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The enormous flower carriage was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Sinsorias?”
Rafael lifted a finger off the reins and pointed straight up. I craned my neck and saw, floating in the sky just tinged with the first hues of dawn, a carriage pulled by six winged horses. Oh. Right.
“We call this area Las Tierras Pintadas, The Painted Lands.”
Rafael’s voice startled me. It was soft and…annoyingly reassuring. I groaned slightly as I tried to stretch my arms. My joints were stiff and achy. My head throbbed with a dull pain.
“Do you need to rest?”
“I just woke up. I’m fine. Only a little uncomfortable.”
He shifted. “We can stop. It is nearing dawn.”
He whistled, and Everence pulled her horse around. Hector’s bay mare trotted up beside us. “We’ll stop here.”
“Why? I’m fine. I can keep riding.”
Everence shook her head. “Not for you. For him. For the change.”
Rafael hmphed, and my body went rigid as he leaned forward, swung one leg over, and dismounted Lily. Then he reached for me, but I snorted in offense. I hopped to the ground without his help. My feet throbbed with pain at the harsh landing, and I nearly fell.
Rafael extended a hand to steady me. “You’re hurting.”
“I’m fine.” Everything ached, but he didn’t need to know that.
He and Everence exchanged a glance. Hector whistled contentedly to himself as he walked Chispa toward the creek that ran alongside the road.
To our right, lemon-yellow mushrooms the size of breakfast tables circled a trio of lumpy brown dirt mounds. Everence drew a blanket from her saddlebags and spread it out for us to sit on. She beckoned me over, unwrapping a loaf of bread and a handful of walnuts. The words she’d spoken outside my room—that she’d never wanted me to die, but to change Rafael—echoed in my head.
Chewing on a walnut, I studied him as he squatted and checked the horses’ silver shoes. Had I changed him?
He’d sounded genuine in the hall, but I couldn’t let myself trust him. Falling for him would kill me, after all. Easy to avoid. Simple.
He looked up and caught me staring. I turned quickly away, stuffing bread in my mouth.
“It’s unfair,” I said to Everence, watching a fox scamper across the brightening plains.
Without asking for clarification, she nodded. “Yes, it is.”
We sat there for several minutes, eating a meager breakfast as the horses rested. Then she sat up a little straighter and nodded at someone behind me.
“The sun is rising,” she said.
I glanced backward. Rafael paced away from us, stripping off his surcoat, then his waistcoat, and finally, his shirt.
“Look away,” Everence begged, touching my arm.
But try as I might, I couldn’t tear my eyes from Rafael.
All at once, his limbs shot out in seizure-like jerks and his chin jutted upward. An awful, gurgled moan rasped from his lips as he fell to the ground. I stiffened, unable to look away.
His muscles spasmed violently. His cheeks hollowed, his chest became a skeletal specter, and his body elongated. His skin rippled like the surface of a pond. My stomach heaved, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. His limbs stretched, bones cracking, and then, in his place, lay a massive bear. In a breath, he stood. He twisted his head back and forth, shaking the skin on his wide shoulders and flinging fur in the first bright rays of sunlight.
Rafael turned his brown eyes upon me. My mouth opened and closed several times before I finally clamped it shut.
Everence rose beside me, then helped me stand. For a long moment, I stared at Rafael. Wanting freedom from a curse wasn’t wrong, but being willing to purchase that freedom with someone else’s blood was. I rubbed at my chest, where a sharp pain darted between my lungs and sliced upward toward my neck and outward toward my arms.
