Chapter Twenty-Seven. In Which the Girl Saves a Princess
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
In Which the Girl Saves a Princess
Risa dropped his hand. “This again?”
She focused on his face, trying to see through his dimples, his gold eyes, the perfect fall of his curls. There was nothing to suggest he was burdened with some malignant magical ailment, but he looked so absolutely wretched at that moment that she almost believed him.
He didn’t try to reach for her again. “It’s true—I can’t be loved.”
Blinking, she tried to wrap her mind around the words he was saying. They made little sense. What was he going on about? Everyone loved him. He made it easy. There were plenty of stories to confirm it, plus all the people he had left behind brokenhearted.
“What are you talking about?”
“Once someone falls in love with me, they … lose interest,” he explained, shoulders slumping with the revelation. “I don’t break hearts. Not really. People just don’t want me anymore.”
She shook her head. “That’s hogwash.”
“It’s one of the reasons I wanted you to stay,” he went on, the words spilling out as if he’d been holding them behind a dam for so long, and now that the dam was broken, there was no stopping the rush.
“You’re the only person I’ve never been able to charm.
I thought, perhaps, you might be different.
Because, well, I don’t want to lose you. ”
“Are you—and I mean this offensively—an idiot?”
Javi scrunched his brows together, confused. “According to you, yes.”
“Javi. You’re not cursed.”
“I am.”
“No,” she said, resisting the urge to laugh. “You’re not.”
No, people were just horrible. And he was an absolute idiot.
“So, all those romances, they—?”
“Fizzled out, perhaps because the draw was a prince they couldn’t have.”
Javi didn’t look convinced. He peered into her eyes as if he could see the lie in her brown gaze. “And you really looked for it?”
She sighed, exasperated. They had a princess to save! “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
And perhaps that was the wrong thing to say.
Perhaps that was inviting disaster. Perhaps it was the kind of thing one said only if they weren’t cursed with bad luck.
But Risa let those thoughts drift away, because Javi was looking at her as if she were the center of his world, and no one had ever looked at her like that before.
Amina’s brooch compass led them through more empty halls and rooms on the ground floor.
At first, they followed the walls with slow, careful steps, prepared for a guard or servant to pop out, eyes vacant and unseeing.
Instead, they were met with nothing but an echoing silence that Risa knew had moved into the castle and made a home there for five long years.
Eventually, they came to a stop in front of a stone wall covered in soot from the fireplace beside it, cracked logs left in its grate long rotted.
Risa examined the wall, much like Amina had when she searched the cliffside for the entrance to the Underground Pass. Javi joined her and seemed to understand immediately, rapping his knuckles against the stone for a hollow echo until finally, she found what felt like seams.
She pressed against the nearest stone and it split, creating a door that swung open into a narrow, dank space with an even narrower staircase leading downward.
Javi sighed. Risa agreed. It did not bode well for them.
“Stay here,” she directed, because she didn’t think it would be smart to have them both trapped downstairs when there was only one way back up.
At least he could call down if something happened, or could close the wall and keep them hidden.
Or she could run back up and into his waiting arms if something worse was waiting downstairs.
He did not look thrilled. “Shouldn’t you stay here?”
“Your muscles are purely decorative,” she reminded him.
“But you’re tired from cursebreaking,” he argued, a hand hovering over her face. She held her breath as his fingers ghosted across her cheek to tuck a few strands of hair behind her ear.
No, she couldn’t let him sidetrack her very important mission. “Trust me.”
She left him there, standing guard, and descended by herself. Her hands scrabbled against the walls, footsteps reverberating along the stone passageway. The steps were uneven, and she swore when her foot hovered in the air for a second too long.
“Risa?” a voice called up from the darkness below.
“Amina?”
“Yes!” A small splash echoed against the stone walls. “I’m locked in a cell!”
Risa hurried the rest of the way down, ignoring the working part of her addled brain that told her to be careful. She landed in a puddle and groaned as water seeped through her boots and met with the sand that had made its way in.
