Curses and Will Chapter 10: Chapter 4: I'll Protect Her Smile

Read chapter 10 of Curses and Will by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

Night settled over the palace in a kind of silence that had weight to it. The stars outside my window were clearer than anything I had memory of seeing, untouched by smoke or city light, scattered across the dark in numbers that made the sky look almost crowded. I sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the door, unable to make sleep come even though my body had every reason to want it. It wasn't restlessness exactly. It was something closer to a held breath. Somewhere in the palace, behind some other door, that thing was still floating above her like it had every right to be there, and some part of me kept circling back to it no matter what I tried to think about instead. Then, quiet and deliberate, a knock. I crossed the room and opened the door before I'd fully decided to. Annya stood in the corridor, a single small lantern in her hand, the flame inside it casting soft gold light up across her face. She'd changed out of the formal dress she usually wore during the day into something simpler, paler, closer to a robe than a gown. Her white hair was loose around her shoulders. Above her, the curse hung quieter than I'd seen it, almost sleeping, though its black eyes were still open. "You're awake," she said, like this surprised her slightly. "I could say the same." A small, tired smile crossed her face. "I don't sleep well most nights. I thought, since you were likely awake too, we might as well not be awake separately." I stepped back to let her in, and she crossed to the window, setting the lantern down on the sill, looking out at the same stars I'd been failing to find comfort in a few minutes earlier. "Jonathan told me what happened in the city," she said, not turning around. "The way you spoke up for him." "He didn't deserve what those people were saying." "No," she agreed. "He didn't. But people rarely care about what's deserved. They care about who's easiest to blame." She glanced at me sideways. "Thank you. For saying something. He would never tell me how much that mattered to him, so I'm telling you instead." I didn't know what to do with that, so I said nothing, and she let the silence sit a while before continuing. "Do you want to know what it's actually attached to," she said, tilting her head slightly toward the shadow above her, like she was gesturing at a piece of furniture rather than something that had eaten her entire family. "Or would you rather not." "I want to know." She nodded slowly, like she'd expected that answer and was relieved by it anyway. "It's not a curse in the way most people mean when they use that word," she said. "It isn't punishment for something my family did. It's older than my family. Older than this palace. It attaches itself to bloodlines that carry a particular kind of strength, the kind that doesn't announce itself loudly, the kind that just exists quietly underneath everything else a person is." She wrapped her arms loosely around herself. "It feeds on what's close to that strength. Takes it, slowly, the way damp takes a wall. My parents. My grandmother before them. It will keep taking until there's nothing left near me worth taking." "Is that why you don't keep people close." "I used to try," she said. "I stopped trying a long time ago. It seemed kinder to everyone involved." "And now?" She was quiet for a long moment. The shadow above her stirred faintly, restless again, like it didn't like the direction the conversation was heading. "Now you're here," she said. "And the curse hasn't reached for you yet, even though you can see it as clearly as I can. I don't fully understand why. Jonathan doesn't either, and he's spent longer studying it than anyone alive." "Maybe it doesn't see me as something worth taking." "Or maybe," she said, turning to look at me directly, "it senses something it can't easily get through." I didn't know how to answer that, so instead I told her the truth, plainly, the way I'd been learning slowly that this place seemed to reward more than careful evasion. "I