Ever Cursed Page 6

  I’m dying. Right now, right here, right in front of their eyes.

  I wonder if this is how they looked at the princess, before one of their kingdoms took her.

  And I wonder, again and again, which kingdom it was. And why we ask for her return, but not for answers.

  Tonight I look everywhere for the young witch who cast the spell, who will any minute now tell us how to break it, but instead all I see are princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, royalty from our kingdom and other kingdoms, waiting to talk to us. Royals from other kingdoms look nothing like our family. My sisters and I all have the same white skin and the same brown hair and the same freckles in the same pattern marking our faces. Nora’s cheeks are higher, and Alice’s nose is bigger. Grace’s hair curls, and Eden’s lips are thin. But we all look like our mother, more or less.

  Families from other kingdoms mostly don’t look like us or even like one another. But we recognize them anyway in their fancy gowns and heavy furs and entirely unnecessary gloves covering them from fingertips to elbows.

  As promised, the party looks like the night sky. And if this party is the night sky, I suppose Nora, Alice, Grace, Eden, and I are planets floating about in the darkness.

  “My beautiful princesses,” Dad says when the music pauses and the food stops its endless parade through the hall. “I’m delighted to introduce the esteemed royals of our neighboring kingdoms to my marvelous girls. Not only are they lovely and kind, we have also seen over the past five years that they are brave. And strong. Stronger than the rest of us. So strong they are enduring the worst spell our kingdom has ever seen.”

  Dozens of people bow their heads at this. But not all of them. I see an errant eye roll, a scowl, a smirk.

  The Prince of Soar raises his eyebrows. He takes up a lot of room, this prince. He’s tall and broad, and he’s wearing a thick brown fur that only adds to his mass. He is big enough to grab a princess around her waist and run her out of the castle before anyone has a chance to hear her.

  And that’s about to change, I want my father to say. They are here to break the spell, I want him to proclaim. We are celebrating the end of the Spell of Without.

  “Every Thirteenth Birthday is important,” Dad goes on. “But this year, more than ever, it is a celebration of my daughters. For what they have endured. For what they insist on surviving. For their unusual circumstances. We won’t ever truly understand them. We have tried to solve many mysteries over the centuries. Where our princess went and when she will return. How the candles in our windows have never-dying flames. How to coexist with the witches themselves. But the biggest mystery of all, it turns out, is these five princesses.”

  He raises his hand and sweeps it through the air, gesturing toward us. I look to my left, past Nora, at Alice, whose eyes are closed. Her body waves back and forth in a state I call Alice’s Near Sleep. This isn’t the way Dad has ever spoken about us. I don’t need him to think we are magical and enchanted and mysterious and unknowable. I want to be his daughter, the way I’ve always been. Last year, for my birthday, he carved a bird in stone, with Alice’s help. Usually a carved bird is sitting and still, but this one was in flight. It was beautiful and simple and somehow exactly what I needed. A reminder that we are moving even when we feel trapped.

  I want that father, the father who whittled a soaring bird in the backyard so that I wouldn’t catch sight of it until the morning, when he served it to me in bed, like he used to bring me breakfast.

  When Dad’s done talking, the royals rush at us once again, but it’s Grace who reaches my side first. She taps my elbow. “Why’d he say those things?” she asks. “Why did he act like we’re girls from a story?” Her brow is furrowed, the way it always is when she’s trying to unwind the world. “We’re real girls,” Grace says, sure at first, then doubting herself immediately. “Right?”

  I hold her close. I want to tell her we aren’t girls from a story, but of course we are. We are written into books every day, the tales of our lives shaped and sharpened into something for students in Ever to memorize.

  I can’t explain that to Grace.

  “Right,” I say, because a queen gives hope to those who need it. Alice opens her eyes for a half second, like she needs to hear the answer too, so I say it extra loud. “We are the realest girls.”

