Adrian didn’t dignify that with a response. He just picked up his black boots off the carpet and walked over to the white fur-covered ottoman in front of the white marble wardrobe full of elegant white-silk clothes he refused to wear. He sat down with a huff and stomped his boots onto his feet before turning to grab his black pointed witch hat off the white dresser. The hat had been a gift from his aunt Muriel for passing his coven tests. It had no magic of its own that he knew of, but just putting it on his head made Adrian feel more like himself. A feeling that instantly vanished again when he grabbed his enchanted coat off the wall sconce he’d been using as a coatrack.
It felt like picking up nothing at all. Adrian couldn’t remember the last time his beloved black coat had been so light. It should’ve been brimming with useful curses, charms, and magical materials, but the very first thing the Crown Princess had done when she’d locked him in here was force Adrian to empty his pockets down to the seams. He’d tried his best to hide things from her, but the disguised queen who’d ripped the real Bex’s horns off was thorough. Probably because Gilgamesh hadtold her the same thing Malik had told Adrian back when he was pretending to be a loving father: that a witch outside his forest was only as good as the spells in his pockets.
There were no spells in his pockets anymore. Adrian would’ve gladly sacrificed all nine of his remaining fingers to the Morrigan for even one of his trusty curses, but the goddess either couldn’t hear him in Heaven or didn’t want his new white blood, because no matter how much of it he offered, she never replied. He couldn’t reach his forest either, thanks to the sharp-toothed seal Gilgamesh had placed over the hollow where his heart had been. He could still feel his actual heart beating far, far away, but he couldn’t touch the roots that bound it or the magic of the Blackwood that flowed through them, which meant he was dead in the water. He was patting down his coat one more time in the vain hope that maybe he’d find a sap trap stuck to the lining, when the princess darted out of the huge white bed to wrap her arms around him.
Adrian jumped so hard he almost bashed his chin open on the crown of her carved, hornless head. Great Forest, hehatedwhen she did that. Gilgamesh’s princess was every bit as fast as the real Bex, but much less conscientious about her movements, or her strength. She was squeezing Adrian hard enough to bruise, and she didn’t stop when he gasped in pain. If anything, the sound made her clench her arms even tighter, wrapping herself around his chest like a vise as she buried her cold, hard face in his wrinkled black shirtfront.
“Why are you ignoring me?” she whispered in Bex’s hurt, shaking voice. “This was supposed to be our reward. We’re supposed to behappy.” Her head snapped up, the interlocking, cuneiform-marked gold rings of her eyes spinning as they focused on Adrian’s face like camera lenses. “Why aren’t you happy with me?”
“Because you’re. Not. Bex,” Adrian snarled, shoving her as hard as he could even though he already knew he wasn’t strong enough to move her. “Having her memories doesn’t make you her, because the realBex wouldn’t hurt me with her strength. She wouldn’t hang on me or sneak into my bed after I explicitly told her not to, because therealBex actually gives a damn what I think.”
“But I do!” she cried, squeezing even harder. “Idocare! You’re the only one I care about anymore! You’re supposed to be myprince!”
She was screaming by the end, but Adrian didn’t reply. He already knew she wouldn’t listen, so he kept his mouth stubbornly shut, letting his silence do what his arms couldn’t until, finally, the princess pushed herself away.
“Why are you being so mean?” she sobbed, wiping her eyes pathetically even though she was a carved doll incapable of shedding tears. “I finally got what I wanted. Gilgamesh set me free of my endless burden. He let me put down my sword so I could live the lifeIdreamed of for once. This was supposed to be our happily-ever-after, but you aren’t even trying. You’ve already made up your mind to hate me because you’re not a noble prince at all. You’re just a cruel, heartlesswitch!”
She started crying in earnest then, the biggest sign yet that she was nothing but a carved fake. The Bex Adrian knew hated for anyone to see her cry, and she’dneveruse tears to get what she wanted. He didn’t know why Gilgamesh had bothered trying to pass this bad copy off as real if he was going to do such a terrible job on her personality, but who knew? Considering how unstable every princess seemed to be, maybe this was the best his father could manage.
It gave Adrian great pleasure to imagine the haughty Gilgamesh failing at something, but while he was never going to accept the princess as anything but an enemy, he still didn’t likelistening to her cry. He had work to do in any case, so Adrian turned his back on the sobbing parody of Bex and strode across his bedroom prison toward the golden door that led to the only other place in Heaven he was allowed to access: his workshop.
True to his word, Gilgamesh had provided his son with a lavish space to study the Queen of Pride’s horns. The room on the other side of the golden door was bigger than Adrian’s entire cabin, with towering, arched white ceilings, a polished white marble floor, and an entire wall of perfectly clear glass windows (unbreakable—he’d tried) overlooking the White City. The walls that didn’t have windows were lined with white stone shelves containing solid-gold versions of every tool a witch or sorcerer might need, but no reagents, potion ingredients, cauldrons, brooms, or anything else that could be used to escape.
There was also a parchment scroll posted on the locked door to the hallway outside listing all the sorcery that had been temporarily banned for Prince Adrian’s “safety,” starting with teleportation. These limitations would be lifted when the prince finished repairing the Queen of Pride’s horns, the pieces of which were spread all over the worktable at the center of the room like a giant unfinished jigsaw puzzle.
