“I’m not scared of your skin,” he continues, “because you’re still the same person. What your father did to you doesn’t change who you are. You aren’t your father’s mistakes. You aren’t your father’s curse. Your legacy rests with you.” He resumes his place at my side and continues walking. “At least, that’s what I tell myself.”
I wish I had words to comfort him, but it’s been so long since anyone used any on me that I have none ready to supply.
The duke walks onward in silence, and as he does, his shoulders slowly straighten. He’s picking himself back up, putting the wall that’s been supporting him for so long back into place. I’ve done it a thousand times myself.
“I had no idea,” I reply, moving to walk beside him once more. I’d heard his father died after falling from a horse he was trying to break. But I understand better than anyone why you’d want to cover it up.
“That’s why I had to come here,” he says, meeting my gaze once more. “I had to find someone else who’d understand. I had to find you.” He looks younger somehow, his eyes more desperate.
I don’t even know what to say. He came looking for me?
“I’m sure your other suitors brought you lavish presents equal to your station and beauty, but I prefer simpler, more meaningful gifts.” He hesitates. “I was thinking perhaps I could take you on a tour of my ship.” His dazzling smile is back.
The entire garden could have turned to gold around me, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed because I’m so focused on his eyes, the way one eyebrow rests slightly higher than the other as his face tightens with expectation. Hope brews behind his eyes, making them glint in the morning light.
No one’s ever smiled at me like that.
“Thank you.” For the first time, I don’t retreat into myself. I don’t fear that if he looks into my eyes, he’ll see the part of me that I’ve always held back. Because he’d only be seeing the reflection of his own pain, a pain he understands.
I make a mental reminder to thank Uncle Pheus. I didn’t give him enough credit. Maybe he’d known that Duke Wystlinos wasn’t just a man the kingdom needs, but a man I need.
And since Uncle Pheus already seems to like him, maybe he would let us go sailing someday. We could even find Jipper. I imagine standing at the bow of a ship and feeling the sea breeze rush over my unveiled face. When my reverie breaks, I realize where we are in the garden.
My stomach drops, and my hand clenches around the duke’s arm as I suck in a breath.
We’re about to turn the corner into the courtyard with the swan fountain.
Even now, the swans loom large in my mind. Three swans with their wings spread wide and thrown back form the top of the fountain. Water shoots out of their open beaks.
I used to love swans.
I pull back, my feet faltering.
Duke Wystlinos stops immediately. “What’s wrong?”
“That part of the garden isn’t very pretty,” I stammer, trying not to sound as breathless as I feel. Bile creeps up my throat. If I think about it too hard, I swear I can detect a metallic taste. I swallow it back down and take a deep breath. “Let’s go this way.” I tug him back down the opposite path.
“Of course,” he says with an easy grin. He loops his arm back through mine, eyeing the visible wing of one of the statues. “Don’t like swans?”
I shake my head, but the tension doesn’t release. I can’t concentrate as Duke Wystlinos recounts the time he got chased by a one-legged swan as a child.
We emerge from behind a tall hedge. Before us, stairs lead up to the terrace. The palace windows gleam in the sunlight, and the building’s tall towers cast long shadows across the thick stones that cover each wall.
As we near the end of the garden, the duke pauses and takes my hands in his. “Is it too much to ask to extend our walk a little longer?” he says.
I squint. His smile is soft and welcoming, and I want to say yes. But a headache has been spreading since we almost entered the courtyard with the swan fountain, and all I want to do is lie down and close my eyes.
“Perhaps tomorrow,” I say. “I’m afraid I have a bit of a headache at the moment.” I press my hand against my temple as a burst of pain radiates outward. It pulses behind my eyes. I try to focus my thoughts, but they only slip farther away.
Duke Wystlinos grasps my elbow. “Are you all right?”
