Chapter 2

ELYSIA’S POV

I was never meant to know what it feels like to be loved.

I have known this ever since I have known my name--Elysia. A name that should have stood for something magnificent, instead, it stood for a woman who was three times doomed.

The first was uttered with my first breath, an infant girl with tiny bright eyes and very pale skin… the harbinger of misfortune with a Barren Womb.

What a cruel fate for a second daughter under the rule of a powerful lord and father Brynwick. No sane man would wish for a wife who could not have his heir, and no father would want to love a daughter who could not strengthen his lineage.

It wasn't like I cannot bring a life into this world, if I ever would, that child would not survive… or worse, it would come into the world unnatural, cursed, like me. The midwives said that the Goddess had marked me, but no one knew whether it was a punishment or a warning. The pregnant women held onto their swollen bellies in my presence as if I would suck away the life of their unborn babies.

Many men had come before me with promises.

Betrothed, bargained for, even sold like cattle-yet none stayed.

"She is beautiful, and her lineage is strong," my father had once told a visiting nobleman. "You will find no more suitable match."

The man had smiled at first, lifting my hand to brush a kiss over my knuckles. "A pleasure, my lady."

Three days later, his body was found in the river, his throat torn open. Another suitor had come after that. A warrior.

"I have no fear for meaningless curses," he declared when the whispers reached his ears. "I forge my own fate."

The morning of our wedding, he vanished, leaving behind only a bloodied cloak near the stables.

By the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh, they didn't even bother naming it—they just turned on their heels and fled from me as if I were a plague.

Eventually, Father managed to get the stable master’s son to agree to marry me. It wasn’t ideal…it was a disgrace to our family name, but it was something. I couldn’t take slaving in that mansion any longer. That night, I waited until the halls were empty until the last servant had retired. Then I crept through the corridors, silent as a ghost, and slipped into the healer’s room.

The healer had kept her records neatly arranged on high, scrolls. Her scrolls were stacked high, packed tight with centuries of knowledge. Neat, precise—too clean for the kind of mess I was looking to fix.

There had to be something in there. Something to undo whatever was wrong with me. Something to make me enough.

"The goddess does not grant a closed womb lightly. If she has taken, she will not give back." I had gritted my teeth, not wanting to accept it.

There had to be something else.

I had found the hidden stores of dried herbs and tonics of the old healer. Some for fever, some for pregnancy.

One for fertility.

I had taken it. Drunk it all.

It had burned my throat, bitter and thick.

Throughout that week, I stole every tea, every tonic, every herb that whispered of fertility and rebirth.

Nothing changed.

By the second week, Sybil caught me.

I was in the storage room, kneeling beside a crate of dried roots, hoping, foolishly, for something new.

She leaned against the doorway, arms folded over her chest, looking at me with a smirk. "Are you waiting for a miracle, dear sister?"

I stood there, frozen.

Sybil moved closer, picking up one of the dried roots from the crate, and examining it in her hands.

"Even if your body functions like magic, Father will never look at you except as what you are." Her lips had twisted.

“You’re marrying the stable boy, Elysia. Honestly, what could be more pathetic?” Then she let the root drop. It landed by my feet, rolling to a stop like punctuation.

"You should stop trying. The gods have already determined who the true daughter of this house is and think of it this way, you will be too busy with the horses to care about procreating."

She snorted loudly and walked out, her laughter echoing behind her. That same night, I burned all of the herbs that I had stolen.

I let the ashes scatter on the wind, and watched the smoke writhe and dissipate. And I had promised myself that I would never call upon the mercy of the gods again.

The next morning, news reached us that the stable master and his son had run away. Another betrothal quietly dissolved.

No argument. No explanation. Just gone. And Sybil—Sybil had smiled.

Not a wide, triumphant thing. No, she was too clever for that. Just a small smirk. "Poor Elysia," she had said.

"Who will want you now?" I hadn't answered.

"A burden to her father's household. How humiliating."

I'd wept that night. My father could not love a shameful daughter, my sister couldn't put up with a rival who wasn't even competition.

She always had insight into the best attacks, she had learned to wound me in such a way that there were no scars.

Perhaps it was because I looked so much like her. And I have often wondered if that was the reason for her hatred.

