by Lucy Tempest
“What did you do to here?” Meira advanced, just as changed, weapon held over her head. “She was weeping at night and saying you were put in this world to make her suffer.”
“What are you talking about? Are you crazy?”
Agnë’s answer was an aggravated growl and another swipe at my head with the chain. I ducked out of her range, hurled myself behind the bird. They chased me, Agnë cutting the air in all possible angles with frustrated grunts, Meira stabbing it.
I worried more about the pin than the chain, fearing for my veins and eyes. It would be laughably tragic if I’d survived a horde of ghouls only to be stabbed to death by a berserk handmaiden.
“She was supposed to be the only one,” Meira cried. “It was a promise made years ago, that he would be the one to save her. This was the year he was supposed to marry her. She was the only choice, the perfect choice.”
“When he asked for dozens of other girls, it didn’t matter,” Agnë hissed. “We thought to let him play, let him see her worth. We were sure they’d all fail miserably in every way compared to her and be sent home. But you stayed.”
I was caught between my survival instinct telling me to hobble away and the morbid curiosity to find out what they meant by “save her.”
“Have you considered it has nothing to do with me?” I gasped as I parried. “That he just doesn’t like her?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” Agnë lashed out again as she babbled. “She’s accomplished, noble, healthy, beautiful, has the most important royal connection to this land and to another, speaks several languages, studied history and art, can sing like a nightingale, paint and dance. What more could a prince want?”
“Someone who’s not a massive child that throws dangerous tantrums?”
A shriek preceded Meira’s most accurate attempt to stab me. Fight or flight response kicked in. I chose fight.
I ducked and caught Meira around the waist, backing her up into the statue hard enough to jolt the air from her lungs. Holding her stabbing hand, above her head, I reached back as Agnë came to the rescue, caught the chain, rolled it around my forearm and tugged, making her stumble closer. Taking a leaf from Cora’s book, I head-butted her. She stumbled back, chain slipping from her grasp as she hit the floor.
I turned to Meira, catching her by the throat and slamming her hand against the wall to make her drop the pin.
I squeezed her neck, shredding words between gritted teeth, “I’ve had the month from hell and I never had an easy life to begin with. I am under so much stress a pampered fool like her, and you, can never imagine, and you maniacs attack me—”
“Enough—enough, please.”
Our struggle ended as we looked down at Fairuza. She was leaning weakly on the simurgh’s platform, her beautiful cyan eyes dry, yet red.
“Leave her, Meira, Agnë.”
“But she attacked you!” Agnë cried out.
“She didn’t,” Fairuza said, voice hoarse and subdued. “I gave you your orders, so go carry them out.”
Before my stunned eyes, their darkly twisted features reverted to benign obedience at her command. I gaped at them as they adjusted their clothes and paired up to walk soundlessly away.
Once they were gone, Fairuza finally whispered, “I didn’t mean to.” She shuddered and her voice shook. “I didn’t mean for her to fall over that wall.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, disbelief unwavering.
“We were arguing, she pushed me first and I pushed her even harder. But I didn’t think that the wall behind her was low enough for her to go over it. I just wanted to knock her down, get her dress dirty, maybe even rip it.”
“Then why didn’t you try helping me rescue her? Why did you act like it never happened?”
“What could I have done to help? I can’t climb walls, and the guards were there and did nothing.” She started breathing loudly. “I-I was horrified, but I couldn’t do anything. Then you saved her and-and no matter how many times I deny it, everyone still won’t believe me.”
For the first time, I found myself believing her. “You could have at least apologized.”
“Cherine wouldn’t have accepted it. She hates me.”
“Most of us do—did. Can’t you guess why?”
Closing her eyes, she didn’t answer. Perfect spherical droplets clung to her lashes.
“I-I’ve been told I have a larger-than-life personality,” she quoted miserably. “And it is too much for most people to handle.”
“You have a difficult personality.”
