The Crown of Oaths and Curses (The Mortal Fates #1)

by J. Bree

When you send your list of supplies to import from the Western Fyres, I suggest adding some plants to it. I can grow them here in the garden, and then I’ll be able to heal without foraging around the Goblin Lands for scraps.” Her tone is flat and calm, but her words rake at my ego, already in shreds from Roan’s ordeal. “You speak as though you're moving in.”

The color of his lips made me think he was dead, but even now his hue is better, closer to health. The pallor must’ve been a reaction to the poison, not the blood loss or organs hit by the two arrow shafts still embedded.

“I’ll go insane if you lock me in this room without something to do, and I suppose you've had more than enough raving witches in your time. I'll play out in the garden, grow some herbs, brew some tinctures, and tend to the injured. What harm could it do?”

Her fingers are careful as she eases the wood from his chest—gentle but firm. She has experience with such things, an...

“I needed the time to adjust. I wasn’t prepared for how bad things had gotten here in my absence, and I left one war only to travel home to another. I just needed to collect myself.”

It doesn't feel like a real answer, but it's the only one she gives as she tends to Roan's wounds and slowly pieces him back together as competently as she'd walked into his wife's bedroom and broken a centuries-old curse.

Soren and Reed both watch me, murmuring to each other low enough that I can't hear them, but I'm too focused to care about their opinions.

The life of a husband and father weighs heavy on me, especially after nights of caring for his family and hearing Airlie’s excited anticipation for her husband’s return.

Prince Soren shakes his head. “There are no other healers to help you. If there were, you’d be assisting them.” Even after he's watched me dig poison barbs out of his best friend's chest, he still has the nerve to hurl around such words.

He looks exhausted. In the long weeks since I arrived at Port Asmyr, I haven’t ever seen him falter. He’s been furious, enraged, cold, completely unreadable as he faced the Unseelie Court, in command and even weary as he’s dealt with the games and gossip, but nothing like this.

The cold and cruel Savage Prince is now nothing more than a false rumor in my mind, the gossip of courts and the petty creatures within, and in his place is the very real and compelling Prince Soren.

I see far too much of the soldiers I’d come to love and respect in the Northern Lands within him, an integrity and honor that cannot be faked, and it only makes his distaste for my people all the more cutting to me.

I’ve seen the worst of what war can do to a male, respected and loved many who fought on the front lines, but there’s something about that red streak that makes my heart pound harder in my chest.

You saw the desperation the curse plunged us into and used your magic to exploit our weakness.” It’s the first time any of his tirades have made perfect sense to me.

it’s warped his view of the entire race of witches.

By his age, I know that he's known nothing but conflict with my race, and I don't blame him for that, but I do blame him for assuming we're all the same.

There are no black markings on my face or my arms. There's no raving madness within me, no fire put there by Kharl Balzog and stoked until I'm nothing but a vessel of his ha...

Prince Soren knows that I left this kingdom. We spoke long ago, when I was barely more than a witchling, through our mind connection, and he ...

How many other witches have been slain by him and his people without question, purely for the silver eyes in their head? Pemba didn’t know my fate, but he was obsessed and furious at the rumors of what the Savage Prince was doing in the Southern Lands, hunting down every last witch...

If the rumors are to be believed, this man killed them all regardless.

“In the forest of madness? How did the Goblin King know you have family there—or was that a lie as well?” A ripple of irritation works its way down my spine, the casual dismissal of my sacred home a greater insult than any other he's thrown at me.

Just because it's outside your knowledge doesn't make it false.”

Roan is strong and determined on the table, still breathing and fighting to return to his wife and family. I will fight with him for that too.

It’s like a slap to the cheek, a reminder that I didn’t just flee the conflict of the Southern Lands. I ran from him; I ran the moment the Seer spoke his name and the fate that tied us together.

The Fates knew I wouldn’t be able to face Kharl and help to fix the kingdom as I was, they knew I’d run to the Northern Lands and become the witch I am today.

