Of Curses and Kisses

by Sandhya Menon

  For the cursed and the brave who refuse to bow to the stars

  He fell into despair,

  and lost all hope.

  For who could ever learn

  to love a beast?

  -Beauty and the Beast

  CHAPTER 1

  Just outside Aspen, Colorado, nestled between the sentinel mountains and an inkblot lake, lies St. Rosetta’s International Academy. Its sweeping spires, creeping ivy, and timeworn brick turrets often lead visitors to remark that it looks like a venerable castle from an old European city. The Academy would be Princess Jaya Rao’s home for the next year.

  While she was there, Jaya had one mission: break an English nobleman’s heart.

  But first she had to fall in love with him.

  CHAPTER 2

  Jaya

  Being a princess wasn’t as glamorous as the media might have you believe. If the courtiers introduced her, say, in this fashion: “Her Royal Highness, Princess Jaya Rao of the Imperial House of Mysuru,” most people would immediately picture Jaya cooing to birds and shaking hands with friendly mice, tiara glimmering in the summer sun. The entire Disney enterprise had a lot to answer for, in her opinion.

  Jaya’s reality was actually quite different. It was always, “Jaya, the townspeople want you to feed their lucky elephant so it’ll win in the races tomorrow. Oh, and by the way, the elephant is in musth, so watch your dress” or “Jaya, the Prime Minister of Oppenheim is morally opposed to butter, so you cannot have any at breakfast either.”

  But it was all right. She was the heiress to the “throne” of Mysuru. (Technically, India was a democracy now, not a monarchy, but Jaya’s family used to be the monarchy in this region and still carried the title.) Jaya understood that she would, at some point, have to grasp the reins. She’d have to take care of the city she lived in, just as her father had for years and her grandfather did before him. India wasn’t supposed to have royal families—except the open secret was that they were still there, and people still looked to them to be benevolent, firm, and fair. Non-royals depended on them for jobs, for charity, and for a million other reasons Jaya was still learning. Maybe because of this, the Raos were placed upon a pedestal. They were, fairly or unfairly, expected to be perfect in every way; the common citizens needed them to be. The Raos family name and the royal traditions that bound them were everything.

  And that was precisely why she had to do what she was about to do. She might be a princess, her parents’ firstborn child and the heiress ascendant to the throne, but that wasn’t all of her story.

  * * *

  They stood in the grand marble entrance with their small bags. Jaya tipped her head back to look at the enormous crystal chandelier suspended like a dewdrop above her head. The rose pendant hung heavy from her neck, eighteen rubies glinting like watchful eyes, reminding her why she was there.

  Isha whistled, low and long, and Jaya glared at her. She cut off mid-whistle, looking only slightly abashed. “Nice setup,” she whispered, but her words echoed anyway. “Nicer than our last boarding school in Benenden, even. And the English really know boarding schools.”

  The wall before them was adorned with flags of more than three dozen countries. A gold-plated sign above them boasted “Our students come from around the world!” Jaya’s gaze was drawn automatically toward the flags she knew very well—India, of course, along with the US, UK, UAE, China, Japan, Mauritius, and Switzerland. She’d spent summer holidays in all these places and lived in most of them, reading in cafés and parks while Isha foraged through thrift stores, searching for gears or batteries for whatever contraption she was working on.

  The floor was drenched in sea-green tiles inlaid with gold, a splash of oceanic beauty here in the mountains. Jaya had heard it rumored that these were a gift from the Moroccan king half a century ago, when his son had been exiled here after an embarrassment of some kind. She hadn’t ever unearthed what that scandal was—St. Rosetta’s was very good at burying what they didn’t want found—though she felt a kinship with the king. He wasn’t the only one who’d shouldered the responsibility of protecting a wayward family member. Jaya’s eyes fluttered to Isha unwittingly, and she forced them away.

  Isha gripped her arm, pointing to the wall on their right. “Look!” she whispered. “Is that…?”

