The Princess Curse

by Merrie Haskell

  And she with him?

  Lord Dragos had been watching the princesses, absorbing all their reactions. Now he extended one extremely long, sharp claw, as strong and sturdy as a dagger, and slowly moved it toward Pa’s throat. I was about to cry out—

  “I remind you of Tereza’s warning, my lord,” Lacrimora croaked. “We won’t be much for dancing if he dies in front of us.”

  Lord Dragos checked his motion. I wished—oh, how I wished—that I could read the zmeu’s expression. I tried to impose my memory of Prince Frumos’s lean face over the dragon’s toothy jaws, but it was impossible. Not even the eyes were alike. Surely if Prince Frumos and Lord Dragos were one, their eyes would be the same?

  “There is one way you could forestall his death,” Lord Dragos pointed out.

  Lacrimora bit her lip. “Would you—would you let him go if I married you?”

  Uproar followed this. Pa yelled angry, misshapen words against his gag, and Otilia leaped from her chair and clapped a hand over Lacrimora’s mouth. The rest of the princesses all spoke at once. Even the footmen looked surprised. I used the uproar as cover to sneak over to Pa, pulling my herb knife as I went, intending to cut his bonds and give him a fighting chance against the zmeu.

  “She don’t mean it, Lord Dragos,” Princess Rada hollered, her tavern wench’s screech cutting across the commotion.

  “Absolutely, she means it!” Princess Maricara shouted back.

  “You would say that, you highborn snot! You’ve been trying to make us pay for your foolishness for six years!”

  It was as if they knew I needed the distraction. I would have thought it was all on purpose, except that Otilia’s struggles with Lacrimora looked very real. Then Rada leaned over and punched Maricara in the nose. As blood poured across Prince Vasile’s eldest daughter’s lips, I spoke softly into my father’s ear—“It’s me, Pa”—and sliced through the bonds at his wrists.

  “No, Reveka!” Pa’s voice was low and urgent, pitched well under the noise of the commotion around us. Only, it came out “Doh, Bubefa!” through his gag. I thought about swatting his head for saying my name—but I had already made the fatal error. Pa’s bonds fell to the floor. And there was no hiding that.

  “Interesting,” Lord Dragos said, and stared right at me. “It appears that I have a second visitor.” And he reached over and plucked the invisibility cap off my head.

  The fighting and arguing stopped as soon as I appeared.

  It must have been an interesting tableau, me poised over my father with a knife, Lord Dragos holding a cap above my head.

  I curtsied to the zmeu, suddenly sure of myself, suddenly certain of what I had to do then, to save us all.

  “Lord Dragos,” I said. “You may let everyone else go free. I will marry you.”

  Chapter 22

  “I accept your proposal,” Lord Dragos said, and the finality of his words was like a thunderclap.

  The strangest details revealed themselves to me in that moment, as if the time between heartbeats had grown to encompass days of wakefulness. I’d not untied Pa’s feet, which was probably the only thing that kept him from imprudently launching himself at the zmeu, though he struggled to move. Lacrimora finally broke free from Otilia and climbed to her feet. Princess Maricara held her streaming nose, while Tereza and Viorica kept Princess Rada from inflicting further damage. Mihas’s expression veered between anguish and puzzlement.

  Lord Dragos put an oddly gentle hand on Pa’s chest to keep him from trying to untie the rest of his bonds. I looked down to see the first invisibility cap lying on the table.

  I scooped the cap into my herb pouch, knowing that no one saw me do it.

  Then my pulse sped up and time resumed its normal pace, and all was chaos and confusion again.

  “You are released from your oaths,” Dragos said to the princesses. “You’re free. Go. Now!”

  “The—the men—” Princess Otilia said.

  “Take them,” Dragos said. “Take all of them. You’ll have to waken them. They’re dull as ditchwater right now.” He looked at me. “Come to me, Reveka.”

  A sudden sob of fright welled up within me, but I choked it back. I would not go to this new life weeping. Nor would I let Pa’s last memory of me be of a terrified, crying girl. I lifted my chin with bravery I did not feel, blinked through the tears, and smiled at Pa as I took a step toward the zmeu.

