It bothered Yzabel that she didn’t understand those reactions. She wondered if it was because of her magic and Fatyan’s pushing and pulling at each other, or if it was something else entirely.
Perhaps she’d know what it meant if she hadn’t lived her life in forced isolation. Other than Vasco and Brites, only Denis had hugged her. Her future ladies-in-waiting, with whom Yzabel spent her better afternoons listening to their gossip as they embroidered, had never been this close to her, and she hadn’t tried being close to them. Maybe if she had, she would’ve known what the fluttering in her stomach was, or why her heart thundered in her chest.
Why she couldn’t forget how Fatyan’s lips had felt against her own, or how her tongue slid across them as if attempting to catch that taste of cinnamon.
Our Lady of Agrela, no one like her in this era, please purge these thoughts from my head. Please purge them, please purge them—on and on she thought, hoping to distract herself from Fatyan’s closeness. In vain, it turned out. Fatyan laid her head against Yzabel’s back, and her heart jumped so high she almost flew from the saddle.
Her kiss was a business transaction. Like your engagement is. And, like Denis, she’s only chosen you because you’re the best choice in a sea of none.
They slowed their horses to a canter when the walls of Terra da Moura emerged ahead, the castle tower illuminated in torchlight from below, the details of its crenellations lost in the blur of Yzabel’s weak eyes. At the sight of it, Fatyan tightened her arms around Yzabel’s waist and turned to frigid stone.
“That tower is where I died. At least, where I tried to,” the Moura whispered, snuggling closer.
She found one of Fatyan’s cold hands and held it to her chest. “Are you all right?”
The hesitation that followed answered her question. As if realizing as much, Fatyan shook her head and gave Yzabel’s hand a squeeze. “I will be. But thank you for asking.”
Their hold didn’t break at the gates; it did not break as they guided the horses up the small hill and into the village’s center.
It was only when they reached the castle and Vasco led them around the back did Yzabel let go of Fatyan’s hand. While her guard went ahead to make sure the path was clear, Yzabel dismounted and helped Fatyan down.
The Moura swayed upon touching the ground, leaning against Yzabel when her legs threatened to give. “It’s…been a while,” she said apologetically, and hugged Vasco’s cloak tighter as she looked at the tower. “They call this Terra da Moura now?”
“Yes.” Yzabel looked about their surroundings, empty now that night had fallen. Light flickered behind some of the windows of the living quarters—a long, two-story building painted white, as buildings often were in Além-Tejo. “Named after the young Moura who jumped from the old tower when the city was taken.” Her gaze fell on Fatyan. “Named after you.”
A snort. “Did they really?”
“Yes. As the story goes, the Brothers Rodrigues were so moved by what you did they could never forget the sight, so they started calling this Terra da Moura to honor your memory. I think…” Yzabel narrowed her eyes in thought and wet her lips. “I think they blamed themselves for your death.”
“From the way they cut down my people, I can’t imagine how that’s possible.” A sardonic snarl disfigured Fatyan’s lips. “Either way, my fate wouldn’t have been much better had they not invaded.”
The air chilled inside Yzabel’s lungs. “What do you mean?”
“What does the legend say about me? About why I jumped?” Fatyan asked back, eyes hooded in bitterness.
She stroked the horses’ snouts absently. It had occurred to her that not everything in the story was true, for victors rarely left the history of the defeated intact. The story of a Moor princess who killed herself out of heartache told a lot better than the one about a Moor princess killed by her conquerors. “They didn’t…push you, or anything?”
Fatyan let out a low chuckle. “No.”
“Then—”
“What does my story say about it?”
Yzabel blinked before answering. “That when you saw the Portuguese wearing Bráfama’s clothes, you were so heartbroken by your groom’s death, you jumped. And that your spirit, restless without the love it’d been promised, haunted the castle, so they had to move you someplace else.”
Fatyan’s face was impassive for one tick of the clock; the next, she broke into a dry, short laugh. “Love. Of course they had to say it was love.” She shook her head and scoffed. “My spirit didn’t linger by choice, dear Yzabel. My father was the one who cursed me—and when given the choice to be captured or be trapped in a stone, I tried to go out on my terms instead. As you can see, it didn’t work out exactly as I’d planned.” A long sigh rumbled in her throat, and she spun so her back was to the tower with agony plain on her face. Whatever the full truth was, it sat locked behind her lips.
Yzabel couldn’t pretend to know what would drive a man to curse his own daughter, or the despair that had driven Fatyan to jump. Prying into it, however, was out of the question. Had Yzabel been in Fatyan’s place, she would certainly have been unwilling to talk to a girl she barely knew. Even if said girl had broken her curse.
A short while after the castle’s bell chimed with the eighth hour, Vasco appeared around the corner, motioning them to follow him inside, and guided them across doors and hallways, deserted in the early hours of the evening. Before they could begin climbing the last spiral stairwell between them and Brites’s rooms, Fatyan came to an abrupt halt, shivering under Vasco’s cloak.
“What’s wrong?” Yzabel asked, one foot on the first stair.
Fatyan took a hand to her belly, stepped back. “My sahar, it—”
“Dom Vasco!” exclaimed a voice from the top. “I wanted to talk to you about the night shift—might we do it over supper?”
Yzabel reached for Fatyan’s ice-cold hand and turned the closest knob. Linen closet, as it turned out. “He can’t see you without a habit. Quick.”
Vasco’s and Matias’s voices faded as they hid behind the closed door. The Moura’s trembling intensified along with her grimace, and she clutched at Yzabel’s arm as if it were a lifeline. “Who’s talking to your guard?”
“Matias,” Yzabel whispered. Heart pounding in her chest, she knelt to spy through the keyhole. Brites’s son, whom Vasco had taken under his wing and into the Princess’s Guarda. “He has the night shift guarding my door.”
“There’s…something about him. Like I’ve heard his voice somewhere.” Fatyan pursed her lips in the darkness and shook her head. “Never mind. It’s probably an overreaction from my sahar, since it senses danger, and there’s plenty of it all around us.”