A Curse of Roses Page 3

  Her thumb brushed over the familiar dips and ridges in the metalwork, waiting for some divine power to sweep in and stomp out the light filling her veins, light that went unseen by Denis, unseen by everyone who didn’t carry magic within them.

  Please.

  The flames in the fireplace did not stir, and no strange breeze whispered in her ear. No divine intervention would come to her aid today, and why should it, anyway? At seventeen, she was engaged to the nineteen-year-old King of Portugal and the Algarves. Yzabel and Denis had a long rule ahead to prepare for, and God clearly had better things to do than help her with a curse.

  But that long rule would only happen provided neither of them suffered an untimely death, and Yzabel was on the verge of one. She could not let this evil magic defeat her and cut short the time she needed to fulfill her destiny.

  Lips worried and hand to her heart, she murmured one last prayer before swiftly cutting a bit of pheasant. The magic surged, a tentative heat that traveled down her arm toward her left hand. Teeth grinding, she tried to force the curse back down. It battled against her, stabbing needles into her temples, rendering her body weak, as though assailed by a fever. Please don’t turn, don’t turn, don’t turn…

  Denis sat, impassive, scrutinizing her and the plate. Eyeing him in return, she shoved the meat into her mouth—the first chew sent juices flowing over her tongue, and she almost moaned as the taste of flesh unraveled in her mouth. Fleeting happiness, though. As soon as she chewed again, her tongue became impossibly hot, her teeth closed on a bitter stem, and she struggled to keep a neutral face as she swallowed, rushing to her glass of wine to wash the horrible taste from her mouth.

  The alcohol burned her throat, making her wince, but she had eaten something. It seemed to satisfy Denis, at least, and he finally shifted his attention to his own plate. “Thank you for going down there to talk to that man. I would’ve done it myself if the prelates weren’t stuck to my side.”

  His tone had softened, and she thought the rest of the meal would go by with ease. But then he returned to their dreaded rift between bites of meat and vegetables. “Charity is not a permanent or sustainable solution. An intelligent person like yourself should have no trouble grasping that notion.”

  She understood where he was coming from. And yet, how could he ask her to ignore the suffering of others when it was so much like her own?

  “Then let me help where I can,” she cried, unable to stop a pair of inconvenient tears from trailing down her cheeks. “Let me do my duty.”

  Please let me pay for the waste of my curse before it kills me.

  “Oh, you want to talk about duty?” He came around the table to loom over her side. She kept her eyes on his chest, too familiar with what came next in this old tirade, too cowardly to meet his eyes.

  “Your duty, Yzabel, is to give me an heir once we’re married,” he said. “Something you will never be able to do at this rate because you keep starving yourself. What for? To teach me a lesson so I realize how much the commoners suffer?”

  Leave it to men to believe themselves the reason for a woman’s actions. But why bother correcting him, when telling him the truth would see her cast out? Their marriage contract would be torn if he found she was living with a curse. At best, he’d send her back to Aragon, and her family’s country and name would be washed in shame. At worst, he’d try to cure her, and she knew all too well how maledictions such as hers were treated. She’d seen enough trepanations done at the hospitals back home to know they cured nothing.

  Better to let him have his misconceptions; at least those she could use to her own advantage. Denis didn’t know the curse was why she couldn’t eat. It was the effect, not the cause that mattered.

  Determination lifted her gaze to his. “If the poorest of us can’t eat, then neither shall I.”

  He groaned. “Yzabel—”

  “If we can’t open the castle doors to them, then let us take out spoils to the church and let everyone who needs it have a meal on the Lord’s good day.”

  “No. All those worries you bear for the Portuguese—you will put them toward your recovery. You will eat and regain your health, and once we’re married, we can ensure the continuity of the Portuguese line. I will think about instilling a charity day after that. Now, eat.”