“Do you have the keys?” Risa asked the darkness, her eyes struggling to adjust without a single source of light. It would have been a nice change of pace for something to work in their favor, but alas, her curse had other plans.
“Yes,” Amina called out, annoyance tingeing the word. “I have the keys and chose to stay locked in for fun.”
The princess was clearly spending too much time with her and Javi.
“You wouldn’t have happened to see the keys somewhere around here?”
There was a beat of silence, and then a sigh of disappointment. “I can’t see anything, Risa. It’s dark.”
She scowled in response. Yes, that made unfortunate sense. On her next adventure, were she to have one, she would ensure she packed some flint. Or, if she ran into a hoarding witch again, ask for a useful gift for the road, like a tinderbox.
Arms out, she began to clamber around blind, hoping to run into something. A torch, a lamp, a door. A copy of the keys, if she was going to be wishful. She got her wish a moment later when she crashed into something that sent a sharp ache of pain up her shin.
“What’s this”—she huffed through her nostrils—“chair doing here?”
Somewhere, Amina banged on the bars of her cell and called out, “The chair leg! We could wedge it into the lock!”
The chair was made of flimsy metal, rusted over after years of disuse. One good kick was sure to dislodge one of its legs.
She gripped the chair back, lifted it over her head, and slammed it onto the wet stone. It fell apart in her hands, the pieces clanging against the floor like little bells. She searched the ground until she felt cold metal beneath her fingertips.
“Rattle the bars!”
Amina did so. Risa followed the sound until her palm met damp bars peeling with rust. She followed each rung, one by one, until she felt Amina’s warm fingers wrapped around a padlock. Fitting the end of the chair leg into the loop, she pulled down with all her might.
The tension went slack as a crack ripped through the air. The padlock clattered to the ground, useless.
“You did it!” Amina wrestled with the iron loop still hanging on the door and threw it aside.
The hinges squeaked as she wrenched the gate open and leaped out, short arms circling around Risa.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed a breath later, burying her face into Risa’s shoulder. “I didn’t try hard enough to save you.”
Risa sagged with relief, and then with an embarrassing amount of joy. Amina wasn’t upset with her. For some reason, Amina had wanted to rescue her. Something tickled Risa’s throat as she returned the embrace with a squeeze.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I owe you.” It would have sounded a lot more authoritative if Amina weren’t sniffling.
Risa shrugged. “I owe you. For the airship.”
Amina scoffed as she pulled away. “You don’t, because I didn’t do enough. But I told you: We’re friends.”
“You didn’t say that,” Risa mumbled.
She could practically hear Amina’s eyeroll. “I heavily implied it.”
“For the record, I don’t think friends should let friends get themselves killed.”
“For the record, I don’t have many friendships for reference, and would like to politely disagree.”
Gratitude surged through Risa, warmth flooding her chest with a tightness that wasn’t entirely unwelcome. Still, she couldn’t help but think of what that meant for her curse, how it would twist the words around and hurt Amina for the sentiment.
She needed to tell them. Unlike Javi’s, her curse was very real. And deadly.
But she was a coward. A monster. A Bad Thing. The words clogged her throat and refused to dislodge.
“Did you find her, or am I supposed to stand here all day?” Javi shouted down the stairs.
Amina’s hand found hers and tugged her through the dark dungeon, their steps echoing against the stones as they climbed up the stairs and into the dim light.
The trio slipped out into cramped servants’ stairs and narrower adjoining hallways.
Still, no guards roamed the corridors, no servants made a mad dash to their stations.
Whatever wedding was happening was a somber one, leaving the castle silent and empty when there should have been a flurry of activity.
Amina led them through halls she knew despite the gloom that clung to the walls and the dust that hung in the air.
What was once a monument to Madrosian wealth and royalty—high, cavernous ceilings; arched floor-to-ceiling windows; silk wallpaper; intricate carvings—had fallen to something worse than disrepair.
It had become stuck in time, sorrow and grief seeping through the cracks in the plaster.
