ARIELLA'S POV
We make camp several miles from Crosshaven, both too tense to speak until we're hidden in a sheltered grove.
The bounty poster image won't leave my mind—my face with the word "corrupted" in bold letters, the obscene amount of gold offered for my capture or corpse.
I'm worth more dead than alive.
Rhys builds the fire in silence, his movements efficient but distracted. He's thinking too, probably calculating how long before hunters catch up, how many we can survive fighting.
When he finally settles across from me, I see the exhaustion carved into his face. The blood from the wraith fight is still crusted under his nose, and his branded hands shake slightly.
"Evening ritual," he says quietly. "Then we need to talk."
I position myself across from him, and immediately I know something's wrong. The curse is agitated from the day's stress, fighting containment, wanting freedom.
When I try to channel it into his suppression spell, it flares violently.
Pain explodes through both of us. I gasp, shadows erupting from my hands in wild patterns. Rhys catches the backlash, redirecting it through his own magic, but the cost is immediate—blood trickling from his nose again, fresh vessels bursting.
"I'm sorry," I whisper when the curse finally settles. "I'm trying—"
"Stop apologizing." He wipes blood away, tired but not angry. "Your curse isn't your fault."
"I touched the tree. That part was my fault."
"Why did you?"
The question breaks something open inside me.
Not because I don't know the answer, but because no one's ever asked. Not my parents, not the High Council, not the guards who dragged me to exile. They all assumed. None asked why.
"I was suffocating," I hear myself say. "Every day, every moment, was performance. The perfect smile, the perfect words, the perfect princess who embodied everything Luminara valued. But it was all hollow. No one cared who I actually was—only what I represented."
Rhys is quiet, listening with an intensity that makes me want to look away. But I force myself to continue.
"I spent twenty-three years being worshipped but never known. Loved for what I symbolized but never for myself." My voice cracks. "I touched the Forbidden Tree because I thought I'd rather be dead than spend another decade pretending to be a symbol instead of a person."
"And now?"
"Now I'm neither symbol nor person. Just a monster running from everyone who used to worship me."
"You're not a monster." His voice is fierce. "You're someone who chose to feel something real even if it destroyed her. That's not monstrous—that's brave. Reckless, maybe, but brave."
Tears threaten, but I blink them back. "The Guild did the same thing to you, didn't they? Made you into something you weren't?"
He looks at his branded hands, firelight catching on the scars. "The Guild wanted a weapon. They trained me, shaped me, pushed me until I could destroy anything they pointed me at. But they forgot weapons can think. Can choose." His jaw tightens. "When they ordered me to execute a kid—barely twenty, guilty only of practicing magic without permission—I refused."
"So they branded you."
"They burned marks into my hands so every spell would hurt, every use of power would remind me that disobedience has consequences." He flexes his fingers, and I see the pain flash across his face. "The Guild wanted me broken. Obedient. Better to destroy me than let me prove power without their control could exist."
"But you survived anyway."
"Barely. For three years, I believed them—that I was broken, dangerous, better off alone. That the brands were justified because I'd chosen wrong." He looks up, meeting my eyes. "Then you showed up, dying in my forest, and when I saved you, my magic worked properly for the first time since exile. You didn't break me more, Ariella. You balanced me."
The words hit like a physical thing. He's not just talking about magic anymore.
"I didn't ask to be anyone's balance," I whisper.
"Neither did I. But here we are." He attempts a smile that doesn't quite land. "Two broken people keeping each other alive through sheer stubbornness."
Despite everything, I almost laugh. There's something absurdly fitting about that—the exiled princess and the outcast wizard, bound by curses and survival, probably going to die together chasing a legend.
"Tell me we have a chance," I say. "Tell me the Moonlight Crystal is real, that we'll reach it before the curse consumes me or the hunters catch us."
He's quiet for a long moment. Then: "I don't know if we have a chance. But I know we're not giving up. That has to count for something."
It's not the reassurance I wanted. But it's honest, and right now, honesty matters more than comfort.
The fire crackles between us. Outside, night sounds—insects, distant animals, the wind through trees. Normal sounds from a world that wants us dead.
"Rhys," I say softly. "Why are you really doing this?"
"I told you—"
"No. The real reason. You could have walked away at any point. Could have left me to die that first day. But you didn't, and I need to know why."
He stares at the fire for so long I think he won't answer. Then, quietly: "Because I know what it's like to believe you're better off dead. To think the world was right to throw you away." He looks up, and there's something raw and vulnerable in his expression. "And because when you're near me, I don't hurt anymore. Not just the brands—everything. For three years, I've been dying slowly, painfully, alone. Then you show up and suddenly I remember what it feels like to want to survive."
My throat tightens. "That's a lot of weight to put on a cursed elf princess."
"You asked for honesty."
"I did." I reach across the fire before I can stop myself, touching his branded hand gently. "I'm glad you didn't walk away. Even though this is probably going to kill us both."
His hand turns under mine, fingers curling around mine briefly before pulling back. The touch is brief but electric.
"We should sleep," he says, voice rough. "Tomorrow we push hard for the foothills. No more towns, no more crowds. Just wilderness and hopefully fewer hunters."
I settle onto my bedroll, but sleep feels impossible. Too much has been said, too much revealed. I'm hyperaware of Rhys across the fire, of the way his breathing sounds, of how close and far away he seems simultaneously.
"Ariella?" His voice comes from the darkness.
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For asking why. For... caring about the answer."
"Always," I whisper back, echoing the word he used in the swamp.
And as I finally drift toward sleep, I realize something terrifying:
I'm not just bound to Rhys through magic anymore.
I'm starting to care about him as a person. As someone I want to survive for, not just with.
And that might be more dangerous than any curse.