  He didn’t move from her side, and he wouldn’t, not until she did as he asked. Trapped, Yzabel sniffed and picked up a piece of migas, soft enough she barely needed to chew. Yet, the curse was hungrier than she was, and as soon as the food slid on her tongue, the heat came back to flood her mouth.

  Loathing welled in her chest, sent a current of fiery anger down her spine. She attempted to swallow, but the migas had already transformed behind the curtain of her lips. Prickles sliced her tongue and gums, the roof of her mouth. Briefly, she considered spitting, let Denis see the reason she couldn’t eat. Bare her greatest shame and let him do what he will—faults aside, he was known to be a fair man. He might even help her.

  Or he might kill her.

  Yzabel tried to push the flower past her throat, but she choked on the thorns, on her tears, and she couldn’t speak, or breathe, or—

  “Are you seriously crying?” her betrothed asked, the annoyance extending his syllables into a hiss. “I’m asking you to eat, Yzabel, and you act like I’ve hit you.”

  But she couldn’t answer, couldn’t explain why his words and expectations were as effective as a physical blow. Denis’s very presence filled her with inadequacy and despair, and she could not stand to be in his company a second longer.

  Cheeks full and tongue bleeding, she looked up at Denis with eyes flooded with anger, and finally, finally, he backed away from her. She didn’t ask or wait for his permission; she left his rooms with lungs close to bursting and a heart in a knot, his shouts for her to return following her as she rushed across the solar to her chambers.

  She barely had time to turn the key in the lock before she bent over.

  From her parted lips tumbled not migas, but red petals, crushed leaves, and a fibrous, thorny stem lined with blood. Whenever she ate, this was the result. Flowers in her mouth, that she either spat out or forced herself to swallow.

  Yzabel knew she had to end the curse, but how was she supposed to put an end to a force she could not control?

  Chapter Three

  A Curse of Roses

  Kneeling on the cold floor, Yzabel stared at the mangled rose.

  She picked up the bitten flower, turned it over in her trembling hand. Such a small thing, no bigger than her finger, and yet it had the power to destroy her life and everything she longed to achieve.

  With a sharp, hateful motion, she tossed it into the fireplace, watched it burn away into ashes, and wished the curse would follow suit. The evil trickle of magic remained, pooling in her fingertips, shining brighter than the flames.

  Growing hungrier.

  Growing stronger.

  It hadn’t been this persistent when it’d first appeared shortly after her twelfth birthday, when she’d woken to agony in her belly and bloody sheets beneath her legs. Back then, the food only turned if her touch lingered for long minutes—she’d still fasted, but it had been by choice.

  Days had gone by. Weeks. Months.

  Years.

  Until a couple of years ago, when the curse went wild and began leaking at the smallest brush. Like her body was a glass, every meal a ravenous drop, and now that it had been filled, she couldn’t stop it from overflowing. And these past few days, the sight of food brought not a single drop, but a deluge.

  Until now, the curse had always receded when she put a couple of feet between herself and a full plate. With a grimace, Yzabel tried to push it back down, but the angry light wouldn’t stop pulsing, tugging at her head, making her look at the window.

  On its perch, the bowl of hard bread she kept for the birds taunted her. Th
e strings of magic carried her on entranced feet, lifted her hand, curled her fingers around a piece. She dropped her heavy shoulders, too defeated to look away as the magic gushed out. The sight took her breath away, its beauty as undeniable as it was unsettling. The bread broke apart and turned green to form thorny stems; petals bloomed from inside out, the red spiraling in on itself until a full flower blossomed. The floral smell thickened the air, tickled her nose. In her hand was not bread, but a rose, fresh as though it’d been picked moments ago.

  A mesmerizing curse, but one she couldn’t even use to the people’s benefit. Senhor Davide and those kids had been famished, and here she was, wasting perfectly good food while they had to ration their bread and vegetables and wine into miserable meals.

