“I’ve kindness aplenty—but not for a lying fiancée who’d keep secrets from me. And speaking of fiancée…” He looked her over. “You’re looking better. At least this whole ordeal hasn’t been for nothing.”
Lips pursed, Yzabel looked down at her lap. Denis had spoken true—she did look better, and much healthier. In the almost three weeks since the ritual, the blessing worked for her rather than despite her, and she was recovering her weight twice as fast as a regular person would. Her smiling dimple was deeper on her rounder cheeks, her hair stronger, skin pinker, eyes brighter.
It shouldn’t be long until her moon’s blood returned, and she had no more excuses to give her betrothed regarding the making of legitimate heirs when the time arrived.
Alone with Faty once more, Yzabel returned to her training with anxious concentration. Sitting on the bed, the bread on her lap turning to roses at a touch. The mounds of flour were getting bigger but using the gift so much and so often was as tiring as running from here to Ulisbuna, driving exhaustion to yawn on her lips, and the weight of iron to her lids.
“It hurts you to be unable to attend Vasco’s funeral, does it not?” Fatyan sat beside her at the foot of the bed. “If I go tonight, you will be able to leave these rooms tomorrow. We can—”
“You heard what Denis said about using the baron’s preferences. I won’t let you denigrate yourself so I can attend Vasco’s funeral. He wouldn’t want you to, either.” She rubbed the sleep from her face. “None of this would be happening if I’d been a dutiful princess, anyway.”
“You are a dutiful princess,” Fatyan amended. “Few in your station would care as much about the commoners as much as you do.”
“It’s not enough.”
Under the silence of the crackling fire, white particles piled on her lap like snowflakes, and so did the frustrations in her head. One by one, they trickled into her thoughts, spilling from her tongue, out her lips. “I can’t turn these roses.” A rose came undone. “I can’t feed the Portuguese.” One more. “I can’t give this country a prince.” Another. “I’m the reason you’re not free.”
The next rose she grabbed so tight, thorns punctured her flesh—she savored the pain, willed God to take it as payment for her faults. Bitter anguish burned her eyes, soured her throat. “I’m holding your life back.”
“I wouldn’t have a life if it weren’t for you.” Fatyan brought Yzabel’s hand to her lips, startling her into releasing it.
The strange tightness returned to coil between her legs, and she knew she should take her hand away but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Fatyan’s touch carried such an exquisite ache it was impossible not to lose herself in its lingering briefness. Her back arched, her chest swelled, awake with a feeling she had no name for—it was painful, sweet, too much, and not enough.
“I could say the same,” Yzabel said. “You’re as indebted to me as I am to you.”
“Then stop saying you’re holding me back.” Fatyan turned Yzabel’s hand palm up, fingertips trailing shivers over the fresh cuts.
Recalling how Fatyan had planted a kiss on the affected area last time Yzabel burned herself with her magic had her light of head and panicked of heart. She hurriedly swept her hand away to grab another rose, clearing her throat as she tried to appear nonchalantly focused. Warm light seeped from her fingers, catching just a bit of the stem at first, then spreading gold into the entire flower.
When she felt she’d poured just enough, Yzabel blinked the sweat away from her eyes, and insides hummed like the plucked string of a lute, vibrating softly as she imagined the flower becoming wheat, flour, bread. She kept her hold firm when the light turned radiant. The rose widened, thinned, and when Yzabel cut off the flow of magic, it splintered into a hundred pieces, soft on the palm of her hand.
Breadcrumbs.
In a trance, Yzabel repeated the process, making another rose, getting more crumb.
The image chained her in miraculous wonder and breathless relief, and it was with wide eyes that she turned to look at Faty, expecting to find her radiant. Yet a furrow marred her brow with something between guilt and concern as she looked over the fragments that were bread, yet not.
Yzabel’s smile vacillated. “Faty?”
Green eyes looked at her from under thick lashes. “Hmm?”
Yzabel’s mouth dried, the beat of her heart heavy as if it were made of steel instead of flesh. “Is your curse gone?”
