I was born with a cursed mouth. Whenever I spoke of something bad, it came true. When I was four years old, I dropped a single grain of rice at dinner. My grandmother flew into a rage, yanked me by the arm, and dragged me toward the old outhouse behind the house.

Chapter 2

I waited for them for years.

I waited through the seasons, through the temple bells at dawn and dusk, through snowy winters and humid summers. I waited until I became known in the temple as the girl in gray robes who barely spoke, the quiet one with clear eyes and an unsettling stillness.

Still, they never came.

Then one day, after all those years, my mother appeared at the temple gates with red-rimmed eyes and trembling lips.

“Come home with me,” she said. “Your father was badly hurt. Your little sister…” Her voice cracked. “She’s been through something terrible. Come see them before it’s too late.”

The moment I saw her crying like that, I packed my few clothes without another question and followed her down the mountain.

After entering the temple, I had learned not to speak lightly. I almost never opened my mouth. But whenever I did, the wicked paid dearly.

My mother didn’t take me back to our old town. Instead, we traveled for hours by train until we reached a sprawling American city. From there, she led me through alleys and rusted stairwells into the basement of a decaying building.

The place was dark, damp, and foul-smelling. It was barely large enough for a broken bed and a rusted fan that no longer worked.

Two people lay on the bed like shadows of the family I remembered.

My father, once broad-shouldered and strong, had become little more than skin and bones. One of his legs was twisted terribly from an old injury that had never healed right. My sister was even worse. She was so thin she looked almost weightless beneath the blanket, staring at the ceiling with hollow eyes like someone whose soul had drifted too far away.

My vision blurred.

All those years at the temple, letters from my sister had never stopped. She had written faithfully, telling me that Mom and Dad were working hard, that things were getting better, that they’d send me warm clothes and treats when they could. When I left home, she had only been two years old, but I still remembered her tiny hand pulling a piece of candy from her pocket and pushing it into my palm.

“Candy for my sister,” she had said, smiling like sunlight.

That day, for the first time in my life, my cursed mouth had spoken a blessing.

“Nina will grow up happy and safe.”

For years, I believed she had.

That was the cruelest part.