Lost, she looked at Brites, at the worry softening her gaze; she wanted to tell her so badly, ask for her advice, bask in her understanding—if there was anyone she could talk to without fear of judgment, it was this woman, who had been more than a mother to her these past five years.
The words were there, on the tip of her tongue, ready to fall from her lips as soon as she opened them. Tears of shame and unworthiness spilled down her cheeks, and she couldn’t muster the will to bare her greatest indignity, her hideous betrayal. Loss and loneliness rushed at her again, and she slipped the necklace over her head, held the stone in the palm of her hand, and let the gesture speak for her silence.
“Oh, little princess.” Brites’s arm came around her, pulling her close. “These should be happier days filled with miracles, not bleak ones drowning in tears.”
They would’ve been, had her flesh not been so weak. The teeth of the cilice woke up then, and she scratched their itch for attention, the reaction sending a domino of pain cascading across her thigh. “I deserve this,” she said, more to convince herself than Brites.
“Yzabel, I love you like a daughter, but sometimes talking to you is like talking to a wall.” She gently rapped her knuckles on the princess’s temples. “This should think for itself. It should know right and wrong aren’t as black and white as a book paints them to be.”
“Not when it comes to this,” Yzabel whispered. “I did something terrible and hurt Faty in the process. That’s why she’s back there. Why I will never see her again, and why we can’t do anything about Matias.”
Brites took the stone, scrutinized it with a heavy squint. The magic inside flashed and wavered before settling back to its steady thrumming. “That might not be necessarily true.”
Hope dared to flare in her heart, and yet, she doubted. “You don’t know what happened. I…” Yzabel’s forehead touched Brites’s shoulder. “She doesn’t want to be with me.”
“Now that is definitely not true. That girl loves you,” Brites said. “And Fatyan isn’t the sort of person who’ll give up on someone she cares about.”
Yzabel held the blanket close around herself, wanting to disappear into it, to never confront her inappropriate feelings or admit them out loud. It was pointless to hide in front of Brites, however; her former maid knew her too well and didn’t need words to understand her heart.
She pried one of Yzabel’s hands from the blanket and held it tightly. “Look at me.”
Yzabel couldn’t. She was too ashamed, too broken, too—
“I know it’s confusing, but you’re not the first, and certainly won’t be the last.”
In an instant, her round eyes met Brites’s understanding ones. “Did she tell you?”
“She didn’t have to.” She squeezed Yzabel’s hand. “It was in the way you looked at her; the way you were with her, and the way she was with you. It was bound to happen, sooner or later. My one regret is that I wasn’t there to smack sense into you when you started whipping yourself raw.”
“How did you hear about that?” Yzabel asked, balking at the memory.
“Dom Domingos came to gloat, claiming my efforts to turn you away from the Lord’s good graces had been in vain.” Brites sighed. “I thought you knew better by then.”
“What was I supposed to do?” Yzabel’s voice reduced to a weak whimper. “It was the only way I had to pay for that sin.”
“Your unwavering piety was always your biggest fault,” Brites pointed out, strong but not harsh. “Remember when Lucas was a pup, and would hump everything—including other male dogs? Black swans and pigeons frequently nest with members of the same gender. And if we’re talking about adultery, that, too, is forbidden in the Bible. Do you see your betrothed being punished for it?”
Yzabel shrunk further into herself. “No. But I shouldn’t do something just because Denis does it as well. And neither am I an animal who isn’t aware of the consequences of her actions.”
“In an ideal world, we’d all marry for love and infidelities wouldn’t occur. And while some do get to marry for love, it’s not the same for many of us.” She fussed with Yzabel’s hair. “Answer me this, did you choose to want Fatyan?”
She hadn’t. It had happened the same way a sunrise happened. She’d been slumbering in the darkness of ignorance, and then, out of nowhere, the brightness had come, shedding light on everything, putting names in what had been nameless.
“No.”
