“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.
Arris had been avoiding everyone since his conversation with his grandfather tree. He did not want his father to hand him increasingly morbid poetry. He did not want his mother to flash a brave, tear-stricken smile and comment on how at least there would be a nice, long party before he was inevitably doomed. And he did not want to see his sister, Yvlle, who was undoubtedly scheming something that might get him killed before his bride got the chance.
All Arris wanted was to appreciate the silence and beauty of his room. Lately, he had been meditating on the nature of wonder and trying to translate it to music. He wasn’t particularly good at composing, but he enjoyed the idea that one could build beauty note by note.
Everything in Arris’s chamber held a glimmer of wonder. His shelves were lined with objects such as the jawbone of a smoke shark, opals from the bottom of the Famishing Sea, crystalline music boxes sculpted from ice and the Isle’s fragrances distilled in perfume and held in alembics of green ozorald and gleaming, red ignix. Beside his bookshelf stood his most prized possession, the swan mirror. It was something of a family heirloom and had once belonged to Delusia the Loud, who proclaimed that it was made from the melted bones of a veritas swan and that all who looked into it would see the truth. A pretty lie, of course. If veritas swans were even real, they had not been glimpsed since the Isle’s beginnings. And the mirror certainly never revealed a truth one way or the other. Nevertheless, it was a reminder of stories taking on grand shapes and Arris found it a comfort.
But despite all of his joyful plans of meditation and music, instead he fell asleep. Panic had a way of making him sleepy.
Now alert, Arris stared at the knife in his face and his twin sister’s grim and determined expression. He sighed. This was bound to happen.
When Arris and Yvlle turned eight years old, the twinsbecame aware of what it meant for Arris to be Enzo’s heir. At the time, the news hadn’t really bothered Arris and the idea of turning into a tree sounded enjoyable enough that he started practicing. Arris would stand still for as long as he could in the hopes that a bird would mistake him for a branch. Unfortunately, the closest he got to this was a bird defecating on him.
While Arris had thought he might turn from a tree to a boy and back whenever he liked, all Yvlle knew was that someone was going to try and take away her brother. This was unacceptable. And so she decided to protect him as best as she could.
The consequence of this was that it took three days to find where Yvlle had hid Arris and in the process of discovering him, several courtiers required extensive healing for severe burns, three cooks were poisoned, four servants suffered hallucinations lasting a fortnight and Arris would not sleep without a nightlight for the next six years. Yvlle had figured that if Arris was entombed in one of the Castle’s secret chambers and encircled by various traps and spells, then he would always be safe.
Perhaps some siblings would never speak after that kind of episode, but Arris understood Yvlle. When he eventually regained consciousness and saw his sister perched at the edge of his bed, he said only one thing:
“I love you too.”
To be loved by Yvlle was to find oneself casually tortured. This was troubling. Still, it was love.
Because of this, Arris was annoyed—but not surprised—when he saw her.
“Are you trying to cut out the need for a wedding altogether?” asked Arris, pushing aside the blade.
“On the contrary, I’ve decided I don’t want you to die,” said Yvlle.
Arris blinked. “Just so I understand the depths of my irrelevance, is this a recent decision?”
“In the past hour or so I made up my mind,” said his sister.
“Wonderful.”
“It will be,” said Yvlle.
She slashed the knife along the side of his arm.
“Ow!” said Arris.”What in Wrate’s name was that for?”
“To protect you,” said his sister. She wiped the blade on a cloth, the strands of which looked like braided starlight. “The Castle has been working tirelessly to prepare for the competition. The grounds are unrecognizable, all overgrown with romantic gardens, fanciful lodgings, hideous mazes, oozing fountains—”
The temperature in Arris’s room dropped. Frost spidered up his blanket. Yvlle looked up from the knife and rolled her eyes.
“I am allowed to have aesthetic differences from you,” she said to the Castle. “Clearly other people find your landscaping very alluring or Mother would have burned it all by now.”
Grudgingly, the temperature returned to normal.
“Anyway, this”—she paused to raise the knife—“is to ensure some protection for you.”
“I feel very protected,” said Arris, wiping his arm.
“If the grounds catch anyone trying to harm you outright, then they will be removed from the competition,” said Yvlle.
Arris smiled.
“Don’t look at me like that,” said Yvlle.
