Kingdom of the Feared (Kingdom of the Wicked, #3)(51)

Nonna pushed herself to a sitting position, her breathing labored. I wondered if Vittoria bruised or broke one of her ribs. My sister yanked her up and thrust her into a chair that materialized from nowhere. In mere seconds, Vittoria had her chained, too.

Despite everything Nonna had done, I tried breaking free to help her, but there was no escaping my own restraints.

“Go on, tell her,” Vittoria demanded, bending down to whisper in her ear. “Or I’ll force you.”

“I caught her scrying in Death’s temple. So I made sure the information she learned never left that chamber. There were certain… truths, only me and one other council member were trusted with. We were told to keep the secret at all costs.”

“So you trapped her mind for nearly two decades?” I asked, disbelief apparent in my tone.

“If she hadn’t gone against the council, if she hadn’t unearthed our secrets, she would have never been subjected to that punishment.”

She spoke as if discovering the truth justified her and the council’s actions. Horrified was only a fraction of the emotion I now felt.

Nonna drew herself up, a stubborn tilt to her chin as she held my gaze. Her look said she was telling me because she wanted to, not because my twin was forcing her hand. It was difficult to imagine the tears in Nonna’s eyes the night I’d discovered Vittoria’s body. Where there once was love, hatred burned between them now, bright and all-consuming. I couldn’t believe she was capable of cursing her own friend, then using her as a cautionary tale all our lives.

“Now tell her about her prince,” Vittoria said. “Don’t leave anything out.”

“In the beginning, the Prince of Wrath was cursed to forget all but his hate,” Nonna said, her voice clipped. Not from anger, but pain. Her breath rasped with each inhale and exhale. “The First Witch told him whatever he loved would be taken from him. At that time, he didn’t care for anything, save his wings. That was before he met you.” Nonna sucked in another ragged breath. “He cursed her right back, promising to take something she loved in return if she didn’t return his wings. So La Prima Strega made a bargain with the devil. No one knows the exact terms. She’d set her spell using her blood, made a sacrifice to the goddess, and was overly confident in her abilities. She forgot whom she’d been dealing with.”

She let that sink in and settle. It was a tangled web with many threads winding and twining together until they were so knotted it felt impossible to cut through. Two curses converged, and our lives were caught in between.

“Our curse… part of it was because of the First Witch?” I asked.

Nonna nodded. “You know the first part of the story—that Pride once had a wife who was the daughter of the First Witch. La Prima wanted her daughter back, free from the demon prince, so she came up with a plan to pit Wrath and Pride against each other. She made a bargain with House Vengeance.”

“For a price, naturally,” Vittoria added, her tone cold.

A memory was rising to the surface. I still couldn’t remember who the First Witch was, but I had a strong sense of what she’d wanted. “We were pretending to be one person.” Vittoria nodded, encouraging me to push forward. To fight to reclaim memories that belonged to me. The magic binding me, it was struggling. I felt for the thread of power that belonged to Wrath and tugged it hard, allowing it to break a little more of the curse. It was stubborn, resisted, but my husband’s power was too strong. Another crack split open, freeing a memory. “I was sent to Wrath; my mission was to seduce him.”

Something like relief crossed my twin’s features.

“And I was sent to Pride with the same mission,” Vittoria confirmed. “At the Feast of the Wolf, Wrath was meant to walk in on me and Pride, thinking it was you. The First Witch wanted a war to break out. She wanted her daughter to see that Pride wasn’t serious about her, had never been, if he publicly fought his brother over someone else.”

“She wanted to break her daughter’s heart.” I felt sick. It was a cruel game. A scheme that had destroyed so many lives. All because the First Witch didn’t want to lose her daughter to a demon. And I’d played a part in it. I’d never hated myself more. “And Wrath? What happened?”

“He gave you his heart. He’d caught on to the scheme and didn’t care. The night you were meant to leave and let me finish our mission at the Feast, from what my spies have gathered, you sneaked back to him. You pulled him aside at the party, dragged him off for a tryst. When I was trying to seduce Pride, you were in the garden with him, where he confessed his love.”

Wrath had… Goddess above. Chills erupted over my body. Wrath, the fearsome general of war, had made himself vulnerable. Likely for the first time in his long existence. And then all hell had broken loose. I exhaled a shaky breath. All these years, he’d been cursed to hate me. Yet he’d fought against it. Tried to latch on to the good. No wonder he was hesitant to give me his heart now. The one time he’d given himself wholly, he’d been punished.

“Before he told me he loved me, I confessed everything that night,” I said, suddenly recalling the midnight garden. The night-blooming flowers, the crescent moon. I remembered thinking it was smiling down on us. Now I wonder if it was in mockery. “Somehow, during our game, my feelings changed. I couldn’t go through with the plan. I loved him. So I dragged him away before he could see you and Pride.”