“I think I’ve just been in the sun too long.” I take a few blurry steps toward a fountain topped with mermaids perched upon shells. Each one has an arm raised in one of the cardinal directions. Below them, fish jut out of the fountain’s base and spit out steady streams of water. A wide stone ledge encircles the fountain, and I press forward toward the ledge. If I can simply rest a moment, I’m sure I’ll be fine.
But before I reach the ledge, screams erupt from the palace. I try to locate the exact direction of the sound, but my heartbeat pounds too loudly. The metallic taste returns to my mouth. At my side, the duke jumps, his attention seemingly torn between helping me and seeking the source of those screams.
The hedges loom large overhead and begin to sway as my vision narrows, dark edges creeping in until all I can see is what is directly before me. I reach the cool stone of the ledge and put a hand down to steady myself. Then two ledges appear before me as everything blurs.
A moment later, the pain in my head sears into my vision with a bright gold flash. My knees give out, and distantly, I hear my head striking the stone as I fall.
CHAPTER 3
The sun is still overhead when I open my eyes. Not that it means anything. When I was turned to gold, I spent three days trapped as a statue without realizing the duration. Any amount of time could’ve passed now, and the thought makes my stomach spin.
A blurry figure silhouetted by the sun moves into my line of sight. Slowly, the top of the mermaid fountain comes into focus, and I move a hand to shield my eyes from the sun, grateful I can move at all. Bit by bit, the pain in my head recedes slightly, and I make out the duke hovering above me. He has one hand holding up my head.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I groan and sit up. Am I all right? I inspect my body. It’s no golder than usual. I touch my hand to my head, where my headache seems to be throbbing with extra force. My gloves slide across something slick.
Blood. It stains two fingers of my glove as I wipe it away.
Duke Wystlinos leans in close. “Let me see.” His fingers gently prod around my forehead. “It’s a small scrape. It’ll only bleed for a little bit.” He tears a small scrap from the sleeve of his shirt. “Press this against it.”
I take the silken fabric and press it against my head. “Thank you, Duke Wystlinos.”
“You can call me Aris, if you like, Princess.”
It’s a daring move. And yet, I do feel like I’ve known him much longer than I have. So to repay the kindness he’s offered me, I reply, “Thank you, Aris.”
He relaxes on his haunches. “Do you think you can stand? Should I send for a chair to be brought out?” Wrinkles crease his forehead.
“No, I’ll be fine.” I balance between his arm and the fountain to gain my footing. My vision blurs once more before settling. I check the scrap of cloth, and the bleeding has slowed considerably.
“I thought I heard someone screaming in the palace,” I add. Maybe they were my own screams. Everything after leaving the part of the garden with the swan fountain is hazy in my mind. I press my hands against my temples to massage away the last of the pain.
“I heard it too,” he says quickly. “But I didn’t want to leave you.”
“We should go see.” I lead him up the steps toward the palace, and as we near the top, Uncle Pheus’s voice booms and rattles the glass windows. His words are unintelligible, but he sounds furious.
I drop Aris’s arm and rush into the main hall. The head table has been thrown aside. Grapes roll across the floor. Puddles of honey ooze beneath overturned platters. Servants and nobles mingle togethe
r around the largest table, poking and prodding one another to get a better view.
“Where is the healer?” Uncle Pheus bellows.
I’m forced to push through the crowd because no one’s noticed that it’s me. Otherwise, they’d be coiling away from my touch.
Aris appears at my side. “Make way for the princess,” he shouts.
Immediately, people slink away from me. A hush falls over the crowd.
People whisper about my exposed skin, but I barely hear them because, at the center of the circle, my father lies on the ground. His arms are sprawled out to either side, and his crown has rolled several feet away. His eyes are closed, almost as if he’s sleeping. The chair he’d been sitting in is overturned behind him, as if someone flung it out of the way.
“The healer. Someone find the healer.” Uncle Pheus’s face is red from shouting.
