Withering Rose (Once Upon a Curse Book 2) Read online

  Once Upon A Curse Book Two

  By Kaitlyn Davis

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2016 Kaitlyn Davis

  Cover Art: Manipulated by Kaitlyn Davis from from an attribution licensed DeviantArt brush by kavaeka, an attribution licensed DeviantArt brush by Inadesign-Stock, an attribution licensed creative commons photo by vectorartbox.com, a Fantasy Background Store image called Night Garden, and a DepositPhotos.com image copyright OlenaKucher called Beautiful Girl in the Purple Dress.

  Title and Chapter Heading Font: Public Domain Font (Newborough) by Roger White

  The right of Kaitlyn Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be direct infringement of the author's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This is a work of fiction and any resemblances between the characters and persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All Works By Kaitlyn Davis

  Once Upon A Curse

  Gathering Frost

  Withering Rose

  Chasing Midnight – Coming in 2017!

  Midnight Fire

  Ignite

  Simmer

  Blaze

  Scorch

  A Dance of Dragons

  The Shadow Soul

  The Spirit Heir

  The Phoenix Born

  A Dance of Dragons – The Novellas

  The Golden Cage

  The Silver Key

  The Bronze Knight

  The Iron Rider

  To my family for their unconditional love,

  my friends for their overwhelming support,

  and my fans for their incredible enthusiasm.

  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  Table of Contents

  All Works by Kaitlyn Davis

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chasing Midnight Preview

  More Books By Kaitlyn Davis

  About The Author

  I'll never forget the exact moment I started to die.

  The day the world fell apart.

  The day my world fell apart.

  The morning of the earthquake began as a morning like any other. The air was cool and crisp, blowing through the slightly ajar carriage window and stinging my nose. I sat beside my father, hands encased in delicate lace gloves and folded perfectly on my lap. The dainty gold crown marking my station was pinned neatly into my hair, nothing compared to the brilliant, jewel-adorned one atop my father's tanned brow. I sat with my ankles crossed, trying my best not to kick my feet, though they dangled a foot above the carriage floor. And my eyes were glued out the window, transfixed by the snow-capped mountains cutting through the horizon like a sharp blade.

  The mountains of the beasts.

  A place of legend and myth.

  The night before, I had overheard my father's guards telling stories about the bear king and wolf queen who roamed those jagged peaks, rulers made of flesh and fur. They thought I had been sleeping, as a proper princess would have been. But though I was a princess, I loathed being proper.

  "Omorose?" my father asked, pulling me from the view that was beginning to make my heart thud in my chest.

  "Yes, Papa?" I murmured.

  "I'm not used to such silence from you. Are you nervous?"

  I bit my seven-year-old lip, trying to ignore the flurry of butterflies that suddenly zipped across my chest. Was I nervous? Yes. Would I admit it? No.

  I shook my head demurely. "No, Papa."

  "The prince will still be the same boy you met before."

  I nodded, swallowing. The prince was Prince Asher. My friend. A boy I had met a handful of times. But now I would be meeting him in a new light—as my betrothed. The contract was signed. And even as a young girl, I knew the gravity of that decision.

  Prince Asher, son of the Ice Queen, the woman without feeling, the woman whose magic was to steal the emotions of everyone around her, the woman who ruled a desolate, heartless kingdom. My mother's magic was beautiful, filled with light and life. The magic I would inherit was beautiful. But the magic Asher would inherit was cold and scary and unfeeling, and it made me shiver just thinking about being married to a man with such power. I remembered him in my thoughts as a kind, lonely boy, who liked to dream and play as much as I did. But would he always be like that?

  "Omorose?" my father prodded, reading my heavy thoughts—far heavier than a girl's of my age should have been. But being royal left little room for a normal childhood.

  "I just miss Mama and sissy," I mumbled, lips wobbling, not needing to use too much energy to convince him of the truth of my words.

  "Your baby sister is still too young to travel, but you'll see them both soon."

  He patted my hands gently, a loving, worried touch.

  And then our world shattered.

  The ground shook, and we toppled, flipping end over end as the carriage rolled from the dirt road, smashing against the ground. I screamed as my body floated in air for an instant before slamming against the hood of the carriage, which was somehow now the floor. My vision went black as my head hit the heavy, gilded wood.

  Everything faded.

  "Omorose," my father was pleading. "Omorose!"

  His hands caressed my cheeks, a light kiss pressed against my temple, and then my eyes flickered open. The dull ache in my head grew as soon as the light hit my pupils, blinding me.

  "Omorose," my father cried, clutching me to his chest.