However-or without having witnessed her mannerisms, her smiles, or her way of standing as a whole-you would mistake us as one. High cheekbones, the shape of our eyes which resemble each other quite a lot, and the curl of our lips when we're in thought do not make it just, the same golden-brown thick locks, the same kind of delicate hands, the same build-as all women understand it to be.

But once you start analyzing-beyond surface analysis- then difference starts to show.

Sybil's beauty was bright and ostentatious, her skin devoid of hard-won texture, and had not a blemish to bear. Her lips always painted, her garments finer, and her hands unpolluted by use.

I am her shadow, just a resonance of her features. My skin is a lighter shade than hers, my hands with wounds from over many years spent scrubbing floors and serving food I am not allowed to even taste. Whereas Sybil's hair is brilliant from expensive oils, mine is smooth with wild curls, untamed and untouched.

That I was the one mirror she refused to see.

"You know, it's not fair. That you look so much like me." She'd said.

"But at least the goddess gave me something to balance it out. Beauty, charm, a future. You? You're merely a poor imitation. Maybe if you hadn't been born with my face, Father might have shown you some mercy. But no, you're just a pathetic, useless copycat."

She stroked me, tracing the edge of my jaw before her fingers closed pitilessly in my hair. "You should be grateful, That I allowed you to be at all."

And then, laughing, she showed me aside. But I don't need their love.

I'd told myself.

Love has never been kind to me.

I have learned that being truly alone is nowhere near the worst thing that can happen to a person.

Not until.

Leonard.

Being the future king of a distant land, son to an esteemed warrior, destined for all things glorious, he probably would not have given me a second glance. I was the burden, the cursed daughter, a girl tucked away and hidden in the kitchens like an unwanted stray.

And yet, he noticed me.

It started with little things… the secret looks passed across the courtyard, the way his eyes would stay staring at me just a moment too long. And then came the first conversation.

"You always sit by yourself."

I looked up from the garden bench, startled. Leonard stood before me, arms crossed, a lopsided grin teasing his mouth.

"Maybe I like my own company," I said guardedly.

"Or perhaps," he came back, closing the distance, "no one here is deserving of yours." I laughed, a sound strange even to my ears.

And there was another exchange, and another.

"You never dance at the feasts," he said one evening, watching me across the banquet hall. "I wasn't under the impression that I was allowed to."

"Then let us break the rules." He held out his hand. "Come, dance with me." He'd said. I stuttered. "And risk your life? You must have heard the rumors."

"I have," he admitted, "and I don't care." Still, he kept coming back.

"Why are you speaking to me?" I asked him one night under the moonlit arch. He bowed his head. "Because you make me forget the world is cruel."

His fingers brushed mine.

"And because when I look at you, Elysia, I don't see a curse."

He smiled softly. "I see you."

And I had no reason to doubt him when he told me, "I love you."

One night, he whispered to me, "I will marry you. I don't care what others say. I don't care about your curse," he'd said. And I'd found reason to think that maybe I was not forever doomed to stand in darkness all alone. Maybe the Goddess had not abandoned me entirely.

I was wrong.

Because in the end, love did not save me, it destroyed me.

The announcement was made on the eve of my twentieth birthday. A banquet was prepared for my sister, not for me.

Sybil.

Beautiful, perfect Sybil.

I stood in the darkness of the great hall, with my stomach twisted in knots at the almost audible command of my father, who lifted his goblet and asked for silence.

"My daughter," he said while smiling happily at Sybil, "is to be wed." Then I heard the name before I could see him.

Leonard.

A hush fell over the great hall. I could feel my breath leaving me, my knees buckling. Leonard took a step into the light next to Sybil, his expression betraying no hint of emotion. That must be a mistake.

That must be a lie.

After that, they laid the shrouds upon me in a coffin.

Maybe they feared my heartbreak. Maybe they feared that my degrading hands could spoil their happiness, that I might ruin their union as I had ruined every engagement before.

I could hear their merry-making from a block away in my little dark room-the music, the laughter, my father's proud voice parading Sybil before our people like a trophy.

I was simply the forgotten daughter, tucked away so no one would remember that I ever existed. No one came to visit me. Not my father.

Not Sybil. Not him.

So was it a lie?

Did he ever really love me?

Or was I just some trivial distraction, a cursed woman whom he played with until finding someone suitable?

I should have cried.

I should have been angry. I did neither.

Because something inside me had broken-experienced some damage far deeper than any of my curses-even, deep enough to touch.

I was done begging for love. Done hoping for kindness.