“I know.” She licked the dryness from her lips. “It’s just…”
Denis slumped against his chair. “It’s just what?”
“That’s easy to say when you’ve never gone hungry,” Yzabel muttered. “Easy to say when you have a country at your feet.”
He fixed her with a glare, dark brown eyes peeking from under his scowl. “Eat.”
With jittery fingers, she grasped the silver cross dangling over her flat chest, earning a long roll of the king’s eyes. In her thoughts, she said, God in Heaven, please take this curse away. Let me eat and build my strength so I can be Your dutiful servant and help those who need me the most. If this keeps going, I don’t know how much longer I have left. Please let me eat in peace tonight.
Her thumb brushed over the familiar dips and ridges in the metalwork, waiting for some divine power to sweep in and stomp out the light filling her veins, light that went unseen by Denis, unseen by everyone who didn’t carry magic within them.
Please.
The flames in the fireplace did not stir, and no strange breeze whispered in her ear. No divine intervention would come to her aid today, and why should it, anyway? At seventeen, she was engaged to the nineteen-year-old King of Portugal and the Algarves. Yzabel and Denis had a long rule ahead to prepare for, and God clearly had better things to do than help her with a curse.
But that long rule would only happen provided neither of them suffered an untimely death, and Yzabel was on the verge of one. She could not let this evil magic defeat her and cut short the time she needed to fulfill her destiny.
Lips worried and hand to her heart, she murmured one last prayer before swiftly cutting a bit of pheasant. The magic surged, a tentative heat that traveled down her arm toward her left hand. Teeth grinding, she tried to force the curse back down. It battled against her, stabbing needles into her temples, rendering her body weak, as though assailed by a fever. Please don’t turn, don’t turn, don’t turn…
Denis sat, impassive, scrutinizing her and the plate. Eyeing him in return, she shoved the meat into her mouth—the first chew sent juices flowing over her tongue, and she almost moaned as the taste of flesh unraveled in her mouth. Fleeting happiness, though. As soon as she chewed again, her tongue became impossibly hot, her teeth closed on a bitter stem, and she struggled to keep a neutral face as she swallowed, rushing to her glass of wine to wash the horrible taste from her mouth.
The alcohol burned her throat, making her wince, but she had eaten something. It seemed to satisfy Denis, at least, and he finally shifted his attention to his own plate. “Thank you for going down there to talk to that man. I would’ve done it myself if the prelates weren’t stuck to my side.”
His tone had softened, and she thought the rest of the meal would go by with ease. But then he returned to their dreaded rift between bites of meat and vegetables. “Charity is not a permanent or sustainable solution. An intelligent person like yourself should have no trouble grasping that notion.”
She understood where he was coming from. And yet, how could he ask her to ignore the suffering of others when it was so much like her own?
“Then let me help where I can,” she cried, unable to stop a pair of inconvenient tears from trailing down her cheeks. “Let me do my duty.”
Please let me pay for the waste of my curse before it kills me.
“Oh, you want to talk about duty?” He came around the table to loom over her side. She kept her eyes on his chest, too familiar with what came next in this old tirade, too cowardly to meet his eyes.
“Your duty, Yzabel, is to give me an heir once we’re married,” he said. “Something you will never be able to do at this rate because you keep starving yourself. What for? To teach me a lesson so I realize how much the commoners suffer?”
Leave it to men to believe themselves the reason for a woman’s actions. But why bother correcting him, when telling him the truth would see her cast out? Their marriage contract would be torn if he found she was living with a curse. At best, he’d send her back to Aragon, and her family’s country and name would be washed in shame. At worst, he’d try to cure her, and she knew all too well how maledictions such as hers were treated. She’d seen enough trepanations done at the hospitals back home to know they cured nothing.
Better to let him have his misconceptions; at least those she could use to her own advantage. Denis didn’t know the curse was why she couldn’t eat. It was the effect, not the cause that mattered.
Determination lifted her gaze to his. “If the poorest of us can’t eat, then neither shall I.”
He groaned. “Yzabel—”
“If we can’t open the castle doors to them, then let us take out spoils to the church and let everyone who needs it have a meal on the Lord’s good day.”
“No. All those worries you bear for the Portuguese—you will put them toward your recovery. You will eat and regain your health, and once we’re married, we can ensure the continuity of the Portuguese line. I will think about instilling a charity day after that. Now, eat.”
He didn’t move from her side, and he wouldn’t, not until she did as he asked. Trapped, Yzabel sniffed and picked up a piece of migas, soft enough she barely needed to chew. Yet, the curse was hungrier than she was, and as soon as the food slid on her tongue, the heat came back to flood her mouth.
Loathing welled in her chest, sent a current of fiery anger down her spine. She attempted to swallow, but the migas had already transformed behind the curtain of her lips. Prickles sliced her tongue and gums, the roof of her mouth. Briefly, she considered spitting, let Denis see the reason she couldn’t eat. Bare her greatest shame and let him do what he will—faults aside, he was known to be a fair man. He might even help her.
Or he might kill her.
Yzabel tried to push the flower past her throat, but she choked on the thorns, on her tears, and she couldn’t speak, or breathe, or—
“Are you seriously crying?” her betrothed asked, the annoyance extending his syllables into a hiss. “I’m asking you to eat, Yzabel, and you act like I’ve hit you.”
But she couldn’t answer, couldn’t explain why his words and expectations were as effective as a physical blow. Denis’s very presence filled her with inadequacy and despair, and she could not stand to be in his company a second longer.
Cheeks full and tongue bleeding, she looked up at Denis with eyes flooded with anger, and finally, finally, he backed away from her. She didn’t ask or wait for his permission; she left his rooms with lungs close to bursting and a heart in a knot, his shouts for her to return following her as she rushed across the solar to her chambers.
She barely had time to turn the key in the lock before she bent over.
From her parted lips tumbled not migas, but red petals, crushed leaves, and a fibrous, thorny stem lined with blood. Whenever she ate, this was the result. Flowers in her mouth, that she either spat out or forced herself to swallow.