Karina

"Who was that in the tower?"

Rhydan didn't answer.

He just gripped his sword tighter, eyes fixed on the window where the figure had vanished. His entire body was coiled-quiet, controlled, lethal. The wind around us shifted, hissing between the towers like it knew something I didn't.

I dismounted before he could speak and marched toward the keep.

"Are we under attack?" I asked without looking back.

"Not yet."

I turned. "That's comforting."

He dropped from his saddle and followed, boots silent against the stone. The guards at the inner gate didn't speak. They never did. They just bowed their heads as we passed and disappeared into the shadows.

The doors slammed shut behind us.

The warmth of the hall didn't touch me.

"Tell me the truth, Rhydan. Now."

He glanced down at me, mask glinting in the flickering torchlight.

"About what?"

"That thing in the tower. The one that watched us return like it was choosing a meal."

His eyes burned like gold caught in firelight.

"There are things in this castle that were never meant to wake."

I stopped walking.

"Then why are they waking now?"

His jaw clenched. "Because you're here."

I stared at him, cold rage blooming in my chest.

"You mean because I'm the bride."

"No. Because you're you."

He turned down a corridor I hadn't seen before, but I followed, too furious to care if I was trespassing.

"You keep talking like I'm different. Like I'm supposed to understand what any of this means. But I don't. You married me into a curse with no answers, and now something is watching us from your own damn castle-and you're talking in riddles."

Rhydan stopped.

Not gently.

He turned toward me so fast I almost slammed into his chest.

"You think I wanted this?" he said, voice low and sharp. "You think I enjoy watching bride after bride cross that threshold and dissolve into screams and ash? You think I want to hold another name in my hands and watch it disappear from the world?"

I froze.

His voice cracked at the end. Just a little. But I heard it.

He stepped back.

"This place has rules. Ancient ones. Ones older than your empire and older than me. I don't get to change them. I can only obey."

I met his eyes. "Then why am I still alive?"

He hesitated.

"Because the moment you bled into that circle, something in this place recognized you. And it didn't recoil."

"It welcomed me?"

"No." He shook his head. "It knelt it"

I felt it then. A pulse in my mark-hot and slow. Like it was responding to his words. Like it agreed.

He took another step toward me.

"You're not like the others, Karina. I don't know why. But the curse doesn't want to kill you. It wants something else."

"What?"

"I don't know yet. And that should terrify you."

He led me deeper into the castle, past halls I hadn't seen, past paintings whose eyes followed me, past doors that breathed.

"Yes" I breathed.

I heard it Really low as if the wood itself was alive.

"What is this place?" I whispered.

"A prison. A throne. A tomb."

"All at once?"

He glanced over. "That's how curses work."

We stopped in front of a tall obsidian door.

Rhydan pressed his palm to it.

The mark on his skin glowed-the same sigil carved into me during the binding.

The door hissed open.

Magic rushed out like wind from a broken seal, thick with the scent of iron and smoke.

Beyond the door was a spiral stairwell, cut directly into stone. The walls pulsed faintly with veins of light.

"Where are we going now?"

"To show you why this castle fears you."

That stopped me.

"The castle fears me?"

He didn't explain. We descended on one floor. Then Two.

Three.

Down and down until the warmth of the upper levels was a memory. The air grew cold enough to numb my fingers, but I didn't stop. Not when he walked like a storm was coming.

Not when something inside me whispered to keep going.

At the bottom was another door.

Carved with a symbol I'd never seen before-interlocking rings pierced by a fang. It hurt to look at it. Literally. My mark throbbed like a fresh wound.

"Is this where the others-"

"No," he said, cutting me off. "This is where the curse began."

I went still.

Rhydan placed his hand against the door, and it didn't open immediately. It fought him. The stone buckled. The magic resisted.

Then it gave in with a sound like a gasp.

We stepped inside.

It was a circular chamber, massive, untouched by time. The walls were carved with writing-ancient, spidery, alive. The ceiling was a dome of glass, showing a sky I knew wasn't our sky.

And at the center...

A throne.

But not like any throne I'd ever seen.

It wasn't stone. It wasn't gold.

It was bone.

Massive ribs curled up to form the back, vertebrae shaped the seat, and two massive claws served as arms. Something had died to make it.

"What is this?"

Rhydan didn't speak.

He walked forward, stood beside the throne, and placed one hand on it.

"I was born here," he said. "Not in this room, but in this place. Nytherra."

I circled the throne, staring at the carvings along the base. Symbols I didn't recognize. But one burned brighter than the rest.

My full name.

Carved into the bone.

I looked at him. "How?"

"It appears every time the pact reawakens."

"You mean my name was already here?"

He nodded once.

"But that's not possible. I wasn't even alive when the last bride came through. I wasn't even planned."

"And yet," he said, "this place knew you."

I backed away from the throne.

"This isn't fate."

"No," he agreed. "It's a sentence."

I looked at him. Really looked.

"Then what's yours?"

He didn't answer.

Instead, he removed his glove.

And showed me the mark burned into his palm.

It wasn't the same as mine. Not exactly.

It was a mirror.

Where mine spiraled inward like a tether, his spiraled outward-like something waiting to be unleashed.

"You're not just the king," I whispered. "You're the other half of the curse."

He nodded once. "If you die, the Veil breaks. If I die, the world does."

"And if we both live?"

His eyes met mine, full of fire and fear.

"Then the curse becomes something else."