Cursed: Briar Rose's Story (Destined Book 6) Read online

  CURSED

  Briar Rose’s Story

  Destined Series, Book 6

  KAYLIN LEE

  CURSED: BRIAR ROSE’S STORY

  Copyright © 2020 by Kaylin Lee

  First Edition

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For information contact:

  Kaylin Lee

  http://www.kaylinleewrites.com

  ISBN: 9798638993207

  Editing by Kathrese McKee of Word Marker Edits

  Cover design by Victoria Cooper Designs

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  The Destined Series

  Book 1 – Fated: Cinderella’s Story

  Book 2 – Hidden: Rapunzel’s Story

  Book 3 – Twisted: Belle’s Story

  Book 4 – Betrayed: Ruby’s Story

  Book 5 – Hunted: Alba's Story

  Book 6 – Cursed: Briar Rose’s Story

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  For EM

  Strike, if you will, but listen.

  Themistocles

  Prologue

  Cyrus stumbled across the blackened expanse of the Badlands, his steps slow and shaky. The late-day sun was still ferociously crisp with heat. When would it relent?

  He cast a final glance over his shoulder at the Asylian city walls shimmering in the distance, then wiped his brow and continued toward the Gold Hills—toward Draicia.

  Bitterness sapped his strength and dried his mouth, as irritating as the lifeless dust that puffed through the air in the barren plain.

  How had he gained so much, only to lose it all in a single, horrible night?

  Zel.

  The secretive bakery owner. The fugitive mage. With the Touch, no less. She could have murdered him in his sleep weeks ago, but she’d shown mercy. She’d given him just enough time to sell her out to the rebellious mages who’d made him rich with their bribes the past few years, and then she’d destroyed the lot of them in a single night.

  The entire leadership of the Crimson Blight—dead?

  It shouldn’t have been possible. They’d had everything they needed to gain her True Name, but somehow, she’d turned on them.

  A rock shifted beneath his next step. He swayed, then stumbled, landing hard on his bad knee. He picked up the offending rock and threw it from his path, but it landed barely an arm’s reach away.

  He’d lost everything, thanks to that golden-haired woman and her pretty, precious daughters. Now she was safe—under the Crown Prince’s protection, no less—while he had no choice but to flee the investigation that had swept up every guard and official in the city.

  After years of building his empire among the timid residents of the Merchant Quarter, he’d now have to start over.

  Sweat beaded on his unshaven upper lip. He wiped it with his dirty shirt sleeve, then lurched to his feet and continued walking. The muddy, standing water pooling between the rocks beside his path looked deceptively thirst-quenching. One of the pools flashed in the sun, but a moment later, it was murky again. He could risk it, but no. He’d hold out. There’d be clean, moving water in those hills, surely—

  SNAP.

  He blinked, disoriented by the earsplitting noise and an overwhelming flash of light.

  “Oh, how it smells!” A thin, colorless woman drifted into his view, her delicate lips curled in disgust. “The mirror never conveys that part.”

  He swayed as her words sunk in. “You talking about me, you skinny—”

  “Hush.” A silvery whip of magic slapped him across the mouth, silencing him mid-curse, and he realized she held a small, crystal vial. She massaged her nose and leaned back. “Piers, are you certain it was this one?”

  A man stood beside her, equally colorless, his expression even sourer than hers. “Doubt me again,” he hissed. “You know I enjoy your grumbling.”

  The woman huffed. “Fine, fine.” She edged closer, looking Cyrus in the eye at last. “What of your masters, creature?”

  He tried to speak but her magic sliced into his tongue, stealing the words and replacing them with agonizing pain.

  The thin woman flicked her fingers. The silvery tingles lifted from his mouth but hovered in front of his face. “What of your masters? Tell us!”

  “I have no masters,” he managed. He stepped back, but her magic followed, gleaming threateningly as though tempted to re-attach of its own accord. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The Crimson Blight,” the colorless man drawled. “And the mage with the Touch. What of them?”

  Cyrus relaxed slightly. This, he could tell them. “Zel killed them,” he said bluntly. “Killed the leaders, anyway. And the Crown is coming for the rest of them. Crimson Blight is done for.” Report given, he waited expectantly, but the sharp, silvery magic didn’t move away from his mouth.

  The other man pursed his lips. “Should have known,” he said to the woman. “The Crimson Blight was weak. To think the city would have allowed a common kitchen girl to hold a mage’s True Name in government, and those red-masked fools couldn’t even stop it.”

  “Yes,” the woman purred, finally dropping her hand from her nose as though she’d forgotten the offending smell. “They were weak. But Zel is not.”

