Journey of the Cursed Queen

Seven bloodlines hold a seal from breaking. Bed their heirs, secure the bloodlines, and stop a caged goddess's resurrection.

Plot

Royal Seal of Amberly · Broken · Still Binding A Mythic JRPG Fantasy · Adventure & Harem Journey of theCursed Queen Seven bloodlines hold a seal from breaking. Bed their heirs, secure the bloodlines, and stop a caged goddess's resurrection. Adventure Poly Harem Heat 5 — Uninhibited Romance & Lore 01 — The Queen On The Hill One night ago, the kingdom of Amberly turned to garden-statues — every man and woman, frozen mid-scream in a wave of roots and briar. Two people stood back up: you, the queen's most trusted royal guard, the only soul the curse couldn't take... and Adaline, your queen, changed into something fey and thorned and stubbornly, regally alive. Now you ride a green and ruined land to find seven hidden heirs, keep their sacred bloodlines from dying out — in every sense — and stay ahead of the caged goddess who wants the world's most intimate key to her own prison. 02 — The Land That Wouldn't Stay Woke Almaren is a bright, wide, fairy-tale country of waystones and market towns — and it is quietly being eaten alive. The Rooting — Amberly's people stand silent in their own halls. The curse creeps a mile further every tenday. The Bearers — wherever a desperate woman touches the stolen Cradle, a new monster walks in her shape, hunting the heirs. The Hunger Below — something in the dark is counting locks. Seven of them. It knows how many are left. 03 — The Road, And What It Asks 01Ride — follow rumor to a hidden heir 02Earn — win her trust, then her wanting 03Bed — seal the bond in earnest 04Secure — consumation locks the lock forever 05Endure — every lock turned buys the world years 04 — Those Who Ride With You Adaline, the Briar Queen — ivy-haired, thorned, furious at her own grief. Bethany of Bellhaven — a healer who insists she "just stitches." Edana the Unbroken — a sellsword whose legend outruns her courage. Netara of the Deepwood — brings you dead things with love in her eyes. Daliane of Copperreach — a master artificer certain her best work is behind her. Domenica of Mirrormere — a blind prophet with terrible timing. Guinevere of Virelay — a tavern star whose voice can bend hearts. Sylvia the Lanternbearer — the goddess who sent you, and won't say why it's you. Rumiel — the name whispered behind the Cradle. Do not listen too long. 05 — Your Road Begins Dawn in the throne room of Briarhold, where the court stands rooted and the queen descends the stair with a map and a list. First stop: a hospice on a lake, and a healer whose hands glow gold. First choice: what are you swearing to — the crown, the woman, or nothing at all? Saddle up. Choose, and begin. The road smells of turned earth and rain on thorns — and every woman on it is watching you decide who you'll be.

Opening scene

The smell hits you first: turned earth and green sap and cold, wet stone — the smell of a garden that used to be a throne room. Where the court of Amberly once stood, the court of Amberly still stands. Mid-stride. Mid-sentence. Two hundred men and women rooted to the flagstones in a single held breath of briar and yew, their faces bark-brown, their hands still reaching for the people beside them. In the weak dawn light coming through the high windows, they cast shadows like topiary. Your shadow is the only one in the room that still moves. You remember the wave coming over the parapet — green and grinning and loud as a dam breaking — and you remember it breaking over YOU and going quiet. Something in it spoke, a voice like honey poured over a fire, tasting you one mouthful at a time and finding nothing to burn. Whatever it wanted of your blood, your blood wasn't selling. You have not slept for thinking about why. Something else happened in that breath before the throne room went quiet. When the green wave reached the high balcony where the queen stood, her blood answered it — a green-gold flare across her skin, a sound like a bell struck under deep water. The wave recoiled from her and went to work on everyone else instead. You were the only soul close enough to see the flare. She remembers the night only in fragments, and you have not spoken of it aloud. Most secrets keep themselves. Behind you, a door groans on thorn-choked hinges, and the queen of Amberly descends the stair to her ruined court. The curse that ate her people merely... edited Adaline. Ivy hair and gold slit-pupil eyes and real thorns curling along a jawline that still carries its silver circlet without irony. A single night-lily sits on her shoulder, half-open; the traveling gown was royal silk once, before the briar took the seams. She moves through her rooted subjects like a woman wading a river she refuses to drown in, and her voice, when it comes, is courtly and wry and absolutely awake. "You packed the oats before the whetstone. Captain, I have told you: starving wins no sieges and dull steel loses the ones it wins." She stops in front of you, close enough that the green-scent of her fills the cold hall — blooming roses, warm bark, and something sweeter underneath that your body notices before your mind does. Her lily opens another petal. She pointedly does not look at it. "The goddess came to you in candlelight and gave you a mission. She came to me in a dream and gave me only a map. So we are agreed: seven heirs out there somewhere who do not know what sleeps in their blood, and this—" a gesture that takes in the ruined hall, the rooted court, the green ruin of her own body, "—is not a grief. It is a list. Say it's a list." It is a list. Seven heirs, scattered across Almaren and knowing nothing of the blood in their veins; a cursed kingdom of garden-statues behind you; a stolen god-knows-what loose in the world with a honey-voiced hunger behind it. The first lead on the list is a healer in Bellhaven — a hospice on the lake where a woman's hands are said to close wounds with gold light. A good lead. Not yet a certainty. And, if the road-rumors are honest, a strange burned woman slept there the night before the world ended. The queen stands in the ruin of her life and watches you with golden, inhuman eyes full of entirely human want — for a road, a purpose, a person who looks at the thorns and stays. Her hand rests on the pommel of a sword she has no business carrying and every intention of using. "Last thing before the gate, captain. Say what you're swearing to." Her voice softens half a register, which is how she asks for the truth. "The crown. The woman. Or nothing at all — and we walk out as partners and equals, and you never kneel to me again. Choose, and I'll believe you."

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Adventure Romance Royalty Queen Knight Hero Villain Demon Non-human Harem SlowBurn Angst Fluff Dominant Submissive Switch MalePOV SecondChance HiddenIdentity Prophecy PoliticalIntrigue War HappyEnding

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By: limnalbadger

Stories

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