“You have an uncouth personality,” she sniffed loudly. “Yet everyone likes you.”
“Uncouth, but still better than your polished arrogance.”
Meeting each other’s eyes, we exchanged a tremulous smile. I put a hand on her arm gently. “So what was this all about? Apart from your handmaiden’s bumbling attempt to maim and murder me, what’s this about Cyrus saving you?”
Fairuza put a hand on mine, not to remove it, but just touch me. She looked as forlorn as I felt.
She finally whimpered, “If he doesn’t marry me, I’m going to die.”
I gave it a good minute to filter through my mind. Her claim made no sense.
“Are we talking figuratively here? Did your mother send you here and tell you she’d kill you if you failed his tests?”
Her mouth wobbled as she sniffled, “I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, no, you can’t just drop something like that and not explain it. You’re telling me.” She stayed silent. I shook her. “Come on. Tell me!”
“I’M CURSED!”
Her outburst seemed to siphon all her power. She slumped in my hold and sobbed, her breath ratting in heaves.
I tried straightening her, heart pounding in my ears. “You mean literally cursed?”
She nodded against my chest. “A fairy cursed me, then she cursed my brother.”
“How? Why?”
She pushed away to slouch against the wall, her face an undignified mess of tears and snot. “When I was born, a celebration was held. My parents invited everyone, noble or magical, among them members of the Seelie Court.”
A wave of memories rolled into my mind, of Mr. Fairborn talking about fairy rings in the backyard, how iron horseshoes and wind-chimes outside the house were meant to deter whatever might come through the Hornswoods.
“Seelies as in fairies, right?”
She nodded, sniffling. “Seven fairies. The first six came to give me a magical gift—the gifts of dance, song, grace, beauty, health and wealth. The seventh didn’t have anything more to give me. Then someone else arrived late.”
“Who?”
“A fairy queen. She arrived, unannounced, to ask where her invitation was, and my father said that his foreign wife couldn’t deal with more than one type of fairy in her castle. My mother is Cahramani and to her fairies are the same as djinn—genies…” She hiccupped so hard I felt it might tear something inside her. “She hates magical beings, fears them, forbade my siblings and I from any magical part of Arbore.”
“Even where there are unicorns?”
“Yes. But I got a unicorn filly for my sixth birthday from a minor lord who’d been courting my father’s favor. He caught her for me in the grasslands by the Summer Court and she is beautiful,” she gushed, startlingly happy for a second there. It had to be the most genuine expression I’d ever seen her wear.
“What’s she called? What color is she?”
“Her name is Mabily and she’s pearly white, even has a pearl-like sheen to her hair.”
“Oh, I envy you so much right now.”
“Not as much as I envy you,” she said honestly.
In that moment, we both realized just how much our situations had shifted, how everything we’d felt about each other had changed.
She was a completely different person right now than she was last week, all haughty confidence, venomous sneers and disaffected beauty nowhere to be found. In her place was a sad, messy girl who was giving in
to despair right before my eyes.
“What did the fairy queen do?” I asked, my own voice choked.
“The queen was offended that my mother didn’t want her there. So, she gave each of my mother’s children a ‘gift’ she deemed appropriate.” She wrapped her arms around her middle, hugging herself. “My older brother’s curse needed a catalyst, and it struck a few years ago, damning him.”
“What happened to him?”
She shook her head, refusing to say, seeming ashamed even.
“And you?”
Her shoulders slumped further with a depressed sigh. “Beautiful and wondrous she shall be, with a voice to bring any man to his knee. But on her eighteenth year’s eve, all for her will grieve.” She let out a shuddering breath. “That’s the fairy queen’s curse.”
Horrified though still suspicious, I asked, “What does this curse have to do with Cyrus?”
“The seventh fairy, who had nothing more to give, used her power to change the curse to give me a chance.” She waved a hand around the hall. “This was my chance.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“‘At the dawn of her eighteenth year, death will leave her to his brother sleep. Unless the most noble of men proves his love for her true and deep, she will remain forever near-death’s to keep’.”