  The man frowned. “You think she—”

  “They had her True Name. I’m certain of it. The mirror showed me. If she killed them, she did it. She is one of us.”

  “One of you?” Cyrus couldn’t help interrupting, though the woman had yet to move the magic away from his mouth. “What are you, exactly?”

  “Followers of the Master.” The woman seemed cheered now, her lips twisting into a smirk. She waved her hand. A helmet and cloak appeared in the air beside
her, each glistening with a strange, shiny black rock. “We finish the Master’s work. Control the continent. Rule the weak.”

  Cyrus peered at the odd garments. The black rock wasn’t a gem, yet it wasn’t a plain stone, either. “And what Master is that, lady?”

  The magic that had been hovering by his mouth finally disappeared. The tension in his shoulders eased.

  “Death’s Master.” The woman slid the helmet over her head and slipped into the cloak as the man beside her did the same with his garments, which were covered in the same slick, black rock. “This one I just perfected this morning,” she murmured to her companion. “Wait until you see how it picks up speed. Quite thrilling, Piers. You’ll enjoy it.”

  Another wave of her hands. A small, crystal structure appeared between her palms. The male mage leaned over her shoulder as he adjusted the placement of his helmet. “You keep tweaking your designs. How many times have we experimented now? It’s been over a decade since we tested it in Draicia. At some point, you’ll just have to pick a design and build the thing.”

  Light flared from the woman’s hands. The crystal structure released a sudden torrent of white powder that shot into the sky, then swirled around them, a small, fierce tornado.

  A searing headache slammed Cyrus to his knees. The tingly, white wind tugged hungrily at his clothes and hair.

  “A few more experiments,” the woman said to her companion, barely loud enough to be heard over the swirling cloud of powder. “Just a few more. Then I’ll build it. And I won’t be late. Besides, you want the storage function to be finely tuned, don’t you? You should. We’ll be depending on that magic.”

  Cyrus’s headache throbbed. The wind tugged painfully at his skin, shrieking in his ears, warping his vision. He groaned, but the wind whipped the sound away.

  “See that you aren’t late,” a distant, male voice replied grumpily, his visage obscured by the strange storm. “It’s bad enough that we have to make use of aurists until the delayed harvest—”

  Cyrus collapsed, dead before his head hit the rocky ground.

  Chapter 1

  There are two types of people out there—those who run from their fears and those who run to them.

  I’m the second kind.

  “Heads up, Briar Rose!” Dad’s panicked warning echoed in the empty, windowless Sentinels’ training hall.

  A mechanically propelled mage shot toward me like a striking snake, long, heavy chains whirring from its hands instead of real expellant magic. I loaded a fresh, blunt-tipped bolt and aimed.

  Crack. Before I could fire, another mechanical mage raced down the adjacent track and joined the first. They rushed toward us, their chains close enough to strike each other. Sparks flew as they sped down the track toward the platform where we stood.

  I released my bolt. The first mage went down with a satisfying crash. “It’s Bri, Dad.” I corrected as I loaded a second bolt. Why was he so worried? This was the most fun I’d had in years, maybe ever.

  I aimed at the other mage and fired. My bolt struck the mage, but without enough force to knock it down. The metal creature kept coming. Maybe I needed to get closer.

  “Get back, kid!” From the corner of my eye, I saw Dad raise his bow.

  “No! I’ve got this.” The oncoming mage was several seconds away. I still had time.

  I bounded off the platform and darted in front of my dad’s bow so he couldn’t fire on the fake mage without hitting me.

  The next bolt clicked into place. I sighted as I jogged down the track toward the mage, then fired.

  Clang. A hard, direct hit. I slowed.

  The contraption collapsed just before hitting me, its metal limbs colliding with the track and echoing in the empty training hall beneath the palace.

  I lowered my bow, then turned, faced my dad, and attempted a graceful victory curtsey. “Didn’t think I could do it, did you?”

  As I said, I prefer to face my fears head on. Run at them, if I can. That way, I meet them on my terms instead of waiting for them to come to me on theirs.

  It made sense, my mom being a famous former assassin and all that. And as I discovered a month ago, my dad being … Dad.

  A soldier. A leader. A brave, strong Sentinel. And currently, a scowling, frustrated one, who did not appear to appreciate my effort at a curtsey. It probably hadn’t looked quite right in the loose training pants I’d borrowed from Mom.

  Dad set his enormous crossbow on the ground and vaulted off the platform, his burly hands in fists. “Briar Rose Mattas, you— I can’t— You just ran right into my line of—”

  “Commander Mattas!” A dark-haired woman approached from the doorway, her brow wrinkled. “You let a child use the mage track on the hardest setting? One misstep, and she could have been knocked unconscious. Or worse!” She stopped beside the track where we stood, her hands on her hips. “All due respect, of course,” she added stiffly. “But what were you thinking?”