Adrian didn’t even spare them a glance. He strode right past, walking straight through the giant workroom to the only thing in the whole place that wasn’t white or gold: a little heap of bright-green needles carefully positioned in the workshop’s sunniest corner under the windows.
Seeing them made Adrian smile for the first time since he woke up. It didn’t look like much at the moment, but that little pile of green was a tree. A white pine sapling, to be precise, and it was Adrian’s most prized possession. He’d gone through hell to get that tree. Not literally, but he had written a five-page petition to the Crown Prince’s office explaining in triplicate why a tree was necessary to complete his work. His first petition hadasked for threetrees, the lowest number that could possibly be considered a grove, but that request had been denied. After a long back-and-forth where he’d been forced to make a point-by-point justification for why a witch of theBlackwoodneeded aforest, he’d finally been permitted one seed, a gold basin containing five cubic feet of sterilized soil, and a watering jug with ten gallons of nutrient-enriched liquid.
Not a bad starter kit for a houseplant, but it had still taken Adrian all of yesterday and no small amount of his quintessence blood to grow the seedling to its current three-foot height. That was pathetic compared to the monster trees he’d grown in twenty minutes using the same technique back in his forest, but growing anything up here was an enormous challenge. All those letters just to get one seed and a pile of dirt hadn’t been the Crown Prince stonewalling him out of spite. They were real restrictions set eons ago by Gilgamesh himself for the preservation of the Eternal Kingdom.
It might be called Heaven now, but this place had originally been Paradise, the land of the gods. It had been Ishtar’s land in particular, goddess of life, death, war, love, beauty, and—most relevant to Adrian’s current situation—fertility. Anything that sprouted, germinated, or pollinated was a potential lever the goddess could use to pry herself out of her grave. Because of this, every type of plant, from ornamental gardens to sidewalk weeds to the slime that grew on the inside of wastewater tanks, was considered dangerous contraband. Procreative activities were also forbidden within the city for the same reason, as were all living creatures except Gilgamesh’s chosen humans and their demon slaves, bodies of water larger than one liter, and all nonmagical fires.
Adrian didn’t see how any place you weren’t allowed to have sex, grow flowers, take a bath, or pet a cat could be possibly called Heaven, but such were the sacrifices required byan empire whose entire existence revolved around keeping the undying gods dead. They took it damn seriously up here too. There were so many anti-growth spells on the palace that just getting the pine tree to sprout had taken every bit of Adrian’s magic, experience, and skill. He had it going now, though. The sap collectors he’d put in last night were full as well, which meant he was in business.
Peeking over his shoulder, Adrian reached down like a thief and began detaching the small gold finger bowls he was using as collectors from the cuts he’d made in the young tree’s bark. There was no obvious reason to be so cautious. He could still hear the princess sobbing in the bedroom, and despite promising they’d work together, Gilgamesh hadn’t set foot in the workshop since the night he’d locked Adrian in. That was fine with Adrian, of course, but the king’s absence made him almost as nervous as his presence would have. Back in the Blackwood, Gilgamesh had made it sound like Adrian’s work was the single most important thing in his entire empire. Now he was being an absentee boss, and while Adrian was sure his father was still keeping tabs on him through the princess’s golden eyes, the whole situation felt very strange. What was the point of forcing Adrian into such a hard corner if his father was just going to leave him to his own devices?He hadn’t even set a deadline. Adrian was just stuck in here with nothing to do until he finished. It almost felt like his father expected him to complete the horns out of boredom.
If that was the expectation, then Gilgamesh had made a grave mistake, because Adrian could always think of something else to do. He’d spent the first three days trying every spell he could think of to get a message out to Boston and his family. Those had all failed, of course, but that didn’t mean he was done. He just had to get more creative. His plan for today was his mostout-of-the-box solution yet. Also the riskiest, but prisoners who played it safe were prisoners who stayed caught.
Adrian was certainly ready to roll the dice. If he had to spend another night in that silent, bright-white box of a bedroom with an unstable doll-woman who wouldn’t stop touching him, he’d go insane. Put it like that and the risk felt much more acceptable, allowing Adrian to keep his hands steady as he painstakingly scraped all the sticky, naturally antibiotic pine sap into the golden bowl his soup had arrived in yesterday. He’d just carried it over to the worktable where the Queen of Pride’s broken horns were scattered when a teary voice called his name.
“Adrian?”
Adrian looked up with an irritated scowl to see the princess standing in the bedroom doorway with a covered golden tray in her white hands.
“The servants brought your breakfast,” she said. “Do you want to come eat?”
Her voice was soft and apologetic, which meant he was getting the contrite princess today. That was better than the furious one who kicked over tables and screamed at him to love her, but he still didn’t want to deal with it.
“Leave it,” he said, ignoring the delicious smell of fresh coffee that wafted from under the tray’s cover because he wasn’t a dog who could be conditioned into obedience with food. “I’m busy right now.”
“Are you finally getting to work on the horns?” she asked excitedly, her distraught tone completely flipping around as she dropped his tray on one of the workshop’s empty tables and ran over. “That’s fantastic! Your father will be so pleased.”
Adrian shrugged and put his back to her, focusing all his attention on stirring the sticky sap with a metal file he’d found in one of the tool sets on the wall. He’d almost gotten it to theright consistency when the princess leaned her white head into his field of view.
“What’s that yellow stuff?” she asked, wrinkling her perfect copy of Bex’s nose. “It smells like air freshener.”
“It’s glue,” he lied.
