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“So I came back.”
I ducked my head, cheeks flaming. I never knew what to say when he spoke to me this way. Nothing had changed on that score.
I cleared my throat. “The Meadow, huh? I’m surprised Meya let you anywhere near the place.” Smiling, I poked his side to let him know I was kidding. “Figured it would’ve been the Burning Plains for you.”
Alisdair chuckled. “I’m not a monster, little bird. I only look like one. Meya knows that better than anyone.”
I know it too, Alisdair.
“Her name was Constance.” Alisdair gazed at the horizon that was no longer there—because of the walls and the darkness. “It’s rare for humans to be born with magic. Exceedingly rare, but not impossible. When they are, the women always discover their power. It’s in them. A part of them. It can’t be denied.
“Whereas for the human men, when they’re born with the power to draw magic out of their environment, they more often than not never know. Why would they? They don’t have crystals, runic knowledge, or any of the tools needed to access their power. They don’t even know they should.
“That’s why when magic was discovered, and the humans did what humans have always done to the different, they only came for the women.”
My quick, working fingers slowed. “Came for them? Do you mean they...?”
“They hunted them down and killed them.”
I hissed. Mama said our land was protected by magic—concealing us from human eyes, weapons, technology, and anymethod they might use to find Elva. But she always said that if these protections somehow failed and I ever crossed paths with one, I had to run. Run so hard and fast, I didn’t stop until there was half a world between us.
“Among the different, Constance was even rarer than rare,” Alisdair said. “She was born with incredible power. More than anyone I’ve ever known. More than Gisela Raekin. More than me.”
My brows blew. Someone more powerful than the most powerful man walking the earth? I couldn’t conceive of that.
“She was blessed, if not for the fact she was born in the wrong time and the wrong place.”
“They tried to kill her.”
“They did kill her,” he dropped. “They burned her at the stake. Her flesh bubbled off her bones while they laughed, cheered, and toasted their good works.”
“Meya, take it! That’s barbaric.” I shook my head. “That poor woman.”
“Don’t feel sympathy for her just yet,” he gritted, wiping away my mask of sorrow. “You see, people don’t understand curses. Not even the fae. We study them, we use them, we live under them, but we don’t know how they’re born, or why. And fewer know that a curse doesn’t need incantations, potions, or even intent to be born. All it needs is the hatred in one’s heart to take root.”
Understanding dawned. “When they burned her. She cursed them.”
“She didn’t know that was what she was doing when she screamed and raged at them, swearing revenge. But with all of that raw, bottomless power swirling within her, it responded,” he said. “When the dawn broke and the fire was nothing but smoking cinders, Constance stepped off her funeral pyre, and left behind a sea of corpses.”
“Her murderers? They died and she lived? How?”
“Not even I fully understand her curse. Near as I could figure, whatever someone tries to do to her, it’s turned around and done to them. Stab her and your chest splits open instead. Burn her and your skin chars and bubbles. Slap her and the pain explodes in your cheek. Kill her... and you die. Die in the same method and manner you chose for her. And it didn’t end there.”
“It didn’t? But what more could the curse do?”
“After her murderers died, they weren’t allowed the peace of waking up in the Meadow. It’s how she healed and survived their attacks. In that moment, she’d steal and eat their souls. The soul became pure, raw, magical power for her—making her stronger. While the would-be assassin became nothing more than an empty husk.”
I whistled. “Wow. That’s awful—for her attackers. It doesn’t sound like a curse for her.”
“It was, Ana. As you know, Meya demands balance. She will settle for nothing less than order and harmony in nature, and because of what Constance made of herself—an immortal, all-powerful, souleater—Meya birthed the means to destroy her.”
“What was it?”
“Fire.” Our own fire seemed to crackle louder, dancing in his eyes. “Has to be fire from a burning oak, the same wood her stake was made from, but oak is easy enough to acquire. Everywhere she went, she was hunted down, chased, and besieged by torch-carrying mobs. She could stop the people, but Meya wouldn’t let her magic put out the fire when it started.”
I thought of Alisdair ordering his servants to destroy the purple flowers instead of doing it himself. The All Mother was exacting in her rules.
“That’s why the night she and her lover woke to a room on fire, she couldn’t save him. She couldn’t stop it.”
