The Island Curse

Revisions Sneak Peek: Prologue

The witch lied.

"There's nowhere else to go."

Shoulders stiff, heels digging into the rocky ground until the skin broke, she slowly turned to face the mob gathering a few yards away. The leader and speaker was Constable Alban, one of the first people she'd met on the island.

She'd thought him polite and kind, but most of all, exotic with skin and eyes the color of freshly turned earth after rain. Jamie grew jealous when he caught her staring at the handsome constable, mistaking her attention for attraction, but his otherness enthralled her.

It turned out Alban was only one example of the island's unfamiliar beauty. No two families looked alike, and the people all possessed a hint of the wild about them. People who looked and sounded like her populated the coastal mountains of her Irish home, and while the locals never offered a straightforward answer as to the island's location, she had only traveled a few days before storms wrecked the ship. Strange to think only a few hundred miles made such a difference.

There was nothing kind about Alban now. Fiery torch raised above his head, its flames swallowed his irises, giving his fury a tangible presence. Others she recognized gathered behind him: the innkeeper and his wife, the schoolteacher and her daughter, and the dark-haired boy from the docks. She stared at him for several long seconds, remembering his attempts to court her. Would things be different if she'd accepted his advances instead of thinking she deserved the attention of a prince?

Alban spoke again. "Why did you do it?"

She didn't have to answer him. It didn't matter now, but she needed them to understand. To know she wasn't a murderer.

"I was trying to save him!"

The constable flinched. Murmurs broke out, and he had to shout to be heard when he replied. "By slitting his throat? Do not take us for fools."

"I-I," the girl stuttered, taking a step back. Stones broke loose and fell over the edge, tumbling toward the thrashing seas. "He was a monster. She told me it would make him human. My blood and his together would cure him. That's what she told me!"

The silence that fell over the mob was more unsettling than their muttering. She squinted to make out their faces, trying to discern the strange looks passing between the islanders. Almost as if they all had the same thought at once.

Why were they not demanding to know the truth about their prince? That he had been unnatural and cursed? Even now she could not banish the images of his true form from her mind. He had pleaded for her to accept him, but the witch had warned her. It was all an act to lure her beneath the waves where he could satisfy his soullessness by consuming her soul.

She tried again. "She gave me a magical knife. Told me it would allow me to share my soul with him and end his hunger. It was the only way we could be together."

"Who is this person you speak of?"

This time it wasn't Alban asking the questions. The crowd parted for the speaker, but she didn't need to see her face to know it was the deceitful witch.

"You know exactly what you're guilty of," the girl said, chest heaving with rage.

The witch's eyes glittered in the dark, unable to hide her feelings of triumph even as she twisted her lips into a sad smile, but the only one who could see the truth was the girl on the edge of the cliff.

"This knife?" the witch asked, holding up a bloody blade. "It's nothing more than a butcher's knife. I tried to warn you Alban. Her poor mind was already addled from the shipwreck. Jamie's betrothal pushed her over the edge. Why didn't you listen to me?"

Alban scrubbed his face, his body sagging as he nodded. "I just didn't want to believe it."

"And now it's too late," the witch said, "Our prince is gone, and his bride has fled to protect herself. What will her father think when word gets back to him? This human girl has brought war upon us, just as I warned."

This human girl... She swayed where she stood. "You're all like him, aren't you? You're all monsters!"

The witch stepped forward, stretching out her hands as if to soothe the girl. "You're sick, child. You don't know what you saw."

She shook her head, flinging fresh hot tears. Her arms itched from all the blood on the skin, but when she scratched, something stuck beneath her nails. She found iridescent flakes protruding between the nails and fingers, and on her arm, matching iridescent patches spread like a disease.

No. I would rather die than become like them.

Shuffling backward, she stopped when only cool night air touched her heels. All it would take to send her into the sea would be a forceful gale. The witch snarled, understanding clear in her face.

"Don't do it, girl."

"I curse you all," she shouted, pointing her finger at the witch first, then moving it along the crowd. "Everyone on this island will know what it feels like to be betrayed by the thing you love and trust the most. You will feel as helpless as I have. You will feel as weak as a human, and this soul you said Jamie craved will haunt these shores until one of your blood makes the same sacrifice I did."

Thunder boomed, but no lightning flashed. A mournful howl called through the trees, over the mountains, and through the hamlet by the coast until every living being on the island felt the curse settle into their bones.

"You little-" the witch shouted, lunging after the girl at the same time she pushed back.

Her last sight was of the woman's wicked face framed by the star-pricked black velvet sky. Before she struck the water, she closed her eyes and repeated the curse, praying that her human heart had enough power to make the words true. Then the waves embraced her, and she turned to sea foam.