  They ogled a cluster of colorful paintings, large and small, that contrasted with the Moroccan tiles, depicting smooth desert landscapes that lifted off the page and caressed the eye. “I think so,” Jaya whispered back, thrilled. She wasn’t sure exactly why they were whispering. Maybe because they were in the presence of greatness? It was probably why people felt compelled to whisper in libraries, too. “Georgia O’Keeffe spent a semester here as a teen, and later donated paintings to the school as a thank-you.”

  Before Isha could respond, thunderous footfalls came rushing down the opulent marble stairs that faced away from them. Without even turning to look, Jaya could guess from the boisterous, deep laughter that it was a couple of boys, though the sheer amount of noise could also indicate a herd of buffalo.

  “Come on,” her sister said, tugging her forward.

  Jaya grasped her wrist and shook her head. “Isha.”

  “What?” Isha said, her brown eyes wide. “I just want to get to know our schoolmates. We have to spend the next year or two here with them anyway.”

  As if Jaya trusted those innocent doe eyes. Isha thought she was much more naive than she really was. Lowering her voice, Jaya said, “And boys have gotten you in trouble in the past.”

  “That is so typical,” Isha hissed. “You treat me like such a baby sometimes. It wasn’t boys that got me in trouble. It was the stupid rules.”

  Jaya opened her mouth to respond—something scathing about the virtues of rules; she hadn’t worked out the details yet—but a jovial voice interrupted.

  “Bonjour! Are you beautiful ladies new?”

  Jaya turned toward the rich French-accented voice. Two boys had rounded the corner and now stood before them. The tall, broad one who had just spoken smiled warmly, like he was greeting old friends. His skin was a golden brown and his straight dark hair hung to his shoulders. Jaya was fairly good at guessing ethnicities, and she thought he was likely a blend of Southeast Asian and Western European.

  Isha set her bag down and stepped forward before Jaya could stop her, proffering a hand. “Isha Rao. This is my sister, Jaya. I’m a sophomore, and she’s a senior.” They shook, and Jaya managed not to wince at Isha’s firm handshake, a reminder of her sister’s… indomitable spirit.

  Jaya pushed her annoyance away. It wasn’t entirely Isha’s fault. No one would’ve known what Isha was up to if the loathsome Emersons hadn’t set her up. Why blame Isha for the Emersons being a bunch of grunting troglodytes wrapped in aristocratic finery? Just thinking of it made Jaya want to strike something. (Not that she ever would. That behavior wouldn’t be befitting the heiress to the Rao dynasty.)

  The Emersons and Raos had been at it for a long time. In fact, Jaya and Isha’s father, or Appa as they called him, said he couldn’t remember a time when the clans weren’t fighting. In the mid-1800s, during the British colonization of India, the Emerson family had infamously stolen a beloved and sacred ruby from one of Mysuru’s temples. Even after India had achieved independence, the Emersons refused to return the ruby, claiming it had belonged to them all along.

  But Jaya’s great-great-grandmother got the last laugh. She cursed the ruby, something about it bringing misfortune to the Emersons and eventually resulting in a termination of the bloodline. She also made sure to circulate the news about the curse far and wide—far enough and wide enough to reach the Emersons. To make them sweat and rue the day they’d cheated the Raos, ostensibly. />
  Obviously, Jaya didn’t believe in the legitimacy of the curse. She was a child of the twenty-first century. Still, her great-great-grandmother’s generation had believed in it, and for many years Jaya hadn’t understood why her relative would curse an entire lineage to end. Yes, they’d stolen a ruby, but that had been in the 1800s. Why, in the mid-twentieth century, would her great-great-grandmother have done something so cruel?

  Then Appa had explained to Jaya how much pain and suffering there had been during the British Raj. By stealing the ruby and then refusing to return it, the Emersons hadn’t just taken a jewel. They’d seized a piece of vital Indian history they had no claim to. Then, even when the British finally gave India back to her people, the Emersons had kept the ruby as a token of their superiority, of their arrogance, of their ultimate victory. It was this final insult that Jaya’s great-great-grandmother had been unable to abide. Remorselessness was absolutely cause for execration.

  Now Jaya finally understood her great-great-grandmother’s rage. It was nearly impossible to look the other way when someone hurt something you cared for so deeply and refused to atone.

