I Woke Up Married to the Cursed King

Chapter 7: Chapter 7: Never Invite a God Home

The maids thought Elian was making dolls.

He could tell by the way they smiled at each other when they thought he wasn’t looking. Little figures made of cloth and stuffing and yellow thread, lined up along the windowsill in a neat row.

Elian didn’t correct them.

Let them think what they wanted. The figures were functional, not decorative — each one packed with salt and specific intent, each one representing a different category of spirit, each one a small exorcism in progress. It was slow work without proper materials. Slower than he liked.

But it was working.

The palace felt different than it had two weeks ago. He could feel it the way you feel a change in weather — not dramatic, just a gradual lifting. Rooms that had felt heavy now breathed a little easier. Corridors that had been dense with old presence were clearing.

He picked up the next piece of cloth.

I’m doing this, he reminded himself, because when I fix his problem he will be so relieved he’ll give me anything I ask for. I’ll ask for freedom. He’ll say yes. Everyone wins.

He began to stuff the figure with salt.

This is a transaction. That’s all.

He tied off the thread.

That’s all.

Caelian had been absent for most of the week.

Council business, Edmund said. Border disputes. Trade negotiations with the eastern territories.

Elian had said ah and gone back to his figures.

He wasn’t bothered. The distance was practical. It gave him time to work without an audience, time to think without the spiritual pressure of thirty-something battle ghosts pressing against his concentration.

But after four days he noticed — and he noted the noticing with some irritation — that the room felt different when Caelian came back to it at night.

Not worse.

Just. Different.

It’s the curse, he told himself. You’re monitoring the curse. That’s all.

Caelian found him on the fifth evening sitting cross-legged on the floor of the sitting room, a piece of pale wood in his lap and a small carving tool in his hand.

He stopped in the doorway.

Elian didn’t look up.

"You’re back," he said.

"I live here," Caelian said.

"I know. I meant from the council."

A pause. Caelian came in. Sat in the chair nearest the fire. Loosened his collar with the energy of a man who had been in formal settings for too long.

He watched Elian work for a moment.

"What is that."

"A pendant."

"For who."

Elian turned the wood slightly, examining the groove he’d just carved. "Me, for now. I’ll make another one."

Caelian said nothing. He stretched his neck to one side, then the other. The firelight caught the angle of his face and Elian clocked — professionally, purely professionally — that he looked less hollowed than he had a week ago.

Less hollowed. Still tired.

The salt bundles are helping, Elian thought. But the curse is still there. The snake is still there. I need better materials.

Which brought him to the other thing he’d been working on.

The next morning he called Edmund.

"Is there a rudraksha tree anywhere near the kingdom?" freewёbnoνel.com

Edmund blinked. "A — forgive me, Your Highness. A what?"

Elian described it. The fruit. The seeds. The tree’s appearance. He’d found a botanical reference in the library three days ago that matched — different name in this world, but the same plant, same properties, same everything. His master had called it the most reliable spiritual anchor in existence.

Edmund thought carefully. "There is a tree of that description, Your Highness. Two hours east. Near the old shrine grounds."

"I’d like to go tomorrow."

"Of course."

The tree was enormous.

Old. The kind of old that meant it had been there long before the kingdom and would be there long after. Its roots had cracked the ground around it into patterns. Its canopy spread wide enough to create its own climate underneath.

Elian stood at its edge and looked up.

There you are, he thought.

He walked slowly around the base. Looking for the fruit. Assessing which ones were ready, which ones had the right weight and density, which ones the tree was willing to release.

His master had taught him this. You didn’t take. You asked. The tree was a living thing and the seeds were a gift and you treated them accordingly.

He found a cluster near the eastern root. Crouched down.

"Don’t take that one."

He went still.

The voice had come from — he looked up slowly.

Sitting on one of the lower branches, legs dangling, was a figure.

Not a spirit.

He knew spirits. He knew their texture, their weight, the specific quality of their presence. This was nothing like that.

This was something else entirely.

The figure was looking at him with bright, curious eyes. Neither young nor old in any way that meant anything. There was a quality to it that made Elian’s vision do something strange at the edges — like trying to look directly at something that existed at a slightly different angle than everything else.

"That one," the figure said, pointing at the cluster Elian had been about to touch, "has been sitting too long. Take that one instead." A gesture to a different fruit, three feet to the left.

Elian looked at it.

Looked back at the figure.

"You’re a divine being," he said.

The figure brightened. "You can see me."

"Yes."

"Nobody sees me anymore." It said this without self-pity. Just as information. "People used to pray at the shrine. Light incense. Bring fruit. Leave offerings." It glanced toward the small temple structure barely visible through the trees — weathered stone, roof half-collapsed, the kind of forgotten that happened slowly over generations. "They stopped."

Elian looked at the shrine.

Looked at the divine being sitting in the tree.

Twelve years of professional practice said: do not engage. Do not invite. Do not make promises you cannot keep. The rules around divine beings were even stricter than the rules around spirits — a spirit could be managed, redirected, sent on. A divine being you’d made promises to was a different matter entirely.

He knew this.

He looked at the forgotten shrine. At the bright, lonely eyes in the tree.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Yes."

"Would you come with me?"

The figure went very still.

Then, slowly, something in its expression shifted. Something that had been dim came up, like a lamp being turned.

"You’re inviting me," it said.

"Yes."

"You know what that means. You know the rules."

"I know," Elian said.

He did know. He was breaking every rule he’d ever been taught. You didn’t invite spirits. You absolutely did not invite divine beings. You did not make yourself responsible for something that old and that powerful because you could not predict what came next.

He knew all of this.

The divine being looked at him for a long moment.

Then it dropped from the branch, landed lightly, and stood in front of him. Up close it had a warmth that spirits never had. Something alive in it, even if the aliveness operated by different rules.

"Okay," it said.

"Okay," Elian said.

He picked the fruit it had pointed to.

He straightened up.

He walked back toward where the horses were waiting, and the divine being walked beside him, and Elian thought about all the rules he’d just broken and decided to think about the consequences later.

Later, he told himself, is a problem for later-Elian.

Present-Elian has a god to bring home.