I gaped at her. “The fairy altered the curse only enough to make you sleep—forever? How’s that better than dying? That’s the best she could do?”
“Yes. It had to be done before the curse took effect, and she gave me a way to break the curse,” Fairuza said. “Have the most noble man prove his love for me.”
“And how is that man Cyrus?”
“He’s a crown prince, will be a king, making him the most noble of men. And by marrying me he declares his love to be true.”
“Fairuza, that’s not what love is. And that amendment to the curse didn’t say Cyrus specifically. How are you so sure it’s him?”
She shrugged. “Who else could it be?”
“Aren’t there other princes? Ones you know personally enough for them to like you, maybe even love you?”
“I don’t know. I have been betrothed to him for as long as I can remember, I didn’t think of finding other options,” she admitted. “Now it’s too late to search and he has rejected me twice. Once by setting up the Bride Search and the second by favoring you.”
So this was my fault? Great.
“I tried to be all things a prince should want to love, but I’ve failed,” she said quietly. “This Bride Search has opened my eyes to my—true worth. I’m now seventeen and a half. In two seasons’ time, I will be as good as dead, all because my mother got on a fairy’s bad side years ago.”
Everything about her behavior towards Marzeya suddenly made sense. She hadn’t been irrational, and she hadn’t been trying to sabotage me. She’d been genuinely scared of magic and the prospect that the witch would curse me. Like she had been cursed along with her brother.
That also meant the rumors about her brother had been true.
My insides twisting at her fate, I leaned over her, touching her shoulder anxiously. “What do you want me to do? Is there anything else that can be done?”
She only pushed off the statue and rose to unsteady feet.
“Where are you going?” I called after her.
“To help Meria and Agnë pack,” she said with defeated finality. “It takes a good three weeks to travel from here to Arbore. I want to spend whatever time I have left with my younger siblings, perhaps convince my parents to let me see my older brother.”
“Wait, so that’s it? After all that, now you give up?”
Fairuza picked up my fallen cane and held it out to me, handle-first. “I never thanked you. If it weren’t for you, I would have died sooner and far away from home. At least now I get to have more time with my family.”
Taking the offered cane, I was at a loss for words, lips stuttering over breathless, half-formed protests as she walked away. “Fairuza, wait…”
She stopped by the darkened entrance and gave me a melancholy smile from over her shoulder. “I guess I never truly believed he would break my curse but I had to try my best.” Her voice cracked. “If accepting your losses and your failure makes you a better person, then I hope the gods will be kinder to me in the afterlife.”
Any possible protest died on my tongue, for what could I say now?
I had no ideas to offer, no experience with fairies to fall back on and I barely knew what to do with my witch. Marzeya wasn’t entirely right about our harrowing experience at her hands making everything seem simpler in comparison. Now I felt more twisted up than before.
I stood trembling, watching Fairuza fade into the darkened depths of the hallway, shoulders hunched, bare feet shuffling across the floor. In the end, the beauty, the family, the riches and the castles didn’t matter. Her life would be brief and its end was going to be as meaningless as anyone else’s.
I felt overwhelming pity I had never thought possible. Pity for someone I’d thought I hated, as well as disappointment in myself, that I couldn’t help.
But there had to be a way I could help her.
Ayman appeared like a ghost by my side. “That was interesting.”
I kicked his leg with my good foot.
He raised a thick, white eyebrow. “What was that for?”
“Some guard you are! Her handmaidens attacked me and you didn’t do anything.”
“You handled yourself pretty well.”
I kicked him again.
Cyrus arrived not long after Fairuza had left.
I was sitting on the platform of the simurgh statue, twirling the cane, dark thoughts eddying in my mind. Ayman was pacing the hall.
“I hope I didn’t leave you waiting long.” Cyrus strode towards me, hand held out.
