Arris looked up at the mushroom tower that housed the contestants. It was a towering thing, draped in thick vines of ivy and swirled up and down with hundreds of windows carved in the shape of teardrops. Arris could not see much, but where all the other windows seemed dark and silent, there was one window near the middle that glowed with candlelight and Arris was certain that inside it, he would find Demelza. He looked around for a door, but could find none. A safety measure, he figured. Fortunately, the exterior of the mushroom tower was softly pitted, and it was easy enough for Arris to wedge his foot into one of the hollows while grasping the vines. Step by step, he began to climb until—
“And just where do you think you’re going, Your Majesty?”
Arris yelped. Just below the knoll where his foot sought purchase, the vines pinched together, shifting and rolling until the writhing mass unfurled at Arris’s eye level. When he blinked, the plants appeared to have arranged themselves into the face of a nosy-looking old uncle. The vines had managed to pick up a twig, which resembled a downturned mouth, and were complete with narrowed leafy eyes.
“Angling for some alone time with the contestants, are we? Hmmm?” demanded the vines. “A marriage bed is a sacred thing, boy, not something to be sampled with—”
“I am not sampling anything!” said Arris. “I have an arrangement with the contestant—”
“Oh is that what the young folk call it these days!”
“I am not attempting anything untoward with her,” said Arris. “I need to speak with her.”
“You can’t do that within public view? You have to go to her bedroom, where the door, I might add, is already shut?”
“Yes—wait. How do you know that? Are you spying on the contestants?”
“I am guarding them from the concupiscent urges of lordlings such as yourself!” said the vines, before adding smugly: “The queen herself summoned my spirit from the forests to serve as security for the future regent of the Isle.”
“You must be very good at your job, then,” said Arris.
The vines relaxed. A few of the leaves arched and Arris suspected that the roots were judging him.
“I am,” it allowed.
“If you allow me to continue on my way then you shall see for yourself that I am no threat to anyone’s virtue,” said Arris.
“Hmpf,” said the vines. “Any manner of carnal mischief will be immediately disrupted. I… shall… be… watching. I shall raise the alarm. Do you understand?”
“I can assure you that I am alarmed,” said Arris. “And a bit disturbed too.”
This answer seemed to satisfy the vines, who pulled back—though not before poking Arris’s hand with one of its thorns—and allowed Arris to scale the rest of his way to Demelza’s window.
Arris did not wish to be rude, but had the vines seen Demelza? The girl was covered—literally—in a fine scrim of dirt. She had charming eyes, which stood out all the more in her grubby face, but there was nothing short of bodilyforce that would induce Arris to be above—or below—that girl.
Arris opened her window and was immediately met with bodily force. Within moments, he found himself pinned beneath Demelza. Not that he immediately recognized this. The Demelza he had encountered was grubby-faced and soot-streaked. Arris wasn’t sure he’d properly seen her face until this very moment. Her skin was pale and luminous, like the inside of a pearl. And her eyes, which had earlier stood out, were not charming but arresting. The color of leaves upon still ponds. She sniffled when she saw him and he realized that her tears had dislodged some of the mud that had been stuck to her face.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
17An Eye for a Secret
Demelza would have leapt off the prince herself, and was actually on the verge of doing so, when her window started shrieking and the walls rattled as seething vines pushed into her bedroom.
“THERE SHALL BE NO CARNAL MISCHIEF DURING THE TOURNAMENT! I MEANT IT, BOY, I DO NOT CARE IF YOU’RE WRATE HIMSELF—”
“That was my fault!” said Demelza.
The vines paused.
“OH. WELL. NEVER MIND, THEN.”
Sulking, they spiraled back into the dark until all that was left was the faint muttering about “the moral corrosiveness in the heart of the youth” and such. Demelza shook her head and then glanced at the ground, where Prince Arris remained sprawled. He was still dressed in the coppery attire he had worn during the trial. He groaned as he righted himself and Demelza was annoyed to notice that the candlelight illuminated shades of auburn in his chestnut hair. And then Demelza was annoyed at being annoyed, because he’dspared her in the competition and made that grand speech while she’d skulked back to the shadows with the other bewildered—and pitying—contestants, because finding herself indebted to the prince was one thing, but finding herself attracted to him on top of it was pathetic.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You were not present in the Ozorald Cave,” he said.
“I was… overcome,” said Demelza, hoping that sounded like something fine ladies said. Her sisters had told her that a lady being “overcome” was something of a conversation ender. But Arris was nonplussed.
