truth, you will think as I think, feel what I have felt. I want you to be my ally, so you’re free to be who you’re meant to be. So that no one will ever control you again.”
“You will control me.”
“No,” Celestine said. “Why would I? You’ll see things as I see them. If not yet, then soon. Soon you’ll see.” And she stepped forward, her fingers reaching for the heart. Everything about her seemed frantic, unbalanced, from the quirk of her lips to the tilt of her head, but she looked so convinced. She truly thought that Aurora would join her. Because of the curse. Because of the life that Celestine had woven for her.
Aurora fought the urge to step backward, to flinch away. The dragons screamed above them. Let them come, she thought. Let them burn her into ash. She would not back down.
“What did my mother offer you?” Aurora said. “In return for me?”
Aurora’s heart beat in time with the dragon’s. “What?”
“I promise you, it is true. She asked for a child, and in return, she promised that the child would belong to me. She sold you away, even as she ensured your existence. Your mother thought she could outwit me, because she did not say when she must hand you over. She thought to delay, to protect you. She told me that her baby might belong to me, but that I had said nothing about taking you from the castle. She believed herself so clever, to point out that no person can belong to another, and that our bargain had no real price.”
“So she didn’t betray you. She was smarter than you.”
“No,” Celestine said. “She simply brought the curse upon you. I would have kept you in my tower, helped you to grow into a fearsome witch, if she had let me. But she did not. I could not physically move you from the castle, so I cursed you, to get what I wanted and to reward your mother for thinking herself smarter than me. I thank her for it now. Your mother gave me such a sweet opportunity, to craft another woman like me. All that power, all that betrayal, all that hatred . . . far stronger than a girl who grew up with all the freedom she required, do you not agree?”
“But you said you cursed me to wake to the kiss of true love. That hardly seems like a good way to crush me.”
“Oh, Aurora, you are still so naïve. Have you learned nothing since you awoke? True love is meaningless. You could have loved Rodric. You would have loved him, if it had not been thrust upon you, if you had not been told that you had no choice, that the security of your entire kingdom rested on your happiness. But when your supposed love is a cage, preventing you from living the life you wish to live . . . no. You could not love him then. You had the potential to love him, but the world beat it out of you.” Celestine’s smile grew. “Without the curse, you could never meet him, but with the curse, you cannot love him. Strange, is it not, how magic works?”
“It only works that way because you made it that way.”
“Perhaps. I suppose there have been many people you could have loved, over the years. Many people who suited you. Some of them may even have kissed you. But I did not curse you to make you happy, Princess. I cursed you to suffering, to a love that was doomed before it began. That is what true love is, Aurora, not flirtations with foreign princes and fire. And your mother gave me the chance to teach you that, as she gave me the chance to teach you many things.”
It could not be true. Her mother could not have sold her to Celestine, given away her life in the same breath that created it. But Celestine had promised to tell the truth, and Celestine always seemed a woman of her word.
“My mother wouldn’t bargain for my life by offering my life,” Aurora said. “It wouldn’t make sense.”
“Desperate people will do desperate things,” Celestine said. “And if a queen cannot have a child, if people are already against her, if whispers spread that she needs to be replaced, for the good of the kingdom . . . well, she may convince herself that the bargain is worth the