Cursed be the Crown (Cruel Fortunes Book 1)

by RAE STAPLETON

“What? Oh,” she said, looking up into my face. “It came from my Opa. He gave it to my mother on her wedding day. He only ever spoke of it once and he laughed about it, but Oma seemed very wary of it and asked that I never touch it.”

  “Did it come from Monaco?”

  “Not that I remember, dear. Why would you ask about Monaco?”

  “Gigi, sit down. I need to tell you where I went when I fell into the water.”

  Gigi went to her room to lie down after my incredulous story so I took the canoe out for a paddle. A heavy mist hovered over the lake, mirroring my feelings. Even the beautiful sounds and smells of nature weren’t pulling me from my funk. I raised the paddle and laid it across the belly of the boat, resting for a moment to wallow in my guilt. My story had shocked her.

  She was so tough, but my outrageous story had pushed her over the edge. Maybe Nick was right. Maybe I hit my head and fantasized the whole thing based on Gigi’s bedtime story and my guilt at losing part of the family heirloom she’d given me.

  I paddled back to our dock and walked up the hill to the house, the mist was beginning to thin. I could just make out the form of an ambulance parked in the drive.

  I watched in growing horror as the mist cleared, revealing Gigi and two men. She turned and I could see that her coat hung loosely around her, unbuttoned, as she was being led to a gurney.

  “Gigi!” I called.

  I ran the rest of the way to the emergency vehicle.

  “Wait. That’s my great-grandmother.” I huffed, trying to catch my breath as straps were secured over her.

  She stared up at me with a mixture of alarm and confusion as one of the two men securing her explained what was happening.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  The man who’d been speaking ignored me. He had a tired face and I couldn’t help but wonder, was he simply worn out or was Gigi dying?

  They collapsed the gurney’s legs, picked it and her up, and slid it into the ambulance. The other man hopped into the narrow cabin and began to put an IV in her left hand.

  “I’m coming,” I said, and jumped inside. I patted Gigi’s arm, trying to look calm and reassuring. I didn’t know what to say to break the silence. The floor vibrated as we twisted and turned. Finally, I felt it speed up as we reached the open road. On the gurney, Gigi was a mass of resistance. Watching her suffer was hell. The siren was on, but it didn’t seem loud. In the eerie quiet of the ambulance I pondered what life would be like without Gigi, and I didn’t like it. We arrived at the hospital. Doors opened and she was rolled out and into an examining room. Someone asked, “Are you family?” It seemed a silly question. Why else would I be there, tears streaming down my face? Gigi was making sounds somewhere between language and a moan. At last, someone I took to be a doctor came into the room; dark-haired, he appeared to be in his late thirties. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He looked at his printout and wandered out of the room.

  I followed him out to the hall, trying to catch up, when Gigi’s scream rose and echoed with a blood-curdling resonance.

  Returning at once, I found my beloved grandmother sitting up in the bed, her arms stretched out in front of her, all but one finger curled into her fists with a terrible rigidity, as if she was pointing. I looked desperately around the room, meeting the eyes of a nurse as she entered.

  “Gigi! What’s wrong?” I cried out. I tried to ease her back down onto the bed, but she was inflexible. The nurse came forward, calling her name, Veronika, holding her and then shaking her. Once again, Gigi ignored us.

  Then she went down. She simply crumpled into a heap in the center of the bed. The nurse and I looked at each other.

  “What’s happening to her?” I asked, my voice high pitched and anxious.

  The nurse shook her head, staring at the monitors as if stumped.

  “Nothing. She’s fine. Must be a nightmare,” she said, before leaving the room.

  Green eyes, the color of grass, opened to mine. They were filled with pain. Her head was haloed by her wealth of hair, and she smiled sleepily at the sight of my face, as if nothing had happened—as if the bone-jarring sounds had never come from her lips.

  “Did you have a nightmare?” I asked anxiously.

  Then a troubled frown knit her brow. “He’s there! Turn around!” she whispered, in a panicked breath. Was she hallucinating?

