The Princess Curse (27 page)

Maybe in a thousand years I could save the sleepers, but I didn’t know how right then. I had to choose: heal the land that I
knew
I could heal so simply, or stick like a leech to dwindling hope and lose both the sleepers and Thonos.

I plucked the seeping half pomegranate from the floor. A small piece of flesh dangled from it, five seeds attached to one other, shimmering darkly. I snagged them and tossed them into my mouth.

I closed my eyes. The juice burst on my tongue; the seeds crunched against my teeth. The Darkness drew back. I breathed deeply.

When I opened my eyes, Dragos was giving me
such
a look, and I realized that the Darkness was still there, still all around, all-encompassing—but that the Darkness was now nothing of the sort. I could
see
, not just within the circles of candlelight but far into the hallway and out the windows.

“It’s daylight?” I asked, bewildered. I climbed to my feet to look outside.

“It is as it ever was,” Dragos said. “The dead and the immortals have always seen it thus. And those who have eaten here.”

“Even Mihas?” I asked, and even as I asked, I realized that he had never carried candles or lanterns except for my sake.

I stared outside. It was as if the world were lit by a thousand suns the size of dust motes, diffuse and tiny, by stars brighter than stars, bright enough to see color by. A wide valley spread below Castle Thonos; small figures roamed back and forth—distant souls.

I breathed in deeply, and it was as if I could smell the grass of the valley, all the way up here. I breathed in again and caught the mineral tang of the lake, and the scent of the brass trees in the Queen’s Forest.

My forest
.

The Darkness laughed, and there was no evil in it. It wrapped around me, and it was warm like a cloak, and I could breathe.

I felt like the whole world—the whole of the Underworld, that is—had accepted me, in that moment. Though one glance at Dragos dispelled that illusion.

He was angry.

“You haven’t
won
the argument,” Dragos said. “Eating here merely puts you under my power, and I still wish you to leave.”

I considered this. I didn’t feel any impulse to obey him. In fact, I mostly felt hunger roaring to life. I bit into the fruit and scrutinized him as I chewed, and offered him the other half of the fractured pomegranate. He stared at it.

“I understand that you don’t want to marry me,” I said. “I mean, I don’t know
why
, since I’m simply delightful to be around. But to each his own taste. It’s just—for the good of your kingdom, I’d think you’d have me.” I joggled the pomegranate at him.

“Don’t you understand?” he growled. “I’m releasing you for your own
good
. Take your soul back to the sunlight and give it to God while you can.”

I ignored that. I had to. If I condemned my soul by being Queen of Thonos, I had probably already done the deed. “I ate five seeds with my first bite,” I told him.

“So?”

“So send me away for now. For a time. But then I’ll return for good,” I said. “In five years. One seed for each year.”

“Five years,” he whispered.

“I’ll come back,” I said. “I’ll go with my father as you want today, but when I’m older, I’ll come back.”

He tilted his head slightly, thinking. “And then what?”

“I’ll come back and marry you.” I waggled the pomegranate at him some more. “Give Thonos her willing bride.”

Reluctantly, he took the fruit from my hand.

“Now, say yes,” I said.

I thought I had him. I didn’t. “No,” he said, crushing the fruit so the juice ran out between his fingers.

I thought about simply plopping down on the throne beside him and promising to stay, here and now. I thought about chaining myself to something.

My mind was in turmoil. Everything I thought I had wanted in the world—my own herbary, and the peace to practice my art—had paled when confronted by more simple needs, like sunlight and food. But now those barriers were gone, and the Underworld looked like a blessing. But . . . honestly, Dragos and Mihas and Thela were not enough company. I needed friendships. And a father. Could I really live in the dark-walled world, as the nymph had called it, when the sun-walled world was free to me?

And my obligation was at an end. Dragos had said so himself. I could want to heal Thonos, but in the end, could I force him to marry me? Thonos probably needed a willing groom as well as a willing bride.

And Dragos was most unwilling.

I couldn’t talk around the lump of tears in my throat. I bobbed a pathetic curtsy and turned to leave.

Only I caught the flicker of something blue out of the corner of my eye as I turned. Before I even realized what it was, I shouted a wordless shout.

