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Perhaps they had been stupid, Tamlin often thought when he looked back on the years preceding Amarantha’s curse.
They had been reckless, that much was certain. Too reckless? Perhaps. Could one ever be too reckless? Certainly.
Then, She had come. Amarantha.
Perhaps they had been too bold, they had believed they could defeat her, they had thought themselves invincible.
Lucien’s eye confirmed that they were mistaken.
During the first decade, they had kept hope. Andras and Hart continued to sing at the top of their lungs starting from breakfast, drinking too much alcohol, sometimes both at the same time.
Lucien continued to seduce every female who passed within thirty meters of him, under the admiring gaze of Tamlin, who continued to recite limericks.
During the second decade, they were combative. Tamlin transformed his estate into an outdoor barracks. If he could not break the spell by cunning, he would do so by steel. He spent entire days exhausting himself against training dummies, his face tight behind that gold mask which already began to feel more real than his own flesh. Every sword stroke he delivered was intended for Amarantha, but it was his own people he was hurting. He watched them, his sentinels, his friends, wearing themselves out by his side. He saw Lucien, whose metal eye never stopped shining with a light of reproach that he imagined he alone perceived. It is my fault, he repeated to himself like a litany. If he had not been so proud, if he had not fanned the desire of this nightmare queen, they would not be beasts trapped in an eternal masquerade ball.
The third decade was the one of sacrifices. The hope they had so carefully maintained ended up mutating into something darker: the necessity of sacrifice. Tamlin no longer recited limericks. The words had become stones as hard as his heart in his mouth. He began to look at his soldiers no longer as brothers in arms, but as bargaining chips, and he disgusted himself for it. The curse was clear, relentless, and it demanded a price that no warrior should have had to pay.
He remembered the first time they had to designate one of their own to cross the Wall. The first time one of his friends had volunteered to become a martyr. To die. The atmosphere in the manor had become sticky, heavy with a silent horror. It was not about sending a spy, but about sending a lamb to the slaughterhouse. They had to die. They had to be murdered by those humans who despised them so much, in the mad and unconscious hope that one of them would be the catalyst for their liberation.
During the fourth decade, the departures toward the south became funerals ahead of time. Tamlin stood on the hill, his massive silhouette standing out against the twilight sky, watching his sentinels, his friends, his brothers in arms move away in wolf form.
There was an unspeakable cruelty in being a High Lord and having to order his subjects to die in hatred. Every sentinel who crossed the Wall took with them a piece of Tamlin’s soul. He imagined their last moments: the fear in the forest, the cold of human steel, and that unbearable wait for a hatred that could save them. But the years passed, and no one returned. The sentinels fell one after the other, and the curse remained, as solid as the mountains of Prythian.
Spring was nothing more than a facade. Beneath the vibrant flowers, Tamlin smelled the scent of rot. He wandered the corridors of his manor like a ghost, avoiding Lucien’s gaze, avoiding the forced laughter that died out as soon as he entered a room.
He felt like a jailer whose cell was his own skin. The mask no longer just covered his features; it seemed to merge with his face, welded by the salt of his tears that he never let flow in public.
"I am their protector," he sometimes said to himself in front of his mirror, but the image that answered him was that of a golden monster sending his friends to their deaths to redeem a mistake he alone had committed. He wanted to scream, to tear down the walls of this prison of roses, but he could only stay there, waiting for the next sentinel he would have to condemn.
In the final year, Andras volunteered. Andras, the last link to that lost recklessness, the one who still sang sometimes, with a voice that was a bit broken. The one who had been his first friend, his brother of heart if not of blood.
Tamlin had wanted to refuse. He had wanted to beg him to stay. But the High Lord had smothered the man. With a trembling hand hidden beneath his cloak, he blessed him and watched him leave toward the human lands.
It was the last hope. It was the last chance before the silence became final. Before Amarantha won.