Chapter 2
Chapter
The tower walls are weathered and Barren,
but her scent refuses to fade.
Cold rain and forgotten tea. Home.
It’s not the first time I’ve woken up in the rot-riddled infirmary. Probably won’t be the last.
Though I’ve grown accustomed to the smell of decay, the way the warped shelves hang over me, barely secured to the crumbling walls, I can’t help but shudder beneath the pontiff’s touch.
Cold and calculating. Meticulous in its study.
I wonder if this time, he’ll finally voice what has been years in the making.
Whatever it is that afflicts me, it’s getting worse.
My fingers are the first to move, groping for the ruby red ribbon that hides the jagged groove carved into my neck, its faded pink line once all that stood between me and death. But no covering could curb the gnawing guilt burning behind my eyes.
At least my tears are now easier to swallow. It’s keeping them down that I struggle with. My stomach churns and I curl my fingers around the ribbon, the dizzying reminder of what may very well be my greatest failure.
“Princess?”
I drop my hand, lifting my head off the pillow enough to find the pontiff’s lengthy form standing at the foot of my cot. Alone.
I exhale a relieved smile. “Good morning, Gally.” The hall behind him is darker than usual. All the daylight lanterns used to mimic sunlight have been blown out. I must have been asleep for a while. “Or evening. I suppose.”
The creases between his bushy gray brows deepen over a faint scowl. One would think after almost twenty-one years of knowing each other, the nickname would be appreciated.
“You’re running on borrowed time, my Princess.”
Guess not.
I sit up, letting the thin bed sheets pool around my waist. “So you heard about Mother’s book, huh?”
Galahand blinks in response, immune to my twisted sense of humor.
I fall back onto the thin downy pillow with a heavy sigh. Why did I think this year would be any different?
“I know. I know. The fainting spells are getting worse. Just as they do every year around my birthday.”
Though I am surprised to find that muscles unaffected by my fall are sore. There’s an ache in them like never before, reaching the pit of my bones. Then again, I didn’t collapse into any man’s arms. I fell into the King’s. And if there’s one thing my father is not, it’s soft.
I rub my muscles, avoiding the nasty blue and black bruises lining the backs of my arms. When Galahand clears his throat, stepping around the simple straw pallet I’ve been laid out on.
“I fear this one may be your last.”
“My last what?” I ask blankly.
Then the pity in his eyes hits me square in the chest.
Oh. I sit upright, in-part to protest, but also to make sure I still can.
It only took twenty years. Well, twenty years and eleven months since I drew my first breath—the same one that could have been my last had the pontiffs been wrong about the curse. About me.
“I’m afraid your body is starting to wither away, princess.”
“I suppose I should be grateful it didn’t happen sooner. A knife to the carotid artery will normally see right to that. It’s not the cleanest method of sacrifice, but it’s certainly amongst the most efficient. Wouldn’t you agree?” My throat tightens around a truth I can’t yet swallow.
“Well, I—”
“Slice the throat open. Take my eye. Steal the life of an innocent in place of a lie. Then carve out my heart and give it away. It should have been that easy.” My vision blurs. “Why couldn’t it have been that easy?”
“Please, princess. You should rest.” I can smell the rosemary on Gally’s robes as he inches closer, but his words sound muddled, as if he’s speaking under water.
Not that I’d listen to them anyway. He wants complacency.
I want to live.
None of this makes sense. Why did the curse spare my life back then, only to work to take it now? I had thought—had hoped—that when the only remains in the Evil Queen’s home were revealed to be from a little girl and not a boy, I would finally be free.
“Who am I to pay such a price?”
“Princess?”
Ah. Of course. How could I forget? I was born a girl. The first and only girl to be born into royalty since the Evil Queen’s death. Only, there will never be a crown resting upon my head. She and her curse saw to that.
“So this is to be my end. I was born, and will die for nothing.”
My head spins beneath the old man’s weathered hand, his cool palm now slick with the sweat above my brows.
“Now hear this, child.”
But all I do is hear, Gally. I listen to the Council as they puzzle through the peculiar little plot twist that is, or was, the curse’s final act.
I listen to the ghosts that haunt our halls, their sorrowful songs the only thing that sings me to sleep at night.
But this? This is not a tune I care to hear.
“No life is without meaning. No magic without its price,” Galahand drones on, his nonsensical words blurring the lines between fiction and reality. “But… there is a possibility the pontiffs read it wrong.”
