Yzabel knew she had to end the curse, but how was she supposed to put an end to a force she could not control?
Chapter Three
A Curse of Roses
Kneeling on the cold floor, Yzabel stared at the mangled rose.
She picked up the bitten flower, turned it over in her trembling hand. Such a small thing, no bigger than her finger, and yet it had the power to destroy her life and everything she longed to achieve.
With a sharp, hateful motion, she tossed it into the fireplace, watched it burn away into ashes, and wished the curse would follow suit. The evil trickle of magic remained, pooling in her fingertips, shining brighter than the flames.
Growing hungrier.
Growing stronger.
It hadn’t been this persistent when it’d first appeared shortly after her twelfth birthday, when she’d woken to agony in her belly and bloody sheets beneath her legs. Back then, the food only turned if her touch lingered for long minutes—she’d still fasted, but it had been by choice.
Days had gone by. Weeks. Months.
Years.
Until a couple of years ago, when the curse went wild and began leaking at the smallest brush. Like her body was a glass, every meal a ravenous drop, and now that it had been filled, she couldn’t stop it from overflowing. And these past few days, the sight of food brought not a single drop, but a deluge.
Until now, the curse had always receded when she put a couple of feet between herself and a full plate. With a grimace, Yzabel tried to push it back down, but the angry light wouldn’t stop pulsing, tugging at her head, making her look at the window.
On its perch, the bowl of hard bread she kept for the birds taunted her. The strings of magic carried her on entranced feet, lifted her hand, curled her fingers around a piece. She dropped her heavy shoulders, too defeated to look away as the magic gushed out. The sight took her breath away, its beauty as undeniable as it was unsettling. The bread broke apart and turned green to form thorny stems; petals bloomed from inside out, the red spiraling in on itself until a full flower blossomed. The floral smell thickened the air, tickled her nose. In her hand was not bread, but a rose, fresh as though it’d been picked moments ago.
A mesmerizing curse, but one she couldn’t even use to the people’s benefit. Senhor Davide and those kids had been famished, and here she was, wasting perfectly good food while they had to ration their bread and vegetables and wine into miserable meals.
It took a few long breaths for her to put a name to the bitterness in her throat. Hate and despair and impotence all merged into one heavy lump. The flower in her hand became her biggest enemy. Nothing else evoked such hatred, and nothing else had the power to doom her in the blink of an eye. She traced its petals of scarlet velvet and their inward spiral, marveled at how their beauty belied the danger underneath. Its sweet scent ingrained itself on her nose. A thorn pricked her finger.
Fury swallowed her world, made it so all she heard was her hissing breath, taken through clenched teeth. Her failures and waste were all she could see.
She ripped the perfect rose into imperfect shreds, barely registering the pain of her rendered flesh as the flower fought back. Blood dripped from her hand, staining the embroidery of the Arraiolos rug under her feet.
The next bit of bread, she put in her mouth. Her tongue burned, and when she spat, it wasn’t bread that left her lips, but another rose. Filled with bite marks and blood from where it sliced the inside of her mouth. She put the rose in the empty bowl and tried again.
And again.
And again.
Soon, nine roses looked back at her, their mangled appearance a jeer, a wound, a reminder. Waste, waste, waste. So much waste, all because she couldn’t control the curse that blighted her touch.
She flung the bowl against the wall, pieces of clay and roses flying everywhere.
“What was that?” Brites emerged from the small door that led to her lady’s maid chambers. One look at the scene had her scurrying over, wrapping Yzabel up in strong arms, whispering, “Shhhh. It’s all right,” while one hand smoothed her brittle curls.
Had it been anyone else, she would’ve insisted they leave. But she would’ve been dead if not for Brites, whose teas and herbal mixtures had dulled the curse for a time before the terrible magic built a resistance and rendered them ineffective. Brites spent however long as necessary sieving soups for her, since the curse had a harder time with liquids—not perfect, but enough for her to hang on to the tenuous grip of life.
She rested her head against Brites’s chest. “Why can’t I stop it? Am I doomed to carry this blasphemy for life? Why would the Lord saddle me with this terrible thing that just takes and takes and—”
Brites kissed the top of Yzabel’s head. Her fingers carried on with their steadying motion. “I’ve told you before—magic is not the villain you make it out to be. People like me have been using it for generations, and people like you have been born—”
“I wasn’t born with this,” Yzabel interrupted sourly. “And even if there are more people like us, what does it matter? We’re all forced to hide it unless we want to be trepanated, so we might as well be the only ones. And even if we could go public, the only other person who was cursed in this way is dead.” A shudder trembled in her lips. “That’s how I’m going to end up, isn’t it? Dead by eighteen because I can’t eat anything other than flowers.”
Brites’s motions stilled as she sighed. “You won’t die if you learn how to control it.”
As if she hadn’t been trying. “What am I doing wrong, then?” She pulled back to look at Brites and found her regarding her with a mixture of affection and despondency. “Gloves don’t do anything, and neither does spearing the food with a knife. Should I pray harder? Fast every day? Go back to wearing the cilice around both legs? I spent the last five years doing that, and the curse only grew stronger!”
Her head went into a dizzy spin, throbbing with pain and guilt. “I’m always tired, regardless of how much I sleep. I’m afraid to eat in public, and what I do manage to eat in private is not enough to keep me healthy. Even with everything you do, I can’t…” She sniffed. “My moon’s blood hasn’t shown in three years. Denis thinks it’s because of the fasting, but if this keeps going, I’ll either be dead, or he’ll find out I’m unable to bear him heirs because of the curse, then he won’t marry me, I won’t be queen, and all this pain will have been for nothing.”
Brites shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a curse you bear. If you let it feed—”
“Absolutely not.”
“We could give it just the bones—”
“I’ll not give this curse anything.” To do so would be to welcome the Devil in, to give in to the horrible relief that followed the curse’s insidious, flowery magic.