The Curse of Ophelia (The Curse of Ophelia, #1)

by Nicole Platania

A place where we bore the weapons we were born to carry and honed the skills that should have delivered us our birthright. Had the war not devastated our people. Had the Curse not been cast against our bloodlines. Had the Undertaking not been forbidden for our future.

I didn’t know it was possible for a broken heart to repeatedly sever, but mine found a way.

“We spoke the Words ages ago, Phel. It’s time.” The Warrior’s Words. The declaration of commitment we had proclaimed privately to each other on my sixteenth birthday, before war broke out and the Curse had tilted our lives toward madness.

He had many names: Malakai Augustus Blastwood, Mali, Destined Warrior Child, Future Revered of the Mystique Warriors—but Augustus was mine.

There were always eyes on us, children of the two most powerful Mystique bloodlines. Augustus, the son of our current Revered, and me, firstborn daughter of Bacaran Alabath.

us. White bricks and debris surrounded our feet, but when I looked at him, everything felt okay. We were rebuilding. The Curse was gone. Soon, we would complete the Undertaking, and all would be right.

“I love you,” I whispered as I left him. “Until the stars stop shining,” he responded.

Mystique Warriors had three causes for tattoos. Each was etched by ink imbued with minerals of the Mystique Mountains, giving life to nearly unbreakable promises. The Bond was the first to be received, given after completing the Undertaking. A mountainous symbol printed into the skin at the back of the neck to mark success and everlasting commitment to our cause.

The Band came next, a design that declared rank to the world. Different forces received variations of entwined florals and vines. The highest bore a delicate band of budding peonies connected by a thin strand. This was the rendition Augustus and I would one day receive. As you traveled lower in the ranks, the flowers became less rare, the vines more brutish, but the tattoos equally as beautiful.

The Bind was the last a warrior was supposed to receive. The artwork was personal, decided between you and the partner you chose to speak the Words to. An irrevocable symbol of the commitment that was to be the final step in that agreement. Though...

The ink merely lay on the surface, but this substance was more than that. It contained the essence of the Mystique Mountains, and it was that very magic that I felt entering my bloodstream, weaving itself through my bones and being.

With each stroke of the needle against his skin, warmth spread through me. The dancing string within my own blood was mated with its match, the two spiraling together, a pair promised for eternity.

It was a small symbol, something understated to the outside world but a constant in our lives. A simple recreation of a star, with four large points and smaller ones blinking out between them, complete with tiny detailing that made the star appear to twinkle like those above us.

“My North Star,” Augustus whispered, bending to brush his lips over the freshly inked spot on my arm and sending shivers down my spine. “So that we may always come back to each other.”

“The Curse was placed on the Mystique Warriors during the war, my dear. The leader of the Engrossian Warriors, Queen Kakias, recruited a sorcia from the Northern Isles for this purpose.”

As the only other major clan, their jealousy of our mountains was the root of all my misery. Their wicked queen’s vendetta against us was the reason the Undertaking was suspended.

“It targeted our people at our most imperative source. The place where our power lives. Our blood. If one was plagued, it was a guarantee that anyone who shared their blood would be, too, starting with the eldest. It was also contagious, should you come in contact with the blood of a Cursed victim.”

our people were born of the Angels. The First Revered Mystique Warrior, Damien, ascended as an Angel himself, as did the prime leaders of the other six clans. No matter what fate has befallen us, we are still Damien’s faithful servants and he our guide. We are still protected by the Spirits of past Mystique Warriors. We are still us, regardless of it all. Sometimes, change is okay.”

Though my father’s eyes heated, I did not back down. He may no longer see a future for me as a warrior, but I could see nothing else. “I was not made for skirts, Father. I was made for swords.”

“Truths aren’t always pleasant, Tolek. It has been two years of this, and we must move forward.” Her entire frame drooped. “Malakai is dead. He died during the last Undertaking.”

The Spirits may grow greedy should a blessed soul cross their path, choosing to claim it as their own, harboring it as a true life among the dead in their realm.

Blessed. Could Malakai have been deemed a blessed soul by the Spirits and now reside—alive and whole—within the Spirit Realm of the volcano?

“For every day my heart beats, I’m yours. My heart, my soul—it’s all yours.” “I’m yours,” I repeated. His lips brushed mine. “I will love you until the stars stop shining.”

