I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 14: Chapter 14: 65 Gold Coins and a New Problem

"Name your price," Elian said.

The old man looked at him for a moment. Taking stock. Calculating.

"A hundred gold coins," he said. "And I’ll point you where you need to go."

Elian glanced at Mira.

Mira looked back at him with an expression that said absolutely not without moving her face at all.

He looked back at the old man.

"Sixty."

"No, no." The old man waved a hand. "Seventy. At the very least."

"Sixty-five."

A pause.

The old man tilted his head. Looked at Elian with something that might have been appreciation.

"Sixty-five," he said. "Wait here."

He got up from his stool and disappeared through the dark doorway.

Mira moved closer to Elian’s elbow. "We shouldn’t be here," she said, very quietly.

"We’re fine."

"We’re in an alley."

"I’ve been in worse alleys."

She made the small distressed sound.

The old man came back twenty minutes later and took them deeper.

Through the alley, through a narrower one behind it, through a door that looked like part of a wall until it wasn’t. Down a short corridor that smelled like old smoke and something herbal underneath it.

Into a room.

The woman inside looked up when they entered.

She was middle-aged. Sharp-featured. The kind of face that had seen enough to stop being surprised by most things. She was sitting behind a low table with her hands folded on top of it, and she looked at Elian the way Elian usually looked at clients — measuring, categorizing, filing.

He looked back at her the same way.

The old man took his coins and left without being asked.

"Who do you want to do it to," the woman said. Her voice was deep. Roughened at the edges, like cloth worn thin.

"Someone," Elian said.

A pause.

She knew he was bluffing. He could see it the moment it landed — a small shift in her eyes, a fractional settling of her posture. She’d heard a hundred people come in with half-formed stories and she’d clocked his in under a second.

He clocked, simultaneously, that she knew more than she should.

Not just about the ritual. About him, specifically. There was something in the way she was looking at him that had nothing to do with the cover story. freёwebnovel.com

He didn’t move. Didn’t adjust. Just held her gaze and let the silence do what silence did.

She gave him the shape of the information. How the working was structured. What it required. How long it took to prepare. She spoke in the abstract, the way professionals spoke when they weren’t committing to anything.

He listened. And underneath the listening he was watching the room.

Three spirits.

One near the window — old, faded, harmless. One by the door — younger, angry, the specific anger of something that had died badly and hadn’t finished being furious about it.

And one directly behind the woman.

Attached. Latched on at the shoulder, pressing in close, the way a vengeful spirit moved when it had been close to its target for a long time. The woman’s jaw was set in a way that suggested a headache she’d been managing for years. She’d probably stopped noticing it as anything unusual.

Elian waited until she paused.

Then he said, "There are three spirits in this room with us."

She leaned back. "A lot of men come in here and say a lot of things."

"One of them is behind your left shoulder," Elian said. "She’s been there long enough that you’ve stopped feeling where the headache starts and she begins. Vengeful spirit. But not toward you — she’s angry at something else and you’re just the closest anchor."

The woman’s mouth closed.

"She’s wearing something dark. Her hair is—" He looked. Described it. The specific details. The way she stood. The expression on her face, which was not rage exactly but grief wearing rage like a coat.

The woman had gone very still.

"How do you know her," she said. Quiet now. The professional surface dropped an inch.

"I don’t. But she’s latched onto you and she has been for a long time."

A long silence. freewebnovel.cσ๓

The woman looked at the space behind her left shoulder. Couldn’t see anything. Looked back at Elian.

"I’ll believe you," she said finally. Slowly. Like the words cost her something. "I’ll give you what you need. And you’ll give me something back."

"The spirit," Elian said.

"Yes."

He nodded. "That’s a fair deal."

She exhaled. Something in her shoulders dropped.

"She’s my mother," she said. Then, before Elian could respond: "You don’t need to say anything. We don’t need to have that conversation."

"We don’t," Elian agreed.

She looked at him for a moment. Then she reached under the table and brought out something wrapped in cloth. Set it down. Began to explain — properly this time, fully, without the careful abstractions of before.

"The body doesn’t need to be willing," she said. "An unwilling participant makes it stronger. The more they fight it, the more the spirit latches."

Elian said nothing. Kept his face neutral.

"They’re bound," she continued. "Eyes, hands, legs. Put in a box. Buried." She said it the way someone described a recipe. Matter of fact. Practiced. "It takes a month before the ritual takes hold. After the month, whoever commissioned it comes back. Digs it up."

"And takes what," Elian said.

"Hair. Nails." She looked at him. "Strands and clippings. Then they’re reburied. The commissioner brings the collection back, draws their own blood, gives it to the spirit. That’s what binds it to the target."

Oh, Elian thought.

The hair and nails. Used again and again. The spirit tethered not just to the buried body but to whatever had been taken from it — renewable, reusable, the curse resupplied every time someone went back to that grave.

That’s why the bracelet keeps getting hit. It’s not weakening on its own. Someone is feeding it.

He kept his expression still.

"The body," he said. "How do you find it."

"You don’t." She said it plainly. No apology in it. "These graves are unmarked. Chosen specifically — places people don’t go, places that won’t be disturbed. The body needs to be preserved for the ritual to keep working." A pause. "When they go back for the hair and nails they take everything. All the nails. A large portion of hair. So they have enough to use the spirit multiple times. Over years, if they want."

"And burning the body ends it."

"Completely. The spirit loses its anchor. The binding dissolves." She folded her hands back on the table. "That’s why they choose the locations so carefully. They don’t want anyone finding it."

Elian sat with this.

Years, he thought. Someone has been doing this for years. Going back to that grave. Feeding the curse. Patient enough to wait for it to work slowly.

Who hates him that much and has that kind of patience.

"Is there anything that slows the feeding," he said. "Between visits to the grave."

Sable looked at him for a moment. Something shifting in her assessment of him.

"Protection workings," she said. "Strong ones. They don’t stop it but they absorb the impact. Buy time."

The bracelet, Elian thought. That’s exactly what it’s doing.

"And if someone kept renewing the protection," he said. "Continuously."

"Then the target stays alive until you find the body." A pause. "Or until the person feeding the ritual gets impatient and goes back more frequently."

He nodded slowly.

So I’m in a race, he thought. And the other side doesn’t know they’re racing yet.

"Your name," he said.

She considered him. Then: "Sable."

"Elian," he said.

She nodded like she’d already known.

"So," she said. "Where do I come to collect?"

He looked at her. At the spirit latched to her shoulder, which had turned to look at him with the exhausted, waiting expression of something that had been trying to get someone’s attention for a very long time.

He smiled.

"The palace," he said.

Sable went completely still.

The kind of still that wasn’t calm. The kind that happened when the mind was moving very fast and the body had just stopped receiving instructions.

"The," she said.

"The palace," Elian said again, pleasantly. "Ask for the consort’s quarters. They’ll bring you through."

She stared at him.

He waited.

"You’re," she said.

"Yes."

Another silence.

Mira, behind him, had stopped making distressed sounds. She’d moved past distressed into something that didn’t have a sound yet.

Sable looked at Elian for a long moment.

Then she laughed. Short. Sharp. The laugh of someone who’d just realized the shape of a situation and found it genuinely funny despite themselves.

"Alright," she said.

"Alright," Elian agreed.

He stood up. Adjusted his plain, merchant’s-clerk jacket.

"Come when you can," he said. "My husband has a complicated problem and I’m running out of time."