  Lord Dragos held out a long-fingered hand, and somehow, I forced myself to grasp it. He pulled me into an embrace so warm that I felt as if the fires of a glassblower’s furnace had engulfed me. I heard the snap of his wings catching the air, and with his arms tight around me, he lifted me upward and away. We swooped from the pavilion and into the darkness, leaving behind the cries of the princesses and my father.

  My stomach plummeted and rose, then completely flipped, and I almost lost its contents all over the zmeu’s chest. Don’t, I ordered myself. Just don’t feel this, and you’ll be fine. This tactic worked well enough to keep my innards in.

  Lord Dragos’s breath blew heavily in my ear, and his arms were too tight around me. His wings stroked steadily, and I couldn’t decide if I wished I could see or if I was glad for the darkness. But wait—I could see. The glow of the pavilion had fallen behind us, but I could distinguish over the zmeu’s shoulder, between his wings, the dazzling lights on the water. Twelve shadows marred the perfection of the pavilion’s reflection: the boats were crossing the lake.

  They were leaving. Just like they were supposed to.

  “Go,” I breathed, a sort of prayer to Lacrimora. I imagined her entering the western tower and waking the sleepers, now that the curse was broken. Didina, awake! Her mother, saved! I thought of Mistress Adina’s face wreathed in joyous smile wrinkles, and I smiled just a little, too.

  Then I wondered if Pa was in one of the boats or not.

  My smile faded, and I found I was clenching my fists. He’d better be.

  We landed in darkness, in a place that smelled of minerals and water and clay. “We’re here,” Dragos said, releasing me but for a guiding hand on my shoulder as we moved forward. “I’m afraid that since I’ve just let all of my servants go, there is no one to light our way. But I have a knack for darkness.” He spoke wryly.

  “Why did you tell me your name was Frumos?” I asked.

  His step faltered and he sucked in a breath, but then he was pushing me forward again. “As you yourself pointed out, I never said it was my name,” he said, his voice grown considerably softer. “So. You knew when you agreed to marry me?”

  “Not much before that, but yes.”

  He was silent a long moment and then spoke harshly: “If you were hoping that the other is my true form and this one the facade, then you made a poor decision.”

  I was glad that darkness hid my face. It wasn’t that I’d thought Frumos was the true form and Dragos the false one; but I’d hoped that there was enough truth in Frumos to make Dragos bearable.

  I breathed deep and tried to summon bravery. “Where are we going?” I asked, instead of the fourteen thousand other questions that occurred to me.

  “To find candles. This place is too dark for your eyes yet.” He guided me on, and I walked trustingly, not hesitating as my feet continued to pat along on flagstones. I supposed that if he really wanted to run me into an oubliette, he would, and it didn’t matter much if I toed my way into it or walked confidently over the edge.

  “So you’re the . . .” I paused, uncertain of how to phrase my question. “What exactly have I betrothed myself to?”

  “‘What?’” he asked flatly.

  I made an impatient gesture, hoping he could see it. “You’re a lord. Of. A really dark realm.”

  “It is the Underworld. Southeast of us is Elysium; southwest, Tartarus. This is Thonos, which is the name of the realm, the name of this mountain, and the name of my castle. And when you are its Queen, I will be your King.”

  Not merely a lord, but a king? “If you had told the princ
esses that one of them could become a queen, Maricara would have married you on the first day you asked,” I said. “Even if this is Hell.” I shivered. “Is this Hell?”

  “No, Hell is a lake of fire,” he said. “This is but a region of the Underworld, and a haven and a waypoint for souls that die. Some go to Hell from here. Some go to Heaven. And some stay. Ah! Here we are.”

  He took his hand off my shoulder, and for one too-long moment, I was alone in darkness. Too alone. Where was up? Where was down? Back? Forth? The darkness seemed to press in on me, curling around my ribs, constricting my breath.

  A hissing pop and a flare of light came from my left. I turned to watch a thin stream of fire leak from Dragos’s mouth and ignite a series of candles. The warm scent of melting beeswax filled the air.

  He placed candles all around a wide stone hall, which was sparsely furnished with a long dining table to one side and a few armchairs arranged before an empty fireplace at the other end.

