Chapter Twenty-Six. In Which the Prince Reveals a Secret
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In Which the Prince Reveals a Secret
Risa found the afterlife very similar to regular life.
Too similar.
For example, the wound across her neck still ached and smarted as the hem of her tunic rubbed against it.
Her knees trembled as she tried to extend her legs beneath her.
The sun shone with unrelenting fervor. And the ghost of Javi’s lips still pressed against hers, soft and plush—the memory of his tongue swiping across her teeth—made it easy to forget the pain in her arm and her back and her leg and—
Oh.
She was alive.
Once her eyes adjusted to the blazing light, she noticed that the airship had splintered around her.
Small fires curled around edges of fallen sheet metal.
The carpet had burned away, leaving behind the tattered remains on which she and Javi were sprawled.
All that was left of the cockpit was a broken leather seat and the black console twisted out of shape.
The benches had melted into puddles of silver, the crystal chandelier had shattered, and the desert heat beat down against her skin, merciless in the face of her near-death encounter.
Javi lay beside her. Sand clung to his hair, his clothes, his eyelashes. There was a new gash across his forehead, but otherwise he remained utterly handsome.
“We survived,” she whispered, awed by the impossibility of it.
He cracked open an eye to take in their surroundings and reached for her again.
“Kiss me and I’ll believe it.”
She shoved him.
He sighed, wistful. “You were drastically improving your skills, but sadly, they’ve turned violent.”
Risa ignored him. She stood shakily, the world threatening to go off-kilter. There were no signs of the Sanguines or life at all among the debris scattered across the miles of dunes that stretched before her.
Brunie was missing. Risa felt a pang in her heart. The sand extended as far as her eyes could see and probably far beyond it, but she had a feeling that the cat would outlive them. Chances were he was already in the shade of Madros’s capital, lounging in some other idiot’s arms.
She turned back to Javi. “How’s your head?”
He sat up and reached back with his fingers. They came away covered only in sand.
Good. They were alive, the airship had fallen apart around them, Madros gleamed in the distance, and Javi was falling in love with her.
Shit.
When death had seemed inevitable, Javi’s words hadn’t registered very much, especially since she had been more concerned with the feeling of his lips against hers.
She hadn’t bothered to think about what the kiss meant or what the consequences would be, especially in the face of their survival and her unbroken curse, which enjoyed finding all the ways it could hurt those she cared for.
Her mother swore that little accidents staved off really big Bad ones, but Risa didn’t think falling out of the sky in an airship could be considered a little accident.
If they had managed to survive this accident, she didn’t want to know what the big one might entail.
Though that was a problem for another time. First, they had to rescue Amina. Who was probably somewhere within the white-walled city of the Madrosian capital, its skyline undulating like a wave in the distance.
“Damn.” Javi groaned at the sight of it across the sand dunes. “We’re going to save Amina, aren’t we?”
“Unfortunately.”
He groaned louder. “I’ve already almost-died several times over.”
“Javi.”
“Several times.”
“Javi.”
“I know, I know,” he sighed in defeat.
Risa didn’t blame him. She was reluctant, too, and not only because she had a sneaking suspicion that her bad luck was going to return with a vengeance, absolutely determined to wreck her life further.
Amina needed their help, and Risa didn’t want the last words between them to be tinged with anger.
After all, neither Javi nor Amina deserved what had befallen them.
They wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for Risa.
She owed it to both the prince and the princess to see this whole thing to the bitter end.
Javi reached to twine his fingers through hers, perhaps in support or commiseration, but something in the rubble caught her eye. It was tiny, nearly invisible in the wreckage if it hadn’t glinted in the light.
She rushed toward it and fell to her knees to dig in the sand. Once it was in hand, she recognized it immediately.
Linda’s gift to Amina.
The pair of white wings glimmered. She remembered how it had been pinned onto Amina’s cape, but now it looked off, lying with its bent clasp in her palm.
Its spinning center was stock-still, a needle pointing decidedly forward, toward a dune.
At first, Risa thought it must have been a broken compass, but the needle did not point north like it was supposed to—it pointed toward an inscribed M slightly askew from the white city.
