Chapter 2

Corinna's POV

"Divorce?"

Aldric stares at me like I just said something insane, eyes wide.

I know why he's shocked. When he wanted out of this marriage for Celia's sake, he offered me a settlement large enough to set me up for life. I never took it. Even after he stopped pretending to care, even after he humiliated me in front of people more times than I can count, I never once said that word.

I close my eyes. "Let's get a divorce, Aldric. The least you can do is make sure our child isn't sent off by his own father."

Something flickers across his face. Then it hardens back into contempt. "Don't try to guilt-trip me. Kalen's right there. Nothing's going to happen to that baby." He looks at me like I disgust him. "You're the one treating a baby like a weapon. Not me."

The pain in my chest spreads out in every direction. But I'm done arguing. Nothing I say is going to reach him anyway.

"Aldric." My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to. "Haven't you always wanted your freedom? You're about to get it."

His pupils contract. For just a second, something shifts in his breathing.

Then a voice screams from outside the door.

"My lord! Celia's coughing up blood again! She's not going to make it!"

Whatever just broke through seals back over just as fast. He spins toward the guards. "Get me paper. If she wants out that bad, fine. I'll give her that."

The divorce contract hits me in the face. The terms are brutal — I leave with nothing, not even the right to be buried in the ducal family cemetery when I'm gone.

I don't bother reading it. I bite down on my finger and press my bloodprint to the page.

A faint light flickers and fades. Our marriage, witnessed by the Divine, is over.

Aldric snatches the contract back and searches my face — looking for regret, maybe, or some sign that this is a move in a game I'm playing. He finds nothing.

There's nothing left in my eyes to find. Whatever light used to be there when I looked at him has been gone for a long time.

It doesn't matter. I'll be dead soon anyway.

My hand drifts to my belly. I'm sorry, baby. I couldn't protect you.

A flutter moves against my palm. Like a tiny hand reaching up to meet mine.

I can't hold it together anymore. The tears come.

God, I'm not asking for the curse to lift. I'm not asking to walk out of this room alive. Just let my baby live. He didn't do anything wrong. He just wanted a chance to see the world.

The pain in my abdomen is so bad it's gone numb. My thoughts keep slipping in and out. I turn my head and find Kalen across the room.

"Done signing?" He doesn't even look up. Just keeps mixing the surgical compounds, calm and practiced. "Then stop wasting time."

After I gave up on my parents, I used my second chance on him.

There was a time when I was just a little girl who followed him everywhere and called him my big brother. And he was exactly that — the kind of brother who used his healing magic to fix every scrape I got from falling down, who came back from the cliffs covered in mud just because he wanted to bring me a moonlight flower that grew up there.

My mind pulls me back five years. Summer.

I'd just gotten my acceptance letter to the Sacred Magic Academy — the most prestigious one in the empire. I ran home with it still in my hands, looking for Kalen.

"I got in! Kalen, I got in! I'm going to be a real mage, just like you!"

He laughed and messed up my hair. "Of course you did. You're the best. I'll take you there myself on the first day."

Then, the night before classes started, Celia collapsed at the dinner table and coughed up a mouthful of black blood.

She curled into our mother's arms, tears streaming down her face. "I'm so happy for you, Corinna... I just wish I could go too. I'm not even sure I'll make it to tomorrow. If I could just... just once, wear an academy uniform and step into the Sacred Pool before I go..."

It was a lie. A sloppy one. Anyone who bothered to look would've seen right through it.

My family didn't look.

Kalen knocked on my door late that night. The warmth in his eyes was completely gone.

"Give your spot to Celia."

I couldn't process what I was hearing. "What are you talking about? That's my spot. I studied for years for that letter. And Celia doesn't even have any magic — they'd expel her in a week!"

"She's dying." His voice goes sharp. His hand clamps down on my shoulder hard enough that I feel it in my bones. "She's been carrying the family curse so you don't have to. She won't live to twenty-five. All she's asking for is one normal semester before she's gone. And you're going to stand here and call that unfair?"

"I'm the one with the curse!" Tears are running down my face. "Kalen, why won't you believe me? Just test me — one time, just run one test and you'll see —"

"Enough."

He grabs the acceptance letter off my desk and burns it with a flick of his hand. Right in front of me. He stands there and watches it turn to ash.

The fire catches the planes of his face. Cold. Unrecognizable.

"As long as I'm part of this family, you don't get to climb on Celia's suffering to get ahead. You only have a life because of her. That debt doesn't go away."

The memory freezes there — Kalen's back as he walks out the door.

That was the night my brother died.

The person standing across from me now is something else entirely. Celia's most devoted follower. The worst nightmare of my life.

And right now, that person is holding a surgical blade and moving toward the last hope I have left.