Chapter 4
“Wake up,” someone says. The voice is sharp, authoritative, exasperated. It’s not my mother or my sister, the people who are usually annoyed with me. Honey, I think. Only Honeyrose can sound that irritated with me.
I open my eyes. It takes me a moment to figure out what I’m looking at. A ceiling, I believe. And faces. I don’t recognize most of them. I close my eyes.
“No you don’t, Your Highness,” the voice says again.
“Honey,” I say, but my voice is hardly more than a whisper.
“Can you sit up?” The voice is kindly, and not Honey’s. Honey often sounds so annoyed with me. I don’t blame her.
I probably can sit up. I don’t want to. I push myself upright, feel hands on my shoulders, helping me.
I open my eyes again. Honey’s face swims into view.
She’s kneeling in front of me. It seems there are others nearby, too, faces that are only vaguely familiar.
The Lord Mayor. Someone else from yesterday. Someone else.
“Honey,” I say again, though my voice is little more than a croak. “I think the old woman must have poisoned me.”
“Worse than that,” Honey says, her voice grim.
What’s worse than being poisoned? Well, maybe being poisoned successfully. I’m still alive, it would seem. Though I feel awful.
“Worse,” I say, trying to force enough into my voice that the word sounds like a question.
“You’ve been cursed.” Honey’s voice is dark, final.
“Oh, damn,” I say. I am not meant to swear; I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve sworn in my adult life. But these are trying times. “Damn,” I say again. Why haven’t I sworn more? It feels nice. “Damn.”
Curses are one of the worst things that can happen to a royal.
Obviously there are worse things, but curses are right up there: They’re difficult to avoid and very challenging to reverse, and can upset…
well, everything. They’re the main reason I travel everywhere with Honeyrose, and I’m not allowed to handle money.
Curses are old magic. Really old. Nearly the oldest, it’s said.
Certain items are conducive to curses, some incredibly so.
Small items with both practical and symbolic value.
Coins, for example. Rings. Keys…keys. I groan.
The key. The old woman handed me a key. And I just took it.
Of course, the words she’d spoken…they didn’t sound much like a curse.
I’ve been hexed before—little things, like an endlessly runny nose (my sister’s best friend, annoyed that I pestered them to be included in their games when I was younger), green fingernails (this one, we think, was the product of a dare between two high-spirited witches), and pimples on my back (my sister’s friend again).
But none of them sounded like…what the old woman had said to me.
And none of them felt like…like this. Because this is a curse.
“The key,” I whisper.
“Obviously,” Honeyrose says.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling my knees up to my chin. At least I still seem to have knees and a chin. I haven’t been turned into a slug or something.
There’s a long silence.
“Do we know what…what the curse is?” I finally say.
“Not precisely,” Honeyrose says. “But whatever it is, it seems you can’t leave.”
“I can’t leave?” I repeat. “I can’t leave what? The village?”
“The bookstore,” Honey says, grimly.