  She set her bag down like Isha had and forced herself to smile. “How do you do? We’re new this year.”

  “Oui, I thought so!” The boy slung an easy arm around Isha, and Jaya struggled not to tear it off. Isha hated her overprotectiveness, and Jaya was trying to be better about it. “It is no problem at all. I shall get you very comfortable. I’m Leo Nguyen, a senior as well. And this”—he gestured at a scrawny, short Indian boy who was intensely focused on his phone and refused to look any of them in the eye—“is my good ami Rahul Chopra.”

  Jaya studied Rahul’s snub nose, the fringe of his eyelashes, the hint of stubble at his chin. Leo seemed friendly and outgoing, properly socially groomed by his parents. Rahul, on the other hand… His shirt was baggy, his pants were too short, and the colors clashed, as if he’d just picked clothes at random.

  Something about him seemed familiar to Jaya; she was sure she’d met him before. Thanks to Amma’s gentle but insistent coaching on royal etiquette, she’d made up a visual cue to remember him. “Rahul Chopra,” she said slowly as it finally came to her: a shy boy in front of the winglike building of the Delhi Secretariat. “Is your mother Mukhyamantri Arti Chopra? The chief minister of Delhi?”

  Rahul nodded and sneaked a glance at her before looking down at his phone again, his fingers tapping rapidly at the screen. With a slight prickle of sympathy, Jaya remembered his awkward fidgeting from their previous meeting. It wasn’t easy to forget someone who drew as much attention for being different as Rahul did.

  “You’re Rajkumari Jaya Rao,” he said. “My mother knows your father. We met six years ago, at the wedding reception for Nehika and Pritam Gupta. You were wearing a beaded red lehenga, and your sister, Isha, was in a matching yellow one. I would say more, but I’m very invested in the outcome of this chess game.”

  Jaya gawked at him, though every well-mannered bone in her body told her not to. “You’re playing chess? That fast?” His hands were practically blurry with the speed of his moves. “Surely no one could make moves that quickly?” Jaya looked at Leo, sure Rahul was pulling her leg.

  Leo laughed. “Please. Do not get him started on how chess is just a formalized logic system.”

  Rahul said immediately, “Chess is just a formalized logic system. If you look at the discreet graph, for instance—”

  “Wait. How did you remember what we were wearing when we met? That was so long ago!” Isha said. Oh yes. Jaya had been so distracted by his swift chess fingers, she’d failed to see the more alarming part of what he’d said.

  They all stood there in awkward silence until Rahul coughed.

  “I… I have a knack for remembering details,” Rahul said, still not meeting their eyes. “I’m not being creepy. That’s what some people say, but my brain just works differently from most others’. I suspect those people don’t understand the neuroscience of memory—”

  Leo interjected with a sudden laugh and clapped Rahul on the back. “D’accord,” he said jovially, though his smile looked like Appa’s when a teacher told him Isha excelled at physics but had the lowest grade in home economics. “Let us not distress the new girls on their first day. There will be plenty of time for them to hear the rumors on their own.”

  Isha and Jaya glanced at each other, and then Jaya forced a laugh of her own. “You haven’t distressed us at all. I’m glad we made such an impression on Rahul.” It was coming back to her now, the reason Rahul’s parents had sent him away from the public eye in India. He was too different, too strange, to be a politician’s son. She’d known that some of the villagers in rural Delhi thought his mother had been cursed before he was born, due to her “mannish” (read: ambitious) nature.

  “Wait just a moment. Did you say ‘Rajkumari’?” Leo said to Rahul, turning to look at them with renewed interest. “As in, princess?”

  Here it was, the inevitable question Jaya was prepared for. Even at St. Rosetta’s. She shook her head. “Rahul’s too generous. India doesn’t have an authoritative monarchy anymore, but yes, we do come from the Rao family that used to rule Mysuru in South India.”

  Leo grinned. “Chouette! We have a member of the British aristocracy here—Grey Emerson. Or Lord Northcliffe, to use his official title. Do you know him? Perhaps there is some kind of royal family network?” He laughed jovially.

