Withering Rose (Once Upon A Curse Book 2) (4 page)

It was the last day I saw my mother and her
alive.

It was the last time I ever felt truly at
peace.

The last time I ever felt that I
belonged.

It was one week before the earthquake. I was
standing in the courtyard outside our home, a grand castle at the
very center of our kingdom. The carriage door was open behind me,
and my father had already climbed inside, settling himself in for
the start of our journey. But I was afraid. I was crying because I
didn't want to go. I didn't want to have a fiancé, I didn't want to
leave my mother and my sister for so long, I didn't want to grow
up.

"Hush, darling," my mother whispered,
kneeling down to my eye level as she wiped the tears from my
cheeks. "You'll be a queen someday, just like me. You'll have
magic, just like me. And Prince Asher will be your king, just as
your father is to me. You will grow to love each other. And trust
me, at this moment, I would bet he is just as afraid as you
are."

I sniffled, lifting my chin to meet her
gaze. "Do you really think so?"

She smiled lovingly. "I know so."

"How?" I whined.

"Because once I was just like you, a little
girl afraid of what the future held for me. And then, just like you
will, I learned how to be brave, how to swallow my fears and see
each challenge as an opportunity for growth, as an opportunity to
be a leader for my people."

I shook my head. "I'm not brave."

She cupped my cheek in her warm palm,
rubbing the last tear away. Then she leaned forward and kissed my
brow. "My darling Omorose, you'll learn to be brave. And this
journey with your father is the first step."

"Ro Ro," a little squeaking voice said from
behind my mother.

I smiled at my little sister. She was barely
two and still wobbly on her feet as she walked closer to me.

"Ro Ro brave," she said confidently.

I laughed. "Thanks, sissy."

But she shook her head as though she could
sense the defeat in my tone. "Ro Ro brave!" she repeated adamantly,
and then she held out her stuffed bear, an offering to me. It was
the same bear I grew up playing with, the one I doubted she
remembered that I had given to her on the day she was born.

"You keep Mr. Winky until I get back," I
murmured, peeking at my mother to see her eyes shining proudly at
both of us. I was trying to be brave, to be an example for my
little sister just like Mother had told me to be. But my sister
just shook her head and stomped her foot, even more stubborn than
me, and held out Mr. Winky again.

"Take him with you, darling," Mother told me
gently.

I grabbed the little brown bear, clutching
him to my chest the way I used to when he was my toy. The soft
touch of his fur was comforting, and he smelled like home. Then I
hugged them both goodbye and climbed into the carriage next to my
father. He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me to his side,
offering the silent strength he knew I needed.

I tried to be brave as the carriage rolled
away.

I didn't once look over my shoulder for one
last peek of my mother, my sister, and my home.

But I wish I had.

As I hug Mr. Winky to my chest now, he still
smells like the fresh garden scent of home. A place I will never
see again. A place I hardly remember. But I breathe in the essence
of the people I love, trying to form their images in my mind. My
mother's wild auburn hair is easy to remember because I see it in
the mirror every day. Her rosy skin, always a hint away from a
blush, was the same as my own. But her face is harder to see. I
remember her eyes, their mix of gold and green that reminded me of
a sunny spring day. The rest is blurred. Did she have my nose? My
chin? And what about my sister? What would she look like now? She
was so little when we left. Her chestnut hair had barely started
growing. Her eyes were green too, I think. Her skin was darker,
like my father's. But what I remember most is the sound of her
laugh, so intoxicating that whenever I heard it, I would laugh too,
and together we would fall into a fit of giggles for no reason at
all.

Be brave.

Those were their parting words to me.

And how have I honored that request? By
hiding, by pretending my life away, by cowering in the corner. Even
now, I'm locked away in my room, running from my fears instead of
facing them.

No more.

I can't do it anymore.

It's time to be brave.

I'm not sure how long I sit alone in my
room, hugging that old bear to my chest. But when the doorknob
turns and my father's head pokes through, I finally have the
courage to say the words I've wanted to say for so long.

"Papa, I'm leaving." A weight lifts from my
chest as soon as they are spoken. And before my doubts can take
over, I push through the fear and continue. "I want more than a
life of hiding. I want more than a life of fear. I can't stay here
anymore. I yearn for freedom, for adventure. I yearn to be myself,
to find a place where I belong. So I'm leaving. With or without
you, I'm leaving, and you can't stop me."

He doesn't say anything. Instead, my father steps
fully into the room and shuts the door behind him, watching me
quietly. He traverses the small space quickly, sitting across from
me on my reading chair, clasping his hands together on his lap. He
looks older than I've ever seen him. The wrinkles across his brow
suddenly seem deeper. His hair suddenly seems grayer. And something
in his expression is so unbearably forlorn that I need to look at
the ground.

"I forbid it," he says with the deep voice
of the king I remember.

My heart drops. But I lick my lips and find
the strength to look up and meet his gaze. "What's keeping you
here, Papa? What's keeping us here?" A brief glimmer of light
passes over his eyes, and I recognize it. Hope. The heavy pressure
in my chest grows. "They're gone, Papa. They're dead."

The light in his eyes fades.

His frown deepens.

A familiar despair gnaws at my thoughts, but
I push it away. We've never spoken of this, but it's always been
there. And it's time.

"Mother and sissy are gone," I whisper. My
throat is still raw from my earlier screaming, so the words come
out scratchy and broken. "Our kingdom is gone. How many times do we
need to search the maps before you will believe it? Our castle, our
city, our lands, they disappeared in the earthquake, and there is
no way to retrieve them. You are king of a lost kingdom, and I'm
the princess of a people who are never coming back. I can't live in
the past any longer."

