The Cursed Kingdom

TWENTY

~ TWO BIRDS ~

It was a dark day, so drearily dark that it could've been mistaken for nighttime hadn't it been for the clock sitting on the mantle above a dying fire. A beautiful piece carved from dark wood, its painted face read that it was a quarter past eleven in the afternoon, a time that was usually bustling with energy but now felt as still and unentertaining as the middle of the night.

I sighed and looked at it impatiently again, eyeing the silhouette of the feathered creature depicted in its center. Just to make sure.

"I heard that Albert—you know Rupert's son from Erdas?—found his mate the other day," Ingrid's voice said, her tone and airy with thought. Although Callie's eyes lit up with recognition at the names, I'd never heard of an Albert or a Rupert before then. But, seeing I was outnumbered, I let her continue and mindlessly turned my face away and towards the window. While she spoke, her hands worked on her quilt with the same pace as her voice, which had morphed into the most wonderful masterpiece over the past few weeks, each colorful geometrical shape placed exactly where it needed to be. "That poor lad. I can't imagine finding out your mate, the one you're supposed to be with, is a Rogue." There was a sharp, familiar 'snap!' of a string.

Outside, a black bird flew in indecisive circles against the grey sky before landing abruptly yet elegantly on a swinging tree branch, letting the unstable limb rock it like a mother to her babe. Back and forth it swung again and again and I wondered why it hadn't chosen a studier structure such as the castle, which was truly not that far away, especially by flight. But still the bird stayed and swayed alongside the wind and nature, seeming completely unbothered by the horrible weather as it began cleaning its wings with his beak.

My eyes flickered back up towards the ominous clouds, dense and still, which looked ready to release an entire ocean down onto the earth. They took up the entirety of the sky, not letting a single ray of sunlight through. My mother used to tell me storms were the gods' way of cleansing some evil from the earth so there was enough room for good to grow, that thunder were the gods' voices and lightening the good striking down from the heavens. But as I stared at the one looming above, I couldn't perceive how anything positive could come out of it.

"That's been happening more and more," Callie said and my ears registered the sound of her teacup lightly scraping against her plate as she picked it up. "Henrik," at the sound of his name, the hairs on my neck stood straight, "and I are trying to set up a law or a protocol of some type. We can't lose our best people because they decide to turn wild for their mate. But we also can't have hormonal Rogues coming into our Packs and humping their mate's doorstep every night. We're the Cursed Kingdom. Not the Coitus Kingdom."

Over the time I'd spent with Callie, it was becoming more and more clear that she was as blunt and crude with her words as her cousin. And, after spending so much time with both, I barely cared anymore. Sometimes I even found myself laughing at what they said and would follow it with an internal apology to my mother and everything else divine.

There was a light gasp. "Callie!" Ingrid exclaimed, a girlish giggle in her tone. "Stop! That's disgusting!"

In the gardens below, guards stood huddled together with their arms crossed and swords strapped to their belts, conversing solemnly amongst themselves while yardmen worked around them. By now, all of their faces looked familiar having passed each of them at least a handful of times in the palace. But no names came to mind as I stared at any of them. Well, except for maybe two or three.

My eyes naturally trailed upwards to the woods and soured. With the rising wind and miserable darkness, they looked like black phantoms waving at me, mocking me.