Chapter Twenty-Five. In Which Life-Altering Realizations Occur
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
In Which Life-Altering Realizations Occur
Risa made her way aboard the airship and dropped onto an empty bench, still reeling from her conversation with Amina.
The girl’s words repeated over and over in her mind.
What had Javi wanted to tell her? Had he been intending to tell her the truth all along, that he needed her to break his supposed curse—one she was sure he didn’t have?
Or was there something else he was hiding, something worse?
She took in the airship in a daze. It was one of the Regent’s personal machines, outfitted in luxury.
Small but mighty, it flew with a deep rumble in its belly, and it had leather seats and a plush carpet the color of moss.
The steel walls were painted burnt copper, and several windows allowed a clear view of the pastoral plains outside the dry patch that demarked San Cirilo.
Beyond those were heather-covered hills and valleys, farms dotting the landscape, and towns that appeared and disappeared as they flew past.
Javi had claimed a bench at the front of the airship, directly behind the curtain that housed the cockpit.
He was dressed like a prince again, the life of a pauper a distant memory.
The crisp white linen doublet had been tailored to his exact measurements in the span of a few hours, highlighting the width of his broad shoulders.
The trousers were hemmed a few inches above his ankles, revealing a sliver of dark skin that made Risa aware of the stuffy heat in the airship.
His curls were limned with gold threads, and his circlet was settled in its rightful place, gleaming against his forehead.
She didn’t realize he’d taken it from her rucksack.
He sat in silence, forearms perched on his thighs, fingers steepled.
Amina sat with him, concern written across her face, her mouth pulled down in a frown.
While her cape had not been replaced, she did wear a new silk tunic of bright sapphire, the tone highlighting the sharp edges of her beauty, the gray of her eyes.
Her jeweled belt was slung around her hips, the pearl hilts of her daggers stark white like shards of bone.
Her trousers were loose and hung a few inches below her knees, emphasizing the shapeliness of her calves and the battle scars garnered over the years.
While she wore no diadem of her own to signify her royal blood, Linda’s gift was pinned to her cape, its center mechanism spinning wildly in its casing.
Risa watched as the princess leaned over to say something to Javi and received no response.
Besides Brunie, their only other companion was a guard busy staring out of a porthole, nose smudging the glass.
With the way they gripped the window, Risa might have thought it was their first flight, but she was sure the Regent wouldn’t have trusted her nephew’s life to a new member of her uniformed guards.
The airship wobbled. A groan reverberated across its metal body, wind buffeting its sides. Brunie scrambled into Risa’s lap while she slid down her bench and watched Amina skid into Javi.
His reaction was quick. One arm dragged the princess closer; the other braced against the bench to anchor them in place. Amina briefly rested her head against his shoulder.
Risa’s heart careened into her rib cage.
She was sick. With a horrible, fatal disease. Death was at her door, knocking with heavy fists, eager to claim her life. There were no doctors or midwives or blacksmiths moonlighting as healers to help her. This was an incurable, unknowable illness, and it was probably thanks to Brunhilda’s spell.
The airship righted itself, then immediately listed to the other side, sending them scrambling for purchase before the airship settled again.
Risa realized she was still staring at Javi and the princess when he lifted his head and their eyes locked.
He pushed Amina away as if she were diseased and climbed onto his feet in a hurry.
“I’m going to check with the pilots,” he declared to the plush rug and his new shoes. “Doesn’t anyone know how to drive this thing?”
The airship teetered once more, sending the prince through the curtains in two quick steps. The guard glanced after him, and though Risa couldn’t see the guard’s face, her bad feeling suddenly turned very, very bad.
She started for the curtain, Brunhilda’s spell pulling her forward. It was perhaps the only time she didn’t want to ignore it. Brunie leaped from her arms, landed in the middle of the airship, and yowled, body arching in warning.
The guard startled, lifting their nose from the porthole, and reached for something at their hip.
A pistol, Risa grasped belatedly, the handle gleaming.
It had to be a very poor choice of weapon in an airship hurtling through the sky where no calibration of its body accounted for a sudden hole ripping through its steel flesh.
The curtain fluttered as a pilot dressed in the Regent’s colors of green and red walked out. Dark goggles covered their eyes. Something metal shone in their hand as it was leveled at Amina’s head.
Great. Another pistol.