A shake of her head. “No. The stone’s still tugging at me because crumb isn’t exactly bread. But…” Faty put her hands to her face, pensive lines burrowing deeper on her forehead.
“But what?”
It started with imperceptible shifts—wider nostrils, smaller mouth, a sharper brow—then the stark ones. One moment, it was Faty she was staring at; the next, a stranger with a head of flaxen hair and a gaze of murky brown.
Breath trapped, Yzabel reached for Faty, tracing the rounder cheekbones, the bow of thin lips. Had she not witnessed the transformation, she wouldn’t have been able to tell who lay under the pale skin.
“My blessing returned,” Fatyan whispered against Yzabel’s fingertips—even her voice was different, higher in pitch, less melodic in tone. “Baba used to call me his little chameleon because I could blend into any surroundings. That was before he hated me enough that he had his Benzedor curse me.” A lingering sigh filled the air between them. “Sometimes, Matias reminds me of him.”
Faty had never told her what it was that had turned her father’s opinion on her, and Yzabel had no heart to ask. Whenever the Moura came close to speaking of it, her lips would twist, and her eyes would mist—pain, she had assumed. She wouldn’t waste this chance to find out more, and so she gently asked, “Of your father?”
“No. Of Benzedor Yusef. My sahar teacher.” Faty squinted at nowhere in particular. “It’s strange, because our Benzedores wore veils that left only their eyes visible, and I never really saw his face. But Matias looks at me the same way Yusef did. Talks in the same way, too. It’s just a similarity, but it’s enough to trigger all those bad memories, and those bad memories trigger the sahar.” A shudder racked her shoulders, and she shrugged it off with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Yusef’s long dead, and so is Baba. Neither can force me to do anything I don’t want to.”
The way she said it, with bitterness dripping from her lips, made Yzabel wonder if Faty had used her powers to do something so terrible she dared not voice it. The nefarious obsessions in her brain drove her to take a step back, suspicion building ugly clouds over her head. She dumped the crumbs that had accumulated in her skirts onto the dinner tray Fatyan had yet to take back to the kitchens.
“Did they make you become other people?”
Fatyan met her eyes as she gave a hesitant, slow nod. “Remember when Denis asked if I was the Moura named Salúquia?”
She did, but with so much happening, it had slipped her mind to ask. Now that Faty brought it back up again, however, the pieces fit. “The marriage to Bráfama. It wasn’t you who was supposed to marry him.”
The saddest glint shone in Fatyan’s eyes. “Sal was my best friend. And when she died with a marriage contract to fulfill, Baba thought to use me to ensure it went through. We needed Bráfama’s forces to defend Al-Manijah, and if I had to be someone else for that to happen, Baba saw no problem with it.”
Yzabel swallowed the lump in her throat. So much sorrow wrapped around Faty, and though Yzabel wanted to cut the Moura free, her thoughts seemed to be stuck on the fact Faty had been made to take another’s shape in order to go through an arranged marriage.
Was this what Vasco had been worried about? The doubt that had driven him to turn against Brites, and ended up taking his life instead?
With a deep breath, she asked, “Could you become me?”
“I could.” Fatyan’s face and skin changed to Yzabel’s, and it was like looking at a mirro
r image that had a will of its own. It crossed the space between them, leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “I could become Denis, even.”
When she stepped back, she was Denis, with his deep-set eyes and severe brow, his wide shoulders and sparse beard, assailing Yzabel with so many conflicting emotions she couldn’t make sense of her own thoughts.
She picked up a lock of wavy hair, the exact same shade of reddish brown as her betrothed’s. Faty’s gift could be used for so many purposes, and if she wanted to, she could replace anyone she wished. A princess. A king.
“But I don’t want to become him. Or you.” A stubby hand brushed Yzabel’s cheek in a way Denis’s never had. “And I would never use my gift to harm you, Yza.”
