Chapter Text
“Please, miss, you gotta help me! I can’t go back home like this!”
Freya stared at the man in front of her, only half listening to him. Her day had been going well enough until he’d decided to barge through her door five minutes before she was set to close up shop, and she was doing her best to keep her annoyance from bleeding into her expression. She’d even gotten a substantial tip from the older woman who had come in an hour earlier, handing her a small antique music box that would try to bite at her fingers whenever she tried to play it. It had taken Freya around half an hour to get a hold of the curse itself, and another fifteen minutes to remove it.
Apparently, the music box had been a gift from the woman’s mother. Although she would never say it out loud, Freya was willing to bet that was where the curse came from. Spirits that departed the world with regret often projected such regret onto objects of meaning and value. Most never intended for it to be a curse in their last moments in the living world, but that was how their negative emotions manifested themselves. But she’d found that, whenever she explained this to her customers, it often only made them sad.
Freya forced her attention back to the man in front of her. He was still rambling on about how sorry he was, and he looked like he was getting close to tears. She’d long lost count of how many people she’d seen cry over the years, whether it be from frustration, sadness, humiliation, or anger.
“So let me get this straight,” she started, sighing. “You’ve been having an affair with a woman for the past three months, neglecting to tell her that you’re married. She found out and, in a fit of rage, shouted a word of power at you, and then stormed out the door.”
“Well… yeah. But that’s besides the point. Can you fix it or not?”
Freya flicked her gaze up to his head, mustard green hair constantly falling in his eyes no matter how hard he tried to push it back. One glance was enough to tell her that it wasn’t a curse, rather it was a hex. Curses took a significant amount of mana to cast, and the worst of them took weeks or even months of preparation. Very few people were even able to curse someone, much less do it impulsively. That, and curses fell more into the category of life-threatening, while hexes were more along the lines of inconvenient annoyances.
But he’d requested her help, and since he was paying her, she wasn’t about to correct him.
“Do you remember the word that she shouted?” Freya asked.
“I ain’t a magic caster so I wasn’t able to understand it much. I think she said the word capillus.”
She let out a breath and dug under the counter for her supply of ginseng root, setting one on the counter. “Alright then, eat one of these. Whole, crush it over your food, turn it into a smoothie, it doesn’t matter. The root naturally rejects magic so it should get rid of the hex on your hair within a few minutes of you eating it.”
The man grabbed the root, some of the tension leaking out of his body. “Thank you, thank you. You’re really saving my skin here.”
Freya nodded absently. “That’ll be 40 credits.”
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a card, pressing it against the reader sitting on the edge of the table, waiting until it beeped before pulling the card away. Freya had been tempted to upcharge him just because she could, but her mother’s words echoed in her mind.
‘Our job is to help those who are hurting, not to judge them.’
Freya always wanted to argue when she said that. But then again, Freya had never had the same amount of patience for people that her mother had. That was why, as the man walked towards her door and pushed it open, she muttered quietly under her breath, and the perfect illusion of a lipstick mark appeared on his collar.
She ignored the sharp pain in her fingertips that followed. It was worth it.
Before anyone else could enter, demanding she solve yet another problem, Freya stood and walked around the counter to the front window, turning the sign hanging next to the door until the side that said “closed” faced the outside world. It was only then that she allowed herself to finally relax, striding back to the counter and closing her laptop. She hadn’t made any more progress on her research, but that wasn’t all that surprising, all things considered.
After all, it was difficult to find the cure to a curse that, according to everywhere she had looked, didn’t exist.
Freya pulled out her notepad and crouched down behind the counter, looking through the various boxes and containers holding different herbs, flowers, and other assorted plants. Very few curses actively required her to use her own magic to break them. Often, for curses cast on living beings, all it took was ingesting some form of remedy. The nastier the curse, the rarer the ingredients she needed to make the remedy.
Objects were a little different; it wasn’t as if they could eat. So instead, they would need to soak in the remedy for… a set amount of time that depended on the curse in question. The woman’s music box only needed fifteen minutes before the curse was broken, but Freya had encountered curses that needed days to be naturalized.
When she finally got to her box of ginseng, she sighed at how empty it was, only a few roots rolling around in the bottom. Ginseng was a root used in a lot of curse and hex remedies, and was therefore an ingredient that she ran out of rather quickly. Five roots wouldn’t be enough to get her through the next day of work.
“Why does it smell like cheap cologne and sadness in here?”
At the sound of a familiar voice, Freya poked her head over the counter. Standing in the doorway was her adoptive younger brother, wild snow-white hair shoved haphazardly to one side and gold eyes staring straight through her. He had a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, arms crossed over his chest.