Malakai’s spear. It shouldn’t be here. He had taken it with him when he left for the Undertaking, and it would have gone with him into the Spirit Volcano.

Ophelia Tavania Alabath, his promise echoed in my mind, memories of soft kisses brushing across each of my cheeks, my partner in life, from this day forward. I offer my heart, my soul, and my hand, that all will be yours until the Spirits beckon us into darkness.

my grandmother gripped my wrist between her darkened, weathered hands. “Twenty is the year my people begin their lives. It is the year you accept your role in society, whatever it may reveal itself to be.”

“The Soulguiders are powerful spiritual readers, leaders, and healers, guiding mystical beings to their final rest. At the age of twenty, our paths are made clear.”

The Soulguiders, Starsearchers, Seawatchers, Bodymelders, and Mindshapers were instrumental to the survival of magic on Ambrisk. They helped ensure the balance of power, but it was the Mystiques and Engrossians given the heavier tasks of guarding sources of magic, while the others guided it or read it, each in their own way.

I adjusted my grip on the spear, searching for the words to explain the sensation when I touched it. “It feels like there’s something in me that’s reaching out to it, and something within it struggling to get to me. Like threads through my veins—tugging. Like my blood was a river whose current was being warped.”

“But it’s Malakai’s spear by the hands of fate,” she mused, one hand fiddling with the charm on her necklace. “Maybe he’s somehow tied to it—like it’s connected to his spirit, so it calls to the tethers within the Bind.”

“I feel as if a piece of me will always be missing while he’s gone. It’s that lost piece that keeps me from believing what you all believe.” I’d not dared divulge those words to anyone.

“You are brighter than this, Ophelia. Meant to be a shining star among us. But since he left, your light has dimmed.”

“My heart broke the day Malakai left,” he whispered. “But it has continued to break every day since, seeing what his absence has done to you.”

It was a delicate patch of green-and-gray webbing, starting in the veins of my wrist and working outward. The visible progress was subtle, isolating itself to the wrist for now, but it was digging deeper. It seeped into my body, my blood. Contaminating it. A slow crawl through my veins as it ripped apart what was most precious. The Curse.

It had been two days, and the Curse had barely spread. Odd and inexplicable, as the Curse should have ravaged my blood by now.

I squinted through the golden light that poured into every corner of the previously dark room, disoriented but prepared to fight. The rays resembled physical sunlight, but brighter. Inhuman and unnatural, yet the purest substance in existence. Through the burning beams I saw a figure that brought me to my knees. An Angel.

Every inch of bare skin it touched heated, my blood pumping faster in response to the ancient source of magic. Angellight—the substance of myth that no living warrior was blessed to see. Or so legends told. Born of the magic of the mountains, it was pure power only the seven Angels ascended to.

This was Damien, the First Revered Warrior, the sire of the Mystique Warrior Clan. And he had appeared to me.

as warriors we kept no gods. Other races of magical beings on Ambrisk, like the fae and sorcia, worshipped one founding god each, but the warriors kept seven Angels to ensure our balance of power was upheld.

minor clans’ magic was linked to the gods, and they even communed with them, but as our founders, the Angels were held above those ancient beings.

“Chosen Child, the time of thy reckoning has reached us.”

“At this, thy twentieth year, it is time that thou hear, a warrior born with blood of two is the blessed of me and you.”

“The task ahead will try thy spirit, but the Chosen is composed of strong merit.”

“Thy deepest wish awaits thee, once thou claims thy destiny. Ophelia, time is running short, for thou art our last resort.”

“Is this about the Curse?” I asked, my voice sharper than one should speak to any Angel, let alone the First Revered Warrior. He opened his arms wide, as if to engulf the entire world. “It is about everything that will be nothing if you do not act.”

“Not even the Soulguiders or Starsearchers could predict your death, Ophelia.

“Your fate has not yet been decided, Chosen Child.”

“If you succeed, you will right the wrongs you have staked your heart against.”

“The truth lies within you, Chosen Child. It is yours to uncover.”

“I’m going to become a Mystique Warrior, and I am going to find you. If this Curse kills me, I will right the wrongs the universe has inflicted upon us first,” I whispered my promise to the stars.