But Dragos was already in motion, pulling the gleaming trident from its notch on his throne and jabbing the butt of it into the blue flicker, then swinging his weapon around to strike from above.

The blue flicker became Armas, with the tatters of my frail second invisibility cap slithering off his head over his ears. He bore down grimly on Dragos with a sword, aiming for the center of Dragos’s head, where the third eye resided.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Lacrimora had sent him to kill Dragos.

With one wave of his trident, Dragos disarmed Armas; with another, he slipped Armas’s feet out from under him; another motion and Armas was on the floor, with the two long prongs of the trident around his neck and the short center prong pressed to his windpipe.

“I was letting her go,” Dragos said.

“I was doing my duty to God,
zmeu
,” Armas replied.

Without turning his head, Dragos said, “Reveka, leave.”

I had been frozen in terror until then, but now a calm stole over me, and I walked forward and put my hand on the trident. “Mercy,” I said.

“For him? Why?”

I shrugged. “Is there a reason good enough to spare one man over another, when simple mercy is requested? I could lie and say that he has two small children—”

“I do,” Armas said.

“Hush. No, you don’t.” I was pretty sure. “I could say that it will hurt Otilia, and Sylvania, and me, if he dies. I could even suggest that you might fare better without the blight of his unnecessary death on your soul . . . but I simply cry mercy.”

And I knew, then, that Dragos had to grant me the mercy I requested. I
knew
this, the same way that I knew I breathed—if I thought about it, I could count the breaths, but if I didn’t think about it, I kept on breathing. It was part of what I had gained when I’d eaten the pomegranate.

Dragos’s voice was harsh. “Go, call for the guards. We will bind him. Swear to me that you will leave him bound until he passes the borders of the Underworld; swear to me that you will never make him another invisibility cap, or let one fall into his possession.”

“I swear, to all of those things,” I said, almost laughing, exultant in my newfound power to grant mercy.

I dashed into the hall and called for the guards.

Chapter 35

W
e were an odd procession, entering the Queen’s Forest: me in royal clothes but wearing peasant shoes and snacking on figs, Mihas looking dazed and carrying an armload of herbs from my herbary, and Pa nudging a bound Armas ahead of him.

I was gaping at the changes in the forest. Every step I took sent out a new wave of invigoration. Flowers unwilted at my passing, and tarnish vanished from tree trunks before my eyes. I was so enthralled, I didn’t notice at first that no one was following me anymore. When I turned back, Mihas, Armas, and Pa were all standing stock-still on the path, staring straight ahead.

“What—?”

Then I saw her, the nymph Alethe, poised in the dappled shadows of the forest, looking much more substantial than when I first met her. She smiled and bowed, holding two chalices out to me: one plain, of dark iron; the other filigreed, and bright silver.

“Hail the Queen of Thonos,” Alethe crowed.

“But I’m not the Queen of Thonos,” I said. “Dragos doesn’t intend to marry me. This is my escort out of the Underworld.” I waved my hand in front of Pa’s eyes, but he didn’t blink.

“He can’t hear you. I’ve . . . stilled him. All of them.”

“Why?”

“To give you this.” She held out the chalices, and unthinkingly, I took them. The cold of them made my arms ache to the elbows.

“What are these?” I gasped. From the iron cup, the scent of forest loam caught in my nose, making me want to sneeze. From the silver one, a waft of spring pollen almost finished the job. I held in the sneeze, though, by thinking of the word
cucumber
. It always works.

“You know the Water of Life, the Living Water, Alethe’s gift. That is always carried in silver or stone. What you do not know is the Water of Death, which kills but also heals the wounds of the dead. Living Water brings the dead to life. Your sleepers upstairs, the ones whose souls wander this realm, are not dead. And since you cannot bring to life that which is not dead . . . So first, death; then life, to wake the unwakeable sleepers.”

“You want me to
kill
them?”

The nymph tilted her head. “And bring them back to life.”

“How did you know— No, wait.
Why
didn’t you tell me this when we met?”

“I was not fully myself before,” she said. “The Water of Life could not have restored life when you and I met. And I myself could not remember such simple things.” She held up a hand, which looked as solid as my own. “With no queen in this realm, the powers of Alethe were fading.”

“I told you,” I said with some asperity. “I’m not going to be the queen.”