  The light grew as Lord Dragos lit more candles. I stared at Lord Dragos’s hands, their thick black claws, his incarnadine skin. I shuddered and looked around for somewhere to hide. Under the table was bad. Under the table he could reach me easily.

  But there wasn’t anywhere else to hide from him and his demon hands and face.

  “That’s enough light,” I croaked.

  He turned to me. I looked at him. A curl of smoke escaped one of his nostrils.

  “Please?” I asked. “Please. I won’t ask again. Probably I won’t. No promises. A promise like that would be a lie. But could you be Frumos for a bit?”

  I wished I could read his expression. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don’t have that sort of power over my form,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  I took a breath, involuntarily shuddering. “There are at least a dozen stories of maidens who married hidden monsters and never knew it. I envy them.”

  “Would you rather live such a lie?”

  I had to look away. “I’d rather the lie if we are to be married,” I said to the flagstones.

  Silence. I dared not look at him until I heard him snort. “You’re a bit young for marriage, Reveka, aren’t you?”

  I should have been relieved at this indication that I might not be marrying him immediately. Instead, I was instantly irate. “But girls my age marry all the time. Among the nobles, anyway. Peasants and guildsmen, sensibly, marry later.”

  “Certainly, girls your age do marry, all the time,” he agreed. “But a girl as young as you lives as a daughter of the family, as a sister to her husband, until the couple prove their maturity to their parents. Consummation . . . waits. For many years, sometimes.”

  I’d never heard that about the ruling classes, but suddenly, it made sense why Princess Daciana wasn’t a mother yet.

  “You’re telling me you went to all this trouble to get a bride, and you want to wait a few more years before getting your heirs?”

  “I will have no heir of my body here,” Dragos said, and for an instant, his voice—well, perhaps more his accent—sounded like Frumos’s. If I closed my eyes, could I imagine that he was the slender young man who’d pretended not to know my name? “It is only a bride I require, a queen for my land. And I’m very grateful that you’ve sacrificed yourself by marrying me. For yes, I am a dragon, a zmeu, and that’s as bad as anything. But you must have had plans. You must have wanted . . . a family? Children?”

  “We won’t have any children?” For this, I was mostly grateful. I couldn’t imagine bearing little red-skinned, horned babies. But I also felt the pang of a loss I did not even fully comprehend. I had never intended to marry, but how could I gain a husband and lose all prospect of children in a single day? In a single hour?

  “I am a lord of the Underworld. This is a domain of darkness and death. No life begins down here.” He spoke so sadly, my ire fled, and with it my sense of gratitude and loss. Mostly, I just felt pity. And that emotion seemed to be a doorway for the darkness.

  “All life begins in the dark, though,” I said, looking at the candles. They did very little to hold the darkness at bay. “All seeds sleep in the dirt.” The words felt hollow. I could feel the darkness pressing on me. I tottered on my feet, losing my balance a little.

  Dragos was there in an instant, hoisting me onto a chair by the cold fireplace. A flash, and he ignited the fire. “Stay a moment—I will fetch you some food and water. You will be all right, with the fire and the candles?”

  I nodded and buried my head in my hands, wondering how I was going to live here, and that’s when the darkness came striding in like it owned my soul, robbing me of my breath. For a long, horrible moment, I could only remember the lies I’d told, the half-truths I’d kept, and the fear of punishment in this life and the next that lying brought. I moaned—and then, the darkness was gone.

  I breathed. It was like lead ingots had been removed from my chest. That . . . thing, it wasn’t just darkness. That was . . . Darkness.

  A few moments later, there was the scuff of a footstep, and I sat bolt upright, terrified, my hands clamped down on the arms of my chair. Lord Dragos didn’t have footsteps, he had . . . hoofbeats. This was someone else, and there wasn’t supposed to be anyone else. “Who’s there?” I cried, and nearly jumped out of my skin when Mihas stepped into the light.

  Chapter 23

  “Reveka,” Mihas whispered, lurching to kneel before me. “I have a message from your father!”

  “What?” I leaped to my feet, capsizing the cowherd. He lay on the floor, looking confused.

  “Before I came back up the mountain, your father and the mean princess, Lacrimora, said I was to look to your welfare—”

  “Did they order you to come back here?”

