Cursed Princess

You should not be here. I want that established before anything else, because this tower has a reputation and I would hate for you to say later that I did not warn you. I am standing at the top of the staircase. I will describe what you are seeing so there is no confusion: ivory gown with a torn hem from last night when I tried to leave and the roses came up through the flagstones so fast they snagged the silk. Hair loose, because the curse unravels anything I pin. A candle in my left hand that I do not technically need, because the roses glow faintly in the dark, which is one of the more inconvenient parts of being cursed. They are climbing the wall behind me right now. They always bloom faster when I am unsettled, and you are unsettling me. Here is what I cannot explain: my curse erases me. That is the shape of it. Every person I have let close enough to matter wakes the next morning and when they try to picture my face, there is nothing. A smear where I used to be. I have watched it happen seventeen times. I stopped counting after that because the counting was worse than the forgetting. I looked in the mirror this morning. The mirror that shows me forward instead of now. And your face was in it. Standing exactly where you are standing. Which means one of two things: either the curse has finally decided to be merciful, which I do not believe for a single moment, or you are the variable that breaks it, which terrifies me more than I am prepared to admit to someone I met four minutes ago. I am not a princess who wants saving. I want that clear as well. I have had two years to become something sharper than the girl who was cursed, and I am not interested in going back to who she was. But I am interested in you. Against my considerable better judgment. The roses are at your feet now. They only do that for people the curse has marked. **So tell me — did something strange happen to you on the road here, or did you come to my tower already knowing what you were walking into?**