Ever Cursed - Corey Ann Haydu Page 0,1

malady would befall us on our Thirteenth Birthdays. “When you each reach my age,” she said, “that’s when the spell will bind you. On your Thirteenth Birthday. When it binds the last of you, in five years’ time on Princess Eden’s birthday, I’ll return. I’ll give you one chance to break the spell.”

I waited for Dad to react, to boom out a hundred questions. Most importantly, Why are you doing this? and Don’t you know what our agreement is? and maybe also Do the older witches know you’re here; are you confused; can someone fetch this young, unhinged witch and return her to her Home on the Hill?

Instead, he was quiet. We were all in shock. Witches were our partners in keeping Ever safe. We protected them. They protected us. Perfect symbiosis. Everything about this witch, from her age to her words to the spell itself, was wrong. More than wrong. Impossible.

I was shaking from the impossibility of it.

Mom was quiet too. Queens are quiet, and she was always, always a queen first.

I stayed quiet for as long as I could, because I wanted to be queen. But as long as I could turned out to be twenty-two seconds.

“Why would you do this?” I said. My voice was small at first, then louder, because she didn’t answer, and her face only got harder, more sure. “This is— What are you doing? We’re princesses, and you’re… We don’t do this to each other! Why would you do this?”

Mom had told me a hundred times that silence is more meaningful than words. I was failing at following Mom’s rules, but I didn’t know how to be quiet in the face of this witch.

The witch kept her mouth closed. She wouldn’t look at me. She looked everywhere else, though. She looked at the castle—its stone, its turrets, its incredible size.

I tried to say only the most important thing in the enormous valley of my parents’ silence. “Please,” I said. “No.”

“I have to,” she said. She looked a little sad saying it. Or maybe I’m just remembering it that way.

I was the oldest, three days from my Thirteenth Birthday. The rest of my sisters would have more time to prepare for the spell. Nora would have over a year. Alice another year beyond that. Grace would have nearly four years to think it all through. And Eden would have the whole five years. I had three days. My heart beat out the number. Three. Three. Three.

“Please,” I said again. “No.” Thirteenth Birthdays are celebrated with enormous royal balls, a feast, a dance, silk dresses, a silver crown. Not with curses. Mine was already all planned. “No,” I said again, trying to make it sound royal and right. “No.”

I looked at my mother. She would know how to fix it. My whole life, she’d solved every problem that had come my way.

There hadn’t been many.

I watched her body lean forward a little, her mouth form an O shape, about to say something wise and true to this young witch, ready to finally break her queenly silence. But before a word came out, before she could stitch things back together, make our world right again, she froze. A glass box appeared around her, trapping her inside.

She was Spellbound.

My heart spun right out of my body and joined her in that glass box. I didn’t cry or scream or throw myself onto the glass. Instead I buried my face in my arms and bent at the waist, like if I could get small and hidden enough, I could disappear from the moment.

She was not yet done teaching me how to be a queen, and I was immediately lost without her. I couldn’t think of words or find the right shape for my body to take. I ran through everything she’d ever told me about queens and witches and spells and How to Be. Queens don’t beg witches to be kind. Queens don’t let their eyes fill with tears or let their hearts beat out three, three, three. Queens don’t wish they weren’t the oldest princess; queens don’t wish their sisters would be hit by the spell first; queens don’t hate everyone who isn’t cursed.

I closed my eyes and told my heart to shut up. Queens are quiet.

I knew enough about witches to know that a thirteen-year-old witch could only cast a Slow Spell, the kind that didn’t have everlasting consequences. When witches turn eighteen, their spells turn True, permanent, everlasting, and damaging.

“How do we break the spell?”