  The Prince of Droomland approaches from behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You sure are real,” he says, turning something sweet into something awful. He has broad shoulders and blue eyes and thick dark hair that girls probably think about running their fingers through. I’m sure I used to have those thoughts. But today I find him repulsive.

  So does Grace. She runs away, to a tower of cheese and bread that I’ve been avoiding.

  The prince stands closer than I’d like. Closer than feels entirely proper. It does not feel like an accident.

  “Your Spellbound,” the Prince of Droomland says. He doesn’t sense the way my body leans back, the way my eyes dart to other places I’d rather be.

  Or, worse, he does sense it and stays anyway.

  I have never liked Droomland and its tall men and smirking prince and king with a very young wife and castle that’s rumored to have a suspicious number of locked rooms.

  “I won’t be Spellbound for much longer,” I say. “You can call me Jane.”

  “Just Jane?” It’s all slippery and wet coming from his mouth. I hate it.

  “Princess Jane.” I hope it sounds like a line drawn in the sand. His fingers touch my arm, the place in between my elbow and my wrist where my sleeve stops and my bare skin emerges. It could be an accident, but it’s not.

  “Well,” he says. “You can call me Felix.”

  “Prince Felix,” I say.

  “It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” he says. “The prince business?”

  I watch Dad introduce Alice to the Prince and Princess of Soar and Nora to the Prince of Nethering and Grace to the Princess of Farr. Alice is already stuck in a chair, too heavy with tiredness to move but maybe in the back of her mind planning her nighttime sculpture of this event: stars and eager faces and princesses looking around for a witch to appear. Somehow, Alice will be able to capture it all. When Alice was six, she chose her name. I wanted her to pick something that would tell everyone what an artist she is. Maybe Elna, which means “creative.” But Alice chose her name, which means “of the nobility.” I understood. Being noble, being royal, is the most important thing that we are.

  Tonight, though, it’s hard to be anything but desperate.

  Nora has a wrinkled gown and narrow eyes. Eden won’t move from the door, she’s so desperate for the witch to arrive and tell us what to do. I wonder if in this strange, topsy-turvy world, I am the most desirable girl here, if Dad is proudest of me.

  For the first time in five years, I wish my body were even more slight, more invisible. Unseen.

  “It’s all a bit much,” I say at last.

  “Especially for you, I guess,” the prince says. He takes my wrist in his hand. Looks at it like it’s made of glass. I haven’t been touched by any royal man but my father. Not ever. My flesh prickles. He circles his fingers around my wrist, and they go all the way around and then some.

  “Look at that,” he goes on. “Tiny.”

  I pull back, but he doesn’t let go. His fingers are dry, and his mouth is wet. He is measuring me.

  They don’t tell you, when you are a young princess, how very often men will take stock of you, the size of your parts and the way they fit together. What they might do with each bit of you. We used to believe we were whole, but the witch and these men know that we are only a collection of parts. A witch can take a part away. A man can decide he wants one bit of you but not another.

  “Not one crumb in five years,” the prince goes on. He doesn’t see what’s happening inside me. For all his assessing, he’s forgotten to care about the expression of my mouth, the loud, fast beat of my heart. It doesn’t concern him, I guess. More parts to discard.r />
  What he’s said isn’t a question, so I don’t answer. I wait for my father to come by and save me. It is the kind of thing my father would do—swoop in and direct me somewhere else, giving the prince a stern look or a talking-to.

  But my father is speaking to a queen from another kingdom, and I can’t catch his eye. I have been having trouble catching his eye lately.

  “It’s alluring,” the prince says, still handling my wrist. “Is that wrong to say? It is, though. Intriguing. So many princesses—they’re all the same. You girls. You’re different, aren’t you?”

  The hall is filled with delicious smells that normally would be haunting me, but right now that pain is better than this shame. I inhale the scent of everything I used to love and focus on how much it hurts to know I won’t be eating any of it. Roast garlic. Melting cheese. Thick cream sauces. Ginger. Strawberries. Shrimp.