“You already are,” she said, completely unperturbed. “You did not eat just any fruit in this world—you ate the pomegranate, the fruit that makes indissoluble marriage, and the fruit that the dead consume in order to be reborn. You became the Intercessor of Souls in that moment, the true Queen of Thonos.”

“I—” I paused. “I
did
? Does the
King
of Thonos know this?”

“I’m sure he’ll figure it out.” She waved a hand at the path. “Now. Go to work. You and you alone possess the power of rebirth in this country. There is no one better suited to the task of awakening those trapped between life and death.”

“And . . . all because I ate a pomegranate, instead of . . . a fig?”

The nymph smiled. “If you choose to believe that, certainly; some would argue that it was your fate.”

“Fate is for people too lazy to make choices,” I said.

Her smile grew. “Maybe that’s true. In another life, I made my choices and did not wait for fate—though that’s not how they tell it in the stories.”

“Wait—in another life? What other life?”

She laughed. “I will tell you the next time we meet. Safe journey to you, sister,” she said, stepping backward into the trees.

“Wait! Who were you? Alethe!”

She was gone, and I had no notion of what to do now. My hands were full, and I was reluctant to let go of the chalices. Pa and the others stood still, staring into the middle distance. I contemplated them for a long moment and decided to try the obvious thing first. “Wake up!”

They came alert instantly. Pa stared at me and what I held. “Where did you go? And what are you carrying?”

“I have been given a gift,” I said. “And it will wake the sleepers.”

Princess Lacrimora waited at the tunnel entrance to greet us when we came up from the Underworld. Well, really, she was there to greet Pa, throwing her arms around him and giving him a big kiss, from which I averted my eyes. Then she gave me a sort of perfunctory hug, too, which I returned stiffly. Armas she also embraced; Mihas she ignored, which suddenly made me irate. Mihas had been the one who gave up his freedom to come help me—Mihas had been the one to pass me food from the World Above, and now she acted like he didn’t matter?

Soon after, Princess Otilia came at a run, heading straight into Armas’s embrace. She untied his bonds and murmured to him in undertones by turns desperate and loving. It was clear that their courtship was no longer secret, nor troubled. They had probably used the time I was in the Underworld to their advantage.

Then Lacrimora and Otilia took Mihas and Armas off to who knows where. Lacrimora gave Pa a significant look on her way out, and said to me, “You must be hungry.” She departed, leaving Pa and me alone.

“Well?” Pa asked in a quiet voice.

“Well what?” I asked.

“What do you think?”

“What does that matter?
You
have to live with her.”

“And you, too. She’ll be your mother.”

“Stepmother,” I hissed. Pa winced. “Oh, Pa! Why Lacrimora?”

“She saved your life—several times—you know,” Pa said.

“She did not! And she poisoned Didina!”

Pa sighed. “Think back on it.”

“I’ve thought back on it,” I said. “I had days and days to think back on it. My conclusion is that any time she did me a favor, it had nothing to do with
me
.”

“Well,” Pa said, after a pause. “Maybe I won’t marry her, then.”

I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t believe my father had snatched me from the bowels of the Underworld, that I was for all intents and purposes married to a dragon-demon, and I was even now a queen—and Pa and I were squabbling like this. And not over anything interesting, but rather over whether or not he was going to marry Lacrimora. “Marry her! She’s a princess. You won’t get another shot at a princess.”

Pa said, “She’s the one I want, Reveka, and I knew it as soon as I saw you didn’t like her.”

“Contrary, obstinate man,” I grumbled.

“She poisoned Didina to save her soul—you do realize that?”

I did realize that, or realized that Lacrimora believed it. But that didn’t mean I was going to start naming herbs after her. “Do what you want,” I said. “I don’t see how you can
love
her, but do what you want.”

“Did I never explain to you about love, Reva?” Pa asked. I gave him a look, and he laughed uncomfortably. “I guess not. Let me put it in a way you’ll understand. Love is like stinging nettles. Only they prick from the inside out, starting at your heart and bursting on around. It’s worst when it gets here”—he rubbed the bridge of his nose—“then your vision goes a little strange. But eventually the nettles stop stinging—once she agrees to kiss you. But they start right back up again when she agrees to marry you—”