“What happened?” I rush forward and fall to my knees by my father’s side. I reach out to touch his chest, but then pull back. I hold my breath until I see his chest rise and fall. My father has often looked like he’s been sleeping through council meetings only to bolt upright mumbling about the gold.
This is different.
“He began grasping his head and then collapsed,” Uncle Pheus says. He puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
Servants appear carrying a couch between them. They lift my father onto it.
I pick up the fallen silver crown and ignore my own distorted reflection before placing it back on my father’s head.
“Please wake up,” I whisper.
My father doesn’t stir.
A small man pushes through the crowd and straightens his cap, re-concealing his balding head. He bows. “I’m the healer,” the man says. He’s breathing hard, likely from running all the way here.
I remember the man. He’s the one who’d been called in to try to turn my skin back to normal.
He’d had me sit in a windowless room in the heart of the palace for a week, claiming seven days without sun would bleach my skin clear. When that cure didn’t work, he’d covered me in every concoction imaginable. All he’d succeeded in doing was leaving me smelling like sap and rum for days, a result that doesn’t inspire much hope in me now.
The healer lifts my father’s eyelids, listens to his breathing, and checks for a pulse. He takes a tiny vial of yellow liquid from his bag and unscrews the lid. He waves the vial under my father’s nose. My father doesn’t react.
“I’ll need to do a more thorough examination,” the healer says, clearing his throat.
“Of course,” my uncle replies. He motions for everyone to leave the room.
As everyone slowly disperses, I spot Archduke Ralton at the edge of the crowd with a smug look on his face, but he’s quickly lost in the shuffle of people, each dragging their feet hoping to catch one last glimpse of the king or a snippet of dialogue that’s being reserved for behind closed doors.
I take a deep breath when the doors to the hall shut.
Aris remains behind, and I’m actually thankful he hasn’t left. His presence adds strength I didn’t know I was missing.
“He doesn’t appear to be in any immediate danger,” the healer says, “but he won’t come to his senses. What happened before he entered this state?”
“He was eating, as we all were,” Uncle Pheus says. “I believe he was having head pains.”
My stomach tightens and threatens to expel my breakfast. I’d thought the headache had been from being too near where my curse had started. How had my father felt it too?
“And he started muttering about the gold,” Hettie says.
My heart clenches and stops for a moment. I twist my hands together.
I can’t keep my eyes from closing, my mind from opening, from seeking the aura that marks the locations of each enchanted gold piece. For me, sensing the gold is like seeing a candle far in the distance on a dark night. Faint but noticeable, and brighter the closer I get.
Normally when I sense the gold, I shove it away. I don’t ever want to think about gold, to let it in, to let it overtake me.
But today, I have to.
The auras are harder to locate today, but eventually, I find one. The golden table. It’s right where it’s always been in the tower. But when I keep searching, I realize I can’t sense the pheasant or the goblets or any of the other golden objects.
My mouth goes dry. My eyes snap open.
“No,” I whisper.
I grab the hem of my dress and dash toward the door. Someone shouts my name, but I don’t stop. I rush down the corridor and up a flight of stairs. My braid thumps against my back in time with my heart.
I skid to a stop at the bottom of the second staircase. Blood drips down the stairs, and I leap away from the puddle seeping into the carpet. Each drop that rolls off the steps seems to confirm my fear.
I stare at the ceiling as I gingerly step around what becomes a stream, keeping one hand against the wall as I inch forward.
A guard’s headless body limply hangs over the top step. I clutch my stomach and look away before I vomit, fighting to breathe as the metallic tang of blood creeps in around me. I struggle forward as much to get away from the sight as from the smell.
Ahead, the woven tapestry of several dancing ladies lays crumbled on the floor, exposing the pieces of the door and staircase it concealed. My feet slide into the grooves in the stone steps worn away by my father’s continual trek up to the gold. As I climb, I suddenly wish I had a weapon.