  I glanced over his shoulder, trying to understand what had happened. The snow-covered fields were a mess of dirt and ice, shaken apart by godly hands. The mountains in the distance were haloed in rings of flurries and dust. The carriage was by our side, broken into pieces. One of the guards was covered in blood, lying still against the ground. Two more were looking beyond me, behind me, with an expression quivering between awe and alarm.

  "Pa…"

  I trailed off as I spun, my father still holding me tight.

  I gasped, unable to breathe as a fear I had never known washed over me.

  Gone was the dirt road.

  Gone was the snow-kissed field.

  Gone was everything I had ever known.

  A city in chaos rested a few feet away from my frozen body. I didn't know what anything was at the time, everything was foreign and loud and unfamiliar. The only thing I recognized were the sounds of human screams and the sigh
t of human tears. But everything else—impossible. I know now that what I saw were cars and cell phones and office buildings. I know now that the clothing I was startled by were jeans and sweatshirts and down jackets. I know now that the sounds blaring in my ears were car alarms and fire trucks. But at the time, I was overcome by panic and confusion, overcome by the otherworldliness of it all.

  And then the very thing I feared most in my life happened.

  I felt a tingle in my heart.

  A warm, powerful tingle.

  And it moved across my chest, down my arms, over my stomach, around my legs, spreading heat and strength across my entire body.

  "Papa!" I cried.

  No.

  I didn't want it.

  Not yet.

  He met my eyes and instantly he knew that the shriek in my voice wasn't because of the unknown scene before us. It was the panic of my inheritance coming all too soon.

  Pain flashed over his umber eyes.

  Pain and hurt and a longing I will never forget.

  But before I could say anything, before I could apologize for taking any ounce of hope he had left, the trickling heat exploded in my chest as the magic washed over me.

  My mother's magic.

  And the fact that it was now becoming mine could only mean one thing.

  She was dead.

  I tried to cry, to scream, to do anything to express the despair breaking my tiny heart apart. But I was lost in the burn of the magic as it funneled into me from some invisible place, pushing and pulling against my body, burying itself deep inside.

  I distantly remember hearing a low voice shout foreign words. Through eyes that felt not my own, I remember seeing two blurry figures in blue pointing weapons at us, yelling at the two royal guards behind us, forcing them to drop their swords. They ordered my father the king around in a way no one dared before, shouting, using hand gestures when he didn't understand. My father listened, standing when they told him to, holding my limp body in his arms, refusing to let go. He walked and walked and walked, holding me silently. He only said three words the entire time the foreign men led us deeper into their unknown world.

  "Don't use it."

  And I knew what he meant.

  Don't use the magic. Don't show them what we are. But more than that. Something deeper. Something only the members of my family knew, a secret we held close to our hearts. Because that moment, still as death in my father's arms as my mother's magic raged through me, that was the exact moment I started to die.

  I felt it as the torment of heat and strength and power finished devouring my seven-year-old body. The fire ebbed. Delightful coolness sprung to my toes, covering my body in a blanket of much-needed ice as the magic settled into its new home. The last place the warmth lingered was down in the center of my chest.

  One moment, I was a happy, healthy child.

  And the next, I was slowly beginning my descent toward death.

  Because my magic came with a price. A curse my family had kept secret for generations. We had the power to give nature life, but only at the cost of our own. And as the heat finally disappeared, I felt the bloom blossom in the very core of my soul, a rose just like my name—a ticking clock hidden behind a façade of beauty.

  From that moment on, my life would become a countdown, and all I could do was wait and watch as the petals of time slowly started to fall.

  Ten years have passed since the day that changed everything. Ten years of pretending to be something I'm not. Meek. Powerless. Just like everyone else. I've grown so tired of pretending.

  But as I walk through the concrete halls of the underground base, I keep my head down. I try to remain invisible. I hug my books close to my chest, keep my eyes on the floor, and try to be as small as I can be. As unnoticed as I can be. But there are always eyes that watch me nervously, tinged with a bright spark of accusation I've done nothing to deserve. In these halls, being born in the magic world is all it takes to be considered other, different, strange.

  Ten years ago, on the day of the earthquake, my father and I and our two guards were thrown into a foreign world we've been unable to escape. Earth. A place with no magic. A place where magic is considered the most evil thing of all. At first, the people of this world weren't sure what to do with us. Our clothes placed us as otherworldly. We didn't speak their language. So they locked us away, giving us just enough food to get by, speaking to us each day as though we understood. Eventually, their language became more familiar to me than my own. And after a year in captivity in a broken city I could only see through the bars on our window, when my father could finally explain himself and offer a truce, they moved us here.

