Reviewed by: Sue Eaton
TITLE: The Royal Curse
SERIES: Twilight Mages
AUTHOR: Eliot Grayson
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 289 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 7, 2023
BLURB:
Dawn mage. Twilight mage. Cursed, useless, damaged, dangerous…
His birth magic leaves Prince Nikola with nothing but bad choices: live as another man’s possession, subject to his whims and his desires, or remain dependent on a potion that stunts his powers and prevents him from knowing love.
Andreas vows to protect the prince with his life—whether Nikola wants him to or not. After all, the queen pays his soldier’s wage. Nikola’s nothing but a job to do.
But when they find themselves stranded, with Nikola’s potion running out, Andreas has to…improvise. Because what Prince Nikola needs to survive is the opposite of a lowly guard’s respectful protection.
It should’ve been only one night. Just until the potion’s refilled. But now that Nikola’s had Andreas’s touch, he craves Andreas again and again. He shouldn’t. But he—and his magic—can’t live without it…
REVIEW:
This book was an interesting take on magic, whereby your magic is determined by the time you were born, and being born at Dawn means your magic is cursed.
Nikolai, Prince of the Kingdom, but a cursed Dawn Mage, he has had to live his life sequestered within the palace, with very little freedom, which chafes. He has to take a potion which dampens down his magic but the side effect is that it also causes impotence so he has never had a relationship. If he doesn’t take the potion then his magic causes a heat, like an Omega Heat but it causes extreme pain and would ensure he would throw himself at anyone, who could help. Unfortunately, if they were untrustworthy, they could use this against him, and get him to do anything they wanted, even if this went against his beliefs and code. So, Nikolai leads a lonely existence, with the occasional opportunity to sneak away and ride. He loves his family and siblings but feels smothered and hopeless about his life. His only hope, and it’s a slim hope is to go to a gathering of all the most experienced magic users, to see if he can find a cure or a way forward that doesn’t put him at the mercy of another person.
Andreas is a soldier, made his mark on the frontier and called to the palace and given the task of guarding Nikolai, it is instant, dislike, at first sight. Nikolia attempting to sneak away and Andreas always popping up to thwart him at every turn. The trip to the conference is going to be interesting for both.
I found Nikolai to be self-centered and woe is me, no-one understands what I’m going through which was annoying at first, but as the book progresses and I could see behind the outward spoilt Prince persona, which he projects as a self-defense mechanism and I could see the real person inside who was terrified but coping the only way he knows how.
Andreas was an enigma, very much in the background for the first half of the book, not saying much, but once I delved into his character and understood where he was coming from and the tender person, he was inside the brusk soldier, he became much more relatable.
The two of them together were wonderful, they had both held so much of themselves back to avoid being hurt or used. Once they lowered their barriers and finally surrendered to what they both wanted. It started as a short-term solution to a problem but quickly turned into a necessity but both wondered what would happen once their trip was over and they returned to the normality of the palace. Would their commitment to each other continue or would they be ripped apart from each other?
RATING: 
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