I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Thirty Ghosts and a Snake

Arjun had not slept particularly well.

This was understandable.

By the time the maids arrived in the morning, Arjun had catalogued the ceiling, counted the bookshelves, identified three exits, and arrived at exactly zero useful conclusions about his situation.

Husband, his brain kept offering, helpfully.

Yes, he kept telling it. I know. Thank you.

The maids moved around him like a system. Efficient. Practiced. They clearly had a routine and he was simply the variable that stood in the center of it.

He let them work.

The trousers were high-waisted. Dark. Well-cut. He looked down at them and felt something close to approval. He’d always liked clothes that meant something.

Loafers. A shirt, open at the collar. Nothing stiff. Nothing ceremonial.

Interesting, he thought. Not what I expected for a prince.

Then the jewelry.

Chains first. Two of them, thin gold, different lengths. Then rings — three, distributed across both hands with an eye for balance that suggested whoever had chosen them actually understood aesthetics.

Then the maid with the earrings.

Arjun went still.

She held them up. Small. Gold studs with a single dark stone each.

He touched his ear. The piercing was there, healed smooth. Had been there for years, clearly.

The body’s choice, he reminded himself. Respect.

He held still and let her put them in.

He looked in the mirror when they were done.

The overall effect was — he turned slightly — yes. That worked. The body carried it well. The chains caught light. The rings fit like they’d been made for those specific fingers, which they had been, just not for him.

You’re a pretty boy, he told the reflection. I’ll give you that.

The reflection offered nothing in return.

The butler — his name was Edmund, Arjun had gathered, from the way the maids said it — appeared at the door at precisely the right moment.

"His Highness is ready to receive you in the study, Your Highness."

His Highness.

Right.

"Of course," Arjun said.

The study was large and smelled like old paper and wood polish.

Arjun stood near the window and waited.

He’d been waiting approximately four minutes when the door opened.

He turned.

And stopped.

The man who walked in was tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of face that had been built for severity and had leaned into it. Blonde hair, pushed back like it had been done impatiently. Violet eyes — the kind of color that shouldn’t exist on a real person, the kind that made you look twice before you remembered you were supposed to be looking away. He moved like someone who had never once in his life wondered if he was allowed to be in a room.

Caelian, something in the body said. Automatic. The way it had supplied the language, the name, the thousand small recognitions of a life Arjun hadn’t lived.

Arjun wasn’t looking at any of that.

He was looking at the thirty-something spirits trailing behind him.

Thirty.

He counted again.

Thirty-two.

They crowded the doorway. They filled the corners of the room before the man had even fully entered it. Different ages. Different states of — coherence. Some were sharp and present, watching. Some were barely there, smeared at the edges like old photographs left in the sun.

Arjun had seen this once before.

A groundskeeper at a cremation ground in Varanasi. Seventy years old, worked the same plot since he was fifteen. The man had forty-odd spirits walking with him and didn’t know a single one was there.

He’d charged that client double. Hazard rate.

This man, Arjun thought, has thirty-two spirits attached to him and he is clearly not a groundskeeper.

The spiritual pressure hit like walking into a wall of heat.

Arjun took a step back.

The man — the husband, his brain supplied, thank you, I said thank you — looked at him.

His expression was already somewhere between neutral and closed. At Arjun’s step backward, it shifted. Harder. Something flickering behind the eyes that wasn’t quite readable.

Arjun took another step back.

One of the spirits — an older woman, sharp and watchful — moved toward him with intent.

He took a third step, and his shoulders hit the wall.

"Elian." The violet eyes didn’t move. "Why are you moving away."

Not a question. A demand wearing a question’s clothes.

Arjun was pressed against the wall, professionally assessing the situation.

Thirty-two spirits. At least four actively hostile. One who just tried to approach me. Spiritual pressure approximately equivalent to standing next to a very angry haunted house.

And this is my husband.

"I would like to stand a little further away," Arjun said carefully. "Your Highness."

A pause.

The man’s jaw tightened. His hand came up and pressed briefly against his temple. Like a headache. Like pressure behind the eyes.

Of course, Arjun thought. Thirty-two spirits and he can’t even see them. He just lives with that weight every day and has no idea what it is.

He would have felt sorry for him.

Except one of the spirits was currently making a very rude gesture in Arjun’s direction, and he had to work to keep his expression neutral.

"Fine," the man said. The word landed flat and final. He dropped his hand from his temple. "Go back to your room. We’ll discuss your recovery later."

"Of course," Arjun said. "Thank you, Your Highness."

He moved toward the door.

Which meant moving closer to the man. ƒгeewebnovёl.com

Which meant moving through the edge of the spiritual pressure.

Arjun kept his face neutral and walked steadily and did not let any of the thirty-two spirits know that he could see every single one of them.

He was almost at the door.

And then he saw the snake.

He stopped walking.

It was coiled around the man’s neck like a collar. Dark. Dense. Not moving the way living things moved — it pulsed, slow and rhythmic, like a heartbeat that wasn’t his. Its head rested against the man’s collarbone, and where it pressed, the skin beneath looked faintly darker. Wrong.

It wasn’t a spirit.

It was a curse.

A specific kind. The slow kind. The kind that someone had put there deliberately, with patience and intent, and then walked away from, knowing it would finish the job on its own schedule.

Arjun had removed three of these in his career. They were not easy. They were not cheap. And they did not stop on their own.

He looked at it for exactly two seconds.

Then he walked out the door.

Back in his room, he sat on the edge of the bed.

He stared at the wall.

Okay, he thought. Okay.

Thirty-two spirits. One active death curse. Slow-moving, but it’s moving. Has been for a while, by the look of it.

He pressed his fingers together.

And I have to live with this man.

He thought about the snake. The way it pulsed. The darkened skin beneath it.

He thought about his professional opinion, formed over twelve years of working with the dead and the dying and the cursed.

That man is going to die, he concluded. Not today. Maybe not this year. But that curse is patient, and it is working, and without intervention he is absolutely going to die.

He lay back on the bed and looked at the chandelier.

Can I divorce him?

He considered this seriously.

What are the divorce laws here? Where even is here? What country — what century — am I in?

He pinched the bridge of his nose. fгeewebnovёl.com

Also, more urgently: whoever put that curse on him is still out there. And they went to considerable trouble. Which means this man has a serious enemy. Which means this household is not safe.

He closed his eyes.

I got shot for knowing too much about one man’s problems.

And now I am married to a man with thirty-two spirits and a death curse around his neck.

He opened his eyes.

I need significantly more information before I make any decisions.

He stared at the chandelier for a while longer.

...The food here is still incredible though.