The Cursed Girl, #1 Read online

  The Cursed Girl

  Maria Vermisoglou

  To my sisters

  To everyone like Eva around the world

  To you

  Copyright © 2018 Maria Vermisoglou

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations in book reviews.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and incidents are either the results of the writer’s imagination, or if they are real, they are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or any other kind is coincidental.

  Editing by Kelly Hartigan (Xterra Web) editing.xterraweb.com

  Cover Illustration by Jessica Allain

  Drawings by Sofia Darviri

  Table of Contents

  The Beginning

  The Ball

  Gossiping

  The First War

  The Mission

  The Eviction

  The Ritual

  Recovering

  The Library

  The Exile

  The Encounter

  In Hiding

  The Fight

  Interrogation

  The Spanish War

  The Flight

  The Massacre

  The Cave

  The Meeting

  Preparing for War

  The Battle

  The Duel

  Birthday

  Go, go, go

  Off we Ride

  The Search

  The Letter

  The End of the War

  Aftermath

  Returning

  The Hearing

  Drawing

  The Assault

  The Fall

  Vacation

  Returning

  A Royal Wedding

  Celebrations

  You Can’t!

  Preparations

  An Unforgettable Marriage

  Honeymoon

  The Accident

  Some Peace

  The Ending

  The Truth

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  About the Author

  You obviously expect a nice story, something that will make you laugh or feel excited. You think this book will get me away from my boring reality, but that’s the thing with books—they transfer you mentally to another reality for a little while. But this book is not like any other book you have ever read. This book is real. You will experience my life, through my eyes and feel real danger. I warn you because this is your last chance to choose another book. Romance, perhaps or a funny story? Even better. My story is no fairy tale and no happy ending is included. If you think your life sucks, think again because my life is like a living Hell on Earth. My friend Ritta persuaded me to write it down so I would feel better—like this is going to change anything...

  My name is Eva and I am a witch. I was born in 1214 in Spain in a little village, at least the first time. Of course, your question is obvious: Why am I still alive? Witches live many years, but we are not immortal; we can die. There are many tales about witches, but I will tell you the truth, since most human tales are just that, stories for scaring children. I see the world differently and believe you should know the truth. I am an artist, and many have blamed all my time spent drawing for my different beliefs. I am also the princess of witches—yes, they have princesses—and there is a queen, but that’s a story for later.

  You can be a witch in many ways, but the most common way is to have a parent who is a witch. We live in a hidden land called White Land. It’s not visible, so don’t look on a map—you won’t find it. Our land is among the stars, so it’s not easy to find it. It is peaceful and magical and for every witch it is a home, a paradise.

  The White Land is safe. No one goes there unless invited, and we live our lives happily, but we have our fights too. Witches have many kinds of jobs such as healers, teachers, shop sellers, and seers who can see the future so they can tell you if a big threat is near. No, fortune tellers are humans who are mostly liars. Please. Seers can see so many things they can give you a headache. Every witch has a different gift she can use. The queen is the one who handles the bureaucracy job as humans say: she ensures peace, breaks the fights, and solves problems, but the princess goes to fight with the big guns: killing demons, evil warlocks, and creatures associated with dark magic. Lucky me!

  Our job is to protect the Earth from demons, so we guard the borders of the Earth and kill them before they enter. If by any luck they enter—it happens—hunters take care of them. Hunters are humans who kill supernatural things like demons. They don’t know about us. Nobody knows about us because there are so few of us, we tend to remain hidden to protect ourselves.

  The Beginning

  The first time I traveled to Earth, I opened my eyes, and I saw colors, plants, animals, and humans. We were in Spain because my mom wanted to see the Earth. We protect the Earth, but we usually don’t visit it. My mom was a curious witch, so one day she just took me and went. I was two so I don’t remember anything specific about the trip.

  I grew up in a small village, and when I was eight, I learned the truth about me. You might ask if eight wasn’t a little young. Yes, it was, but the earlier you learned who you were and how to defend yourself, the better. At first it was fun. I mean, come on, who doesn’t want to be a witch with magic and to know there is another world? I know better now, unfortunately, it’s bad and ugly and a world full of dangers. My mother, Angela, knew, and that’s why she left. She wanted a normal life for me, so we went to Spain. It was quiet, the people were friendly, and I liked the happy life of growing up in a village.

  A few years passed, and I went to the White Land to train at the Academy. Twice a week, I went down to Spain to see my mother. Life was good. Humans fought their wars, but we didn’t care much about them and only moved if war was too close to us. I enjoyed my training and my life until the day I became sixteen.

  Those days when a girl was sixteen, witch or not, she had to marry someone, but I didn’t want to marry anyone. I just wanted to live my life, travel around the world, draw, and have adventures. But no, there was a stupid protocol that everyone from the princess down to the lowliest peasant had to follow. I didn’t care about why the rule was created, but why wouldn’t the princess tear it up?