  “He wants Mama’s jewels!” she cried. “Hide them.” For a fleeting second, I wondered if Gigi knew more than she had let on. I had done this. I never should have told her of my time travel—it was just too much. I felt overcome, but I swallowed the sob. A nurse wheeled in another bag, fussed with the intravenous line, attached an access joint to it, and began another drip.

  “Morphine,” she said. “That should help.”

  As I tried not to think about what she’d just said, I realized I should call Greta.

  We were moved to a room with monitors, a chair, and a television suspended above the bed with curtains that could be drawn for privacy. It wasn’t brightly lit but whispers of grey light filtered in through the window. Gigi was transferred to the bed, and I prayed the morphine was working. An hour later, Gigi bolted upright. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven,” she mumbled. “A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant.”

  “Gigi, what are you talking about? Are you singing right now?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  “Ecclesiastes three,” she whispered. Her words were so jumbled, they were hard to understand but, by the fourth time, I knew she was quoting her favorite passage in the bible.

  “A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.” I finished the passage with her, which seemed to agitate her more.

  “Too soon. I need to show you.” She fought me as I tried to lay her back down. “You don’t understand. My book. Where is it? Find it!”

  I guess everyone wants to hear God’s word in a situation like this, I told myself, scanning the room for a bible. Then the nurse returned.

  After watching the nurse give Gigi another shot of morphine, settling her quite comfortably, I sat holding her hand until she fell into a deep sleep. The nurses were kind enough to bring me a reclining chair, and so I dozed in and out of consciousness.

  Finally, she woke. She seemed much better. She turned to me, tears brimming in her eyes.

  “Come closer, child.”

  I dutifully moved out of the recliner and into the chair by her bedside.

  “I’m sorry, Gigi. I never should have said anything.”

  “Now, now, hush. Let your Granny speak before it’s too late… I know I romanticized life for you when you were younger, telling you magical stories my Opa told me, but I never told you everything… I never told you what Oma said… about the jewel being cursed.”

  “Who said the jewel was cursed?”

  “Oma-Gretchen.”

  I shook my head, forcing back tears as she patted my hand.

  “Opa-Johanne playfully spoke of it at dinner one night—the night my mother wore the necklace. Oma grew very agitated. Opa called her superstitious at the time and said she was upset because she blamed the damn thing for Velte’s disappearance.”

  “Velte was your father’s twin who died on the passage over from Germany, right?”

  “You do pay attention, don’t you, dear?”

  “Of course, Gigi; you don’t speak of your family often, so when you do, I listen.”

  The nurse returned; we both hushed. She asked Gigi some questions about her pain and pulled back the blankets to check her leg.

  Gigi groaned as the nurse moved her.

  “Is it your back, Mrs. Jackson?”

  Gigi nodded, squinting in pain.

  “I’ll get you something for that. I think it’s time for a heavier dose. Just a minute.”

  The nurse left the room, and Gigi turned toward me. “We don’t have much time. I can’t think through these drugs, so listen up. Oma said the gem was
cursed. She said Velte touched it and that’s why he died.”

  “Where did your Opa get the jewel set from?”

  “The original gem came from a curator in Ireland. Papa had it made into a set for Mama. It came with a curse.”

  “A curse?” I asked, just as the nurse returned. I wanted to ask what the curse said, where the note was, but I knew Gigi’s pain was bad. She was starting to shake, and I figured I could wait until she was better. When she nodded off, I picked my phone up and shot off a text to Leslie letting her know what had happened and where we were. Just as I set my phone back down, it dinged with a message from Cullen asking me how I was doing. I’d spoken to him when I’d got to the hospital so he knew what was going on. Everything was such a blur then, I couldn’t remember much of the conversation, except that he’d been sweet, offering to come and help out if need be. We’d talked four times since I’d left France and he’d asked me to come to Ireland. Teasing me that I needed another vacation. Of course, given what Gigi had just said about the curator who’d sold it to our family, perhaps a trip to Ireland was a good idea. After Gigi recovered, of course.

