Poison and Passion

Hello, happy review day!

This is a very interesting story that gripped me at the first line. You use very descriptive language throughout and an interesting narrative that the reader enjoys and understands

I like how you start off with the idea of your grandfather telling you the story of a curse. The idea of a curse really grabs and drags the reader in as they stand on their tiptoes to discover the truth of this curse. You then proceed to explain how you believe that this curse is not a work of fiction. By doing this, you hang the reader on a loose rope that gets tighter as it drags them further into the story. You then relate this curse to a woman that has stepped into your life; possibly a new mother? This then makes the reader question what has happened in the speaker's life, wondering wether the original mother has left in some way and if the father has fallen in love once again. This would seem like a reasonable idea due to the common idea that the child hates anyone who tries to replace their parents-thus relaxing the idea of the curse being real.

You then proceed to use excuses for your secret love for her. By saying that her evil is the thing that makes you love her, just suggests that you like her but you cannot admit it as the curse would then be false.

However, the reader then finds out it is not a mother but his lover, taken by his brother. The reader can then really feel the fire that must burn within him.

When we venture into the final paragraph of the story you thread in how much you hate her. The reader can really see in this paragraph the growing hatred getting out of control as soon as you mention the idea of stopping this love. The reader then finds out right at the end that the brother has a wife, taking them on a crazy roller coaster of thoughts. You leave the reader with a burning sympathy for the speaker and a fire of anger for the brother.

That, my friend, was absolutely amazing!

That's all from me,
I'm now gonna follow you,
Godly

To begin with, I'd like to say that this is a very compelling story. I like your descriptive language, and the symbolism adds a nice layer of meaning to the relatively uncomplicated narrative.

However, there are places in which your writing falls a bit flat, such as your continued and heavily repetitive use of "very" (I counted about ten, and in a story that clocks in at barely over a thousand words, that's pretty excessive.) I'd recommend replacing most instances of it or just removing it entirely.

"Once long ago my grandfather told me a story about a curse that has haunted my family for centuries. I have come to believe that this curse that grand-papa told me isn't just a figment of fairy tale magic, it’s actually reality."

In the first sentence, you should have a comma between "Once" and "long ago." Additionally, the narrator first refers to "grandfather", but in the sentence immediately after, she calls him "grand-papa." While the reader can tell that she's referring to the same person, it would be best, for clarity and cohesion, if you picked one title and stuck with it.
Additionally, "a figment of fairy tale magic" is a bit long-winded. "A figment of his imagination" would work just as well, and similarly, "it's actually real" would be a better way to phrase "it's (the curse is) actually real."

"That unwanted lover has come into my life recently, she is the devil in a woman’s body. She strikes fear into my very heart every time I look into those emotionless grey eyes and her stone cold face."

The first sentence is a run-on, and there are a few ways you could fix that. You could replace the comma between "recently" and "she" with a semicolon, or add an "and" in front of "she," or even just replace the comma with a period.

"But, I was told to stay away from her, to stay away from her conniving ways. I could not do that. She was so beautifully evil. So sinfully mysterious, that my very heart stopped each time she spoke my name. So sinfully mysterious that her grey eyes would suck me into the chasm that was supposed to be where her soul lay. What did that mean for me, my family began to reject me for chasing my new love. She kindled my every desire and lighted a deep fiery passion within my very soul. "

The comma immediately after "But" is unnecessary, and I think it would benefit the story if you simply struck it out entirely. This entire paragraph is rather adjective and adverb-heavy, and while it can be tempting to cram a lot of description into such a short space, it actually bogs down the story. As a whole, this paragraph would benefit from more "showing" and less "telling", or at least, an attempt to strike a more even balance between the two.

"That deep fiery passion is what I know will be the death of me if I keep this up. I know this, yet and still I continue to chase and court her with every fiber of my being. However, that is not the worst part about all of this, the worst part is I'm suspecting that my brother is falling for my darling demon. Where are my manners, I forgot to tell you my name, I'm Aiden Morgan Prince and Heir to the throne of Persia."

Here, you repeat the phrase "deep fiery passion" that you used in the sentence immediately preceding this one. That makes it seem repetitive and takes a lot of the punch from the first usage of that phrase. Just "passion" would be just fine.

Additionally, "falling for", when used to refer to infatuation, doesn't really seem like a phrase that a Persian princess would use. It would also have been better to gradually introduce the fact that the narrator is a princess via showing rather than completely stopping the narrative to introduce that fact. I'm hardly the expert on Persian names, Aiden Morgan sounds distinctly western/Germanic.

"...when I overheard someone say something about a dance in less than a fortnight (14 days)."

You don't need to specify that "fortnight" means fourteen days. It doesn't make much sense for the narrator to clarify that, as she'd probably expect whoever was reading her account to understand what is meant by that, and it's not so essential to the reader's understanding that this break in narrative integrity can be justified. Just say "fortnight" and leave it at that.

