Chapter Eight. In Which the Pair Participates in a Festival That Is Most Definitely Not Sinister at All #2
The strain around Risa’s chest was all she could think of.
It pulled at her the moment the door closed behind the prince, and grew more insistent with each passing breath.
She did not register the barren second floor lit by sconces or how every door on the landing was closed tight.
Nor did she notice the path of drag marks worn into the floorboards around the balustrade.
When Risa stumbled onto the final landing—an attic with a door the same color as the scarlet shingles of Cairn’s roofs—she finally managed to blink through her unfocused vision.
Diffused morning light streamed through sheer linen curtains across an opulent room with dark green paneled walls and a black-and-white tiled floor.
At the center was a gilded clawfoot tub and, standing beside it, a young girl in a simple dress the color of an unripe olive.
Upon seeing Risa enter, the girl released a relieved sigh.
Whatever show Miss Rivera had been putting on for the prince, it was decidedly over when she shoved Risa farther into the room and disappeared out the door. A deadbolt slid into place with a final click.
Silence settled over them. Risa’s heart began to meter out her assured death. Breathing ragged and vision darkening, she could hardly register the young girl as she spoke.
“It’s lukewarm now.” The young girl motioned toward the bathwater.
Her eyes were the same color as her dress, a greenish brown that resembled a murky puddle and blended with her skin, the shades too similar.
She must have been a few years younger than Risa, around twelve or thirteen, her face round with childish youth.
But the permanent crease between her sparse brows aged her far beyond her years.
With what strength remained, Risa whirled around to the door. She grasped the handle and pulled with all her weight.
It did not budge.
If it hadn’t been obvious from the constant singing and dancing that she was in dangerous territory, the locked door now confirmed it. And that wasn’t even considering her thinning breath and the painful hammering in her head. Brunhilda’s spell was slowly killing her.
Her forehead landed against the doorframe with a thunk. “You’re not singing,” she noted, taking a shaky breath despite her tightening chest.
“I could, if you’d prefer.”
Risa did not want that. What she wanted was to be able to breathe again. To have things go slightly right for a change.
Left with little else to do, Risa shed her clothes and climbed into the tub. Water cascaded over the edge, splashing onto the floor, though the girl didn’t seem to mind.
The bath wasn’t cold; the summer heat kept the water from turning tepid too quickly, and it was nicer than the stream. But it did not dispel the cold deep within her bones, nor did it relax her anxious body. She watched the girl reach for a rag and begin scrubbing at Risa’s back.
The girl paused scrubbing. “You should leave.”
Risa sighed. “Yes. I figured. Though I feel like if you’re going to impart ominous warnings, they should be a little more substantial. Can you help me?”
She felt the girl shake her head. A haunting whisper: “I can’t.”
Risa turned and met the girl’s vacant, thousand-yard stare. “My name is Risa,” she said, hoping it would inspire more camaraderie. Or guilt. Seeing as she had no experience with charming or coercing anyone into feeling sorry for her, she hoped she was doing it right. “What’s yours?”
The girl dropped the rag and folded her arms while staring down her nose. All right, so Risa was not charming or manipulative.
“Maria.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Maria.”
Maria did not look convinced. She arched both sparse brows.
“Okay, you got me. It’s not very nice to meet you. But I won’t tell anyone if you help.”
Maria regarded her coolly and, after a long moment, swept her eyes toward the door, as if to reassure herself they were alone and that the door remained locked.
“I can’t,” she emphasized.
Risa settled back in the tub with a splash. So she was going to die, either at the hands of a musically inclined town or by Brunhilda’s spell. Perhaps the tub would do. “Perfect.”
“But…” Maria trailed off, pensive. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that being crowned maiden isn’t a good thing.” She stopped speaking, then perked up with a thin-lipped smile. “Oh, that was easy.”
Risa slowly sat up. “Would you like to elaborate?”
The girl shrugged. “I certainly don’t mean to imply that it spells your demise.”
“Wait,” Risa demanded, holding up a hand. Her pounding headache was making it very difficult to think. She clambered out of the tub with Maria’s help and let the girl wrap her in a drying cloth. “What was that bit again?”
Maria said nothing.
Risa rubbed at her temple to dispel the fog settling over her.
But it remained stubbornly in place, even as Maria helped her into new clothes, which were the color of a stormy sky and felt like slick, worn-down cobblestones.
Whatever thoughts Risa tried to grasp slipped away like the same rain she’d been trying to escape her whole life.
Each breath became more difficult than the last. There wasn’t enough air in the small bathroom, the shop, the whole town.
She felt faint and fevered and ill and cold and hot and a tinge seasick, despite never having been at sea and therefore having no idea what it felt like to be seasick in the first place.
“I think I’m dying,” Risa told Maria, stumbling toward the door, her hand grasping the knob.
The door held fast, and her vision turned to pinpricks and starbursts of white, darkness crowding the edges.
She slid down onto the cool tiled floor as pain burst from her chest, flames licking up her body in a roar of heat.
The young girl stepped over her, face blank. “Yes, you are.” She pulled a key from beneath her shift, fitted it into the keyhole, and opened the door. “It would have been me,” she whispered before slipping through the crack.
Risa could do little else but watch her go as darkness claimed her.