  Greta showed up a few hours later and I headed out to grab a coffee with Leslie. As soon as we were alone, I wrapped my arms around her and let the tears loose. “This is all my fault.”

  “What?” Leslie asked, patting my back like a small child.

  I was crying so hard I could hardly explain plus I didn’t know where to start but she wasn’t about to let it go. She pulled me back and held me by the shoulders. “Sophia! What are you talking about? Gigi has cancer. That is not your fault.”

  I glanced around the underground parking lot. “I told Gigi what happened, and it shocked her. Let’s talk in your car.”

  As soon we shut the doors, she turned to me. “Spill.”

  I sniffled. “I don’t know how to put this.”

  She frowned. “Just have out with it, already.”

  “I guess there is only one way, really,” I hedged.

  “Yesss.” Leslie pushed her glasses higher up on her nose.

  “This is going to sound nuts, but there’s no real sane way to say it. When I fell from that island near Cannes, there was a swirling vortex—and I think it was a passage through time.”

  Leslie laughed. “I’m sorry, but I think you should put the seat back and have a nap. You’re delirious.”

  “No, I woke up in a palace bedroom. Everyone thought I was the Princess of Monaco—you know the one we were researching for that psychic lady.”

  Leslie had a look of disbelief on her face. I knew it well. I’d seen it in the hospital, and seeing it on her face made me cry.

  “Anyway, there was this alchemist named Rochus and guess what he owned—that book, the one I brought into the library by accident—the spellbook. Coincidence? I think not. He said the jewel in my ring, the sapphire ring that Gigi gave me was magical and assumed that was why I slipped through time. Do you know what he called it?” I paused. She was looking at me like I was crazy. “The Delhi Sapphire. You know, like the one we researched.” I was getting nothing but crickets. “Ugh, you don’t believe me? Not you too?”

  She reached out and touched my hand. “It doesn’t matter what I believe, Sophia.”

  “Nick didn’t believe me, either,” I said, with a trace of bitterness. “He tried to have me committed at the hospital.”

  “Please, please, don’t compare me to that jackass.”

  “Oh, Leslie, I can’t be going crazy. This really happened. I mean, you saw the book open to that spell, remember? You met the psychic who asked us to look into all this. She probably foresaw what was about to happen to me.” Which reminded me that I should get in contact with her to find out why the hell she didn’t give me more of a direct warning. Then again, I did run away.

  “Sophia.”

  “Don’t say my name like you feel sorry for me. It’s real. It all has to be real, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, let’s look at this from a Wizard of Oz sort of perspective. We found a peculiar book and yes, we did research these people for a patron who turned out to be a weird psychic lady. I mean, she totally creeped you out, and after that, you had a near death experience that landed you in the hospital. Don’t you think it’s possible that in your unconscious dreamlike state, your brain’s wires got crossed between reality and fiction. It made your dream seem real.

  “No!”

  Leslie sighed. “You’ve just been through some major trauma, Sophia. Maybe you should speak to someone.”

  “I am speaking to someone. You!”

  “I mean a professional. What if you have a brain injury from that fall?”

  “You know what… never mind,” I said, getting out her car. I’m going back in to see Gigi. Can you just bring me back a coffee and a sandwich?

  The next few hours were touch and go. As I sat by her side, I contemplated everything that had happened. Curses and magical gemstones—I had always assumed that was the stuff of legend, children’s bedtime stories meant to spark the imagination. Whoever possessed the magic gained the power to time travel, which, to the logical mind, sounded crazy, but then there was me—unless I was going nuts? Which I wasn’t entirely sure was inaccurate. Leslie assumed I was still confused from the bump on my head. Even Gigi had seemed shocked by what I told her although she definitely knew more than she ever let on. Which is why I couldn’t wait for her to get better. Sometimes, she was lucid, but she was never as clear as the first time. More and more often she confused me with her sister, and mumbled incoherently about Ireland and the family curse. That alarmed me because, based on everything I had been through, I couldn’t help but wonder if she knew something more. I rocked back and forth on my feet, needing an outlet for the energy that rumbled inside my bones. I tried to question her further, but the nurses told me I should let her rest, that the drugs created hallucinations and the patients were apt to ramble incoherently. I had trouble accepting that, but what more could I do? It was like she had a million secrets to share and I would never hear any of them.