"I never felt so much adrenaline pound through my very veins before. I had to keep all the excitement locked inside me, until I could deliver the flowers to my darling Susanna and ask her to be my date for the night. I would court her and woo her at the ball and win the very heart that beats in her sweet chest. I returned into the palace and up the marble and gold staircase up to her very room where the smell of her sweetest perfume drifted."

Even taking into account the advances that Persia made in the medical field, it doesn't make much sense for a princess in what seems to be a time period well prior to the nineteenth century (I'm basing that judgement on the fact that Persia has a hereditary monarchy at this point, which definitely was not the case for post-~651, by which point Persia had been incorporated into the Caliphate and would not have had its own monarchy) to have enough knowledge of medical chemistry to (a) know what adrenaline is, and (b) tie that knowledge to a specific reaction on her part. Just have her say that she was excited and leave it at that.


Again, word choice becomes an issue here. "Date" is a very uncharacteristic word for any pre-651 C.E. Persian girl, let alone the date. I don't know enough about Persian culture to be the judge of whether or not balls were a common pastime for the upper classes, but I'd recommend you do a bit more research on that to keep your cultures consistent, because otherwise it just feels like you're taking the plot of a European fairytale and setting it in Persia for no particular reason. The setting is going to affect the plot, or at least it should if you're being consistent.

"I automatically recognized her voice; the evilest of sweet voices of pure sin. "

The word "automatically" feels a bit too mechanical for the fraught, erotic relationship that you've previously established between these two characters. Also, "pure sin" is needlessly contradictory.

"I hear a loud crash, I barge in her room to see who was in the room with my darling one. Alas to my now heartbroken eyes my brother, that fiend was standing there with my love's hand in his own. He must have wooed her because she laughed with glee at every word he said before I rushed into the room. I took my brother by the throat and I felt all the anger that I had ever felt for him pound into my hands making me grip stronger. "

You have a tense switch between the first sentences. "Hear" and "barge" are used in the present tense, but then you use verbs like "was standing" and "laughed," both of which are past tense. You're the best judge of which tense best fits your story, but you need to pick one and stay consistent.

Also, the phrase "all the anger I had ever felt for him" implies that the narrator had a long-standing grudge against her brother, but that was never really set up, and it needs to be if you're going to include it as a reason for the narrator murdering him.

"Susanna tugged at my sleeve causing me to let go and come out of the sadistic state I was in."

There should be a comma between "sleeve" and "causing," and "sadistic" feels a bit too mild for the actions the reader just watched the narrator take. "Murderous" or "savage" might be better.

""I'm Sorry, Aiden." She says."

"Sorry" shouldn't be capitalized, and neither should "she."

"For once in her life or for as long as I have known her, this is the very first true sorry I have heard come out of her mouth. I dropped my brother, sparing his life and he collapsed onto the carpeted floor; sputtering and coughing trying to catch his breath. Susanna still hung onto my sleeve, and I snatched from her and walked out of her room stepping on the flowers that I dropped when I barged into her room. Before walking out, I did stare into her eyes there was nothing there as I expected."

"The first true sorry" feels remarkably clunky and awkward. Just "apology" would work better, and the sentence as a whole would benefit if you replaced "true" with "sincere."

Just a few paragraphs ago, it was pretty heavily implied that her brother was already dead; "I watched the life slip out of his dying blue eyes" is pretty unambiguous. (Side note: why does a Persian prince have blue eyes?)

There should also be a comma between "room" and "stepping," though it would be better if you just replaced "stepping" with "crushing," to better fit the fraught and emotionally tense mood of this scene.

"There was no sympathy or sign of any life inside of those grey eyes. I despised her, but not only her both of them for ripping the heart that beat in my very chest. He could not, and shall not win her, this I vowed as I stormed to my room, Susanna's cries for me to come back fell upon my ears but just then I didn't care. I didn't care that she wanted me to come back, why should I come back she already had my brother in her room buttering her up so that he could take her from my very arms. I vowed revenge and I was determined that I in turn would take the dearest thing to m brother, his loving wife."

The "but" in the second sentence is unnecessary and breaks up the flow of the sentence, and the latter part of the sentence (like most of this work) would benefit from the removal of "very".

Finally, the if the narrator's plot to murder her brother's wife (which, incidentally, is rather out of the blue; why has the focus of her fairly directionless anger shifted so quickly) is to hold much weight, the reader would have had to have been introduced to the aforementioned wife prior to the last sentence of the story, or at least be made aware of his existence.

All in all, this is an interesting concept that would greatly benefit from additional editing for stylistic cohesion, research on Persian culture, and a more thoroughly unified narrative.