Risa knew what was happening before the pilot even lifted their goggles. Her stomach flipped. Her heart stuttered. She should have known the moment Javi had skirted around her feelings the night before.
There was no way to escape her bad luck. Not a thousand miles in the air, and not by pushing people away. She couldn’t outrun her shadow. It would always find her.
Amina began to reach for her daggers, but El Gib shook his head in warning.
“Uh-uh, Princess. Not when we have your principito.”
Javi stumbled out from behind the curtain, followed by the second pilot—Carlos, of course—holding something against Javi’s back. The first guard shed their leather cap and goggles, letting their long curls tumble down. Bella stood there, pistol in hand, looking a little queasy from the flight.
Javi sagged in defeat at the sight of the beautiful Sanguine. “I see all my past mistakes are coming back to haunt me.”
“You wish,” Bella teased, blowing him a kiss.
“I guess you settled your differences, then?” Risa asked, staring pointedly between El Gib and Bella.
Brunie launched himself at El Gib, claws ready to attack, but the Sanguine grabbed him out of midair and dangled him menacingly at Risa.
“Don’t even think about opening yer mouth, girl,” El Gib reprimanded Risa, shaking Brunie for emphasis. “Ya talk too much without saying anything at all.”
She swallowed her words, not daring to test El Gib and his pistol while they were in the air.
Wait—who was flying the airship?
Her thoughts were interrupted by Bella gesturing at Amina. “Are you sure that’s the princess?”
El Gib wrapped his hand—pistol and all—around Amina’s hair and pulled. The princess gritted her teeth as her head was forced back and the light from the airship chandelier caught on the scar across her cheek and throat.
“Looks like it.”
Bella glanced past the prince, to where the airship controls blinked bright red in warning. “Let’s go before the ship goes down.”
“You don’t need her,” Javi said, sounding rather put out, though his frantic eyes betrayed him. “You want the bounty? Fine. I won’t put up a fight. But leave the girls alone.”
What was he doing?
Risa’s curse liked easy targets—that was why her parents had had so many accidents in the beginning.
Before she learned to tamp down her true feelings, when she still ran into their arms and told them she loved them, even as the rain fell loudly on their roof and flooded their gardens.
When they still tried to treat her like a real daughter and hadn’t known the consequences for loving her.
Javi saying such a thing might make it look like he cared. About her. About wanting to save her.
Risa stepped forward.
But El Gib shot her a cold, dead glare and smiled a wide, cruel grin that twisted his hideous face into something monstrous and stopped her in her tracks. He slowly looked back at the prince, and his lips curled further.
“All we need is for ye to be dead.”
Carlos slammed the heel of the pistol against the back of Javi’s head. The prince crumpled into a heap on the carpet. Dark red bloomed beneath his head, staining the rug.
Risa screamed, heart lurching at the sight of Javi’s unmoving body. El Gib twisted Amina’s hair until the princess was screaming, too. Another groan rocked the airship as the front tipped downward.
This was all her fault. Javi was probably dead. Amina had been discovered, so close yet so far from reclaiming her rightful place in Madros. Worst of all, Risa could do nothing to fix this. All she was good at was breaking curses, and that was debatable.
Unless—
“Curses,” she said, gripping the edge of a bench with one hand and letting her other flutter dramatically against her throat, emulating a certain witch.
She needed drama to sell it, and no one was more dramatic than Linda.
There wasn’t much time, so she had to make it quick and believable.
“I hadn’t realized your entire group was cursed. ”
The words had their desired effect. The Sanguines stared at her. Bella was agape. Carlos cocked his head, confused. El Gib shoved Amina into Carlos’s arms and pointed his pistol at Risa. “What are ya talking about?”
“Haven’t you wondered why you’re having such a hard time killing us?” She gestured at Javi, heart in her throat when he still didn’t move. “You’ve got a whole criminal organization and you can’t manage to off teenagers?”
Carlos scratched at his eyepatch. “You know, she has a good point, Eto.”
El Gib scowled at her. “I said shut up.”
Risa hurried on. “I can see curses. And I see yours. Such terrible, awful luck. You can’t kill me. If you shoot, it will rebound or it’ll rip a hole in the hull and send us hurtling toward a gruesome death. Well—you. We’ll be fine.”
Bella reached for something tucked in her bosom and pulled out a knife rusted over with what could only be someone else’s blood.