  It took a few long breaths for her to put a name to the bitterness in her throat. Hate and despair and impotence all merged into one heavy lump. The flower in her hand became her biggest enemy. Nothing else evoked such hatred, and nothing else had the power to doom her in the blink of an eye. She traced its petals of scarlet velvet and their inward spiral, marveled at how their beauty belied the danger underneath. Its sweet scent ingrained itself on her nose. A thorn pricked her finger.

  Fury swallowed her world, made it so all she heard was her hissing breath, taken through clenched teeth. Her failures and waste were all she could see.

  She ripped the perfect rose into imperfect shreds, barely registering the pain of her rendered flesh as the flower fought back. Blood dripped from her hand, staining the embroidery of the Arraiolos rug under her feet.

  The next bit of bread, she put in her mouth. Her tongue burned, and when she spat, it wasn’t bread that left her lips, but another rose. Filled with bite marks and blood from where it sliced the inside of her mouth. She put the rose in the empty bowl and tried again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Soon, nine roses looked back at her, their mangled appearance a jeer, a wound, a reminder. Waste, waste, waste. So much waste, all because she couldn’t control the curse that blighted her touch.

  She flung the bowl against the wall, pieces of clay and roses flying everywhere.

  “What was that?” Brites emerged from the small door that led to her lady’s maid chambers. One look at the scene had her scurrying over, wrapping Yzabel up in strong arms, whispering, “Shhhh. It’s all right,” while one hand smoothed her brittle curls.

  Had it been anyone else, she would’ve insisted they leave. But she would’ve been dead if not for Brites, whose teas and herbal mixtures had dulled the curse for a time before the terrible magic built a resistance and rendered them ineffective. Brites spent however long as necessary sieving soups for her, since the curse had a harder time with liquids—not perfect, but enough for her to hang on to the tenuous grip of life.

  She rested her head against Brites’s chest. “Why can’t I stop it? Am I doomed to carry this blasphemy for life? Why would the Lord saddle me with this terrible thing that just takes and takes and—”

  Brites kissed the top of Yzabel’s head. Her fingers carried on with their steadying motion. “I’ve told you before—magic is not the villain you make it out to be. People like me have been using it for generations, and people like you have been born—”

  “I wasn’t born with this,” Yzabel interrupted sourly. “And even if there are more people like us, what does it matter? We’re all forced to hide it unless we want to be trepanated, so we might as well be the only ones. And even if we could go public, the only other person who was cursed in this way is dead.” A shudder trembled in her lips. “That’s how I’m going to end up, isn’t it? Dead by eighteen because I can’t eat anything other than flowers.”

  Brites’s motions stilled as she sighed. “You won’t die if you learn how to control it.”

  As if she hadn’t been trying. “What am I doing wrong, then?” She pulled back to look at Brites and found her regarding her with a mixture of affection and despondency. “Gloves don’t do anything, and neither does spearing the food with a knife. Should I pray harder? Fast every day? Go back to wearing the cilice around both legs? I spent the last five years doing that, and the curse only grew stronger!”

  Her head went into a dizzy spin, throbbing with pain and guilt. “I’m always tired, regardless of how much I sleep. I’m afraid to eat in public, and what I do manage to eat in private is not enough to keep me healthy. Even with everything you do, I can’t…” She sniffed. “My moon’s blood hasn’t shown in three years. Denis thinks it’s because of the fasting, but if this keeps going, I’ll either be dead, or he’ll find out I’m unable to bear him heirs because of the curse, then he won’t marry me, I won’t be queen, and all this pain will have been for nothing.”

  Brites shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a curse you bear. If you let it feed—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “We could give it just the bones—”

  “I’ll not give this curse anything.” To do so would be to welcome the Devil in, to give in to the horrible relief that followed the curse’s insidious, flowery magic.

  Sighing, Brites scratched her hawkish nose. “Then I don’t know. If you were a Caraju like me, I could’ve trained you. We can try soaking you in Terra da Moura’s medicinal springs as well, but I don’t think that’ll make a difference, either.” She squeezed Yzabel once before letting go, and her half-lidded eyes caught on her left hand still bursting with magic, unsated, unrelenting.

