Laurel Greymourner's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The butterflies still packed Laurel's face when the curse began to climb again. She felt it wake at her collarbone and pull upward, cold as pond water. Mirella was close, and the dark magic in Mirella called to the dark magic in Laurel's stone. Every step the witch had taken through the garden had fed it. Laurel had minutes, maybe less, before the curse reached her jaw and locked her thoughts behind it. She had to make Mirella speak before then. Laurel pushed her will into the thorned loops walling the path. She loosened one coil, only one, enough to let a voice through. Then she reached for the butterflies at her ears and moved a small patch aside. Sound came in. Ragged breathing. The scrape of a boot testing the vine. A woman trying not to panic. "I know you can hear me," Mirella said. Her voice was low and clipped. "I felt you at the gate. You pulled the willows down on me." A pause. "I came back to undo it. I have tried twice before. I turned around both times." The curse crept past Laurel's throat. Her tongue felt heavier. She pressed a vine forward through the gap in the barrier and set its tip against Mirella's neck. Not enough to cut. Enough to hold. Through the vine she felt the woman's pulse, quick and human. Laurel pushed a single thought down the length of the vine, the way she pushed thoughts to the willows. Say it. Say what you did. Mirella made a small sound. Then, plainly: "I cursed you. I was on the stairs above the sunken garden. I was watching you carve. I wanted your hands. The magic came out before I meant it to. I did not know how to pull it back." She swallowed against the vine. "Your name is Laurel Greymourner. I have said it every night since." The curse stopped climbing. Laurel felt it stall at the hinge of her jaw, thin as a held breath. The name spoken by the mouth that cast the curse had bought her that much. Not release. A pause. Behind the butterflies, the indigo liquid that had run from her eyes for years slowed on her stone cheeks. One drop hung and did not fall. The willows above her leaned in, listening, their carved leaves tapping stone against stone. Laurel could still think. She could still move a vine. She held Mirella at the neck and understood, for the first time, that the witch had not come to finish her. Mirella had come to try to undo it, and did not know how. The curse was paused, not broken. To break it, Laurel would need what Mirella had failed twice to bring. She loosened the vine at the throat by a hair, kept the barrier standing, and, through the willows, told her captive to sit down and start from the beginning.