Hearing her name in Fatyan’s lips heated her cheeks further, and her closeness breathed wonder into her lungs. No stranger had come so near her before, and she almost stepped away—but then her eyes found Fatyan’s and the tender curiosity reflected upon them, and the enchantment of it all rooted her in place.
“I need your help,” Yzabel said.
“I know. I need yours, too.” A slight tilt of her head. “What would you ask of me?”
Yzabel tensed, her fingers matching the white of her dress as she clutched it. “You have to promise not to tell anyone. Even after we leave this place.”
Understanding blinked in Fatyan’s eyes, and she tilted her head to the side as she asked, “Is it the sahar?”
“Sahar?”
“Magic.” She motioned toward Yzabel’s left hand that was still glowing as though someone had spread embers under the skin. “It’s what woke me up, even though you were far away.”
The curse had been reacting to Fatyan’s. Yzabel’s lips fell open. “Can you tell me why it turns all the food I touch into flowers?”
Intrigue drew Fatyan’s lips into a pout and her fingers to her chin. “You turn food into flowers?”
“Yes. That’s why I came to find you.” She looked at Fatyan, and her tongue darted to wet her lips. “I need this curse gone.”
Pensive eyes studied her, then Fatyan raised her hand. “I need to feel your sahar better.” Fatyan stilled, left her fingers to hover above Yzabel’s jaw. “May I?”
An answering nod came without Yzabel’s command, and she stepped forward so Fatyan brushed her cheek. The Moura closed her eyes as she fully cupped the side of Yzabel’s face, and she wasn’t certain what spell had her enthralled so completely, if it was the stone’s or the Moura’s, but her heart was racing, and an odd feeling forming in her stomach, so much like hunger and yet not.
The magic inside her surged, and heat spread from where their skin touched. Her heart tried to climb up her throat. When she swallowed it back down, the throb rose to her ears, numbing her to anything that wasn’t Fatyan.
A crease appeared between the Moura’s brows as she opened her eyes, and her hand moved across Yzabel’s jaw, down the slope of her neck, mesmerized as they trailed her own gesture. Yzabel looked down when the Moura stopped at her shoulder and gasped at the sight before her.
Under Fatyan’s touch, Yzabel’s skin came alight, as though she had candles underneath her flesh and Fatyan’s fingers were the flame that lit their wick.
“This is no curse,” Fatyan said under her breath. She trailed her hand down the inside of Yzabel’s arm, and it was like watching lightning cross her skin. “How long have you had it?”
“Since my first blood, five years ago,” Yzabel replied bitterly, but did not pull away. “And it’s been growing worse ever since, to a point I can barely eat anymore.”
“Gifts such as ours tend to grow wild if they’re not accepted and centered.” The Moura gave her a perplexed look, brow low over blinking eyes. “You hate it. No wonder it’s angry.”
“Angry?”
“Your sahar is starved, driven wild by your revulsion.” Fatyan took her hand away and then backed up a step. “I cannot take or change it, dear Yzabel, no more than I could rip your heart from your chest and turn it into a lung.”
The shock from Fatyan’s words struck her in place. She was sentenced to die, to be devoured from within like a mite-infected tree. “You…can’t help me?”
All the suffering and despair, the isolation and the sickness… All for nothing.
It was as if a violent storm raged around her, and she but a cracked reed whipped in every direction, soon to be violently uprooted and lost in the wind. Reduced to a footnote in history as the first woman promised to the King of Portugal, a princess who would give no heirs and leave behind no legacies.
All because of the cursed magic she unleashed at every meal, magic that would finally kill her after all these years.
Stars and darkness overtook her sight. The pressure mounted in her lungs, and wind stirred the mist, snaking around her legs, lifting her up, and Yzabel could not breathe, she couldn’t—
“I never said that.” Fatyan’s soft statement anchored her. “Your sahar isn’t that different from mine. Ours is the gift of transformation, but yours flows outward instead of inward. Either way, if you learn how to properly wield it, you can control how it acts.”
Yzabel’s throat bobbed as she looked away, biting the inside of her cheek. “I’ve been trying to do that all my life. I’ve never been able to suppress the magic.”
“That’s where you went wrong. Those of us born with magic are meant to use it. We’re not meant to choke it, but to give it shape and set it free. You can turn food into flowers on your own, but Yzabel…” Fatyan tucked one of Yzabel’s curls behind her ear, lifted her chin with an index finger. “You can learn to do the reverse and turn flowers into food. Of that, I’m sure.”
The gates of her imagination opened, showing her pictures of the Portuguese fields packed with wildflowers ready to be plucked by anyone who wished. She could turn all that into food people could eat, without spending a single dime. “How?”
“The same way I did—practice, patience, and a small ritual.” Fatyan smiled, and sunlight seeped through the mist, kissing Yzabel’s cheeks with warmth. “On my life and blood, break my curse, dear Yzabel, and I will help you become a master in the arts of sahar.” Her hand returned to Yzabel’s face, startling her into motionlessness. “I will help you turn flowers into food.”
How had she not seen this before? How had she been so blinded by terror that she’d failed to grasp the most obvious of possibilities?
Denis had restricted Yzabel’s charity to measly alms that were nowhere near enough to make an impact. And God had known Denis would forbid her from being as charitable as she wanted; He’d known the Portuguese would need her, so was it possible He had equipped her to deal with it?
Eating alone, avoiding public outings, staying hidden out of fear of being persecuted for the magic she carried… That was not her fate. It was a challenge, given so she could truly understand her calling and take matters into her own hands.
The tentative relief overwhelmed her into a stutter. “H-How do I get us out of here?”
“Ah, this is where even more irony comes in,” Fatyan said. “Our legends are always made with men in mind. Women are the object of a curse, not their breakers. Yet, in all these years, no man has been strong enough or brave enough to come. You did.”
“What do you mean?”