“You know the kind of people who find themselves on my doorstep, North,” she reminded him. “People are desperate and I get to deal with the consequences of their actions.”
“So I can assume that the man with unnaturally vomit-colored hair who just left is the source?”
“Probably. I’m surprised you didn’t also pick up on a scent of fragile masculinity. He cheated on his wife and the woman he was having an affair with is the one who hexed him.”
North moved towards the counter, hopping up to sit on it, feet dangling over the side. “Then I can assume the lipstick mark on his neck was also your doing? I would scold you for using magic, but I can’t really bring myself to.”
Freya shoved the nearly empty box of ginseng back into its cubby and got to her feet. “I know my limits, North. Besides, a spell like that only took a few minutes off of my life.”
“I would prefer that your lifespan didn’t get any shorter, but it’s not like I can control you and what you do.” North’s gaze traveled from her face to the elbow-length gloves covering her skin. “You know you don’t have to wear those, right? Not around me at least.”
Freya sighed, gripping the hem of her glove and pulling it off. “I know. But it’s bad business for a cursebreaker to walk around with a visible curse.” She looked down at her hands, ink-black corruption spreading from the tips of her fingers up just past the lines of her wrists. “The irony isn’t lost on me and it certainly wouldn’t be lost on them. No one wants a cursebreaker who hasn’t figured out how to break her own curse.”
“I get it,” North finally said. “Like I said, I’m not condemning you for it. I know asking you not to use your magic is like asking me not to shift.”
The look in North’s eyes wasn’t pitying, something that Freya would always be grateful for. Pity was the expression most people wore when they learned of her curse. They pitied a sorceress who couldn’t use her magic without it slowly killing her. It was the equivalent of an Avian being unable to fly. Magic was ingrained in her very being, and no matter what North or her mother said, she would never be able to go her life without ever using it.
She would rather live a short but fulfilling life than a long and miserable one.
That didn’t mean she hadn’t been looking for a way to get rid of her curse entirely. It was what she spent her free time researching, looking for some form of cure to the monster that had haunted her since before she could even remember. But no matter where she looked, whether it be the trenches of the internet, every library in the city, or even the black market—the side of the black market that didn’t require her to sell her kidney—she hadn’t been able to find anything.
North had been looking too, alongside working as an apprentice to one of the best apothecaries in the city. No matter how much he joked about wishing he were an only child, Freya knew that he wanted to see her curse broken just as much as she did. After all, at the end of the day, they were all each other had left.
Freya slid her laptop into her backpack and slung it over her shoulder, shoving her gloves in the pocket of her hoodie. “Did Jericho let you go early then? Normally they don’t let you off the clock until after sunset.”
North shook his head. “Nah, they want me to go get some more bloodroot. Their stock is running low. I came to ask if you wanted to come with me. I could use the company.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Yeah, I’m running low on ginseng so we can hit two birds with one stone. But we’ll need to go pretty far into the forest. If we want to make it back before too late, you’re going to have to run us.”
North hopped off of the counter, lifting his arms up and twisting to either side. Freya could hear his spine pop as he did so, and if he were anyone else, she would have feared for the integrity of his bones. But after witnessing him break an arm when they were children, said arm having healed itself in the span of a few hours, she’d learned not to worry about his capability of taking care of himself.
“Is fast and free transportation all I am to you?” He asked, though there was nothing accusatory in his tone.
“Yes,” she responded without hesitation.
He pouted. “Rude.”
The two of them stepped out of the shop, and Freya turned to lock the door behind her, taking a moment to stare at the hanging sign that read “Guinevere’s Cursebreaking.” Her mother had always been the better cursebreaker out of the two of them. Without her there, the shop felt empty, even when Freya made sure that it stayed open and running, awaiting its owner’s return.
When she turned, North was gone. In his place was a white wolf, shoulders settled at the height of an average human man. He towered over her, familiar golden eyes boring into her, waiting. Freya had known North for pretty much her entire life, but she would never get used to how quickly and silently shifters could go from looking nearly human to whatever animal they shifted into. In North’s case, Freya would at least recognize that his silence likely had to do with the fact that wolves were stealth hunters.
North knelt down and bowed his head, allowing her to climb onto his back, grabbing a hold of his fur to keep herself steady. He waited until she got comfortable before he stood to his full height, moving to the edge of the sidewalk before he broke into a sprint, speeding up until he could slide into the lane of traffic reserved for the faster class of shifters.
It was always impressive to Freya no matter how many times she witnessed it, just how fast North could run, able to keep up with the cars driving next to him without breaking a sweat. He’d grown to around five times the size he’d been when Freya’s mother had found him, and although his wolf form wasn’t supposed to get any bigger after he’d reached the age of eighteen, Freya was convinced he’d gotten at least a few inches taller in the four years since.
