Page 1 of Cursed with the Dragon Prince
Part One: Arrival
Awakening
Reina
I stir, covered with salt and sand.
It’s dried on my lips, crusting my eyes shut. My throat is so thick it’s a struggle to swallow, and when I curl my fingers, pain radiates from each knuckle as my flesh cracks.
I grab a fistful of the earth that supports me.A beach.
I’m alive, for now, stranded on an unknown beach. By all accounts, I should be dead. After all, the entire village says I’m cursed.
Yet I survived the stormy sea, stranded after being tossed overboard. When the waves took me, my brother didn’t turn the boat around—he refused to risk himself to save me.
My stomach lurches with the memory—the vigor of waves, rhythmic ups and downs, the crashing and rising.The fear.
Treading water while drowning, I watched my family’s fishing vessel drift farther and farther, swept into the storm, and with no land in sight, I knew it could be my end.
But it wasn’t.
Once again, I’ve proven myself a survivor.
As a child, I was jealous of my brother. I longed to travel the seas like he did, to sail beyond our small village and discover whether other lands were like ours.
My father told me I was stupid for wanting that. A woman could stay safe at shore. Why would I want to leave? He wouldnever understand there was little safety in a world controlled by men—men like him, my brother, and my former husband.
From the moment the village saw my birthmark—a patch of purple scales, at the hollow on the base of my neck, a shiny blight between my clavicles—they called me cursed.
My mother died upon my birth; that was the first strike against me. The scaled blemish was the second.
The third strike came years later. My father finally convinced a man to take me as his wife, but ten years later, I still hadn’t conceived a child. We divorced, and now he has a younger wife, already pregnant.
Barren, they called me.Cursed.
Even my sister-in-law declared I was an unfit companion for my nieces, insisting I focus on housework. I longed to help with the children, to help nurture them, but she spirited them away, warning them I was dangerous. She feared my curse could contaminate them too.
No wonder my brother allowed the sea to claim me.
I’m not trained as a fisherman, and I was only allowed on his ship because he was desperate for the labor. Since our father’s death and my divorce, I have been merely an extra set of hands to him.
As soon as the waves threw me overboard, I understood that my survival depended on me.
Sometimes I wonder why I’m so determined to live.
Lost to the stormy sea, I floated, preserving energy. I swam, pulling myself up from the depths. I progressed and recovered. Repeat and regress.
At some point, hope becomes lunacy—believing survival is possible when all evidence suggests otherwise.
Float, swim, rest. Work, wait, and repeat.
The storm passed, but the dark clouds remained. Without the sun, I didn’t know my way to the village, so I swam toward warmer water.
I must have passed out because I don’t remember seeing land.
Now salt dries my skin as I lie on a sandy beach. My body is worn and wasted; I have no idea where I’ve been stranded.
Regardless, it’s my time to rise.