"We don't know," he whispers, strength
gone.

I cringe. "We do, Papa. We've known for a
while. How many more times will you use their machines to search in
vain for our kingdom? How many more times will you try to find a
home that isn't there? Mother died ten years ago, you and I both
know that is a fact. I could never have the magic otherwise. And
there's another fact we both know. Sissy was barely two, and Mother
never let her out of her sight. They are gone, Papa. We must accept
it. We must move on and figure out how to live in this new world
we've been thrown into."

He looks to the floor, dropping his forehead
into his hands, running his fingers through his ebony hair. For the
first time in a long time, I realize I'm not the only one hiding,
not the only one running. "You are all I have left, Omorose."

"I know, Papa," I murmur gently. "We're all
each other has. And if you love me, you must realize it is killing
me to be here. You must—"

"Being here is the only thing keeping you
alive," he interrupts, snapping his head up to find my eyes.

My own go wide.

I flinch as though struck.

There is a confession in those words, one
I've never understood until now.

"You," I gasp, then swallow, trying to bite
back the hurt. I shake my head as the realization fully hits.
"Staying here was never about Mother or sissy or our people.
Staying here, you knew what it was doing to me. You knew how hard
it was for me. But you didn't care. As long as I couldn't use my
magic, you didn't care."

"Your magic will kill you," he says, not
denying anything. "I watched it kill your mother. Day by day a
little bit of her life seeped away, a little bit of her soul, her
happiness, her beautiful essence that I loved so dearly. You were
too young to understand, but it's not only time the magic takes
away. It strips away pieces of you, slowly enough that you won't
even realize they're gone until it is too late."

"Papa," I whisper.

I know all of this. I've felt it.

"Twenty-five years." He sighs deeply.
"Twenty-five years is the longest amount of time any woman in your
lineage has lasted after inheriting the magic. Twenty-five years is
not enough, Omorose. I've outlived one wife and one daughter, and I
cannot do it again."

I deflate. My shoulders hunch, and the bear
I had still been clutching to my chest falls away as my arms go
limp.

Twenty-five years?

And I've spent ten of them in hiding.

I shake my head and take a deep breath.
"This changes nothing," I answer softly. "If anything, it makes my
conviction even stronger. I have to go, Papa. If I only have
fifteen years left, I want them to be spent living. And what I do
here? It's not living, Papa. I'm barely getting by, barely
surviving. Don't you want more for me than that?"

The corners of his eyes glisten. But his jaw
is hard-set and stubborn.

I continue before he can say anything.
"Don't you want me to be happy?"

My voice falls away. The words hang between
us, filling the small space of my room with a charged silence. I
refuse to say anything until I have his answer. He refuses to
answer me. Instead, we stare at one another, two sets of stubborn
umber eyes, the only features I inherited from him.

"Where would you go?" he asks somberly. "Did
you really think I haven't thought all of the options through?
There is nowhere in the world you could go where they wouldn't find
you. Always their machines are pulsing, tracking every movement the
magic makes around the world. Always they are watching for it. It
is safer to be here under their noses than out there on the run
with no food, no warmth, no protection. You are still a child, my
darling Omorose, just a child. You don't understand what you are
asking for."

My heart warms when I hear the endearment
from his lips, the same one my mother used to use. My darling
Omorose. Their darling. And I love his love for me, his concern for
me. But I'm not a child, and I haven’t been one in a very long
time.

I've spent so long dreaming of escaping this
place that an answer rolls smoothly off my tongue, one I've
practiced a million times in my thoughts. "I'm going to find Queen
Deirdre and Prince Asher. He's still my fiancé. He'll keep me safe.
And no one will be able to tell I'm there. On their machines, the
magic all looks the same. Once I'm in Queen Deirdre's realm, they
won’t be able to tell my magic from hers. They'll think it's the
same. I have thought this through, Papa."

His brows furrow tightly and then lift as an
almost apologetic expression passes over his face. He stands,
crossing the small room quickly. The mattress dips below his weight
as he hugs me to his side, sighing deeply.

"What?" I ask softly.

He kisses my temple. I look up at him,
confused.

"Did you hear the announcement?" he finally
says, voice so gentle I hardly recognize it.

"Yes," I say, breathing the word more than
saying it as the wheels in my head start to spin. New York City.
New York City. The name turns over as I shuffle through my
thoughts, trying to place it.

"Kardenia," I whisper. "New York City is
Kardenia."

My father nods.

Suddenly everything becomes clear.

"Queen Deirdre is the magic user they
killed?"

My father nods again.

"And the magic is gone?"

"Yes," he confirms, gauging my reaction.

But I'm numb. For so many years, I'd been
practicing my speech. My plan had been foolproof. How could my
father deny me the right to find my fiancé? How could he refuse to
let me go to a city where he knew I'd be safe? How could he prevent
me from fulfilling a contract he himself signed a decade
before?

"Asher is dead," I murmur.

And all my plans have died with him.

"I'm sorry, Omorose." My father hugs me
tighter, but I can't feel it. My limbs have grown cold. "If the
magic is truly gone, then we both know what must have happened. The
last heir has to die for the magic to be released back into the
world. Queen Deirdre was killed, her magic passed to her only heir,
her son, and then he was killed as well. There is no other way to
get rid of the magic, or your mother would have told me long ago.
She would have done it to save you from her fate."