from, but it was hers.
Somewhere-maybe from another life.
She took a breath and stepped through the wall.
The east tower was quiet, save for the hum of thousands of books that hadn't been touched in centuries. Dust floated like ghosts through light shafts from broken windows.
Kaelith entered without knocking.
Sareth didn't look up. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by scrolls and bones. His skin was paper-thin, eyes dark hollows. Hair like dried grass.
"Ah," the old man said, still not looking up. "The dreamer has come."
Kaelith stopped cold.
"You know about the dreams?"
Sareth gave a hollow chuckle. "I know more than you'll want to believe."
Below, beneath the illusion-wall Elara had passed through, a hall of stone stretched forward. Torches lit themselves one by one as she walked.
At the center stood a woman-tall, robed in black with skin like cracked porcelain and lips painted with ash.
"You've come back again," the woman said.
"Elara of Flame. Elara of Falling."
"You know who I am?"
The woman tilted her head. "I've known all your deaths."
"Who are you?"
"A memory that escaped the curse."
Upstairs, Kaelith crouched beside Sareth.
"I saw her," he said quietly. "In the chapel. She didn't say her name, but I knew her. I don't know why."
Sareth finally looked at him. His pupils were clouded with age-but filled with knowing.
"Because you killed her. And loved her. In seven lives."
"Because you are the boy made of forgetting. And she is the girl made of fire."
"Because you were cursed by the gods you no longer believe in."
Kaelith leaned back. "That's impossible."
Sareth smiled. "So is love that survives death."
Elara stepped closer to the mysterious woman in the hidden chamber.
"I want to end the curse."
"Then you must remember the first name he called you."
"And he must remember the first lie he ever told you."
"I don't know either of those things."
"Then it will kill you again."
Elara clenched her fists. "Not this time."
Kaelith stood from the historian's floor, heart pounding. "Where do I find her again?"
Sareth's answer was immediate.
"Where all curses begin. The garden with no roses. The place you buried her first name."
Kaelith didn't understand it yet.
But he knew where to go.
The south garden. The one sealed after the fire. The one no one visited anymore.
As he rushed from the tower, a shadow stepped out from behind a column.
A man in a silver-trimmed coat, eyes sharp like razors, whispered into a small rune-stone.
"The prince has begun the return."
"Prepare the seal."
In the hidden room below the palace, Elara finally asked the question that had burned through every life.
"Who cursed us?"
The woman didn't blink.
"You did."