“Had you a choice, would you have let your father promise you to Denis?”
The question stunned her for a moment. “No. I would’ve joined a place like this. Dedicated my life to helping others through the Lord.” Yzabel bit into her lip. “Alas, I was too valuable for that. I was always to be married off, and when the King of Portugal and the Algarves asked for my hand…Papá couldn’t say no.”
“A convent is where you should’ve been. Where do you think women who love other women end up if not in marriages of convenience?”
“You mean to tell me they…the nuns…” It seemed impossible to think as much. No women were purer than those who dedicated their lives to the Lord, and—
Yzabel inhaled, halted her mind’s racing. Weren’t they pure women still? Did those unnatural desires make them less so because they felt them?
“Some of them, yes. It was the only way they could be themselves behind closed doors, and it works. Almost everyone is oblivious to a woman’s true affections if they aren’t directed toward men.” She gently lifted Yzabel’s chin. “You’re going to marry for a political alliance. So long as that alliance stays in place, so long as you give Denis what’s expected of you, no one will even notice you have a preference for women. If anything, it makes it easier for you to follow your heart and be happy in ways your betrothed can’t make you.”
Happiness. She’d been so full of that when she’d been with Faty, until she remembered how wrong their affair was.
When she didn’t speak, Brites continued, “You didn’t have a choice in whom your father promised you to, but Yzabel… You have a choice now. You can keep on hating yourself for the things you feel, keep hurting yourself to try to make it go away, throw yourself into your duties until you’re too exhausted to think about anything else. It will work, for a while. Then it won’t, and by the time you realize you’ve made a mistake, it’ll be too late to correct it because you will have driven away everyone you love.” No doubt lurked in Brites’s steady tone, or her dark eyes. “And you won’t be able to visit me, either, because I won’t want to see you.”
Dread weakened her voice, weakened her question to a pathetic sob of, “You’d do that?”
“You’d ask me to watch you slowly kill yourself again? I’ve been through that once. It was enough.” Brites huffed. “And if you can’t accept Fatyan or yourself, then you can’t accept me, either.”
A knot wrapped her stomach as puzzlement blinked in her eyes. “What?”
“Like I said, you’re not the first. I called myself a widow to hide who I am. I raised an adopted son to hide who I am.” Grief trembled in Brites’s voice. “And the reason why I accepted your mother’s proposal to come to Aragon to help you was because I knew you’d lead me back here, to the person I love.”
Yzabel’s heart was a thousand pieces slowly breaking apart, for even though she could hate herself and her wants, she couldn’t summon the same righteousness for Brites. “Is it Zaida? You did talk about her a lot. And she was your Enchanted Moura.”
“Her, indeed.” Brites smiled. “We traveled together for twelve years, but when all that happened with Matias, she refused to stay with me while I brought him up as my own. We settled in this city, and she went to the convent, seeking their protection while I stayed in the house where you met Matias tonight. But I’m old now, Matias is no longer the boy I raised, and I’d rather spend every day I have left with her in this gilded cage rather than al
one and in freedom.”
That had been what Faty has said, too, in different words, right before their fight.
“I…” Humbling tears fell from trembling eyes. “I didn’t know.”
“I never wanted you to. You were so set on the Book, on doing everything by it…”
She’d driven the closest thing she had to a mother to secrecy. Although she wished to deny she’d have done it, Yzabel knew it’d be a lie. Had Brites admitted to it before, she would’ve acted the same way she had with Faty, making her no better than the hypocrites who claimed to want to help but never did anything about it. She was no better than men who waged wars over interpretations of faith, no better than the prelates who stole from the people.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I had no right to force you to keep that part of yourself locked away and out of sight.”
“And I accept your apology because I know you mean it. But Yzabel, dear.” Brites smoothed the side of Yzabel’s face. “That acceptance has to be for everyone. Including Fatyan. Including yourself.”
