The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) (42 page)
Read The Cursed (League of the Black Swan) Online
Authors: Alyssa Day
Some little time later, they sat on the bench facing the fountain, watching a beautiful—and very much alive—black swan float serenely in the water of the Black Swan Fountain near its marble namesake. Rio handed Luke the bottle of whiskey that Clarice had left them, and he took a long drink.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” he commanded once more, and she almost laughed.
“Don’t ever again get sucked into a starlight circle with my mother, who is apparently some kind of celestial being, and learn that I can conquer starlight?”
Luke looked closely at her, and then his eyes widened. “Rio, your eyes—they’ve gone completely silver. There’s not even any pupil or white left.”
“I can still see perfectly well. Apparently it’s a big damn deal to conquer starlight,” Rio said, and then she started giggling.
Luke grinned. “Your eyes just went back to normal. The silver is pretty, but I’d miss the amber.”
Rio blinked. “Have we had too much to drink, or did that swan just turn into a naked woman?”
Luke turned to look, but Rio covered his eyes with her hand.
The swan who’d turned into a woman glared at them. “If you would give a person a little privacy to get dressed, it might be nice. Or is all that starlight affecting your brain?”
Rio started laughing, pretty sure that both starlight and whiskey were affecting her brain, but she tossed the swan-woman a salute and pulled Luke to his feet. “Time to walk home, handsome. There’s no way either of us is in shape to drive.”
Rio made an important discovery during the course of that trip: It takes a very long time to walk anywhere in Bordertown when you’re stopping to kiss someone every five feet. She found that she didn’t mind it at all.
Luke shoved open the back door to his house and half-carried, half-dragged Rio in with him.
“We’re bad,” she said drunkenly, and then she started to giggle.
He tripped on something and realized that the lights in his house were all blazing, which was unexpected in the middle of the night when he’d been out, but he had nothing left. No reserves with which to protect them; his magic was fried and he was damn near fried himself.
A bottle of water sailed through the air at him, and he reflexively held up a hand to catch it, and then Alice was suddenly there and helping him carry Rio inside.
“I managed to get out of the Hawaii trip, but not until I was in Seattle. I’m sorry I didn’t make it back in time, love. What happened?”
“It’s a long story.” He got Rio to the couch and then stopped moving long enough to drain the bottle of water. “I’ll tell you after I get some sleep.”
“Sleep would be great,” Rio said, yawning in midsentence. “I conquered starlight tonight, Alice.”
“That’s lovely, dear. I’ll make you pancakes in the morning.” Alice patted Rio’s arm, but then she shook her head at Luke. “You’re in love, aren’t you?”
He stroked Rio’s hair—
Princess El’andille’s
hair—and nodded. “Pretty much out of my mind with it. She’s the princess, and I’m the frog.”
Luke turned his head and scanned the room, remembering the thing he’d tripped over. “What is all that wood doing in my dining room, Alice? Are you planning to go stake some vampires or something?”
She strode over to a pile of cardboard and held a piece up, and he was shocked to see that the cardboard square was mostly covered with his picture, with some writing surrounding it. Realization dawned, and he looked around for something to blow up. Since wood and paper covered most of his house, targets were plentiful.
“Alice, I’m going to
kill
you.”
Something in his voice must have alerted Rio to possible danger, because she sat straight up on the couch, already pulling starlight into her eyes, but then she fell back against Luke and started laughing.
“Luke, why is Anne Hathaway holding a
Luke Oliver for Sheriff
sign?”
Luke sighed and gave up, and then he pulled Rio into his lap and kissed the breath out of her. Alice had discreetly vanished down the hall, with Kit following her, by the time they came up for air, and Rio started laughing.
“Happy birthday to me. It’s going to be a crazy damn year.”
Turn the page for a preview of Alyssa Day’s League of the Black Swan novella
THE CURSE OF THE BLACK SWAN
Appearing in the
Enthralled
anthology, coming in July 2013 from Berkley Sensation
A thousand years ago, a beautiful young peasant woman was bathing in a stream, singing a song of gratitude for the golden sunshine and the magnificent day. However, unlike many who play in the daylight, the girl also sang her thanks to the moon, which rested in diurnal slumber and yet heard the lilting melody of the girl’s voice and was pleased.
But others with darker purpose heard the girl’s wondrous song, too. The ruler of the land, a cold, hard man who beat his hounds, his children, and his wife with equal fervor, followed the melody to the stream and found the girl, innocent and glorious in her nudity, and he determined to attack her with his rapacious lusts.
The girl pleaded with the barbarian king, which availed her nothing. So then she ran, and she fought, as her father the woodsman had taught her, and she managed to keep the king at bay until the sun dipped below twilight’s horizon, when her strength finally gave out. The king, enraged by her defiance, stabbed her through the heart and left her to die. As the girl bled to death on the bank of the silvery stream, the night wind whispered in her ear that the moon, who had appreciated the gift of the girl’s song, had taken pity on her.
“I will save you from this king, but you must agree never to leave me, and to become a black swan and sing to me every third night for the rest of your life, and swear that your daughters and their daughters will continue to fulfill this promise.”
The girl, who had lost all hope as her blood pooled near her body and then slipped into the moonlit stream, parted her lips, barely able to speak. “And if I agree, will this gift—this curse—never end?”
The moon reigned alone over the dark night, and thus had her own measure of cruelty, but she knew well that mortals needed the promise of hope to survive, and so she offered this edited version of the truth in return:
“You and each generation’s eldest daughter will be released from your vow when you meet your one true love.”
The girl’s tears flowed as her blood had done mere moments before when she agreed, and the moon caused a beautiful fountain to appear on that very spot. In the center of the fountain, a perfect black marble statue of the beautiful young woman, one hand held out to a swan, now stood as eternal monument to the vow.
From that day until this one, a black swan swims in the fountain and sings her songs of loss and longing, every third night, while the moon smiles her icy smile. This woman who is also a swan plots and plans for how to avoid falling in love, for her ancestors had learned and passed down the bitter truth of the moon’s deadly promise.
And, somewhere, a man exists who one day will become the true love to a magical swan.
Just before she kills him.
BORDERTOWN, A PLACE WHERE THE FAE, DEMON, AND HUMAN WORLDS INTERSECT, HIDDEN IN THE HEART OF NEW YORK
Sean O’Malley ran into the burning building, dodging and weaving around the rest of his colleagues who were running and limping out of the inferno before it exploded or completely collapsed, either of which was due to happen at any minute.