  Shreds of the afternoon conversation with Senhor Davide kindled an idea into life. “What about the Enchanted Moura? You said she grants wishes. Could she… Do you think she could put an end to this somehow?”

  Brites bit the inside of her cheek. “She might, if you can find her.”

  Yzabel had nothing to lose by trying.

  “Get Vasco,” she said. “We have plans to make.”

  …

  The curse didn’t dim during her night of fitful sleep, and Yzabel woke to a burning left hand and a boiling tongue. With the sun still slumbering, she held her fingers aloft, noticed how they trembled. Either from her own frailty or the proximity of the Enchanted Moura’s magic, Yzabel could not say.

  At her feet, Lucas raised his ears, a question in his whine as he tilted his head at her. She patted him as she sat up, eyes closed to fight the nausea swaying in her throat and the hunger gnawing at her stomach.

  She slid out of bed, naked feet stomping on the carpet as she went to wake up Brites in the room next to hers. Brites helped her dress amid yawns, first the white gown she’d need to wear for the Moura, then a commoner’s outfit over it. As they went downstairs, Yzabel fiddled with the rough wool of the skirt’s high waist, felt the embroidery in a red-and-gold jacket over a loose chintz shirt. The thick woolen socks chafed almost as much as the cilice, and tanned hide shoes, old and worn, were two ovens baking her feet despite the cold.

  “I’ve packed some bread and chorizo for the day and crumbled some of those honey broas Her Highness likes so much.” Brites handed a cloth-wrapped bundle to a sour-looking Vasco.

  “I still don’t like this,” he grumbled. “The Moura’s story is pure fantasy.”

  Yzabel made herself meet his stare. “What if it isn’t?”

  “It’s not befitting of a princess—”

  “I decide what’s befitting of me.” She didn’t mean the accusation in her tone, but it slipped past her like a poisonous snake. “And if there is a Moura, and if she can help, what harm would come of listening to what she has to say?”

  Some of the tension lifted from Vasco’s shoulders and his glower softened to a frown. “Even if the tale is true, and we find this creature, what do you think will happen if someone discovers you’ve conspired with a Moor?”

  “I’ll be killed if someone finds out about the curse anyway, so we better make sure we don’t get caught.”

  “It’s dangerous. I c
annot, in my right conscience, allow you to do this.”

  This discussion was moot. She so loathed playing the princess card, but sometimes it was the only way. Being confident in front of Vasco had always been difficult because it often meant hurting him, and she hated to see sadness in his eyes.

  He’d been willing to look past her curse and protected her the best he could, sought help when Yzabel thought she’d be forever lost. He was more of a papá to her than Pedro had ever been. Which was why she must not let his doubts affect her. Yzabel’s own were already hard enough to deal with.

  “How long do you think I have if we don’t solve this problem?”

  Vasco made to answer but ended up chewing on his bottom lip.

  “Tell. Me. And be honest.”

  Remorse darkened his eyes, and at last, he confessed, “Not long. I suspect we would’ve lost you already had we let the medicus bleed you like they wanted.”

  To this day, it was hard not to laugh every time she remembered Brites chasing the medicus with a broom, yelling obscenities unfit for anyone’s ears. Humor was not appropriate at this instance, so she held firm, face and eyes of unwavering stone. “Then we agree—if there ever was a time to resort to desperation, it’s long passed us by. I’ll respect your choice to not involve yourself in this, but if you think your absence will deter me, you’re wrong.” She pierced Vasco with a sharp look. “If there’s a chance I can rid myself of this magic, I will find it. With or without you.”

  He nodded, the faint beginnings of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and turned to her, encased in hesitation, before placing a fatherly kiss atop her head. “I keep forgetting you’re not a child anymore.”

  She hated him for the reluctance yet loved him for everything else.