It turned out that, for the Usurper, finding the Cursed Prince was as easy as doing it for himself. He hadn't considered it important enough until it was nearly time for the Curse itself to rear its ugly head.

The way the Kingdom had been cleared of spinning wheels thrilled the Usurper Maleficar. It was a challenge for his Curse, and not one nearly so hard to surmount. When so many had a livelihood based on spinning, there was bound to be an outlier who hid theirs away, rather than giving it up to be burnt with all the others. There were bound to be outliers who never, in the last fifteen years, heard about the ban on spinning wheels.

It was an exciting development, rather than an irritating one. A development which would have warmed the Usurper's heart, if affection were an emotion that the Usurper were more familiar with. As it was, it simply made the Usurper feel powerful and noticed, which was arguably better than any feeling of worthless affection.

The search the Usurper put into finding the Cursed Prince was not one full of effort. Truly, it was nearly simple. The Wood was the place, because the Wood tried to keep him out. Where in the Wood could have been difficult, but the Usurper Maleficar was not unfamiliar with forcing information out of the unwilling, and the Wood lived, breathed, and bore sentience, just like any other sentient being did.

The Wood gave up her secrets without a fight that significantly troubled the Usurper. Then she retreated, leaving her trees empty for a time in which the Usurper was unhindered in wandering the area.

He found the child.

"Someone has been forgoing meats," was his introduction. "A boy of fifteen shouldn't be so... diminutive."

The boy swung around, book clasped in his hands and flying to his chest with his arms, protective. "Who are you?" he asked. His eyes were wide. His hair was a pale, comely blond, like a ridiculous dandelion. His skin was tanned a golden tinge. He looked like a picture perfect child of the Wood. Except that he was human, not sylvan.

"Oh, I'm no one of consequence. Just... the reason you have so few sunsets to look forward to, my dear," the Usurper touched a tree delicately, reveling in the way his touch turned the bark black, and continued to turn more and more of it black, even when he'd taken his hand from it.

Before their very eyes, the tree died, becoming something more closely reminiscent of stone than something that had been alive.

"Why did you do that?" the Cursed Boy stood, shutting his book and running over to the tree. He reached for it, but hesitated.

"Oh, go ahead," the Usurper Maleficar encouraged.

The tree felt all wrong.

"Go ahead, shorten your days. I would like to see nothing more, you know. It would be so ironic, after all. You? Dying here? Instead of at home? In the very forest that is supposed to protect you? It tastes like beautifully wrought irony. Do it!" The Usurper laughed. It wasn't a very nice laugh.

The boy looked at the Usurper, withdrawing his hand from the tree. "Why?" he asked.

"Why do I want you dead?"

"No. I don't think I care. Why would you kill a tree like that in a Wood like this?" the boy demanded. It was quaint. The way a child shouting at a god was quaint. "Why would you do something so... cruel? What will that do to the Lady?"

"I didn't think I cared," the Usurper said. A bird landed on his shoulder. A crow.

The boy looked at the bird wryly. "Oh, I see."

"What do you see, little human child?" the Usurper asked, sweet as honey. Deadly as hemlock. "My messenger, here?"

"You're the master of the crow-birds and the crow-people. Or raven. I can never tell the difference," the boy sighed and looked at his book. "I'm going home, now. I don't know the things of which you speak, and I know better than engaging you further. Good day, sir."

"A polite to-be-dead boy," the Usurper mused. "I wonder... did they tell you who your father was? Do you know how your next birthday will go? Oh! You have a brother."

"I..." Hyacinthe stopped. "Excuse me?" Father, brother, mother, origin. Hyacinthe hadn't been told anything about them. And he hadn't really thought to ask. He didn't think it mattered, or that he cared. But the idea that he had a family, like the faeries and different, all at once... the idea hurt him a little, inside, and he didn't know if it was a good hurt or a bad hurt.

"A brother. He's so small. And he'll live much, much longer," the Usurper purred.

"Tell me..."

"No," the Usurper raised a hand. "I know you knowing that much will hurt. And not knowing the rest will be salt in the wound. I would leave it that way. You see, I am no nice person. Not to the sons of my betrayers."

"Please, sir..."

"No," the Usurper grinned. "Hadn't you better be running home, little Cursed One?"

Between blinks, the Usurper Maleficar seemed to disappear from Hyacinthe's sight. Gone in a flash of black lightning and a rancid, sulfurous scent. Hyacinthe clenched his fists and glanced left to right, though he knew the Maleficar gone.

A brother.

Around Hyacinthe, the forest seemed to become the Wood again. It graced itself with light and magic, and the paths around Hyacinthe began to shift, almost nervously. "Sorry," he said, motioning lamely to the dead tree. "I think he... broke it."

"He who?" the forest seemed to writhe in question.

"I don't know," Hyacinthe whispered. "I don't know who he was."

It was another secret for Hyacinthe to keep.

The faeries seemed more and more frazzled, more harried, more paranoid as time went on, and mentioning how the Wood had gone still, a man had come to call him Cursed and to gloat at him, a tree had been destroyed in a way that prevented the Wood from affecting the ground around it, and that Hyacinthe himself had come to know he had a brother? It seemed like an easy way to be put under house arrest. 'For his own safety,' of course.

"I don't know," he repeated, again.

Then, reluctantly, he turned and headed back for the cottage.

--

In the days to come, Hyacinthe kept finding his way to the dead tree. It seemed as though it were the only truly fixed point in the forest. In some ways, this fascinated Hyacinthe.

In other ways, the idea of part of the Wood being poisoned ground horrified Hyacinthe. He hadn't thought that any part of the Wood could die, or cease to exist the way it had probably always existed. But here was proof that, not only could the Wood die, but it could be killed.

He didn't often go to the tree, if he could help it.