The room wasn’t truly dark; its only light pooled from a huge circular magic circle laid on the floor at the center. The red glow held the shadows back, yet it washed everything in a blood-tinted chill.
Several men didn’t care if it felt eerie. They stood rigid beside the circle, ringed around the young girl sleeping on the sigil, her brow tight, trading quick, loaded glances.
After a long silence, one man clapped. Eyes narrowed all around; stiff faces surfaced, as if they were about to attempt something grand.
“O power that lurks behind the world!”
“Let holy light reign as king!”
“In the name of your temporary master, I command you—”
“I choose you!—[DATA DELETED]”
Who knew what breed of bizarre spell this was. A ring of grown men, one line after another, and it somehow sounded legit. Too bad Ling wasn’t here to roast them, though the circle itself seemed offended—it flickered twice at the nonsense. That tiny flick made those terminally theatrical nerds light up like kids catching fireflies.
“Proclaim it! Thou art under us—this is the rule! Repeat thrice! This is the rule! This is the rule! This is the rule! We summon thee only to feed thee! Go! Devour the ‘curse’ upon her!”
If you’re going to do a knockoff, at least make it look half decent.
Still, the circle finally reacted. Countless threads of pure white light geysered from the ring’s edge. Enlarge them and you’d swear they were tentacles—too bad tentacles would get censored anyway.
The messy bundle shot up and stood on end, tips twitching, like pale grasses scenting prey.
They didn’t search for long. One thread pointed at Elfe, froze, and sent the news to its “kin” with the speed of the modern net. In an eye-blink, every white tip leveled at Elfe.
Strength in numbers emboldened them. One thread hesitated, then lunged for the spot over Elfe’s heart. With a lead taken, the rest surged after it, a rush of pale arrows converging as one.
—
“Sis, does this ‘curse’ remind me of anything to you?”
Ling nestled in Alicia’s arms, savoring a rare moment of just the two of them. Wind combed past her ears from every direction; say what you will, it felt good.
“A curse’s a curse, right? What else is there?”
Ling let out a small laugh—no joke, just that hollow chuckle when nobody gets your reference and a thin loneliness slips in.
“In a place very, very far away—so far even I can’t touch it…”
Wistfulness tugged at her face; she smoothed it away. Whether Alicia saw it or not—eh, who knows?
“In that place there’s a very similar ‘curse’. The victim is a princess again, punished because they failed to invite a mage called a ‘witch’. The wording is the same: she sleeps on her birthday. But unlike Elfe, she sleeps upon [spindle thread]. In theory, that’s no different from death—and the culprit is that pure white thread. A tiny, unremarkable little… thread.”
—
“?! Your Majesty, something’s… not right!”
One man felt it first; fear drained the color from his face.
The Queen’s expression was no better. She was no ornamental monarch; truth be told, she might be the strongest queen in the line. With power like that, of course she noticed the wrongness.
“Didn’t you say it was a hundred percent guaranteed? What is happening now!”
Her heart was a storm; her voice lost its usual gentleness. It was Elfe—the girl’s face knotted in pain. The circle wasn’t lifting the ‘curse’ or easing it; it was amplifying it.
Those so-called threads meant to ‘eat’ the curse were burrowing all over Elfe, biting here, gnawing there. This wasn’t consuming a curse. It was consuming her daughter.
Knife-edge pain carved her chest. They say a daughter is flesh torn from her mother’s body. Elfe may have been born from the Elven Tree, but without Amelia, where would Elfe be? Blood or bark, she is Amelia’s child all the same.
Seeing the Queen’s fury, even the elf captain wavered. It was his first time witnessing her wrath; anxiety and fear made him itch to shove the blame onto someone else.
“N—No, this isn’t right! By all logic, it should work! Yes… yes! Someone’s sabotaging it!”
He stammered when nervous, eyes skittering around as if hunting for a target. They finally locked on the elf sprawled on the floor; his gaze brightened like finding a lifeline.
“Y—Yes! It has to be him! He resents us for not letting him help prep the circle! So he retaliated against the Princess!”
The excuse was paper-thin, no logic to be found. But to him, it meant he’d dodged suspicion; whatever happened to that man—what did it matter?
The Queen, though? She hadn’t been hit with any brain-drain debuff. She saw straight through him.
Annoyance pricked her, but she wasn’t in the mood to assign blame. All she wanted was a way to save Elfe; everything else could wait.
Amelia shoved aside the chirping man and moved toward Elfe.
He panicked at the look on Amelia’s face—that look that said she didn’t believe a word—and rushed up, trying to explain himself. In Amelia’s eyes, that scramble took on a different flavor: one more obstacle to sweep away.
—
