Nicholas Stormholden's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Nicholas Stormholden had made three men love him, and he had wanted none of it. He stood on the balcony of his hilltop villa, wrapped in drifting mist, and remembered the gardener who had wept when Nicholas sent him away. One glance was all it took. His brown eyes did the work, and the man's heart bent like a reed. Nicholas hated that power. He wanted to love one man for real, chosen freely, not caught in a spell. But he could not break a curse he could not name. His raven landed on the stone rail. The bird's feathers caught green and violet in the pale light, and its dark eyes fixed on him with that watchful, knowing air. It carried something in its beak. A single black rose, pale-stemmed, its red thorns bright as blood. "Where did you get that?" Nicholas asked. The raven dropped the rose at his feet and hopped toward the door. It wanted him to follow. He had learned long ago to trust the bird's strange foresight. He picked up the rose, careful of the thorns, and went inside. The raven led him to the library, to a shelf he rarely touched. It pecked at the base of one heavy book until Nicholas pulled it free. The cover was old leather, bound in iron and wrapped in chains. Two hearts twined together on the front, ringed by runes he could not read. A lock held it shut. Nicholas set the rose on the table. He tried the lock. It would not turn. Then the raven pressed its beak to the black petals, and a drop of dark sap welled up. Nicholas understood. He pricked his thumb on a red thorn and touched the blood to the lock. The chains fell away. The book opened by itself, pages turning fast, then stopping. He leaned close. The runes shifted into words he could suddenly read. There, drawn in faded ink, was an eye ringed by thorns. Below it, a name. The Gaze of Bound Hearts. A curse laid on a bloodline, the page said, passed from parent to child. It forced love where none was chosen. And it could only be undone by the one who cast it, or by their living heir. Nicholas sat back. His hands shook. For years he had believed the curse was random, a cruel accident of birth. Now he had a name, and worse, a source. Someone in his family had cast this. Someone tied to him by blood. The raven watched him from the table's edge. Nicholas looked at the eye on the page and knew his search had changed. He no longer needed to ask what the curse was. He needed to find who in his bloodline had made it, and whether they still lived. He closed the book. The chains did not return.