Chapter 26

"I can't do this anymore."

Aria's voice broke on the last word. She stood in Seraphina's recovery chamber, surrounded by the smell of herbs and old magic. The ancient witch lay on a narrow bed, still weak from the attack weeks ago but alive. Awake. Watching Aria with those bottomless dark eyes.

"Can't do what, child?"

"Any of it. All of it." Aria pressed her hands against the stone wall and let the cold seep into her palms. "My father is threatening to expose the bond. Vivian is blackmailing me. Knox is plotting with people who want to use my blood to resurrect a dead witch. And I'm supposed to compete in a trial tomorrow and smile like everything is fine."

Seraphina said nothing for a long moment. The silence was filled with the crackle of candles and the faint hum of the wards her daughters had placed around the room.

"Sit down," Seraphina said.

Aria sat. The chair was hard and uncomfortable. Everything in this room was old and worn and built for purpose, not comfort.

"You came to me for guidance," Seraphina said. "Or did you come to give up?"

"I don't know."

"Then I'll decide for you. You came for guidance." Seraphina pushed herself upright, wincing. A bandage wrapped around her torso where the attack had left its mark. "And I will give it. But first, I need to tell you something I should have told you weeks ago."

Aria's chest tightened. "What?"

"The curse. The price for breaking it. I told you it would cost your life."

"Yes."

"That was true. But it wasn't the whole truth." Seraphina's eyes held hers with the weight of three hundred years. "If you die breaking the curse, Aria, you don't just die. Your soul becomes bound to the curse itself. Trapped. Forever. No peace. No passage to the Moon Goddess's realm. No rest."

The words fell like stones into deep water.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying the price isn't death. The price is eternal death. Your consciousness, your essence, your very soul—locked inside the remnants of the curse for as long as the world turns." Seraphina's voice was steady, but her hands gripped the bedsheets. "You would feel everything. Remember everything. But you could never touch, never speak, never be heard. An endless existence of awareness with no release."

Aria couldn't breathe. The room felt smaller. The walls closer. The candles dimmer.

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Because you needed to process the first truth before you could bear the second."

"You should have told me." Aria's voice was shaking. "I had a right to know the full price."

"Yes. You did. And I failed you in that." Seraphina bowed her head—an act of humility that looked strange on a woman who'd lived centuries. "I have watched this curse consume generation after generation. I have seen mates torn apart, kings go mad, kingdoms crumble. And when I finally found you—the descendant we've waited three hundred years for—I was afraid that the truth would make you run."

"I don't run."

"No. You don't." Seraphina raised her head. "Which is why I owe you every truth I have."

Aria's mind was racing. Eternal death. Not just dying—existing in torment forever. No afterlife. No peace. Just awareness and isolation for eternity.

And this was supposed to be the solution?

"There has to be another way," she said.

"There may be. Morgana's spirit has been communicating with you through your wolf, yes?"

Aria nodded slowly. "Fragments. Feelings. Not words yet."

"She will speak to you when she's ready. And when she does, listen carefully. Morgana knew things about her own curse that even I don't." Seraphina leaned forward. "The curse was not originally what it became. It was corrupted. Changed. If the corruption can be identified and unraveled, there may be another path."

"Knox's ancestor," Aria said. "He corrupted the spell."

Seraphina's eyebrows rose. "You know about that?"

"I know pieces. Enough to know Knox isn't just a political threat. His family is woven into the curse itself."

"Deeper than you realize." Seraphina settled back against her pillows, exhaustion pulling at her features. "The Knox bloodline has been feeding on the curse for three centuries. Every time the royal twins suffer, Knox's family grows stronger. Their political power, their influence, their very life force—all tied to the curse's continuation."

"So breaking the curse doesn't just free the kings."

"It destroys the Knox family's power base. Which is why they will do anything to stop you."

Aria sat in the hard chair and stared at the floor. Patterns in the stone blurred as her eyes lost focus.

