“I see we had the same idea,” she said. “That music is wretched.”
“Not as wretched as some,” said Demelza, and then she sang.
Zoraya’s gaze went unfocused. “You’re right. That is dreadful.”
“Quite,” said Demelza. “What would really be terrible is if the prince stayed alive and someone actually had to go through the process of marrying him, don’t you think?”’
Zoraya’s eyes suddenly welled with tears. “I would only find it terrible if the person who married him wasn’t me.” Zoraya started sobbing. “We were made for each other! All the prince has ever wanted is love and that is all I have ever wanted too!”
Demelza found it a little hard to believe that no one had ever loved Zoraya.
“Are you truly telling me that no one has ever told you they loved you?”
Zoraya sniffed, drying her tears with the end of her long braid. “No… never.”
“That’s… shocking.”
“I know,” said Zoraya. “I mean, I fend off a marriage proposal every other month and men have pledged their hearts to me, brought me exotic animals, one gentleman had a gold sculpture carved in my likeness… but no one has ever said they loved me. I want that. I deserve that! My dearest friend, Niko, says that I deserve all the beauty in the world for that is what I bring to the world. He says—”
Demelza had passed the realm of incredulity and intodeep annoyance. “So you have no desire to murder the prince?”
“Of course not!” she said. She looked suddenly stricken. “Why? Does the prince think I am capable of such a thing? Because Niko thinks I am the soul of gentility!”
This continued for some time until Demelza began to ponder the merits of throwing herself down the staircase for the sake of being unconscious and thus spared more of Zoraya’s woeful tales of her own beauty.
Eventually, however, the horrid concert ended and Demelza’s covert interrogations came to an end, which she was extremely grateful for as her back was beginning to ache from hiding in the boat’s stairwell. When dusk fell, the mushroom residences unfurled out of the ground and the girls trooped inside for dinner.
“I was sure Prince Arris would have joined us today,” muttered one of the contestants, a girl named Oliana. She pouted. “I nearly snapped my ankles wearing these shoes because he said he liked the color gray, and they are most uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps he is deliberating which one of us should go home next,” said a girl with the spotted and swiveling ears of a deer. “Did you notice that Erinya wasn’t there when the boat docked? I heard she got thrown overboard!”
“Serves her right. She was so pompous. And I hated her perfume. She smelled like a wet dog.”
“Well that’s fitting considering she’s an absolute—”
Demelza tuned out the chatter, dragging herself up the stairs and into her room, where she wanted nothing morethan to peel away every thought and throw herself into her bed.
Soon, she thought, trudging to her room and opening the door. Soon she would be gloriously alone—
“Hello!”
Demelza blinked. Sitting very comfortably in her room was Prince Arris. He was dressed in a rumpled tunic and brown trousers that were rolled at the cuff. He was, oddly, barefoot. And even more oddly, Prince Arris was holding a plate of pie. He grinned and Demelza recalled the other night.
Call me Arris.
He held up the plate. “Pie?”
21A Very Peculiar Kind of Hope
Demelza had never in her life said no to an offer of pie and she wasn’t about to start now. But the prince had not come to her room to bring her a pastry. He wanted information and was merely being polite.
“Why not,” said Demelza, slumping into the chair across from him. “As far as reports go—”
“I never see you in the dining hall with the other contestants,” said Arris. “Why is that?”
Demelza shrugged. “I’m not hungry at this hour. Whatever Ursula makes is a thousand times better anyway and she spends the dinner hour foraging. I’d sit with Talvi, but she only drinks snow tea in the evenings and reads alone.”
Her stomach growled.Traitor, thought Demelza. Arris glanced at her belly, but he said nothing. Instead, he continued to regard her with those wide, brown eyes that seemed to perceive far more than Demelza would like.