“But how can I do that?” Desperation lifted Yzabel’s voice. “I’m already promised to Denis, and when I marry him, I’ll have to take vows before the Lord. I can’t betray them.”
And she had to marry him. Not just because their union would keep Castela from waging war on either Portugal or Aragon; if she stood to have a chance at changing the world for the better, she had to be Queen of Portugal and the Algarves rather than a princess at the whims of others.
“Ai, Lord give me patience. No one expects you to be a true saint. And no one’s saying you have to act on anything,” Brites sighed and rolled her eyes before placing a hand over Yzabel’s heart. “The Lord is here, Yzabel, not in the Bible, not in any book. He loves you as He made you, and He made you as you are—and that is the truth. So long as you share love and not hate, the Lord will never abandon you. He knows the world wasn’t always the way it is now, and it won’t remain like this forever. But we live when we live, and if Rome wasn’t built in a day, you can’t topple centuries-old misconceptions in a day, either. So don’t try. What you do is, you find happiness where you can, and you make sure no one finds out where it comes from.”
“But what if people suspect?”
“They don’t. Not the men, anyway. They see us as breeding cows and don’t really understand that we can want, too. Especially if what we want is what we can’t have. That’s…too much of a man thing, and in their self-absorbed brains, women aren’t capable of the things a man is.”
“Not even women?”
“They might, but…” Brites shrugged. “Like you, their brains have been washed into thinking they can’t feel that way. That it’s impossible. Use their misconceptions to your advantage.”
It seemed so easy, so…doable. “How can you be sure?”
Brites scoffed. “Princesses and queens keep the company of other women all the time. So long as you lock the door and keep your deviations behind it, no one will ever know or suspect what goes on between the two of you. Not to mention those behaviors are easier to hide among women. Women can hold each other’s hands in public. They can kiss each other on the cheek in public. They can embrace in public. In that, it’s easier being a woman with so-called unnatural needs than a man in the same situation. It’s unfair, true, and we should all be free to show our love—because that’s what it is. Love.”
“And Love is the ultimate commandment,” Yzabel finished. Once, she would’ve been shocked to an allusion to such immorality; now, she felt only frustration at the injustice, and shame for doubting God.
“It is.” Brites brushed Yzabel’s hair from her face. “And the Lord knew you’d never be able to love your betrothed in that way—but He still wanted you to experience it, and all the wonders that come with being with someone who’s right for you.” A daring, knowing wink. “There’s no risk of contracting a bastard in an affair between women.”
That much was true. It was almost funny that Yzabel deemed her feelings for Faty unnatural because no child could come of their union, and it’d taken Brites’s words for her to turn it around and see it as a blessing.
Just as with her magic, what Yzabel had believed a curse was a gift from God in disguise.
“You called me daughter of your heart.” She hugged Brites, kissed her cheek, added, “Thank you for being my heart’s mother in return. Thank you for everything.”
The sweet pressure of a peck on her cheek. “How much do you trust Fatyan?”
“With my life.”
With her secrets.
With her heart.
“Good. That’s what it’ll take, if you want to get her out.” Stone in hand, Brites trudged back to the cabinet, the drawer’s creak cringing in Yzabel’s teeth, and plucked a knife from within. “I have to curse you the same way she was. You will become pure magic, the same way she did when Yusef did it to her. That means you won’t grow old or ill once the two of you get out.” Brites came back with heavy steps. “I also don’t know what will happen if two Enchanted beings break each other’s curses. There’s a chance both of you will die if one does; a chance you’ll die independently of each other; and a chance you never will.” She leveled a stern look at Yzabel. “Are you sure you want this?”
The argument between her and Faty flickered behind her eyes. The look on Fatyan’s face, lined with disbelief and colored with hurt, embittered her tongue with regret and despair. The part about them dying wasn’t a theory Yzabel cared to test anyway, and she could deal with it when the time came. She wouldn’t need to be afraid of the red plague or any other sickness anymore, either.