The princess stopped mid-flight up a cramped staircase, looking out a window to survey the ruins that stood in place of her childhood home.
“This is not my Madros,” she whispered, her voice carrying despite the wedding bells that still tolled. The clanging sounds were muffled and melancholy from inside the castle walls.
“You will rebuild,” Javi assured her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Amina looked unconvinced. Her face was squared, her jaw set. The gleam of her scar looked angry and raw. She stared out into the empty halls, seeing a past that Risa did not know and could not imagine.
Risa retrieved Amina’s brooch from a pocket and straightened the clasp.
Since the princess stood a few steps ahead, they were nearly the same height.
That made it easier to pin the compass to the princess’s cloak, right above her heart.
Once secured, the needle began to spin in its endless circle, the M glowing gold.
“Home is something you make.” She straightened Amina’s cape, the way her mother used to do when Risa would still let her dress her.
She missed her mother’s warmth; missed tracing the lines around her mother’s eyes, counting the hairs that framed her heart-shaped face.
“No matter how much he has destroyed, your people are Madros. You are Madros.”
Saying the words—feeling how true they rang—made Risa realize she missed home.
Not just her room or the loose floorboard or her mother’s rice and beans and cheesy doughs, not just her father droning on about town taxes.
She missed the sound of rain hitting her metal roof.
Missed the way the meandering river sometimes swelled and threatened to flood the town, and how, when it did overflow, nothing too terrible really happened beyond ruined floors and waterlogged furniture.
She even missed Emilia and her snobby little face looking down her nose.
Amina stared at her. The princess’s stormy eyes were glassy with tears as she said, “You would make a good older sister.”
Risa patted the princess’s shoulder awkwardly and leaned away, unsure of what was expected of a good older sister. “I’ve learned from the best.”
“You’ve never said anything so nice to me,” Javi teased, nudging her shoulder with his. “And we’ve ki—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” she warned, suddenly glad for the dim lighting.
The princess glanced between them and shook her head. “It’s like dealing with children,” she muttered before starting the upward march once more.
The Madrosian castle seemed to go on for miles and miles, until a stitch started in Risa’s side. Javi was huffing and puffing as he trudged up behind her. She paused long enough to take a few swigs from her canteen, then handed it over to Javi, who finished the rest with a sigh.
“We’re here,” Amina announced a moment later.
They emerged onto a landing with a sloped ceiling and beams that ran the length of the hall.
Sunlight streamed through the narrow windows angled on the roof, and painted the red rug in stripes of gold.
There were a few wooden benches built into the walls, vestibules that might have once housed robes or uniforms for the servants who might have had to go beyond the two small double doors made of alabaster that waited at the end, door handles shaped like giant replicas of the wings on Amina’s brooch.
The princess slowed, her body shuddering at the sight. “The chapel dais is beyond the doors,” she said.
Javi nodded, and together the prince and princess forged on, heads bent in conversation, no doubt discussing how they were going to burst through and make their demands.
But Risa hung back, the dread that trickled down her neck serving as a warning.
The bells continued to toll beyond the doors, where the general and his army were surely waiting.
Risa couldn’t risk going with them, not after every near escape, not when it counted the most.
Especially when she could feel something—her curse—starting to slither through the cracks in the wall she’d built, trying to worm its way inside her.
“I have to tell you something,” she declared.
Javi turned back. “Now?”
“Yes.” She took a steadying breath. “I can’t go with you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Amina didn’t even turn around, hands on the winged handle.
Enough hiding. If Risa didn’t tell them, she would be as bad as the Sanguines and the general. Endangering others for her own selfishness. To save her own skin.
“Come on,” Javi said, an encouraging smile on his lips as he turned around to assist Amina with the door. “We’ve already made it this far.”
Before she could yell at them to listen to her, a large hand wrapped around her mouth, then around her neck, crushing the air from her throat.
“Well, well.” El Gib’s voice stirred the hair around Risa’s ear, making her insides crawl. “Looks like the witch survived after all.”