She believed it. She doubted it. And hearing the nickname Fatyan had given her in Denis’s voice, through his lips, was a dichotomy she couldn’t wrap her head around, and neither could she understand the feelings tugging at her stomach. It was Denis, but it was also Fatyan. One was the person she was supposed to love, who she was supposed to want. The other…
Would her lips taste the same? Would her touch awaken light in Yzabel’s breast, or simply leave her lukewarm? Under the linen nightdress, was there a new appendage between the legs, and why did the possibility make her shudder as if hit with unpleasant cold?
Why did it feel like death would take her if she didn’t find out?
It hit her that this was the very first time she wanted to kiss her betrothed, and the reason was because she knew it was Fatyan under a mask. She didn’t know what it meant, and neither would she find out, because Fatyan had no reason to stay, and if she wanted to leave, Yzabel would have to let her go.
Tears returned to her eyes, raining torment on a moment that should’ve been of joy.
The hair between Yzabel’s fingers flattened and elongated, darkening to the black of night, and Faty became herself again. It was her arms that hugged Yzabel close, her voice that asked, “Yza, what’s wrong?”
“I-I’m s-s-sorry.” Yzabel couldn’t help but think that their embraces would soon come to an end. “I’m so thankful, and yet…” She pulled away to look at Fatyan’s face, the curve of her lips fickle. “You’re still not free.”
“Neither are you.”
Yzabel shook her head. “I never was. My privilege is my cage, and one I cannot break. Or want to. I must shoulder my burdens, Faty. But you…” She wiped her eyes with a shaking finger before looking at Faty again. “You can be free for the both of us.”
Hurt flashed across the Moura’s face. “Do you want me gone that badly?”
“No! That’s not it at all,” Yzabel hurried to correct the misconception—but how could she explain that she didn’t want her only friend to be as trapped as she was? “I just… I want you to have a choice.”
“Then I choose to stay. With you.”
No hesitation in her voice, no doubt in those searching eyes. The paranoia stormed back into Yzabel, and there it was again, the vivid image of Denis and Fatyan together, locked in passion, whispering promises of love to each other.
She didn’t have the courage to look Faty’s way anymore. “Why would you want a life of servitude when you can have true freedom?”
“Why would I want true freedom if taking it means I can’t stay here to help you?” Two fingers swept across Yzabel’s jaw, persuading the rest of her face to follow. “We both know making bread out of flowers is but one step in your plan to feed the people.”
Several times during the week, they’d talked about what Yzabel would do with her blessing once she controlled it, and had come to two realizations. First, no one could know she was secretly feeding people; second, Denis could not notice Yzabel’s absence.
As if reading her mind, Fatyan said, “If I’m here to take your place when you’re gone, your betrothed will never find out.”
And if he came by during that time bearing thoughts of heirs, it’d be Fatyan he’d lie with. Fatyan who’d bear his seed, his touch, his needs—
Unable to keep wondering, she asked, briskly, “Is it because of him?”
Fatyan blinked up at her. “Him who?”
“Denis.” She held her hand against the twisted pain in her chest. “I…I am aware that I’ve asked a lot—too much—of you. If you want to stay because you feel compelled to bed him, I will not hold it against you. I know some women have those needs, even if I don’t.”
A long pause withered in the air.
“Why is it so hard to believe I want to stay for you?” The susurrus of a question barely heard over the drumming of Yzabel’s heart.
She had to get away, put space between them so she could think without her body urging her to lean forward, to wrap herself around Faty and breathe in her scent. Her feet moved, skirting around the Moura. “Why would you?” Yzabel said.
Warmth caught her fingers as she passed by. “There’s not an arrátel of malice in your bones, no trace of selfishness in your actions—to a fault, I might add.” Yzabel couldn’t move between the polarizing desires warring inside her, couldn’t help but let Fatyan embrace her from behind, or take Faty’s hand away when she placed it over her thundering heart. “I’ve seen this,” she whispered into Yzabel’s ear as her other arm tightened around her waist. “And it was filled with light and goodness. Of all the people who found me, you were the only one I wanted to leave with, the only one I could see myself staying with. And I will, for as long as you want me.”