  I watch ten roast ducks with whipped parsnips and pomegranate seeds be wheeled by on a gold tray across the room. Prince Felix hovers over me. Watches my wanting, pairs it with his own.

  “Anyone could marry a regular princess,” Prince Felix says. “Practically anyone. Anyone of note. But there’s only four of you. Five now. That’s—well. I’m honored to be here. Honored that I might deserve something different than a regular princess in a castle, pecking at pastries and sipping champagne and waving at peasants.” He considers my waist. My face. The slump of my shoulders. “I bet by the end of the day you can’t even wave your hand. I bet you can’t stand at all. Can you even sit? You must be on your back every evening, no fight left in you.”

  I check my arms, my legs, rub the back of my neck to make sure I’m still there, that I’m a whole person, and not just the idea of a princess. My skin is hot. Sweating. Usually, at the Birthdays, they kiss our hands and compliment our hair. From time to time they’ve whispered a question about the spell. But this is new. This is base and terrible and wrong.

  I wonder if this is the way they spoke about the kidnapped princess. No one knows where she ended up or if she’s alive or why she was taken to begin with. But right now, with the prince finding me perfectly weak and takeable, I think I know more about that princess than I ever wanted to.

  It turns out I’d also forgotten that she was a person, and not just a bit of lore. My grandmother’s sister. My great-aunt. It’s hard to think of her as anything but a story we’ve been told, though.

  I’m as bad as he is, this awful prince.

  I must blush. It feels like rage, but I think it shows up on my face as modesty. I want to tell him that I won’t be this way for much longer, that tonight is about the hope for the future, is about breaking the spell. I want to tell him to get away from me, to stop looking at me with those awful eyes. I want to tell him that the way he’s talking to me only makes me more determined to break the spell.

  I try to make him see I will be queen. But he doesn’t see. His gaze is fixed on my waist.

  “You must simply fall to pieces at the slightest bit of trouble,” he whispers in my ear. His breath is hot against my skin. It is worse than hunger. It makes me even emptier. I lift my shoulders to my ears, but of course it’s not enough. “I’m here to catch you,” he says. “You can collapse anytime. I’ve never seen a fainting princess.”

  I hate the way it sounds, but I don’t respond. Sometimes that’s better. Easier. Princesses aren’t meant to respond to every little thing. It’s okay to be quiet and still, my mother told us years ago. Except now those words feel like an awful premonition of what was to come for her.

  “Can you dance?” the prince asks me.

  “All princesses have to learn how to dance,” I say, hanging on tightly to the rules I’ve always followed, the way I’m meant to be.

  “I know you could dance,” he says, putting a hand on my waist. His thumb grazes my ribs. Once it finds them, it moves back and forth, like it’s found the very spot it’s been looking for. “But are you able to dance now? Can your body… handle it?”

  No one ever taught me how to say no to a prince. It seems like it would have been an important thing to teach princesses of Ever. It’s strange, eighty years after a princess was stolen, that we wouldn’t have been shown how to not be taken away.

  But that’s how it is. So I dance.

  Prince Felix ends up practically moving my body for me, and I let him. It’s easier than considering my feet, his hands on my waist, my body in space, the smell of the meal, the smell of his skin, the way my skin feels too thin to be touched like this.

  Instead of being in my own body, instead of being in the dance, I watch my sisters.

  Alice is in the Prince of AndNot’s arms. Her head is on his shoulder, and he’s grinning like it means something, like she wouldn’t rest the weight of her head on any sturdy surface. My feet are making remembered patterns on the floor, and Nora looks at me with pity, but they’re coming for her, too, and I can’t do anything to help her.

  Grace is dancing as well, with the Princess of Thorner. The princess is exceptionally tall with brown skin and big brown eyes, and she dances a little out of beat with the music, but it looks good on her; it looks like an awkward elegance. Grace’s nose has found its way to the softest part of her neck, and because I know Grace as well as I know myself, I know she is imagining this is her moment of falling in love.