I took his pain away and absorbed it into myself, burning my magic stores a little so I wouldn’t have to feel it, but I can't keep up the connection while I’m elsewhere in the castle. Not without leaving behind a trail of light and glowing brighter than the full moon on a clear midwinter night, and I think I’ve pushed the high fae far enough for today.

There's nothing here, not enough food to get through the week let alone the coming winter, and I curse under my breath at how close they’ve come to ruin.

Thank the Fates the Goblin King changed his mind about the trading route—whatever opportunity he saw in Prince Soren might just save Yregar. There's nothing within the cupboards that can help.

Firna hovers behind me, and when I stand once more and shake my head, she frowns, deep lines between her brows as she presses a hand to her forehead once more. She’s no longer afraid to show her true emotions around me, the prim façade gone.

Maybe the bond that I felt in the birthing room wasn't just one sided; perhaps Firna and Airlie felt it as well.

“The people here are afraid of you. The stories they've all been told are old, older than most of them are, especially the servants within the castle. They know that witches aren't a threat only to them, that being known to be friendly to one is to flirt with death. The high fae make no exceptions…even the Seers are gone now.”

I have half a mind to walk back into that healer's quarters and throw these words in Prince Soren’s face. How dare he sit there and lecture me about our fates with all the evil his people have wrought against my own?

I swallow around the lump in my throat, grief seizing me so hard that my chest aches with every breath. The covens are gone, all of them either killed or driven out. Thousands of innocent lives, witchlings and the el...

My fate has led me here to save a kingdom that has shown my people only the very worst of injustices. The desperation of the forest is an echo in my mind, and I can’t help bu...

The witches are gone, the survivors may never return, the land may continue to decline because the b...

A filthy witch helping another high-fae prince, even at great personal cost, because none of the high fae have ever given a blessed Fates-fuck about the innocent witches of this kingdom.

Kharl Balzog’s deceptions only swayed the weakest from our path—the rest wanted nothing to do with his madness. I know my role in honoring this land, do any of you?”

I ignore Prince Soren’s presence in the corner, knowing well that if I open my mouth right now, a curse will fall from my lips and his life will be forfeit. The land would welcome his blood spilled in sacrifice, but the Fates would be swift in their own reply to my disobedience.

It doesn’t matter what the high fae have or haven’t done. The Fates have spoken and I have no choice but to obey.

None of these people have changed their opinions of me or my kind. I could save a thousand royal babies and still be loathed regardless.

I don't want to live with such rage within me either, choking and consuming me until I'm nothing but vengeance and fury.

There’s censure in his voice, but a wave of satisfaction rolls over me. I’m glad he heard me, glad the words made their way to his high-fae ears, and I hope they haunt his every moment until he never knows peace again, just as my people have been haunted.

My skin tingles as the magic passes through the planters around me, still filled with wilting and dead remnants of a once thriving garden. The dead plants begin to fall away to the ground as the earth within them churns, the soil reviving as my gift of life is multiplied tenfold around me.

There's no saving the dead crops, but I've renewed the life within, giving the earth the ability to prosper once more. The milk thistle will grow now, and any other plants I find. The problem, of course, is finding them.

Even in the calm wake of my exchange, my temper simmers at his reaction. Any act of magic is distasteful to him, but I hold a palm out toward the gardens around me, silent as I gesture at the stark transformation I’ve wrought with a single act of giving and irreverent to his misplaced scorn.

Where dry and ashy dirt once lay, forgotten and sucked dry, now rich and abundant soil lies ready to nurture life.

The first small buds of weeds have started to peek out, a nuisance for later but a positive sign for now. The very air in the garden has changed, the scent of life here once more, and even withou...

This is what the high fae have forgotten. This is why the land withers. Every innocent witch you killed, every one of my kind who chose to hold to our traditions and reject Kharl’s war, all of them gave themselves to the land, over and over again. All of them lived in the cycle of life, and you murdered them.

Senseless killings because the high fae trust only their own, care only for themselves and those who they exploit. This is why your people are ruined. Not me.

The resolute way that she can disregard me while I’m painfully aware of her is infuriating but there’s nothing I can do about it, not without making my own obsession known.