  She died two days later and I went into a numb state. Leslie, drove us to the Lakehouse. I slept for a bit, but it was hard to ignore the scent of Gigi’s ghost that hung in the air. After cleaning up our dinner dishes—which consisted of take-out boxes and chopsticks—Leslie poured me a glass of wine and carried a beat-up, cardboard box up to Gigi’s room where I was sitting.

  “What’s that?”

  I looked at it. “Oh, I think that’s the box from my great-grandfather’s secret cubby.” I reached forward and pulled an album from the top out first and took a seat by the hearth. Leslie bent down and grabbed a stack of papers and then moved back to her spot on the couch.

  I looked down at the album. The first snapshot made me smile. It was an old Polaroid of my Gigi and me lying in a field of wild flowers.

  Leslie picked up a paper and then turned it toward me, pensively. She rotated her shoulders as she worked a deep breath in and out of her lungs.

  “You’re staring,” I said, irritated.

  “This is you!”

  It was a nineteenth-century portrait ripped from a history book. The image was grainy, but I recognized it. The caption below read Princess Sapphira Alexandrie of Monaco, 1857.

  She flushed and glanced at the picture and then back at me. “It’s uncanny.”

  “I saw that painting, in person. It hung in the palace study. Now do you believe me?”

  “Holy shit! I’m beginning to. Oh God, they’re going to lock us both up and throw away the key. How can you look so much like your ancestors, anyway—especially when there’s over a hundred years separating you?”

  “I don’t know that I’m related to the Princess. Maybe it’s a past-life thing.”

  “Well, is this lady from a past life as well?” she said, holding out another photo. “Because, seriously, this is you at sixteen.”

  “Now that is a relative. That’s my Great-Aunt Zafira, Gigi’s sister.”

 
“Genetics are fascinating,” Leslie said. “Your name even sounds like hers?”

  “Kind of. Gigi always told me I reminded her of her sister, Zafira.

  I pushed my feet a little closer to the fire, hoping to rid them of the chill. When that didn’t work, I grabbed the next item from Grampa’s container—a shoe box—and moved to the chaise to cover myself in a black, plush blanket.

  “What’s in there?” Leslie asked, as she downed her last sip of wine.

  “Police reports, newspaper clippings and a leather notebook. You want half?”

  “Yes,” she chuckled, getting up. “But I’m going to bed. I’ve got to work tomorrow. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  On impulse, I walked to Gigi closet and pulled her fur coat out. I wrapped it tightly around me. From behind closed eyelids, I could picture her ensconced in the bed the first night I came to live with her. Her room reminded me of a pillow—so peaceful with all its soft grays and muted creams. There were two banks of diamond-paned, bay windows at the far end, half veiled by gold-and-cream brocade shades and valances. The windows looked out over the dark, still lake. Chairs and loveseats were arranged in front of the windows. Against another wall was a large fireplace; across from that was a king-size bed with a large trunk at the end of it. She’d been wearing a sage green peignoir, reclining against a mountain of satiny, pearl pillows. There was a tea tray on one side of her, and she had been engrossed in a book. I had been terribly homesick and lost without my mother’s embrace. As I walked in, she had turned to face me. A bright smile lit her tired face.

  “Sophia, darling. What’s the matter? I thought I tucked you into bed an hour ago.” Her words rang in my ears as if she’d just spoken them yesterday. She’d held out her arms for me to come to her. Of course, I climbed on top of the giant bed, and she enveloped me in her arms, bending to kiss my cheek. Gigi’s hair had still been that incredible shade of fiery copper; her eyes—always her best feature—were wide and green and striking. Her skin and nails were meticulously cared for. She smelled and even sounded like my mother, so I curled in.

  I could feel her ghostly arms snuggled around me now.