  “She—” Dad looked from the woman to me, his eyes flashing. “She didn’t—”

  “I’m not a child!” I drew myself up to my full height. I was shorter than Dad, but even at thirteen, I was almost as tall as this lady.

  “Right. She’s not a child.” Dad shook his head and rubbed his beard, looking more bemused than angry now. “I mean, she’s my child. Raven, this is Briar Rose. You haven’t officially met since Zel took down the Crimson Blight, so here you are. She’s my daughter.”

  “Bri,” I mumbled, unable to resist, but neither of them acknowledged the correction.

  “Mm.” Raven eyed me, then turned back to my dad. “Tell me again why you set it to the hardest setting?”

  There it was again. The hardest setting. I liked the sound of that.

  “I was going to be the one using it. To show her.” Dad coughed. “And then she wanted to try using a bow herself. And, ah, I didn’t see the harm …”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Dad plucked my bolts from the track beside the two downed, metal mages and handed them to me, his reproachful frown at odds with the slight glimmer of humor in his eyes. “Put the gear away, kid. And stop smiling. You’re in trouble.”

  I hung my head apologetically as I carried the bows and bolts back to the racks where we’d found them, probably looking as dramatic as my twin sister Alba. If only the emotional act worked as well for me as it did for her. But while Alba got her way about everything else, at least I had Dad.

  When I returned, my father beckoned me to follow them to the door.

  I dragged my feet as we left. It would have been nice to run the track just once more. Was that truly the hardest setting? Maybe Dad would know ways to make it harder.

  It would be downright painful to go back to our dim, little room in the Sentinels’ protective custody now that I knew this training hall was just on the other side of the palace.

  I hoped we wouldn’t have to live at the palace much longer, but there was no telling when Prince Estevan would be able to get the mage regulations passed, or when the Asylian public would calm down enough to let us move back into our villa without another uproar over Mom’s dangerously absorbent power.

  Dad glanced back at the downed mages then clapped Raven on the shoulder as they went through the door. “That was a terrible idea,” he whispered to her, barely loud enough for me to hear. “But did you see her? That’s my girl.”

  Chapter 2

  The dim, chalk-scented room we entered a month later resembled a dark mountain cave, or what I imagined a mountain cave would be like. The Sentinels team of instructors had carved jagged handholds into the rough, gray stones that lined the walls and ceiling. My feet bounced on the mat-covered floor as Dad and I approached the wall.

  A small luminous in the corner provided barely enough light to see the holds. I’d have to go mainly by feel. My specialty. Thanks to Mom’s training, I was no stranger to climbing at night.

  I ran my fingers over the nearest hold, itching to get started. Maybe once I’d shown Dad I could
handle rough, rocky terrain like that in the Badlands, he’d support my plan to become a Sentinel like him.

  “The trick is to stay relaxed,” Dad said over my shoulder. “Don’t tense up your arms, or your strength will wane too quickly.”

  “Relaxed. Got it.” I gripped the first hold then reached as high as I could to fix my fingers on a second hold. “What do I do with my feet?”

  “You actually need me to answer that?”

  I laughed and jumped onto the wall, my feet clinging to the rocky handholds near the floor. “Just trying to be a good student.” I pushed off with my legs and shot upward, releasing my first handhold and snagging a higher one in a single, smooth motion.

  Somewhere below me, Dad heaved a loud sigh. “I should’ve known. For a second there, I thought you needed me.”

  “Sure I do!” I yelled from near the ceiling. “I needed a ride to the palace. And the climbing room was locked, remember? Unless you want to give me a key—”

  “Commander Mattas!”

  I froze. Raven again. Why did she always appear when I was having the most fun?

  “What is it?”

  I held my breath, but to my surprise, she didn’t even address me.

  “The prince has called an emergency meeting. He got word from a contact in Draicia yesterday—something about aurae. The Herald has a reporter there. And they think it’s something to do with that … incident, with your wife at the gate …” She trailed off.

  I stayed in position and peered over my shoulder. What incident? My fingertips began to burn from the tension of holding myself in place, but if I climbed down, Dad would probably send me out. I wanted to hear their conversation.

  “The magic at the gate?” Dad approached Raven, his tone sober. “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t have all the details, but it sure sounds that way. Something’s coming, the prince says. The brief starts in five minutes. Where’s Zel?”

  “At the Mage Academy.” Dad ran a hand through his hair. “We’ll have to send a courier for her. Listen, Raven, if it’s related to that magic …” His voice quieted. “Whatever’s coming, it’s going to be bad.”