The trip to the edge of the city took around fifteen minutes, and it took another thirty to get to the ravine in the forest that grew the largest quantity of ginseng and bloodroot. Once they’d reached the edge of the ravine, North slowed to a stop and crouched down again to let Freya slide off. Once she was steady on the ground, North’s form shrunk until he’d returned to looking relatively human.
“You could have run faster, you know,” Freya commented.
North crossed his arms. “Just because I’m not a vehicle doesn’t mean that I don’t have to follow the laws of traffic. And I’ll have you know I was still technically speeding.”
Freya set her backpack down against the nearest tree and moved to the side of the ravine that wasn’t as steep, carefully sliding down until she reached the bottom. North followed behind her, stopping once he reached a small white flower. He opened his messenger bag before he grabbed the flower by its base and pulled, unearthing the red root that was the plant’s namesake.
“You know, you should really wear gloves,” Freya told him as he dropped the root into his bag. “The sap can give you rashes.”
“And you know the rashes wouldn’t last longer than a minute for me,” he shot back.
Freya rolled her eyes before letting it go, sliding her own gardening gloves over her hands. “Why does Jericho always insist that you be the one to restock their bloodroot anyway? They never send you out to get the rest of their stock.”
North pulled another root from the ground. “Superstition mostly. Rumor has it that this forest used to be home to a Fae city. And with the Fae comes all manner of deadly magical shit. Master Jericho doesn’t want to bring a curse down on their entire bloodline for venturing where they shouldn’t. They try to convince me not to forage here whenever they run out of bloodroot, but they also know that fresh and wild bloodroot is more effective. And with so few people willing to come here, it’s also relatively untouched.”
Freya remembered the stories her mother had told her about the Fae when she was a kid. They were stories of magic and mystery, always painting the Fae as beings of great power but also great trickery. The stories were meant as a warning, but also as an example to how one should respect the world around them and the gifts they were graciously given.
‘The humans who are lucky enough to be born with the capability of magic must always respect the natural world, Freya, and that includes the Fae. After all, it is one thing to be able to bend magic to your will, it is another thing entirely to bleed magic as they do.’
“They Fae have been extinct for over a millennia” Freya argued back. “Any curses or traps they set would have long since eroded. Superstition is pointless.”
“Try telling Master Jericho that.”
Freya scanned the bottom of the ravine until her gaze landed on the red berries littered through dark green leaves. She knelt down, methodically pulling on the roots until the soil gave way. Once she got a hold of the root, she pulled out her pocket knife and cut the root from the leaves. She only needed the root for cursebreaking, but that didn’t mean she didn’t pop a few of the berries into her mouth as she worked.
After a while, she heard North call down to her. “I’ve got enough bloodroot. We can head back when you’re done.”
Freya swallowed. “I’ll be a second. Mom was always faster than me at gathering roots. I still have to dig through the dirt when they don’t want to cooperate.”
North was silent for a moment before he spoke again. “Do you… do you think that mom is still alive out there?”
At the question, Freya’s hands stilled, body going tense. “Of course she is. She’s mom. If anyone could survive anything thrown at them, it would be her. And if anyone could find a cure for my curse, she would be the one to do it.”
“But we haven’t heard from her in six months, Freya. She said she’d check in but she’s been radio silent.”
Freya turned to look at him, and her gaze softened when she saw the worry in his eyes. “You’re allowed to miss her North, but have some faith in her.”
North huffed, blowing some of his hair out of his eyes. “I know. And I know you’ve gotta miss her more than I do. She’s your mom after all.”
Freya stood and put her pocket knife away. “She’s as much your mom as she is mine, North. Blood has nothing to do with it. The same goes for me. You're my brother regardless of what someone else might say. Mom raised both of us.”
At that, North smiled. “I know. But please, for the love of the spirits, stop sounding so wise. You’re only two years older than me, but if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were an old philosopher.”
Freya glared at him. “Call me old one more time and I’ll give you something to philosophize about. Now get your ass down here and help me with these roots. We might even get back before sunset.”
North did as she said, sliding down until he knelt next to her. The two of them didn’t need to talk as they worked, perfectly content to just exist in each other’s presence. One might have expected them to argue, and they did—quite frequently, actually—but both of them had long since accepted that, as the only family each of them had left, nothing good came from pushing each other away.
Freya reached for the next root, but instead of coming into contact with the moist soul of the ground, her hand hit something solid and round, and she froze. North glanced at her with a questioning look in his eyes, but all Freya could think about was the fact that the thing under her fingers had an indent in it that felt suspiciously shaped like a handprint. And when she pushed her hand down to fit into the socket, her theory was confirmed as the ground under her began to glow white.