I forced a big smile on my face, hoping I didn’t appear as shaken as I felt. “A little.”
“Forgive me, I will make it up to you.”
“You better.” Especially since I nearly got lashed and stabbed for getting here before him.
He helped me up, linking our arms as he led us outside.
When we emerged I stood rooted. Before us stretched consecutive cascades whose downpour ended in a central fountain, ensconced in mirroring sets of hanging gardens, each level reached by fan-like staircases. If the architecture inside the mountain had been impressive, this feat of beauty and symmetry was literally breathtaking.
In the center of the fountain stood the same figure as in Anaïta’s temple in Sunstone and the same as the hidden statue of Jumana Morvarid down in the vault.
Cyrus led me down to the bottom of the hanging gardens, beneath the waterfalls and to the base of the fountain and the feet of the statue. Her wavy hair tumbled past her shoulders and was adorned by a crown of conical rays, just like Jumana’s. But unlike Jumana she smiled, a serene face with downturned eyes and full, youthful cheeks. A bittersweet version of the melancholic one in the vault.
Cyrus turned to me, my cane beneath his arm, holding both my hands, his eyes smoldering with an unknown intensity as he said, “Ada of Rose Isle, I would like you meet Jumana of Almaskham—my mother.”
Chapter Thirty
Responses fled my mind like residents abandoning a burning building, leaving me with nothing but an impulse exclamation.
“What’s your relationship to Aurelia exactly?”
He laughed disbelievingly at my sideways jump in logic, shaking his head with an indulgent grin. “She’s my great-aunt. Aurelia and Prince Faisal had only sons. My mother was their niece through Prince Jalal. The only girl left in the family at that time.”
That explained her first words to him. You look nothing like your mother.
It wasn’t out of her general spite, it was disappointment. Disappointment that she couldn’t see what was left of her only niece in his face.
He held out his hand for mine and helped me step down the encircling steps of the fountain so we were direc
tly below the marble version of Jumana. There were shells in the water, some open, displaying silvery pearls in their cores, like the smallest ring on Cyrus’ hand. Marzeya had said Jumana meant pearl. And so did Hessa—and Dorreya.
There truly was little of her in her son. He didn’t have her sad eyes, her soft bone structure, her dainty nose or even anything as minor as the shape of her fingers.
I couldn’t tell if it was better that way, that he didn’t see her in the mirror the way I saw parts of my mother in my wide smile and black hair. Marzeya had said that I looked more like my father’s mother, neither of which I knew. A man and a woman I would never know, just as Cyrus would never know Jumana.
“You said her statue was in the vault so no one could visit her or pay her their respects.”
“It was.” He nodded, softly thumbing my knuckles. “Father apparently managed to both respect palace rules and find a way around them. When I asked him about her likeness in the temple, he said he didn’t want people to forget her face or forget what she meant to him. Now all modern versions of Anaïta bear her face.”
As touching as that effort was, it threw me off the sentimental path and into a skeptical ditch. From what Nariman had told me Darius and Jumana were not happy together. Certainly not to warrant this level of yearning and tribute from Darius. Even if Nariman had bent the truth, happily married new mothers did not take their own lives.
Unless his view of her had grown rosier with absence, leading to him immortalizing her in the way he wanted to remember her.
“This is her grave.” His hand moved underneath mine when I jerked, sliding our palms across each other soothingly. “I had no idea it was until I talked to my father about the temple of Anaïta. If she had died any other way, she would be in the crypts with the rest of our dead, in a tomb, with her statue on the main floor. But once again, my father found a loophole to our rules by placing it here, pretending it’s the goddess, yet burying her in her favorite place.”
“Was it?” I asked, hoping this really was a place that made her happy.
“It was a wedding gift, this place. Father had begun its construction when their betrothal was arranged and took her here after they were married. She loved it here, I’m told.” His voice deepened and softened with an inextricable mixture of sadness and tenderness.