  A dozen responses flew into Jaya’s head. Know him? Not personally, but I’m no stranger to the tears and heartache his family caused mine. Or No, but my fist would love to make acquaintance with his jaw. Could you point me in the right direction? But, of course, she kept her thoughts to herself.

  The thing was, refusing to return the ruby wasn’t the last of the Emersons’ transgressions. Far from it, actually. Perhaps as payback for the “curse” (British aristocrats tended to be as superstitious as Indian royal families, Jaya knew)—or perhaps because they were just cruel—the Emersons regularly released vitriol into the Indian tabloids about the Rao family. Not that the Raos just sat there and took it. Jaya remembered more than an occasion or two when they’d struck back at the Emersons in various business dealings and political connections—all warranted, of course. It was a seesawing, back-and-forth enmity that was second nature to both clans.

  This time, though, the Emersons hadn’t gone after the adult Raos like they usually did. This time they’d gone after Isha. And, unfortunately, this time everything the tabloids had printed, everything the Emersons had leaked to them, was true.

  Jaya remembered asking Kiran Hegde, fellow trusted royal from a different clan in the Indian state of Karnataka, why the Emersons had changed their modus operandi. “It doesn’t make sense,” she’d said to him on the phone. “Something feels off. Why now? Why Isha?”

  “I don’t know,” Kiran had said. “Why don’t you call and speak with the journalist on staff? The man who wrote the article? He probably won’t reveal his source, but he might give you a hint about what the Emersons are up to.”

  So Jaya had done just that. She’d called the tabloid, spoken to the reporter, and asked him who was behind the leaked picture of Isha. She remembered distinctly how that smug, greasy little man had paused before saying: “Would it come as a great surprise if I said it was the male heir of a family that finds you Raos particularly deplorable?”

  “You mean a male Emerson heir,” Jaya had said, fuming, her hand clenched around her cell. “I suppose I knew that all along. Which one of them was it? And why did they come after my sister?”

  “That I cannot say,” the reporter had said, practically cackling with glee. Jaya imagined him in his stuffy, crammed office, his feet jauntily up on the desk. “But can I get a quote about how you’re dealing with the story? Do you feel a lot of rage, Jaya? And what about Isha? Is she still ‘drowning in a bottomless well of mortification’?”

  She’d pressed “end” without saying another word.

  Kira
n had been right to instruct her to go to the source. Recently, Amma and Appa had been hinting that Jaya marrying Kiran might be a good political move for the Raos. It made sense. He was the firstborn son of the well-placed Hegde royal family. An alliance would only strengthen both estates. When the time came, Jaya would be happy to do it.

  * * *

  Now, at St. Rosetta’s, Jaya felt Isha’s sharp gaze on her, and took her time answering. She inhaled slowly and deliberately, trying to calm her rubbed-raw nerves. Then, pushing her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, she said slowly, “I’ve… heard of Grey Emerson. Is he here?”

  “Yes, and he has disappeared again as he does,” Leo said, exchanging a glance with Rahul that Jaya didn’t understand. “But we can introduce you on Thursday, the first day of classes. Please come sit with us in the senior dining hall during breakfast.”

  “We have the table all the way to the back and right,” Rahul added helpfully.

  “That’s nice of you to include Jaya!” Isha chirped.

  In spite of her cheerful tone, Jaya could see the worry in Isha’s eyes. All summer long, Isha had seen the embers of anger burning in Jaya’s heart. She was no stranger to the way any mention of the Emersons had flushed Jaya’s cheeks, fevered her eyes. Now she was worried how Jaya would react to the knowledge that an Emerson went to this school.

  But that wasn’t all Jaya saw in her sister’s eyes. Jaya recognized Isha’s anxiety, too. As was her nature, Isha had been quick to forgive and forget the Emersons’ deception; she’d just wanted to move on with her life. But Jaya had seen how the scandal had left her usually effervescent sister flat, dull, empty. She’d worried during Isha’s blackest period that she wouldn’t come back to her whole. Now, in Isha’s eyes that were just a bit too wide, in her smile that was just a bit too stiff, Jaya saw Isha’s memories of that time resurface.