The Princess Curse Read Online Free PDF Page B

of Saxon.
    Invisibility? I frowned and read on:
~ Gather, w. golden knife—
    Didina dragged me out by my heels. I tried to stuff the vellum up my sleeve, but she saw and dug it out.
    “Careful, don’t rip it!” I cried.
    “ You be careful. It’s mine !”
    “Invisibility?”
    “Shut up! Someone will hear you.”
    “Let me see it! Please?”
    She paused for a moment, then made a disgusted face and threw it at me. “Fine. Look at it. Looking at it won’t help you in the least.”
    I eagerly snatched the paper before it hit the ground and read:
    Plantes Which Confer Vpon the Wearer Invisibilitie
     
~ Gather, w. golden knife & in vtter silence, at mid-day or mid-night, on midsvmmer or midwinter day, the sukkory plant. Carefvl to collect w. left hand onlie.
~ Carry w. thee a tiny horn filled with tvrnsole.
~ Wear mistletoe arovnd thy neck.
~ Collect pig’s weed, to be worn as a wreath.
~ Walk with fern seed in thy pocket.
~ For six days, soak nepenthe-seed in wine; drink the wine three days rvnning whilst fasting. Afterward, thou shalt become invisible at will.
~ Wrap wolf’s bane seed in a red lizard skin & carry in thy pockets.
    Ideas skipped around my mind like flat stones across a pond. If I were invisible, I could watch the princesses all night. If I were invisible, I could find out what they did. If I were invisible, and provided I didn’t burst out in a sneeze or something, I could discover the secrets of the curse, report back to Princess Daciana and Prince Vasile, and claim the dowry.
    I stared at Didina. “Where did you get this?”
    “I found it in that book when I was looking for drawings of betony to copy. It’s old, you can tell, older than the book. But it’s nonsense! Nothing on the list works.”
    “Why would someone write it all down if it were nonsense?”
    “I don’t know, but it is! Try something on the list—anything! There’s pig’s weed in the kitchen garden—Cook uses it to thicken stew.”
    “All right, I will,” I said, marching out into the garden to gather an apronful of pig’s weed.
    I twisted together a wreath in short order, perched it atop my head, and tiptoed back to the herbary.
    Didina glanced up from her asphodel. Brother Cosmin also looked up. I wondered when he had arrived. They both stared right at me.
    “There you are, Reveka!” Brother Cosmin said. “Have you prepared the princesses’ posies yet? Princess Nadia wants day’s-eyes tonight.”
    “I’ll head out in a moment,” I said, flinging the wreath into the compost bucket by the door.
    “Well, don’t take too long. You picked all the day’s-eyes within the castle walls, and now you’ll have to go into the forest.”
    I grunted, sitting down with my personal herbal. I flipped to a blank square and titled it “Investigation of Plantes Which Confer Invisibilitie.” I wrote, “Test One: Wore a pig’s weed wreath. No effect.”
    I shoved my herbal underneath my mortar, glaring at Didina. She said with ruthless cheeriness, “Make sure you take the left fork on the riverward path. You wouldn’t want to get lost in the forest.”

Chapter 6
     
    I n the three weeks since I’d been at Castle Sylvian, I’d not managed to learn my way around the Prince’s hunting park at all.
    This was partially because I was simply unaccustomed to wild-herb gathering. I’d grown up inside the stone walls of a convent-fortress in Transylvania, which was fortified for a reason: We were close to the Turks and always under threat of their raids.
    That’s just what it’s like to live in the last outpost of Christianity—you don’t count on having food to last all winter, and you don’t take many forest walks.
    We were safe here in Sylvania at the moment, or maybe I just felt safer with Transylvania and Wallachia between us and the Turks, and with Hungary at our backs. The Hungarians were a threat to Prince Vasile’s sovereignty, but they were also a threat to the Turks’ expansion.
    But safety was a matter of