THE CURSE OF LUST
The walk through the gardens should have calmed me, should have erased my frustration, but it did not. Lanterns twinkled above the hedges and fountains, the air crisp and fragrant with late-summer blooms. My senses tingled with a strange unease. The wolf inside me whispered, small and insistent, trying to guide me, to warn me—but her voice was drowned beneath the roar of the curse, beneath centuries of witches' malice that tangled every instinct. The noise pressed in from every direction, leaving me dizzy, overwhelmed, barely able to parse what was danger and what was desire.