Merrie Haskell - The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell

Merrie Haskell - The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskell

Author:Merrie Haskell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-09-05T22:00:00+00:00


Chapter 20

I stopped in the kitchens for a bit of food and learned that the Prince and his Consort had ridden out to hunt at a distant estate and wouldn’t be back for days. That answers that question, I thought, biting into a thick piece of bread. I didn’t even need to argue with myself about going to the Princess Consort and telling her what I’d seen, and her absence gave me time to rescue Mihas and Iosif.

I grabbed a few extra pocket-sized loaves for that night’s trip. It had been hard looking at all the food in the Underworld and being unable to eat it. I felt very clever for thinking to bring something of my own.

Back in the herbary, I discovered that Brother Cosmin had reverted to his old ways, for he was nowhere to be found. I seized upon this opportunity to reclaim some of the sleep I’d missed the night before. It was an odd luxury, to sleep with the sun on my face. I could see why Brother Cosmin often reveled in it.

I slept so deeply that when I woke and found my invisibility cap missing, I had no notion of how it had been taken.

“Reveka!” Brother Cosmin called again. It was his first call that had awakened me. “Are you up there?”

“Yes,” I hollered back, frantically shaking out my blanket and hoping the cap would roll out. Then I shook out my clothes, lifted my pallet, and—

“Reveka, are you ill?”

Who could have stolen my cap? Who would have? Who even knew about it? When I found out who’d stolen it, I’d wipe his mother’s grave with my dirty socks!

Marjit. Marjit was the only one who had known.

“I’m a little ill,” I said, climbing down from the loft. I did feel like I was going to erp everywhere.

“You’re shivering,” Brother Cosmin pointed out. And I was. Vibrating with anger, actually.

“Yes—I’m going to the baths,” I said, and was out the door. Let him assume I was going to the soaking pool to warm up.

I pelted toward the baths but was brought up short when I noticed the man sitting in the shadows by the Little Well. A man wearing a black military cloak over red velvet. Today, he did not wear the cloak pinned jauntily back over one shoulder; rather, the hood draped low over his face.

Frumos. There was no mistaking the clasp on his cloak. There was also no mistaking the fact that Lord Dragos had worn one identical to it last night, a clasp made of animal bones. When I’d first seen Frumos in the woods, I’d thought they were boars’ tusks, but now I’d seen a zmeu and knew that they were a zmeu’s face spikes.

Perhaps this really was Prince Frumos, hero, slayer of zmei. How else did you get a zmeu-spike cloak clasp?

Frumos stirred, lifting a small, wet bucket to his mouth, and drank. In that moment, I remembered the taste of the water, and my mouth filled with saliva. I



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