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, Grace falling in love with the Princess of Thorner. I’ve never considered that the kingdom of Thorner could have taken the princess. It is a small, friendly place, and there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide her anyway.

  Grace won’t remember any of this tomorrow. She won’t remember the princess’s sharp chin or the way her neck smells. She could fall in love a hundred times tonight and not remember a moment of it.

  It might be sadder than my want for a bite of an apple or Alice’s long, rock-carving nights. Grace deserves to remember the good things.

  I’m exhausted from the dancing, disgusted by the hands on my waist, and I am still waiting for my father. For a moment, I think he sees me. His hand nearly waves. But when I try to mouth something over Prince Felix’s shoulder, my father turns away.

  He turns away. I tamp down the worried feeling, the almost anger, the panic at this break from the script of our relationship. He must not have seen. He must have misunderstood. He’s right there. I’m safe.

  I look for the hundredth time to the door, wishing the witch would appear and put a stop to whatever this night is. Olive promised she delivered the invitation, said the witch seemed to know it was coming. I look for Olive now, though, and she’s nowhere to be found. She’s been my shadow for years, but when I need her, she’s gone. I’m alone.

  “You need special care, don’t you?” the prince says, his tongue practically touching my ear. I tense. I shudder. He doesn’t care. “It’s a good thing. It’s a beautiful thing. Your need. Don’t be so quick to let it go.”

  He holds me closer. I can’t find the phrases to explain that hunger isn’t the same as desperation, that tiredness isn’t the same as surrender. I can’t find any words at all.

  Or breath. I am losing my breath, too.

  With each spin I re-search for the witch, and she is never there.

  “We won’t be this way forever,” I tell Prince Felix at last, when my mind emerges, as it sometimes does before dulling again.

  “Oh?” the prince asks. He smirks. He could rival Nora with his snide expressions.

  “Of course not. We’re going to break the spell.”

  Prince Felix lets his hand wander to my hips. For a moment I’m thankful for how little of my body is left. There’s not much of it to press against him. I’m easy to keep close but hard to hold.

  “You’re the only ones who want to go back to the way things were. The rest of us like you this way. Special.”

  My stomach turns. I put a hand below my ribs to calm it, but it doesn’t work. Nothing works. I wonder, when he says this, if he likes my mother where she is too. Frozen.
A statue forever, if the spell isn’t broken.

  “Spellbound,” I correct.

  “Enchanted,” he says. The word in his mouth sounds like a delicacy.

  I break away from him when the dance is done. “I’m going to sit down,” I say. Prince Felix follows me to a table, and Dad finally, finally approaches.

  “I see you two have found each other,” he says. The whole room stops to watch us. They love seeing the king with his daughters, and I can understand why. He is a perfect father—calm and kind and knowing. I imagine he can tell just from cupping my shoulder how I feel about this prince, this night, this Feast. I’m so relieved to have him next to me that I lean against him a little. I wish the night were over and we were in the library, reading aloud the best parts of our books to each other.

  Soon, I tell my heart. Soon, I tell my tired limbs.

  “Your daughters are truly something to behold,” Prince Felix says. His hand grabs mine. A roomful of people hold back gasps.

  “They’re much more than that,” Dad says. He smiles at me, and all is right. I’m not alone. I’m never alone. My father is right here, always protecting me, always the Good King, always there for us.

  Prince Felix gets up from his chair. “I suppose,” he says, “I should pay my respects to the other princesses. See what is so exceptional about each of them.”

  “I suppose you should,” my father says.

  I want to hold him back, to keep him from them. But I don’t know how to protect myself, much less my little sisters, and he can move so quickly and speak so surely, and I am having trouble holding my body upright, walking in a straight line, breathing through my mouth.

  “Your Spellbound,” Prince Felix says with a half bow to me. Dad nods and continues his walk through the room, but as soon as he’s out of earshot, the prince leans down and whispers into my ear. “The cheeses are salty and soft. The duck is succulent. Even the bread is perfection. Soft. Comforting. With a swipe of butter it’s truly something to—”