Words that should’ve been water to her parched throat were a gag of regret. Fatyan wouldn’t be saying them if she saw Yzabel’s heart now, with its ugly jealousy and unwarranted suspicions. “I’m not that good.”
A long, exasperated sigh heated the curve of her neck. “Learn to take a compliment.”
“I know how to take one when it’s deserved,” Yzabel countered.
“You really don’t.” Fatyan chuckled before releasing her. “It’s endearing, until it becomes annoying.”
“And you still want to stay and help me.” She hugged herself against the cold of Faty’s absence, wishing it would mitigate the void in her every pore as she watched the Moura open the bed and settle under the covers.
“Your plan to deliver bread won’t work unless someone stays behind to cover for you,” Fatyan pointed out, patting the mattress next to her, a siren’s song that lured Yzabel into the sheets with her and their little dance of spooning for warmth. “What happens once you’re married and Denis comes to your rooms at night to find you gone?”
“He spends most nights with his mistresses anyway,” Yzabel muttered, closing her eyes to better savor the pleasant shivers Fatyan trailed along her arm. “All I’d have to do is go to him first in the nights he does not.”
“Is that something you think you can do?”
She buried her head deeper into the pillow. “It’s something I must do. Being with Denis in that way is as much my duty as helping the poor.”
“But you don’t love him like that.”
“Love isn’t a steady foundation to build a marriage on anyway.” Yzabel swallowed the quiver in her throat. “In a way, I’m glad there’s no passion to cloud our relationship. Better for the country that volatile emotions aren’t sitting on the throne along with the king and queen. And as much as the prospect of lying under Denis terrifies me, I can endure that if it means bringing stability to our rule.”
“That’s…” Fatyan sighed. “That’s so sad. Someone as kind as you deserves happiness, and it hurts to see you resigned to never having it.”
Yzabel shrugged. “It’s not anything many women haven’t gone through before. Love is a small price to pay for a lasting marriage and just ruling.”
“And why must you pay it alone?” The mattress shifted as Fatyan propped herself up on one elbow. “Your betrothed has lovers aplenty. Why can’t you?”
The snort was out of her nose before sh
e could help it. “And risk a bastard? The law isn’t as lenient on women as it is on men when it comes to that. Even then, I…” A furrow came upon her brow as she thought back on all her encounters with supposedly handsome men. That every woman she’d come across swooned and sighed over Denis, and all Yzabel could nurture for him was a warm buzz of friendship, which had dwindled to tepid tolerance over the past three weeks.
She turned to lie on her back, her sight full of Fatyan’s firelit features. “I’ve never felt the need to be with any man. I just can’t fathom how shoving a rod of meat inside me can be anything but painful.”
Fatyan swept the hair away from Yzabel’s face, so gently it was as if she ran a brush dipped in starlight. Under the shower of easy sparks, slumber began to tug at her conscience, and she was almost out when Faty said, “It doesn’t have to be.”
Yzabel snapped her eyes back open, suddenly alert, mind reeling.
Chapter Nineteen
Rift
It doesn’t have to be painful.
“How would you know?” Yzabel said. “You told me you’d never been with a man.”
“I didn’t. Didn’t have to.” The air became heavier, charged with danger and allure, and so did her hand where it rested on Yzabel’s hip. “I spent a lot of time alone, and without anything else to do, you’re bound to explore. And the one thing I could explore besides my sahar was my body. As much as they want us to believe otherwise, we don’t even need a man to have pleasure.”
The question of how scratched the back of Yzabel’s throat, but only shallow breaths passed her lips. A caress on Yzabel’s chest, barely there—Faty’s bosom, so close, and she had to grab at the sheets to keep her hands from closing on it, to keep herself from finally knowing the feel of her friend’s breasts.
The aching heat built low in her belly, her legs closing on their own to suffocate it as Fatyan leaned in. Yzabel licked the warm breath tingling along her lips. A distant part of her mind told her she was supposed to say something, but she couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about—Faty’s closeness was all there was, all she could think about.
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