“That’s not possible. I would have died the second they slit my throat,” I let out, meeting the old man’s eyes.
The dim flame flickers in their reflection. His resolve is sound. But is his mind?
He crouches close to me, lowering his voice. “But that’s just it, princess. This curse—I don’t think it was meant to destroy. What if it was cast to preserve something?”
“To preserve something?”
“Or someone,” Galahand nods.
“Someone?”
Gally casts a look over his shoulder before turning back to me, his voice barely a whisper now. “The first born son…”
The first born son? I reel back, my stomach bottoming at an idea I refuse to put too much weight behind. And not for a lack of curiosity, but because if what Gally suggests is true, and Father finds out, then my heart is to be butchered. Stolen from my chest.
And I can’t afford to believe that what little time I have left may be even less now. Not when I am this close to convincing Father to let me leave.
To let me create some good before I go…
Besides, what Gally’s saying is impossible. Because the first-born son, the supposed missing piece to this godforsaken curse?
He’s the sole reason it exists. The epicenter of my suffering.
The Evil Queen’s child.
The prince that was taken by fire.
It’s right there in the Evil Queen’s own words…
I curse the crowns upon your heads.
May your sun never set.
And your night never end.
With your greed and selfish pride.
You stole a crown and took a life.
So keep all your riches, but enjoy them not
And let all you’ve ruined never be forgot.
Till the day you die, I curse unto you
A life full of rot. A life full of dues.
But should you wish to make amends
For all the good you’ve helped upend
Give me a life untouched by sin.
An eye for an eye.
Innocence for a lie.
And once the deeds are done,
Put the heart of the daughter into the hand of
the first born son.
“Princess?” Galahand’s cold fingers rest on my shoulder, pulling me free from my thoughts. “I had hoped this might bring you comfort?”
Comfort? I let out a humorless laugh. “I hope you don’t think me rude, Gally. But to hear that the very one who is meant to rip my heart from my chest is somehow the only reason I’ve been kept alive is not the consolation prize you think it is. Upon hearing that I am to die either way, no less.”
Galahand’s lips pull into a frown as he turns to leave, muttering to himself as he goes.
Perhaps I am not the only one in need of rest.
I stare up at the weathered beams above me. It’s not much for entertainment, but I suppose the steady stream of water trickling through the cracks will have to do.
Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.
I count one hundred and seventy two before the last drop falls and the room grows still in the pontiff’s absence. It feels as if the world inside these four walls has stopped entirely. Or maybe it’s only my mind, scrambling for a way to create more of what I don’t have.
Time. Time to explore the world beyond these castle walls. To live the life I’ve not been granted, for fear that I might make everything worse.
I want to smell flowers that aren’t a deadly shade of red. I want to see the sun shine off these black castle walls. To see the light pour in through the stained glass windows decorating the long halls. I want to know what it would feel like on my skin. Would it hurt?
And what of the dragons? Is there no hope of seeing the skies filled with their feathery wings again?
Are little girls and boys destined to fall prey to the very creatures that remain a staple in their bedtime stories?
Is the rot to turn every wonder of the world into just that—a story, history turned fable in the years to come?
And what of me? How will my story read? Will I ever know love or how to make it? I’ve read a great deal about true love’s kiss, but does that happen before or after the love has been made?
God, I want to know what it is to love and be loved in return. I want to be touched in a way that doesn’t leave a scar. That soothes the ache in this bleeding heart I call home. I want for so much, but more than anything, I want more time.
All at once, the walls begin to shrink around me, suffocating what little hope I held in my lungs all these years.
“I need to leave this room.” No. “I need to leave this castle.”
“What are you—” Galahand reappears in the doorway, his eyes widening at my legs now dangling off the side of the bed. “No, no, no. You must rest!”
He slams the door shut and rushes toward me when a sudden drop in temperature has him whirling around. His dusty blue robes catch beneath his feet as he jumps back from the door that’s swung back open.
Rich notes of whiskey and damp earth flood my senses. I meet my unexpected visitor’s pointed look with my one good eye. Not that I need two, or really either, to know exactly who he is.
He is the only man I’ve ever known to carry such an overwhelming undercurrent of sympathy for those around him. But whatever affections my brother holds for me are quickly dismissed as Father steps out of the shadows and into the torch-lit room.