“I’m not your sister,” Risa snapped.
Amina gave her hair a slight tug. “Oh, I know. She didn’t have nearly as much of an attitude as you.”
Risa would not dignify that with a response, but after several moments of Amina working out more knots in her hair, she asked, “How old was she?”
She could hear Amina brighten at the question. “Three years younger than me, and an absolute terror. She drove my parents wild. Climbing trees, getting into trouble. She told everyone she was going to be a witch, which upset them so much they nearly sent her to the dungeons as a lesson.”
“Not big fans of witches?”
Amina made a little humming noise as she began to braid Risa’s hair from the top of her crown. “Madros has always avowed science over magic. We moved away from it a few centuries ago.”
“So you don’t have a fairy godmother?”
Amina laughed, the sound no different from that of a farm animal. It made Risa smile.
“No,” Amina confirmed. “If we do, she’s made her presence scarce indeed. There haven’t been many Madrosian witches, and I bet there are even fewer now.” Amina tied the braid off with a piece of ribbon, acquired from some unknown pocket or secret stash on her person. She swung it over Risa’s shoulder and started working on the other side. “If only things had played out differently. My father was seeking to change Madrosian policies on magic. Hethought magic and science could coexist—I guess he was a little like the Regent of San Cirilo.”
“Perhaps science could break your curse,” Risa supplied, suddenly inspired by the idea.
She felt Amina shrug. “I should ask. Though I don’t think it’ll be that easy. You heard what Linda said about witches and curses.”
Risa stared into her lap. If it could work with an airship… perhaps it could work for her, too.
Though that meant prolonging her journey with the prince. It was a good enough reason—after all, if science could break one curse, it could break two. Then Brunhilda’s spell would fall away and she could leave without ever looking back.
The thought made her insides feel funny, her heart squeezing.
“You really don’t know who placed it on you?” she asked, ignoring the tightness in her chest.
“I assume it was the general. He must have realized I survived and, for all his anti-magic talk, found a way to ensure that I could never reclaim my throne. He must have a witch working for him.”
“And what do you intend to do when we storm the castle? Kill him?”
“If necessary.” Amina’s hands stilled at her back. “Not that I’ve ever killed anyone. I learned to fight because I had to survive, but I don’t take any pleasure in violence.”
Amina returned to braiding, humming a little to herself. Risa’s chest tightened again, though she could hear Javi outside the door, complaining about his lumpy armchair.
Amina wasgood. She deserved to be free of her curse. She deserved to be remembered.
“What if I try again?” Risa whispered.
Amina finished the second braid and tied it off with a matching ribbon. “Tried what?”
Risa turned slightly, glimpsing some of Amina’s features in snatches: beaky nose, dark brows, eyelashes so long they fanned across her scarred cheek when she blinked.
“To break your curse.”
Amina sucked in a hopeful breath. “You don’t have to.”
Risa knew that. But she wanted to. She wanted to be good, too, even if she wasn’t very good at it.
She turned to the princess until they were sitting knee to knee. Taking the princess’s smaller hands in hers, she stared into Amina’s inscrutable face, ever-changing and fluid, like a rippling lake or a warped mirror.
But that wasn’t Amina. Amina was a girl who had been forced to be an outlaw. Who helped criminals leave their past behind for a brighter future. Who carried too many daggers and ribbons, and laughed like a braying donkey. Risa had to see the princess she once was, the girl she’d been forced to become, the queen she could be. Past the curse and its unwieldy weeds, past the thorns that threatened to tear through Amina’s skin like paper and lay claim to what it could find inside.
For a moment, Amina’s real face shimmered: plump and heart shaped, with a pointy chin and a widow’s peak. Slate eyes upturned slightly at the ends. And at the center of it all, her curse, wrapped tight around her heart, trailing off into the distance, past mountains and deserts toward a kingdom that had forgotten her.
Risa couldn’t understand it. Something about the way the curse clung to Amina’s face and around her heart made Risa think that atits core, it had something to do with Amina’s identity. General Sur hadn’t wanted a ghost to return to claim the throne he had killed for, so he’d used magic to kill what she was.