At the top, the other door has been kicked in. No lamps are lit in the room—there don’t need to be, at least not for me. An ever-pulsing glow ebbs and flows from inside, inviting me in as it did ten years ago.
My breathing quickens. I shouldn’t be this close to the gold, to the room where I nearly killed a man last time I was in it. No, where I did kill a man.
But my father can barely survive without sitting next to the gold. Every day his eerie connection to it saps more of his strength, consumes more of his mind, makes him need its presence in order to keep going. What would happen to him if the gold really isn’t in the tower?
Before I let my fears overtake me, I shove off the wall and into the round, windowless room.
The golden table rears up in front of me, and the glow overwhelms me, like I’ve stepped into the sunlight of the garden. I freeze. My breath catches in my throat. It’s been years since I’ve seen real, solid gold. Not since the incident.
I swallow down the bile crawling up my throat. I force myself to inhale. No matter how much the room smells like metal, you can’t inhale gold. I hope.
Still, my fingers itch inside my gloves. I clench them into fists and take one step farther into the room. Closer to the golden table. Its hulking legs look like columns of twisted gold, and its top could easily fit Hettie and me lying side by side.
It’s the only object too big to steal. The other eleven objects are gone. Round and square outlines of dust are all that remain of the three coins, two chalices, rose, platter, pheasant, knife, tapestry, and necklace that my father had turned to gold.
My father’s gold has been stolen.
CHAPTER 4
The wooden chair my father uses to sit near the gold lays in pieces on the floor. I pick up what used to be the seat of the chair and hold it like a shield across my chest.
Footsteps pound up the staircase toward the tower room.
Maybe it’s the ghost of the man I killed. Still lurking here, waiting for me to come back after all this time. Or maybe whoever decapitated that guard is still nearby. I shouldn’t have run off on my own. I shouldn’t have come here at all.
My eyes widen when a figure does appear. I stumble backward until I collide with the wall. I clutch the broken chair fragment closer to my chest.
It’s not a thief or the man I killed come back to haunt me. It’s Aris.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say. “It’s not safe.” I’m not safe is what I meant, but I can’t tell him that. I tighten my hold on t
he chair fragment, willing myself to look at him and not at the table. Oddly, that seems to help. My rising panic subsides the longer I look in his eyes.
Still, the ever-pulsing glow doesn’t let me forget that it’s there. Just one touch away.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?” he asks breathlessly. His eyes are wide as he takes in the room.
“It’s gone,” I say, my voice strangely hoarse, as though being this close to the gold has strained that too.
“What’s gone?” The words echo hollowly around the room. He takes a hesitant step forward. He must’ve taken the same staircase I did. Bloody footprints trail behind him.
“My father’s gold.”
“We’ll alert the palace guard. The thieves can’t have gotten far. Come on.” He reaches out to me.
“No.” I answer as much to his statement as to his waiting hand. I’m afraid to step closer to him. Not with the table so close.
“Why not?”
I take a steadying breath. We’d never told anyone outside the family about my . . . ability. My curse. Most people have realized something was off about me, something more than just my gold skin. But we never confirmed it. Uncle Pheus always said it was better to let them wonder, to dream up their own ideas, than for us to confirm any weakness.
And yet, I feel that if anyone is going to understand my family’s curse, it will be Aris. There is nothing else to lose anyway.
“The gold my father . . . created was stored in this room.” The dingy space looks even dimmer with just one large gold table in the middle. Spider webs cling to the corners of the rafters. Oddly, none lace their way around the table legs, as if even the spiders are afraid to touch the gold.
“All of it?”
I nod. The whole reason my father had wanted The Touch in the first place was because the treasury was nearly empty, and he knew war was on the horizon. But he hadn’t turned many things to gold before turning me to gold, after which he’d refused to touch anything.
“Surely your father can survive without a few gold pieces.” Aris runs his fingers across the top of the table, leaving trails in the dust.
A Touch of Gold Page 3