  They call it the Midwest Command Center, a freedom fighter base where the people of Earth fight with all they can to rid this new world of magic, to make it more like the world they remember. My father became their biggest source of information about our old world and the magic that lived there. He gave them our secrets to keep me safe. He pretended to hate the magic of our world, he devoted himself to helping them fight it, all so they would never guess what I was. What I could do. And at first, I thought it was our salvation. They allowed us to live in a house together. I could see the sun each day, could feel the wind on my cheeks. I had more freedom than I'd ever had before, even in the old world. No maids. Only two guards. No responsibilities except to be a child.

  And then it all changed.

  Magic isn't docile. It doesn't do well waiting in the background.

  Every day became more of an internal struggle to keep my power contained. Every breeze carried the scent of the flowers I could grow with the twitch of my finger. Every weed breaking through stone whispered to me to turn it into something beautiful. The sun on my cheeks was a warm reminder that its light was not the only thing that could give plants life. I could give life. I could make things grow.

  The magic swelled, pressing painfully against my chest, my fingertips, my toes, aching to be released, aching to be used. The power was a foreign presence inside of me with its own needs and desires, its own demands. And every time I took a breath, the magic came alive, fighting against my futile efforts to keep it contained.

  My father commanded me to keep it inside.

  But I lost control.

  One night while I slept, the magic seeped out against my will. It had become too big for my little body to contain any longer. And when I woke in the morning, gasping as I felt the first petal in my soul fall away, the first reminder that using my magic cost me some of my own life, I still couldn't help but smile as the view of flowers filled my vision. A hundred different kinds, a hundred different shades. My inheritance. My birthright. The one little piece of my mother I could hold on to, that no one could take away. I laughed as I danced in the meadow my bedroom had become. My magic was beautiful. And having been used, it was satiated and calm, no longer fighting against me. The magic and I were both at peace for the first time since coming to this foreign world.

  Then my ears caught the distant drum of an alarm ringing ugly against my wondrous morning. The pound of feet tearing up the staircase yanked me from my reverie. My father ripped open the door.

  "I didn't mean it, Papa," I whispered.

  "We have to get rid of it," he said harshly. Not angry with me, I knew, but still, the words hurt. "They have machines, Omorose. Machines that track the magic, that know when and where it comes from. They sensed the surge of your magic overnight. They're on their way here right now."

  Together we ripped the flowers off the walls, tugged the roots from the floor, and stuffed the broken petals in my closet. Tears started to fall. I didn't have the strength to wipe them away.

  When the freedom fighters came, the room was clean. My father told them it was the beast from the mountains, the one whose magic these freedom fighters were constantly tracking. He said the beast had come to kidnap me in the night, that he knew we were from his world, and he wanted to kill us for fighting against him.

  The general and his men b
elieved my father. They trusted him.

  It saved my life.

  And it destroyed it.

  That day, my father moved us from our house. He packed our belongings and brought me to the underground section of the Midwest Command Center, a place no sunlight and no life could touch. A concrete box hidden in the dark. And I've been here ever since. Hiding. Pretending.

  I can't remember the last time I truly saw the sun.

  But each day I learn more about my new universe. The scientists who work here called our world a parallel one to Earth, similar yet different. And they say that long before the earthquake, something happened to throw one of our worlds off course and send it crashing into the other. Ten years ago, our worlds merged, becoming a patchwork planet. I've seen the map at the center of the base, blinking lights outlining the land and sea, outlining a new world that was unnaturally created from two different ones. In some places, the difference is so stark—a mountain range that suddenly cuts off to flat plains, a gently curving beach that abruptly turns into a wide stretch of hilly lands. Old rivers have dried up. New ones have formed, cutting through towns that survived the earthquake only to be flooded and destroyed. The weather is still adjusting to the new world, unpredictable as the tides and winds change each year.

  But there is one thing on the map that consumes everyone's attention, one feature that silently demands to be seen. Dozens of misty circles pulse haphazardly across the globe, obscuring the shorelines and the terrains, spots that are masked and void. It's the magic. Their machines work on electricity, and I've come to learn that magic and electricity were not made to mix. The electric currents cannot penetrate the magic, so all that is left in these areas is a hazy abyss signaling the unknown.

  And that's why I must continue to hide, why I must be very careful about when and where I release my power. The magic cannot be contained forever. Once in a while, it demands to be let out, to be released. It is an animal caged inside of me, ripping me apart for freedom. Sometimes, fighting it is too hard. So I wait for ferocious storms, and when the lights in my room flicker, I know it's safe. In the dark of the night, I sneak to the surface where rain and wind whip around me, and I use it. When my magic forces the electricity in the base to shut off, silencing their blinking machines and winking out the lights, the people of Earth think it is no more than the storm. Those few moments are precious and short, not long enough for anyone to raise questions. And after the brief second where I no longer have to pretend, I sneak back down into my prison to continue the pretense.