  “No. I offered to come.”

  “What? Why?”

  Mihas looked confused.

  “You idiot! I came here to free you!”

  His mouth gaped open. He gestured around. “You did this for me?”

  “For all of you! For my pa, of course, mostly, but for all of you trapped idiots, too. And for the sleepers in the tower—Lacrimora will wake them now.” Tears of fury sprang to my eyes.

  He got slowly to his feet. “Your father’s message—he says, ‘Hold fast. Eat nothing. Drink no wine, or beer, or the water of Lethe. Do these things, and you can leave the Underworld again.’ He will come for you. He will rescue you.”

  “The others, they all drank the wine and ate the food, and Lord Dragos released them from their bonds—”

  “I asked this same question,” he said. I felt markedly stupider for thinking like Mihas. “Princess Lacrimora said Dragos would never release you if you ate here, because you agreed to be the consort of the Underworld. But your father shushed her and said— Oh.” Mihas looked sad. “He said not to tell you that.”

  I ignored this. “So am I just supposed to starve?” The Darkness was pressing at me again, trying to steal my breath. I tried to ignore it.

  “I will bring you food and drink from the World Above as I can,” Mihas said. “I’ll be your footman. If I set a plate of food elegantly before you, you can be sure that it is safe. If I fumble with it, then it is not safe.”

  Amazing. Perhaps he wasn’t a total idiot after all.

  “Now, the water you can drink, as long as you are careful never to drink from the river Lethe.”

  Lethe—I’d heard of that. In the Greek myths, it was the river of forgetting, which souls had to drink from in order to leave behind their lives on earth. “All right. No food, no wine, no Lethe. I understand. I assume it’s all right to use the toilet facilities, however?”

  Mihas looked confused, then vaguely appalled. “I didn’t ask!” he wailed.

  “It was a joke, Mihas.”

  His brows drew together. “How can you make light of this?”

  “How can I not?” I peered into a water pitcher standing alluringly on the table. I hadn’t been hungry or thirsty until Mihas had told me I was on a restricted diet. “Di
d my father give you any further message for me? ‘Don’t eat. Don’t drink anything but water, and then not if it’s from Lethe.’ But nothing else?” No ‘Thank you’? No apology for stealing my invisibility cap?

  “I . . . I don’t think so,” Mihas said, sounding confused.

  “Never mind.” I poked my nose into the pitcher and inhaled. It smelled like springwater. “What’s the water of Lethe like?”

  Mihas appeared to consider. “Like water,” he said. I groaned and put the pitcher back down.

  I didn’t hear Dragos enter, but I felt the room fill with his presence. I turned to find him glaring at Mihas.

  “Why didn’t you go with the others?” he asked the boy.

  “I vowed to serve you,” Mihas said.

  Dragos snorted, looking carefully from Mihas to me. “And I released you from your vows. You should have taken the chance while you could. You will not be released a second time.”

  “I came to serve,” Mihas said. “May I show your guest to her room?”

  “She is my betrothed and your future queen,” Dragos said. “Not a guest. She will tell you what she wants.”

  “I could rest,” I said feebly.

  “Very well.” Dragos extended his hand to me, and for lack of anything wise to do, I let my fingers touch his. He bent nearly in half to press his dragon lips—which were not really lips at all, but simply the coldness of his tusks where they poked from his mouth—to my hand. I tried not to shudder.

  He stepped back. “I must see if I can find servants for you,” he said. “Mihas here will not be enough. Sleep well, Reveka.” And his hand and his tusks and the whole of him were gone in a swirl of red wings and black cloak.

  I stared after him for too long a moment, until Mihas coughed, evincing more discretion than I had ever suspected he possessed. He held out his arm in a courtly manner, and I took it, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for an herbalist’s apprentice to play queen to a cowherd’s footman.

  Mihas took a brace of candles and led me down two hallways to a bedroom. Bedchamber and hallways alike were stone, stone, and more stone. There was no softness anywhere, no carpets or tapestries. The bed even lacked curtains, which it direly needed, for I was beginning to feel the stone-damp in my bones. There was at least a mattress filled with something softer than straw, covered by a bearskin—head still attached.