As for the aging, she supposed she could always ask Faty for help. If she stayed. But neither of that mattered, not when this was a second chance at making things right; a chance to ask Faty to return her friendship, her patience, her guidance, even though she had no right to any of them. Most of all, she wanted to ask her for forgiveness over the hurtful things she’d said, how she’d reacted.
She had no right to that, either. Because in that moment, she’d chosen cruelty over kindness, sowed seeds of ugliness and reaped their bitter reward. All she could do was hope Faty chose differently. Heart pounding and breath held, she answered, “Yes. I’m sure.”
“I’ll put the necklace around Lucas and tell him to go back. If all goes well once you’re in, you should be in your rooms by the time you get out. And be very, very careful around Matias. He might not say anything to Denis about seeing you, but he will find a way to pressure you into making more mistakes.” Brites put the still-humid cloak back on Yzabel’s shoulders, then held her at arm’s length, a long look passing between them, and a gentle whisper rolled from her smiling lips, “Good luck, little princess.”
So quickly Yzabel barely caught it, Brites grabbed her hand and slid the blade across, pressed it against the stone as she chanted,
“Ó pedra encantada,
Que este sangue seja
O pagamento de entrada—”
A loud crack thundered in Yzabel’s ears, and radiant energy struck her with the speed of lightning. Her body splintering and shrinking; Brites a giant holding a mountain as a tug at her center pulled past the hard, jagged edges and into the stone.
Immaterial, Yzabel floated in the never-ending mist.
Below her, steam puffed around a replica of the springs in Terra da Moura, and there, sitting on a granite edge with her legs in the water, black hair a coat around her shoulders…
Fatyan.
Yzabel tried to scream for her, but she had no mouth; she tried to feel for her throat, but she had no hands. As with the flowers and bread, she focused on her magic—that was all she’d become, pure and undiluted magic—imagined her toes, her feet, her legs, her torso, her arms, her head, falling like a star at midnight and crashing straight into Fatyan’s waiting arms.
“You’re here,” she stam
mered, sinking her face into Faty’s hot neck, half expecting her to dissolve and vanish from under her. “You’re here.”
Warmth bloomed in Yzabel’s brow, on her cheeks, of lips and kisses and tears. Faty hugged her as she always had in their brief time together, a span of weeks that felt like years, and perched her chin on Yzabel’s head.
Softly, as if afraid, as if dreaming, Faty whispered, “I’m here.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
One Last Trade
Yzabel didn’t know how long they stood there, simply basking in each other’s touch. Too long. Not enough. Eventually, she scraped up enough courage to look at Faty, who was still wearing the nightgown of that fateful night. “I thought I’d never see you again,” she whispered. “I tried to tell myself it was for the best, but…”
“I did, too,” Fatyan admitted. “You said some very cruel things.”
The harshness stung—but she deserved it. “I’m sorry for how I reacted. I…” She suffocated on all the things she wanted to say, all the apologies she had to make. “I wanted to take it back as soon as I said it. I talked to the stone every day, hoping you could hear me.”
“I know. I’ve been listening.” Faty let go of her, a critical glint in her eye. “You should’ve been smarter about how you give away your bread. What possessed you to do it alone at night?”
“It’s the only time Matias isn’t around to follow me and report my every movement to Denis.” She wetted her dry lips. “Did you know who he was?”
“I suspected it when he mentioned the sihaq. But no, I didn’t know, not until he found you tonight. He was older, back when I knew him, and always wore a veil.” Faty let go of her, sunk back onto her seat by the spring’s edge. “I realize you came here through great trouble because you need my help to deal with him. But it’s moot. I can’t forgive him.”
Shame coated Yzabel’s cheeks with red. “That might have been the catalyst, yes.” She dragged her feet to Fatyan’s side and sat beside her. The water was as warm as she remembered. “But I would’ve come for you regardless.”
A Curse of Roses Page 24