The brooch had never stopped spinning while the princess wore it.
“Shut up,” Risa said, her eyes growing wide, hope rising in her chest. She blinked up at Madros, the heat making the image of the capital ripple in the air. “Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Risa held up the pin, shaking it at Javi. “It’s a compass.”
“We don’t need to go north.” At least he said it gently, like he was speaking to a child, his eyes soft and sweet as he nodded at the city and its stark-white fortress walls that kept the desert at bay. “We need to go there.”
She shook her head and shoved the compass under his nose. “It doesn’t point north. It points to Amina.”
“Not to jinx it, but I thought this would be more dramatic,” Javi observed. “We’d storm the city, take out an army, present the lost heir, and be hailed as heroes.”
Risa winced, but Javi was right. She had expected to find an army marching through the sand toward them after the crash.
That didn’t happen, and so she assumed there would be a battalion waiting at the gate, barring entrance.
Instead, the Madrosian capital rose up from the dunes, an impressive fortified castle nestled at the center of the walled city.
The gates in the wall were carved from white stone, and they remained unguarded save for one lone soldier who stared at the dusty ground and didn’t lift his head in acknowledgment as they neared.
Up close, the wall towered above them like an impassable mountain.
Pillars carved with perfectly symmetrical geometric diamonds gave it a dizzying, striking effect.
The main gate followed the same design, and together the gate, pillars, and walls seemed to shimmer without any help from the unbearable heat.
No one stopped them as they passed through the gate.
On the other side, Risa was hit by an equally dizzying feeling, though it was not caused by the careful artistry of eras past. This time, it was the familiar prickle of magic that morphed into a wave and crashed over her.
She stumbled, swallowing the bile that rose in her throat.
Javi steadied her, concern flashing in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Magic clung to the uneven cobblestones beneath their feet, to the carts clattering down the road, to the dirty glass windowpanes of white stone houses covered in a thick film of grime.
She couldn’t speak without feeling like she might be ill.
The town greeting them was a dusty, hollowed husk that hinted at a time of greatness past, where it might have stood as a testament of strength, vitality, and ingenuity.
Domed roofs jutted into the sky; intricate, swirling geometric patterns were etched into arched doors and window frames.
Once upon a time, the place would have been beautiful, with its whitewashed walls and facades and equally white stone streets.
But now there were cracks in the plaster, chips in the roofs, and half-missing stone reliefs.
All around, tired people dragged their heavy feet up and down steep streets and alleys.
“Something isn’t right,” Javi whispered.
Risa knew what was wrong. This was a cursed kingdom.
Something sticky and viscous slithered beneath her feet and pressed insistently against her mind.
As if it were trying to find a crack to seep into and smother her thoughts.
It thrummed and pulsed like a living, breathing thing, tendrils reaching, probing with a mind of its own.
No wonder Kheadon couldn’t escape the glutinous grasp of Madros’s curse. Why the people and towns on the other side of the Bosque had been overcome. The power of the curse made her feel as if she were wading through a sea made of tar that wanted to pull her in and drown her.
Javi appeared not to fare any better. Despite the compass leading them toward Amina—at least, Risa hoped Linda’s useless gift wasn’t so useless—it was hard to remember the plan when their thoughts kept slipping out of their heads like grains of sand between their fingers.
Remnants of old Madros still littered the streets.
A rusted track where a trolley once operated had been left nailed to the road, metal rails catching the light.
On the steep hill farthest from the looming castle were the ruins of an observatory.
Bells tolled in the distance. They rang in a cheerful tone that suggested a celebration was at hand.
The townspeople did not lift their weary heads or startle at the sound reverberating through the air. Their faces remained vacant, unseeing eyes staring off into nothing.
Risa marched on, determined. Ahead, an older woman was coming down the same hill she and Javi were struggling to climb, hunched over with an eerily silent baby strapped to her back.
She had a faded, tattered handkerchief tied around her head, the fabric so worn it was nearly translucent.
She didn’t seem to notice them as she took mindless steps forward, ankles wobbling under her weight.