  When I turned sixteen for the first time, I was in Spain. The next day, a witch showed up at my door. The male witch—don’t confuse them with warlocks, they are different things—stood there and asked me to marry him with a poem. Cute, but I kicked him out of my door. I didn’t exactly kick him, but I told him that I wasn’t interested. Another one showed up the next day followed by one the next day and the next and the next. It was not just witches, but humans too, and they all were given the same answer: a no and the door slammed in their faces. Do I have to hang an announcement on my door?

  I was so furious it rained for days, and after that they got the message. A month later, while I was shopping in the market, someone bumped into me and all my fruits spilled out of my basket onto the ground. I was so furious I was about to turn him into a frog, but then I saw him and his expression was... sad.

  He said, “I am so sorry, my lady.” He put everything in the basket and kept apologizing like he had committed the most horrible of crimes, and I just stared at him. He had black hair and blue eyes. He was tall and looked to be about seventeen years old. Then he said, “I want your forgiveness, so can you accompany me to the ball of the prince tomorrow night at the royal castle?”

  I couldn’t
utter a word. A boy dropped my basket and as an apology he invited me to a ball? Why was he talking to me like that? Who did he think I was? A princess? A queen? Well, I was neither. “I am flattered by your invitation, but I am no princess. I am just a peasant girl,” I kindly replied.

  “I know you are just a peasant girl, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go to a ball. Everyone is invited after all,” he continued.

  “And why did you choose me? I am pretty sure there are plenty of pretty girls out there.”

  He looked at me strangely. “Because you are the only one who rejected me and you are beautiful.”

  Rejected him? When? I didn’t remember him coming to my door. What is going on? I wondered. Why does he want to go to the ball with me so badly?

  In the end, I decided to give him a chance. “All right, then. I will go to the ball.”

  He beamed like he had just inherited a fortune. “Perfect. Don’t forget to wear your mask.”

  I stared at him. “My mask?”

  “It’s a masked ball after all.”

  “I hope for your sake that you can recognize me.” I half-threatened.

  “I will do my best,” he said, bowed to me, and left.

  He seemed very happy about me going to the ball, which was strange. I mean, had Spanish girls vanished? I headed home and I told my mother about the whole incident. She advised me to go, and now I am going dress shopping at the perfect place: The White Land.

  My friend Ritta came with me to go shopping. I met Ritta at the Academy, and we have been friends ever since. She had blonde hair with blue eyes and was a very good fighter. She hadn’t married yet and I wondered why. She has everything someone could ask for—beauty, brains, and was a good fighter—but she was waiting for “the one.” Like he exists.

  Ritta came with me everywhere. Any place that was strange or odd, she would come with me. It was like she thought she was my bodyguard, but I let her come because I liked her company. But a ball? That was different. It was a must go occasion. Ritta loved balls and the dancing at them. I was glad to have her with me to pick out a dress.

  The shop we visited was named Elegance Inside. I always passed by it and gazed into its windows. I had always wanted to go inside, but there had been no reason. Until now. The shop had dresses of all kinds but mostly ball dresses, and as I entered I caught the smell of fabric. The inside was like a dream: dresses of all colors and shapes as far as the eye went. The shop seller was an elegant woman with brown hair and sweet brown eyes but short like me. I liked that because I always had the feeling that among tall people I was the joke and I hated it.

  “Good afternoon. What can I do for you this fine day?” she asked politely.

  “We would like dresses for a masked ball, please,” we said.

  The woman was thrilled. “Excellent and I know exactly what to bring you.” She went to the back of the shop and returned with two exquisite dresses. One was dark blue like the sky and changed colors to match the colors of the night sky. The other was yellow like the sun with a strip the color of green grass at the bottom edge. I fell in love with the blue one and Ritta liked the yellow. I like yellow but not enough to have a dress that color. We bought the dresses, and all the way home Ritta was talking about how much she loved that dress and how beautiful it was. We went to my home in Spain and had a meal with my mother while discussing the strange incident behind my invitation to the ball again.

  The next day we stayed home doing housework mostly, but in the early afternoon, we started preparing for the ball: I put on the blue dress and shoes. My mask was also blue, but had stars on it. I left my hair hanging loosely over my shoulders. Ritta put on her yellow dress, red shoes, and a white mask, but she arranged her hair into a bun. I stared at her.

  “What?” she asked me curiously.

  “I feel like I am seeing springtime, and we are in the middle of winter. Are you sure you are not the witch of sunflowers?”

  She laughed. “The next time you mention it, I will turn you into a sunflower.”

  I stuck my tongue out at her.

  The Ball

  We arrived at the royal castle, and there were already people inside. Good, I thought. I didn’t like being among royals very much, but fortunately, the mask was hiding my face. As long as I could control my expressions, then we were good. The room was at least two times the size of our house in Spain and very beautifully decorated.

