My stepmother, queen of Skalla and Sorceress of the Mountain, had been on that black burnished throne for a long, long time. Threats to her kingdom and impediments to her rule were dealt with. Pawns were put at risk whenever necessary. After the tower, I had tried to accept being a pawn for fear that if I did not, she might begin to see me as an impediment.
My trust had never been required by her before. I wondered why she was asking for it now.
“If you told me why you were sending me off,” I said to my stepmother, “if you told me anything, for once, then I might believe it wasn’t simply because you can’t stand the sight of me.”
“And what would I tell you? I see a thousand thousand futures where you go and a thousand thousand futures where you do not. To speak of the one I desire most is to well-nigh guarantee it will never come to pass.”
“A very convenient excuse for not saying anything.”
“Yes.”
I sighed. There would be no answer. I didn’t know why I’d tried. “Will that be all, or did you want something else of me? Perhaps you need a pin fetched from the bottom of the ocean or a hundred lost pearls gathered in a night?”
She gestured my dismissal. I turned and walked off, all the long way across the throne room and out through the great bronze doors. Humba and Femus, seeing the anger plain on my face, said nothing as I tried to slam the doors behind me. They weighed a quarter ton together, so I was only able to push hard enough to produce a quiet thump. Even the horrible squeal sounded muffled. I am no ogre.
Senseless rage would do me no good. I clenched my teeth until my breathing slowed, and I was able to think rationally about what was happening.
If I was going to run, this was the time. Maybe I could makea go of it, at least for a while. I might stumble across a cave full of robbers or a cottage full of dwarves and keep house for them in exchange for a place to stay. Which didn’t strike me as being a wonderful life, but there was a chance I wouldn’t utterly hate it. I was no stranger to cleaning up messes—it was a useful habit in a place where Calla’s helpful animals were constantly rampaging through on one errand or another. It sounds cute until you find what the rats have left on your floor and the doves have left on your bedsheets.
But even if I found somewhere to hide, how long would it be before my stepmother showed up with a clever disguise and a shiny red apple? I’d probably end up lying in a glass coffin until the trump of doom. Or at best, I’d find myself engaged to a different prince. One with a tendency toward necrophilia. The coffin kissers are the worst.
The queen had tamed giants and destroyed armies. I doubted it would take an eternity for her to track me down. Running away would only be putting off my fate, not escapingit.
Instead of heading down the thousand steps to the town, I went up to my room to prepare for the journey to Tailliz.
Chapter Three
My Siblings Offer Marital Advice
“If there’s a locked room King Gervase doesn’t want you to look at,” Jonquil said, raising her voice to be heard over the cacophony of chirps, hisses, and yips, “you might want to stay out of it until we’re over there for a visit.”
“Wrong!” declared her wife, Gnoflwhogir. “Open the door immediately. Open every door! Find his secrets, steal his treasures, drink his wine!”
Jonquil rolled her eyes. “Don’t expect a quick rescue, is all I’m saying.”
“I’m not going to needa—”
“Tailliz is too far for me to get there right away,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “even on dragonback. And Mother never lends me the seven-league boots. But if you do the exact opposite of anything my wife tells you, there’s a chance you might lead a quiet life.”
Gnoflwhogir snorted, succinctly expressing her contempt for the very concept of a quiet life, and rolled off the bed. She landed with a thump on the pile of rejected dresses that Liam,Calla, and Calla’s swarm of furred and feathery animal friends had tossed out of my closet and onto the floor. A couple of chipmunks who’d nearly been crushed by Gnoflwhogir’s sudden drop scurried into a corner and chittered at her angrily.
Fairies can be difficult to deal with, although I’m sure they find mortals similarly frustrating. The fae folk consider logic, reason, and self-restraint about as appealing as a pile of dead bugs. Less so, come to think of it, since fairies have been known to make lovely dresses out of butterfly wings. This notorious aversion to common sense may explain their propensities for tooth buying, child stealing, ear collecting, and soon.
Jonquil was often driven to distraction by Gnoflwhogir’s impetuousness, while Gnoflwhogir regarded Jonquil as rather unadventurous. They had fierce arguments every now and again, and I’d needed to comfort Jonquil in the aftermath more than once. Nonetheless, the magnetism that had locked their gazes together when they first met had never lessened. Possibly it helped that Gnoflwhogir was six feet tall and muscled to match, with hair the color of jade, flawless skin a few shades lighter, and the large, reflective eyes of a nocturnal predator. She always looked like she was about to pounce on you, whether to bite you or give you a kiss. Jonquil was equally as lovely, for that matter—though I suspected Gnoflwhogir admired Jonquil’s dismemberment scars even more than her figure, particularly since Jonquil had acquired them while keeping the grootslang from chomping on her spouse-to-be.
As soon as my sisters and their spouses heard about my engagement, they’d come to my room. It hadn’t taken long for them to get word—the throne room is too big to keep entirely free of insects, and a humble ant had overheard everything that passed. Ants are terrible gossips. Calla knew about the proposal before I was all the way up the stairs, and she promptly shared the news with Liam, Jonquil, and Gnoflwhogir.
By the time the late afternoon sunlight was slanting throughmy bedroom window, the four of them, along with a horde of weasels and bluebirds and squirrels, had assembled to help me gather items for my trousseau. The floor was a crush of small creatures ferrying lace gloves and silk scarves, while birds fluttered back and forth with earrings in their beaks. I was sorting through my own underthings, since that wasn’t a task I wished to leave to a random squirrel. Squirrels have awful taste; they’re as bad as magpies—the shinier it is, the better. If I let them choose it, my lingerie would be nothing but sequins. As it was, I’d need to double-check the shoes that night to make sure I was leaving with a few pieces of practical footwear and not a rodent-selected collection of silver, ruby, and glass confections.
At least the squirrels weren’t peppering me with unnecessary advice. My relatives were failing to observe the same courtesy.
“If he comes to you only in the dark, and you wonder if you’ve married some kind of terrible beast, never try to get a look at his face,” Jonquil toldme.
“I know,” I said.
“No fetching a candle while he’s asleep, it’ll just end in tears.”
“And,” Calla began, “if it turns out that heissome kind of terrible beast—”
