"My father found out.
" Pryce's jaw clenched.
"One of the servants told him about my visits. About Elara. He was furious—said I was disgracing the family, embarrassing him, ruining my future over a peasant whore."
"She wasn't—"
"I know!" Pryce's voice rose. "But that's what he called her. That's what everyone called her once they knew. The gold-digging peasant. The seductress who'd corrupted the prince. As if I wasn't a grown man making my own choices."
He began pacing, agitated.
"My father gave me an ultimatum: end it with Elara and marry Princess Luna of Blackwood, or he'd have Elara arrested for witchcraft and executed. So I... I agreed. To protect her."
Rhys felt a chill. "You agreed to marry Luna?"
"Yes. Broke Elara's heart in the process. Told her I'd been using her, that it was just an amusement, that I could never marry someone like her." Pryce's voice was hollow. "The look on her face... I still see it. Every time I close my eyes. Three hundred years later."
"Why would you do that?"
"Because I thought it would save her!"
Pryce turned to him, and for the first time, Rhys saw genuine anguish in his eyes. "I thought if I made her hate me, she'd leave. Go somewhere safe. Find a normal man, have a normal life. I thought I was protecting her."
"But you weren't."
"No." Pryce's shoulders sagged. "Because my father wasn't satisfied with just separating us. He wanted to destroy any possibility of us reuniting. So he arranged the setup."
"The man in her bed."
"Marcus Thorne. A merchant. My father paid him a hundred gold pieces to drug Elara's wine at the harvest festival and carry her to a rented room. Told me where to find them. Made sure I saw..." Pryce's voice broke. "Made sure I saw what he wanted me to see."
"And you believed it."
"Wouldn't you?" Pryce looked at him. "I'd just publicly humiliated her. Broken her heart. Why wouldn't she seek comfort elsewhere? Why wouldn't she want revenge?"
"Because she loved you."
"I know that now. Cassian proved it—found the servant who'd been paid to drug her wine, the receipts from my father's ledgers, everything. But by then it was too late. I'd already..." Pryce closed his eyes. "I'd already done things I can't take back."
"What did you do to her?" Rhys asked, though he dreaded the answer.
Pryce opened his eyes. They were black. Endless.
"Do you really want to know? The details? How many times I struck her? How roughly I used her body? How I screamed accusations while she begged me to listen?"
Rhys felt sick. "You raped her."
"I told myself it was my right. That she'd betrayed me, so I could do whatever I wanted.
That she owed me this." Pryce's voice was flat, emotionless—the tone of someone reciting facts too painful to feel. "I visited her cell every night for three weeks.
Sometimes I'd just rage at her. Sometimes I'd cry and beg her to explain why she'd done it. And sometimes I'd... take her.
Roughly. Trying to reclaim something that was never mine to own in the first place."
"And she never fought back?"
"She tried at first. Then she just... stopped. Went silent. Limp. Like her soul had already left even though her body remained." Pryce's hands were shaking.
"That should have told me something was wrong. That she wasn't guilty. But I was so consumed by my own pain, my own betrayal, I couldn't see past it."
"What about your father? Didn't he stop you?"
"Stop me?" Pryce laughed darkly. "He encouraged it. Told me I was 'teaching her a lesson.' Made his guards available to...
continue her punishment when I wasn't there."
Rhys's stomach turned. "Oh my God."
"And then Cassian started investigating.
Started finding evidence.
My father panicked—if the truth came out, he'd be exposed. So he had Elara killed.
Made it look like suicide. Hung her in the dungeon and left her there for me to find."
Pryce turned away, shoulders rigid.
"I held her body for three hours. Just held her and cried. And in my grief and rage and guilt, I convinced myself it was her fault.
That she'd chosen death over facing me.
That even in dying, she was trying to escape me."
"So you cursed her."
"So I cursed her." Pryce's voice was barely a whisper. "Swore she'd be mine in every life. That no one would ever take her from me again. That she'd never escape what we had."
"What you thought you had. It wasn't real."
"It was real in the beginning!" Pryce spun to face him. "Before the lies, before the paranoia, before I let my father poison everything—what Elara and I had was real. And beautiful. And worth fighting for."
"You didn't fight for it. You destroyed it."
"I know." Pryce's voice broke completely. "I know what I did. I know what I am. And I've had three hundred years to regret every moment, every cruel word, every time I hurt her instead of trusting her."
"Then let me go," Rhys said quietly. "Let this be the end. Break the curse. Let both our souls be free."
"I don't know how!" Pryce's shout echoed through the hall. "Don't you think I've tried? I've spent centuries trying to undo what I did in one moment of anguished madness! But the curse won't break.
It just... continues. Life after life, I watch you be born, grow, love someone else, and then I have to—"
He broke off, turning away again.
"You have to kill them," Rhys finished.
"Yes." The admission was barely audible.
"Even though I don't want to. Even though I see the pain it causes you. The curse compels me. When you love someone else, when they threaten to take you from me, I become... something else. Something dark and violent that I can't control."
"Kai didn't deserve to die."
"No," Pryce agreed. "None of them did. Thomas, Catherine, James, Michael, Jennifer, Kai—all innocent. All guilty only of loving you." He looked back at Rhys with haunted eyes. "All murdered by my hand because I can't let you go."
"Then we're both prisoners."
"Yes."
They stared at each other across the candlelit hall—a ghost and a man, bound by a curse neither fully understood.
"Thirty days," Rhys said finally. "You said I have thirty days to break this. What happens if I can't?"
"Then you accept the inevitable. Stop fighting. Stay with me willingly."
"And if I still refuse?"
Pryce's expression hardened. "Then the cycle continues. You'll eventually die—whether by my hand, your own, or time itself—and you'll be reborn. And we'll do this all over again. For eternity."
"That's not love,
" Rhys said. "That's hell."
"Perhaps they're the same thing." Pryce moved to the door. "Eat. Rest. Tomorrow, explore the palace. Read the old journals in the library. Look for your solution." He paused in the doorway.
"But know this, Rhys: I'm rooting for you. Despite everything, I want you to break this. I want us both to be free."
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because I'm tired," Pryce said simply. "Three hundred years of obsession, jealousy, violence, grief. I'm so very tired. If you can find a way to end this curse, to free both our souls...
" His voice dropped.
"I'll help you. Even if it means I cease to exist."
With that, he vanished, leaving Rhys alone with a feast he couldn't stomach and questions that had no answers.