Everything connected. Knox's obsession with her bloodline. Vivian's desperation to become queen—probably her father's idea, to keep the curse fed through proximity to the crown. The gray-cloaked followers. The attack on Seraphina herself.

"They attacked you to stop you from telling me this," Aria said.

"Yes."

"They almost killed you."

"Almost is the important word." A thin smile crossed Seraphina's ancient face. "I've survived worse than hired thugs."

"Who were they? The attackers?"

"Knox's people. Gray cloaks. Remnants of the old coven, as you've already discovered. They used a draining spell—powerful but crude. It would have killed someone younger." The smile sharpened. "Being old has its advantages."

Aria rubbed her temples. Her head was pounding. Too much information. Too many threats. Too many prices she couldn't afford to pay.

"Seraphina. If I don't sacrifice myself, and if we don't find another way... what happens? The kings don't claim me. The curse just... continues?"

"For another generation. Another set of twins. Another mate who will face the same impossible choice." Seraphina's voice softened. "The cycle repeats, Aria. Until someone breaks it. Or until the Knox bloodline finds a way to make it permanent."

"Morgana's resurrection."

"Yes. If your blood is taken unwillingly to the sacred circle, the curse evolves. The kings become vessels. Morgana's twisted version—the corrupted version—lives again through them. And the Knox family sits on the throne they've been scheming toward for three hundred years."

Aria closed her eyes.

Three paths. Die eternally to break the curse. Do nothing and let it continue forever. Or be captured and used to resurrect a dead witch.

None of them were acceptable.

So she'd find a fourth path. Or make one.

She opened her eyes. "Thank you for telling me the truth. All of it this time."

"I should have from the beginning."

"Yes." Aria stood. "But we're past that now."

She walked to the door. Stopped. Turned back.

"Seraphina. The blood moon. How long?"

"Four months and seventeen days."

Four months. To find a way to break an ancient curse without dying, without losing her mates, and without letting a dead witch's followers use her blood as a resurrection spell.

"Eternal death, child," Seraphina said softly from her bed. "That's the true price. Are you still willing to pay it?"

Aria looked at her. The old witch's eyes held centuries of watching and waiting and hoping that someone, someday, would be strong enough.

"I'm willing to fight," Aria said. "But I'm not willing to die. Not like that. Not forever."

She walked out before Seraphina could respond.

The corridor was empty. Quiet. Her footsteps echoed on stone.

Willow was waiting for her at the end of the hall. The young witch sat on a window ledge, her legs dangling, her dark hair falling across her face.

"You spoke to my grandmother," Willow said. Not a question.

"She told me the full price."

"Eternal binding." Willow's voice was soft. "I've read about it in the old texts. It's the worst thing Morgana's corruption created. A soul trap designed to feed the curse forever."

"Your grandmother thinks there might be another way."

"There is. There has to be." Willow hopped off the ledge. For sixteen, she carried herself with a certainty that reminded Aria of Darius. "Morgana's original spell wasn't meant to destroy. It was protection magic. Love magic. If we can strip away the corruption—"

"That's a big if."

"Every solution starts as an if." Willow held out her hand. A small flame of blue-white magic danced on her palm. "My grandmother has been studying the curse for three hundred years. I've been studying it since I could read. And you—you carry the First Luna's blood. Between the three of us, we'll find the answer."

Aria looked at the young witch. At the fire in her hand and the determination in her eyes.

"You really believe that?"

"I have to. Because the alternative is watching another generation suffer. And I refuse."

Something inside Aria shifted. Not her wolf this time. Something purely human. A small, fierce spark of hope that refused to be extinguished no matter how many people tried to stamp it out.

"Okay," she said. "Then we fight. Together."

Willow smiled. It transformed her face from serious to radiant.

"Together," she said.

Inside her chest, her wolf stirred. Not with fear. With something fiercer. Something that felt like the beginning of a fire that refused to go out.

Four months. She had four months to change everything.

And she was going to start tonight.