Chapter Twenty-Three. In Which the Trio Learns a ThingTwo About Balance #2
“I don’t,” Risa spat at him, her heart flip-flopping in her chest like a struggling fish out of water.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to wrap her hands around his neck to force him to actually look at her, or to wring it.
“Avoiding all-out war seems to be in my best interests, considering I’d like to live past seventeen. ”
The Regent swept her eyes down Risa’s body. Then, turning to her nephew: “You know, betrothals come and go. If you’re feeling particularly compelled to do your job as a prince, you could arrange a new one with the princess once she’s queen.”
Javi chuckled nervously. “Let’s not get me a second engagement before I’ve even ended my first one.”
“Besides,” Amina added quickly. For some reason, she gave Risa a nervous shake of her head. “Recouping an entire kingdom will take more than just planting me back on the throne. I can’t be distracted with a marriage. I’m sixteen!”
The Regent hummed in thought, then picked up a strange bell-shaped contraption that she held to her mouth.
“Get me the pilot captain! We’ve got a princess to help, a general to dethrone, and a kingdom to save!”
Though the wedding was upon the horizon, the Regent insisted that the three (plus Brunie) stay the night.
Rooms were to be prepared, new clothes were to be procured, and a quiet dinner was to be served.
Javi was whisked away on a tour of the Flying Palace, replete with guards, and Amina requested a jaunt to a library, where she could read whatever books had been collected before the curse had been placed on Madros.
That left Risa alone in the Regent’s study, face pressed against the glass window where she could stare out at all the things magic could make and build and create, wondering what it was that kept the thorns of her curse so embedded.
Night had fully engulfed the sky but that only magnified San Cirilo’s beauty.
Lights sparked to life throughout the airships: in portholes, lamps, orbs that floated below the airships like lighthouses onshore.
If she stared through her eyelashes, vision slightly blurred, it almost looked as if she were staring out into a blanket of bright stars.
She felt the Regent join her at the window.
“Do you know why I left Kheadon?”
Obviously, Risa was not privy to the political machinations of the kingdom, or to the inner mental workings of its royalty, as evidenced by her inability to understand Javi half the time.
The Regent continued, “My nephew never liked listening to me. Not as his aunt, and not as a witch.
“Magic needs belief. Faith that it’s real.
Hard, grueling work.” The Regent tapped a finger against the glass, and frost covered the pane.
When Risa blinked, it was gone. “It doesn’t last very long without it.
Like love, I suppose. If you stop feeding it, stop working it, stop believing in it, it fades away like smoke. ”
Risa didn’t think that was true. Or, to go on with the metaphor, she didn’t believe it was true.
How could magic be so fragile when it could create airships and underground tunnels running a maze through a mountain range?
Rain-slicked towns and sun-drenched nightmares? Curses that could never be broken?
A small aircab flitted past the window, docking at the large airship across from the Flying Palace. She couldn’t see who the passengers were, their figures too small to discern any features.
“Not that I would know,” the Regent said, flippant and bored. “I’ve never fallen in love.” She let out her honking laugh.
It didn’t ring hollow. In fact, the laugh was delicious. Robust. It echoed with the unmitigated thrill of running through a forest without care, the joy of feeling mud between bare toes, the knowledge that life was about more than lamenting the things one couldn’t have.
“Don’t bother,” Risa mumbled, thinking of Linda back in the Underground Pass. “It’s miserable.”
The Regent’s eyebrows rose. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“What?” Risa spluttered along with her heart. “No. I know a witch who— Doesn’t matter. Why are you telling me all of this, anyway?”
“Because you can leave my nephew and let him save Madros with the princess. There is nothing binding you to him.”
Risa gulped. Shook her head. Rooted around in the confines of her chest to find that her heart ached with Javi’s distance and that the pull she felt was as insistent as that first night in the woods.
Only it felt like the dull ache of having left something behind and wondering when she would be able to see it again.
“Yes there is.” She felt it with every waking hour, with every step closer to Madros. Whether he was near or far, she felt that tug toward him, the insatiable need to— Well, she didn’t know. “I feel it right now.”
Sympathy was written all over the Regent’s face: in the slight furrow of her arched brows, in the frown pulling at the corners of her lips. “I’m sorry.”
This was her chance. Her only chance. If the person who had developed an entire floating city couldn’t remove her curse, then Risa was doomed.
“I’m cursed,” Risa insisted. She placed a hand over her heart, where it beat painfully in her chest. “You’ve built an empire on belief. Help me break it. You must know how.”
The Regent studied her carefully. Her gold eyes roved across the planes of her face. “Some curses are only visible to those it afflicts,” the Regent finally determined, her voice soft.
Risa tightened her hands into fists until her nails dug into her palms. “What is the point of being able to break curses when I can’t break my own?”
The Regent was silent. They stood there, the lights across the dark sky twinkling in and out of life.
“I am sorry I cannot help you,” the Regent said.
Risa tried very hard to swallow around the knot in her throat and keep the tears at bay.
Each step of this journey, there had been something to keep her moving forward.
The slim chance that someone out there might be able to break her curse.
That there could be a day where she was not a Bad Thing but just Risa, a girl who could be loved without fear.
Now she knew there was no hope for her.
“Do you think…” She leaned her forehead against the window again, let her breath fog up the glass, turning the floating city into a gray haze. “Could the witch who placed the curse on Madros help me?”
The Regent considered her request for a moment.
“Witches can’t usually unravel magic. Only make it.
Like knitting or stitching, we stitch and knot until we’ve created something new.
Unraveling shouldn’t be difficult, but you can’t make all that thread disappear, and magic can’t go back into the ether.
It has to go somewhere.” The Regent sighed.
“I’ve never met a cursebreaker before you. I wonder how you do it.”
Risa laughed bitterly and knocked her head against the glass. “Me too.”
This could not be the rest of her life. Trailing after the prince, forced to forever be in his orbit.
Never a part of his world, but never able to leave it.
She didn’t want to watch him fall in love over and over again, hoping for the day he might decide to settle down and finally free her from Brunhilda’s spell.
She didn’t want to watch her bad luck try to hurt him, knowing she would never be able to break it.
The Regent placed a resigned hand on her shoulder.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for. Sometimes, the answer is right before your eyes.”