“Well, Bart seemed suitably smitten with me. The other guard, Nathaniel, I had to leave down there for them to deal with. Maybe they sent Ebony out to seduce him?”
“Who?” Theo asks, sitting opposite me.
“The Snow White I woke up.”
Hart leans against the window and folds his arms. “Please tell me you haven’t collected another fairy-tale creature?”
“No, I think Nash is going to find a place for her to figure out her life.”
Hamish and Eugene skitter out of one room and across the floor before snuggling underneath my legs against the sofa.
The door flies open, and Malachi and Nash join us. “That was some interesting flirting,” Malachi says, dropping onto the sofa next to me while Nash joins Theo. “The other guard will wake with a ringing headache and no knowledge of what happened.”
“What happened with your sister?” Theo asks.
“The ball is the next diurnal. Charming intends to marry her,” Nash tells them. “We left her in the tower while we figure out a plan of action. If we take her now, it will cause a kingdom-wide search.”
I’d struggled to leave my sister to the whims of Charming. It didn’t feel right, and I don’t trust him to follow his own narrative. That Poopfloof is devious and determined.
“She’s safest where she is right now,” Theo adds. I don’t agree, but I also don’t have a plan.
"Perhaps if we hide Daphne, preventing her from attending the ball, it will force Charming to find alternative sisters for the wedding ceremony," Hart suggests.
I blink and then shoot up to my feet, causing my capons to squawk and flap their useless wings. “You are kidding?” I snap. “You want a pair of females to lose their eyes as sacrificial lambs in my place?” I stride up and down the length of the room. “That’s incredibly selfish. You are knights. Perhaps you should look at your job description. You seem to have gotten lax in your saving duties and the definition.”
“Daphne, that’s not what Hart meant,” Nash says.
“What did he mean?”
“It’s exactly what I meant,” Hart says. “We can’t avoid the darkness of the fairy tales. They will always exact a price, but we can control how and who pays it.”
My hands dive into my hair, and I tug on the strands. “It is not right, and you are talking like Gwyneth is going to marry Charming. That is not happening.”
“Once married, she will be free to live like a queen,” Hart says, launching himself off the wall and stepping into my path. “Charming will continue to take maidens to his bed, and your sister as queen will host tea parties and balls. It is not a hardship.”
“We have little in this life,” I tell him. “Less than you blessed beings living out your narrative for the pleasure of the Idols. But the one thing we have which you don’t, is freedom. Our lives aren’t squashed into a pair of tight pants that everyone expects will fit, despite eating all the sausage in the kingdom.”
“I’m so confused,” Malachi says.
I throw my hands up. “Gwyneth and I, we aren’t meant to be here. All we have is our freedom, and because of Charming’s wandering eyes and floof addiction, he has derailed our plans to fall in love and live happily ever after in a story of our own making.”
“I understand,” Nash says low, like he’s talking to a fire-breathing dragon. I guess he has experience with that. “But this is a tough situation, and Hart may be correct in his assessment. We protect you, allow the wedding to occur, and then you can return to enjoy a rich life with Gwyneth if that is what you desire.”
They are missing the point, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Born into privilege and prestige, they could never understand that removing our free will, even for a tempo, is the greatest insult to a Burgher. My heart thumps in my chest at the loss of my knights, whom I believed had my back. How silly of me. I will have to rescue my sister alone. I’ve survived many annuses without them, this will be no different.
“You will need to stay with us,” Nash says. “No one will dare to take you from our bedchambers.”
A flush of heat for a different reason other than anger washes over me. “Fine.”
The brothers stare at one another as they try to work out silently whose bed I should return to this sundown. “No choosing required,” I say. “I don’t know whose room is whose, so I’m just going to pick a room, and that is where I will stay.”
I spin and eyeball the four doors. I randomly pick one and march through it, finding a neatly made bed in the center. There’s no clothing strewn around, and everything has its place, even the guitar on its stand in a corner and the books arranged by size on a shelf.
There’s a chuckle from the living chamber and I spin on my heel to find Hart in the doorway. Oh wonderful, I’ve picked Mr. Icy for my last night with the knights. I guess that is for the best. If it were one of the others, I would have trouble keeping my hands to myself, deepening my connection to them and shaking my resolve to save my sister from her fate. No, this is the right decision.
“You want to try again, Calamity?” Hart asks. There’s a mocking glint in his gaze as he awaits my rejection.
I shake my head and round the bed, letting my hand graze across it. “Which side do you sleep on?”