Something sharp poked her index finger, causing her to yank her hand away with a curse. The white glow shifted to a red that matched the blood dripping down her hand. She and North both stumbled back as the ground beneath them began to tremble, and she couldn’t help the way her jaw dropped open as the steep cliff side of the ravine moved, two square-shaped pieces of rock sliding apart until the entrance to a long corridor sat before them, smelling of dust and decay.
“Woah, creepy magic cave,” North muttered before turning back to her. “You okay? You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine,” she told him, but she still let him pull bandages from his pack to wrap her injury. “I just wish I had your healing factor.”
When North was done, Freya got to her feet and studied the entrance, taking careful note of the ancient rune carvings she couldn’t make sense of lining the edge of the stone. North, for his part, didn’t hesitate to step into the corridor, unbothered by the darkness as someone who was fortunate enough to have night vision.
“Careful,” she called. “We don’t know what kind of traps are here. Be cautious.”
“Weren’t you the one who said that most of the traps have probably eroded by now?” He called back. “Besides, who knows what kind of secrets are in this place? It looks like it hasn’t been touched in centuries.” He gasped and turned around to look at her. He was grinning wide, sharpened canines glinting in the faint sunlight leaking in through the corridor’s entrance. “Hey, maybe they have information on your curse in there! It wouldn't hurt to look, right?”
Freya could think of many ways that wandering into an abandoned Fae corridor could hurt, but she couldn’t argue with his logic. She too was curious, a trait she knew would inevitably end up getting her killed one day, but she couldn’t help but want.
“Fine. But not for too long. I still want to get back before sunset.”
North nodded before grabbing her wrist and pulling her with him. “Come on, I think I smell books.”
There were, in fact, books. The corridor eventually opened up into a massive library, shelves littered with old scrolls and slates. Freya pulled a few off of the shelves, scared they would crumble in her fingers if she moved them too quickly, but soon came to the realization that all of them were written in a runic language she didn’t understand. And even if she could understand the language, the only lighting she had was a few skylights.
It was strange, actually. How were there skylights if they were likely several feet underground, and there wasn’t any sign of such a library from above-ground?
Freya took to studying the cave’s architecture after realizing she couldn’t read any of the books. There were several carvings and murals littering the walls, some more intricate than others, and some nearly impossible to make out due to erosion. The easiest mural to depict was what appeared to be a meeting of kings, one king clearly Fae judging by the tall stature and pointed ears, and the other seemingly human, long hair, long beard, and an intricate crown resting on his head. The two kings looked as if they were agreeing to something, an idea that Freya found rather ironic considering that it was due to the humans that the Fae were extinct in the first place.
“Um, Freya? I think you should come see this.”
Freya moved to the other mural that was easy to depict. “Give me a second, North.”
The mural was vastly different from the other one, showing the same Fae king but with a knife in his back. He was reaching out to what appeared to be another Fae, a young woman. She had a circlet around her head, likely signifying her to be some form of royalty, and she was reaching out to the Fae king, their fingers inches from touching one another. Behind her, what appeared to be ice was creeping across the edge of the mural.
“Yeah, but this is actually rather important and you should really, really come look.”
Freya sighed and turned. North stood in the center of the room, looking at what appeared to be a large block of ice setting on a table that looked to me made for it if the way it matched the size of the ice was anything to go by. Freya approached him, but as she got closer, she made out his expression to be one of both shock and horror.
Something nervous swooped low in her gut as she came to realize that the block of ice was the same size and shape as a coffin.
“What is it?” She asked him as she came to stand next to him, but she found she didn’t need him to answer.
In the block of ice lay the figure of a young woman, arms crossed and her hands resting on her chest. She wore what looked to be silk robes, ancient in design, and her long black hair, even when braided, extended to her mid-thigh. Ivory skin stretched perfectly over high cheekbones, and her almost ethereal beauty—alongside her antlers and pointed ears—gave away what she was almost instantly.
“Holy shit,” Freya said smartly. “That’s a Fae. That’s a fucking Fae.”
Next to her, North swallowed and pointed at her chest. “Uh, that’s not all.”
Freya studied the Fae closer, and when she finally realized why North looked so shocked, her blood went cold and the feeling of unease that was simmering in her gut boiled over into near-panic.
The Fae’s chest rose and fell. It was slow, but it was unmistakable, and Freya didn’t know what it meant, whether to her, or the world as a whole. She couldn’t know the consequences of what she and her brother had just uncovered, and that terrified her more than anything.
There was a Fae lying in a coffin of ice, hidden in a library undiscovered by the outside world, and that Fae was alive.