  Wreaths and flowers were everywhere, and the ceiling was decorated with stars. If I stretched my arms out, I would not be able to reach both sides of the wreath. That’s why I can’t stand royals—constantly showing off with items larger than normal—I hated it. I didn’t judge them for what they had but for showing off everything they owned.

  In the White Land, we lived simply, and even if we were poor, we would always share our joy, our music, and our help with everyone who needed it. Here? No. I have heard of some royals who did everything to help the poor; they were loved by their people, and I admired them. Sadly, most royals and rich people weren’t like that. I would have liked to turn them into toads, but it would take too much time to track them down and I had other things to do. I had to kill demons.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about poverty or world peace. I was a witch, not God—not that I believed in any religion. Now I killed demons, the biggest threat to humanity. Even though humans didn’t know what I did for them and I received no thanks for this, I still did it.

  People were wearing their best clothes. Yes, even peasants had good clothes—don’t act so surprised. The peasants wore pretty dresses and beautiful handmade masks with bright or dark colors. The rich people—dukes, counts, and marquises—were wearing haute couture. The fabric looked bright and expensive, and their masks were full of diamonds, pearls, and feathers. I heard some of them talking, and each one trying to outdo the other. “I had this ordered from France,” one said. To which another one replied, “I decorated my house like the Queen of England’s palace.”

  Seriously? Witches were much simpler than that. We went to parties and enjoyed them. Yes, we wore pretty clothes, but that’s it. We didn’t brag about everything. That was something only a human did.

  “Do you see him?” Ritta asked.

  I turned around, but I couldn’t see him. However, being a witch had its perks: since I caught his aura yesterday, I could find him whenever I wanted. Auras were like an identity of a person, and it was unique for everyone, even if you had a twin. Auras could tell you what kind of person someone was. The darker an aura was, the more evil a person was, and it could show a person’s intentions.

  “Any sign?” asked Ritta interrupting my thoughts.

  “No, not yet.”

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

  “Gold.”

  She turned to me with a startled look. “You are joking.”

  Did I mention that witches can speak to each other’s minds? No? Well, we can which is very helpful in situations like this one. Ritta would be able to help me find his aura in the crowd. His aura color was one of the three rare kinds, so it shouldn’t have been this hard to find him.

  The three auras were gold, silver, and multicolored. A gold aura meant the person was kind, heroic and would do great things. A person with a silver aura was considered a smart and kind-hearted person. Multicolored, or rainbow, auras were only mentioned in books, so I had no idea if that kind of aura even existed.

  As far as I knew, no one had seen one and legend said that if you had a multicolored aura you could use different auras at any time. For example, you can use the green one and later the blue one or both because auras can give you abilities and you can extract different magic. The color of your aura determined your abilities since you extracted your magic from your aura. Green, meant your magic came from nature. I had no clue what color my aura was—you couldn’t see your aura and only others could but no one had ever seen mine and I didn’t hide it. My guess was that it was transparent.

  “W
hy didn’t you tell me so?” Ritta asked, thrilled. Her question came at a perfect time as my thoughts were wandering again.

  “So, you wouldn’t act like a lunatic.”

  She gave me an odd angry look. “I am not a lunatic.”

  “All right, fine, but I wouldn’t make a big deal about this. What if he’s bad?”

  “No way. Golds are good.”

  “Right...” I sighed. “I still don’t see him here. Can we go?”

  “Maybe he lives far away,” she speculated.

  The trumpets sounded and that was the signal that the royal family would enter the room. Let’s brace ourselves.

  The royal guards announced the king, the queen, and the young prince. Everyone stopped talking and every lady of marrying age looked forward. This ball was for the prince to find a bride. Lucky her. I didn’t look forward because I was still searching for the boy in the market. The royals marched like peacocks in front of us so everyone could see them. That’s when I saw him, and I had a silent heart attack.

  “What is it?” Ritta asked, sensing my conflicted emotions. “Do I turn him into a toad now or do I kill him?” She looked at me curiously and then back to the royals. “I have no idea.”

  That was very helpful, Ritta. I am sure she saw the pink aura of the queen, the gray of the king and the gold aura of the prince. I was so angry—no I wasn’t angry. I was furious—and suddenly the room started shaking and everyone looked around. Ritta caught my hand, and the room stopped moving. When I was emotionally charged, I had a hard time controlling my powers. My powers were crazy enough as it was, but add a little emotion and mayhem can happen. Now, his words made a lot more sense. “You don’t know why he invited you; maybe he is a good royal, different. Just wait and see.” I wished, but most royals were what they were taught to be, but I should stay like Ritta suggested, and if I didn’t like him, I could turn him into a teapot. What damage could there be with one less royal?

  The prince spotted us, separated from his parents, and came to stand in front of us. “Good evening, my lady.” He smiled. Every lady in the room looked disappointed and jealous. I wanted to say You want him? Take him, he’s all yours.