All of Jaya’s righteous anger melted away, bit by burning bit, as she went back uphill to take the ski lift down by herself. She was too preoccupied by her own thoughts, by the echoing replay of their conversation, to notice the beauty of the wintry evening around her this time. As she traveled down she thought she glimpsed Grey in the near dark, head bent and still as a statue, but she wasn’t sure.

Jaya felt the sickening churning in her stomach that came with having been needlessly cruel, with having lashed out at someone out of defensiveness and fear. Yes, he’d tried to steal her necklace. No, she didn’t like it. But she understood. When he told her the story about the curse—the way he had the entire thing memorized—she’d understood how desperate, how unhappy, how scared he must be. She could see it in his eyes, the haunted, hunted look of someone coming to terms with news they had no framework to accept.

She didn’t believe in the curse one bit. Jaya came from a world where ancient superstition and logic coexisted side by side quite nicely. It was a world where astrologers could pick your school for you based on the alignments of the stars, but you took antibiotics when you were sick because you knew and accepted that medicine, that science, worked. The curse? It was obvious to Jaya that her great-great-grandmother had been consumed with pain and anger when she’d supposedly cursed the stolen ruby. Jaya had heard the story only once, a long time ago and then only in passing, because no Rao believed in it. She’d had no idea the Emersons did.

If Grey hadn’t leaked the pictures like the journalist had said, who else might it be? Another Emerson? Perhaps the journalist was confused and meant it was an Emerson aristocrat and not necessarily an heir to their estate. And maybe the curse was behind it all. Perhaps that was why they’d lashed out at Isha. And why they always seemed to be coming for the Raos.

She shook her head as she got off the ski lift and made her way to the lodge, past the snow-caked fountain, passing under the stone arch lit up with a thousand twinkling lights. What the Emersons (whichever one was responsible) had done to Isha and her family was still unforgivable, of course. But Jaya had to wonder… how would Appa react if an Emerson had cursed their bloodline to end, had cursed Jaya to die? If he fully believed it were true?

How would Jaya react?