She called after me, “Have you seen Princess Amalie?”
“Not since last night,” I panted, taking a step back towards her.
She raised her eyes to the heavens, and released a long exhale, as if praying to Seru to grant her tranquility. It was the most stressed I’d ever seen her. “The maids are waiting in her quartersto dress her, and she is nowhere to be found.”
I wasn’t the least bit surprised that Amalie was hiding. She had threatened to boycott the wedding, and she was certainly strong-willed enough to have meant it.
“If I happen to see her, I’ll send her your way,” I offered, but she wasn’t listening anymore. She turned and resumed her stride down the corridor, muttering about it being too close to the ceremony to play games.
The princess had found a new and creative way to torment the matron. I would have chuckled had I not been entirely consumed with the task at hand.
When I flung open the door to my bedchamber, I went straight to the pile of books on the breakfast table, praying my inkling was not wrong.
Opening the book on witches Hugo had loaned me,desperation and despair increased with every page I turned.Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.I couldn’t find any evidence that I’d seen the amulet before, and I was running out of pages. Running out of time.
It wasn’t in that book.
Or the next.
Or the next.
I tugged at my hair. I wanted to rip it out and howl in frustration. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could sit like this, rifling through books with the deadline of the wedding looming over my head.Think.I closed my eyes, drawing the image into my mind.
The first time I saw the amulet, it hadn’t been sitting around Oriane’s neck. It had been an illustration… an illustration in a book. A somewhat crude illustration, with muted colors. And when I first came across it, I didn’t give it a second thought because…
Because…
Because it was in a storybook!
At the bottom of the long-forgotten pile of books I’d read the day I was confined to my bedchamber, I found it. The book of fairy tales and folklore.
I flicked through the pages in such a frenzy that I worried I might tear them. At last, my eyes fell on an image in shades of black and white and red—the amulet.
Accompanying the illustration was a story about a peasant girl who asked a witch to help her make a prince fall in love with her. The witch gave the peasant girl the amulet and told her it had the power to make any living person feel love and desire towards the wearer. She instructed the peasant girl to mark the ruby with a single drop of blood from the prince, and, if she did this, the prince would love her for as long as she wore the amulet.
The witch warned the princess that the amulet could have severe repercussions, but the peasant girl ignored her. She acquired a drop of the prince’s blood and donned the amulet. The prince fell in love with her immediately, and soon they were happily married—at least at first.
With time, the prince’s love for the girl, now a princess, grew into something more sinister. It became possessive and controlling. Wildly jealous, he locked her in a tower, so only he could lay eyes on her. He put her hands in chains, so she could never remove the amulet.
For years, he kept her isolated and chained in the tower until, one day, the clever princess asked the prince to unchain her so she could give him a kiss. Greedy with lust, the prince removed her chains. As soon as he did, the princess snatched his sword and, with it, she stabbed herself in the heart. She told him she would rather be dead than continue to live as his prisoner. She knew her death would be a fitting punishment for what she had done.
The princess died swiftly. Shortly afterwards, the prince,sick with grief, flung himself out of the tower’s window and fell to his death.
A chill swept through my body as I set the story aside.
Not only was Tarben enchanted, but, if there was any truth to this story, he would only grow more fanatical over time. Dangerous, even.
I needed to take the book to Hugo and Filip immediately. Wehadto get Oriane to take off the amulet before it was too late.
As I rose from my seat, book in hand, there was a knock on my door. Britta entered the bedchamber carrying an envelope.
“This just arrived for you, Miss,” she said, handing me the envelope and retreating from the room.
My stomach twisted. I would recognize that bold handwriting anywhere. Ripping it open, the air rushed out of my lungs at the sight of a single lock of golden hair accompanied by a note.
With trembling hands, I opened the note. My skin prickled when my eyes fell on the central crest—the murderer’s symbol. My heart was in my throat as I read what was written.
There lives a little princess who’s been stolen away.
