I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 15: Chapter 15: Ask Him

Sable arrived at the palace gate the next morning.

She’d dressed for it — not finely, but carefully. The kind of clothes that said I know where I am without saying I belong here. Elian appreciated the instinct.

He met her at the side entrance. No announcement, no escort beyond himself. Edmund had been told that a specialist was coming to consult on a household matter and had accepted this with the diplomatic incuriosity that made him invaluable.

"This way," Elian said.

She followed him through the corridors in silence, taking everything in without appearing to. The paintings. The architecture. The specific quality of a place that had been accumulating history for a very long time.

He brought her to the east corridor.

She stopped.

She could see it. He’d known she would — you didn’t know what she knew without having the sight to some degree. But it was still interesting to watch her face when she did. The slight widening. The reassessment.

"Nasty," she said quietly.

"Yes."

She moved closer. Studying it the way Elian studied things — professionally, cataloguing. The spirit held its ground. It looked at her, then at Elian, then back at her.

"It was starved," she said. "Before death. Look at the way it holds itself." She tilted her head. "That’s why the vengeance is so clean. No confusion in it. Just hunger and purpose."

"Starved deliberately," Elian said. Not a question.

"Almost certainly. It would have made the binding stronger." She straightened. "Whoever did this didn’t rush it."

"No," Elian agreed. "They didn’t."

He looked at the spirit. At the hollow, patient fury of it.

Someone starved you, he thought. While you were in the ground. And then they used what was left of you.

"Can you make out his face," he said.

Sable looked for a long moment. Moved slightly to one side, then the other.

"No," she said. "The binding obscures it. It does that — protects the origin." She paused. "But there’s a way."

"What way."

She looked at him. "You ask him."

Elian looked at her.

"You ask him," she said again. "These spirits — they’re not like the ones you can’t see. They’re not residue. They’re not echoes." She considered how to explain it. "Think of them as a genie. They were made to serve a purpose, to grant something to the person who commissioned them. Except the only thing they grant is a curse. And they can only ever serve that one person — whoever’s blood was used in the binding."

"So it can’t be redirected," Elian said.

"No. And the number of times it can be used is finite — it’s tied to however much hair and nail was taken from the body. Each use costs a portion of that." She paused. "But they can think. They can feel. They can communicate, if they choose to."

"If they choose to," Elian said.

"You have to earn it." She shrugged slightly. "They don’t owe you anything. The only person they’re bound to is the one who commissioned the curse. Everyone else has to gain their trust."

Elian looked at the spirit.

The spirit looked back.

Twelve years, Elian thought, and I have never had to make friends with something specifically designed to kill my husband.

He was about to say something else when Sable made a sharp sound beside him.

Not pain. Surprise.

He looked at her.

She was looking down the corridor.

Caelian had appeared at the far end of it. Moving with his usual purposeful efficiency, papers in hand, clearly going somewhere and not paying attention to the corridor’s other occupants.

Then he looked up and saw Elian standing with a woman he didn’t know outside his usual route and slowed slightly, the way a person slowed when something registered as unexpected.

Sable had gone very still.

"Is he—" she started.

"Yes," Elian said.

She looked at Caelian. At the snake coiled at his neck that she could apparently see perfectly well. At the spiritual weight that moved with him like weather.

"Why," she said. "Why would someone curse the king."

Elian watched Caelian notice them, change his route slightly, continue on his way without stopping — though his eyes moved to Elian for just a moment, a brief question in them that Elian answered with a slight nod that meant later. freewёbnoνel.com

"That," Elian said, "is exactly what I’m trying to find out."

Sable was quiet for a moment.

Then she looked back at the spirit in the corridor. At the hollow, starved, purposeful thing that had been sent to do one job.

"You’re going to need patience," she said. "Gaining its trust. It won’t be quick."

"I have time," Elian said.

He said it with more confidence than he felt.

The bracelet on Caelian’s wrist had five darkened beads this morning.

He had time.

He just didn’t know how much.

"Gaining its trust," Elian said. "What does that look like practically."

"Different for every spirit," Sable said. She was still looking at the corridor where the thing stood. "Some of them just need to be seen. Acknowledged. They’ve been bound so long that recognition itself is enough."

"And others."

"Others need something more specific. Something that relates to who they were." She paused. "Which is why we need the name and the face. If we know who this person was, we know what they valued. What they might respond to."

"And if it never responds." freewebnσvel.cøm

"Then you find the body another way." She turned. "But a spirit that communicates is a spirit that can tell you where it’s buried."

Elian thought about that.

Where it’s buried, he thought. It knows where it is. It came from there. It remembers that even if it remembers nothing else.

"So the trust isn’t just about getting information," he said. "It’s about getting the one piece of information it actually has."

"Yes."

He looked at the thing in the corridor.

It looked back with the flat patience it always had.

You’ve been here a long time, Elian thought at it. You don’t remember your name. You barely remember yourself. But you remember where you came from.

That’s what I need.

"I’ll start tomorrow," he said.

"Start carefully," Sable said. "Spirits that have been bound this long — they’re not entirely what they were. The binding changes them."

"I know," Elian said.

He’d been working with changed spirits his entire career.

One more wasn’t going to break him.