“In any event,” she says, “we’ve got the wintertide ball in a week; we’ve spent enough time getting here, dealing with this…issue”—she gestures toward me—“that we’re now a week behind schedule, and youknowwhat the ministers from Parciful are like; they insist on seeing our complete plans before their king so much as sets foot on our soil.”
“Driz has been here for months and I don’t think he’s demanded anyone’s specs,” I say, a little petulant.
“Driz?!” Mother gasps.
“Prince Drizen,” I sigh. “The first one you sent here to kiss me.”
“Oh yes. Well, he was always rather unconventional, that one.” She pauses. “The fact remains: We’ve got to get back to the Winter Palace; it’s only half opened since we haven’t properly moved into it yet, given that we had to stay in Mydmouth in order to await the arrival of…this personage,” she says, indicating the sorcerer, who’s now sitting on a pillow by the window, peering at the dust on the cover of a book. She draws a finger through the dust as we watch, pulls out a loupe, and squints at her fingertip.
Some rubbishy little bit of teenage spite, which somehow lingers inside me, begs to apologize for inconveniencing the ministers from Parciful in the snottiest of tones, but I quash it. I didn’t speak like that when Iwasa teenager. I left the brattiness to my sister.
“I’m not sure how we’ll get enough new gowns for you in time for the season,” Mother’s saying. “Honeyrose has been working on the logistics, but the schedule’s going to be tight; you’ll be in fittings until the morning of the ball, I’m sure of it.” She glances over at me. “We’ll have to begin retraining your waist immediately. We can start this afternoon. Once all this”—she waves a hand—“is over.”
Corsets. In order to create the correct silhouette for one’s winter gowns, one is meant to wear corsets of increasing tightness for the weeks leading up to the season. It’s called waist-training, and it’s the actual punishment meted out in the fifth hell. I haven’t worn a corset in months.
“Why do we have to follow the dictates of older courtly style?” I burst out. “We’re the royal family; if we don’t want to wear corsets, we don’t have to. Everyone will just think we’re starting a new fashion.”
Mother gasps. “Tanadelle, thefabricsmay change; thehemlinesmay go up and down, but thesilhouetteshave been unaltered since our family first ascended to the throne! It’stradition.”
“Intriguing,” the sorcerer says, more to herself than anyone else. “When the girl—”
“Princess,” Mother grits out.
“—is upset, the energy that surrounds her—what those of a less scientific nature might call her aura, and which is indicative of her curse, of course—becomes quite agitated. Fascinating. I must remember this; what a chapter it will make in my memoir.”
Somewhere behind me, someone—sounding suspiciously dracone—sniggers, and covers the sound with a cough.
“Look,” the sorcerer says, gesturing toward my parents with the dusty book she’s still holding. “See how the dust trembles across the surface!”
“You’rebreathing on it!” I burst out.
“Details,” she says. “The dust is, without a doubt, attuned to the energy of your curse.”
“Honey, honestly?!” I say, throwing her a look. She returns my gaze with huge eyes and a kind of open-handed shrug that saysShe’s a git, but she’ll do the job.
The sounder is asleep in a sunny corner. Bash has taken a seat on the ground, near the bookcase filled with all my favorite tragic romances, and has his arms draped over his knees. He looks about as miserable as I feel. As though sensing my gaze on him, he looks up and offers me a wry little smile. Something in me twists, and the urge to cry wells up again. I push it down, savagely.
“We’ve got the Feast of the Five Hills a week after the winter ball,” Mother is saying, to herself or my father or me or all of us or none of us, I’m not sure. “Two months in Fantamir, then it’ll be time to head out again; we’ll have to get in as much as possiblebefore your sister gives birth, since she won’t be in any condition to hold court for a while after. Tandy, you’ll take on some of her responsibilities during the first year, as she takes a step back from the throne—you’ll have to host the Feast of Saint Switha, and serve as spring-queen after the last snowfall of the year. Honey, we’ll need a new gown for that one; you’re so much shorter than your sister that I don’t think we can alter the existing costume. There’ll be a number of state visits next summer, in addition to the usual tours, of course—no one’s seen you for months, and we’ll have to get you out and about…incumbent upon us to repay all the state visits the princes of the other kingdoms have paid to us this year…state gifts; I’ll have to begin preparing the silver for the visit to the Five-Fold Night.”
She trails off, mentally working through her calendar for the next year, as the horrifying prospect of serving as spring-queen (one is meant to sit on a throne carved of ice in a gown covered in holly and pine needles for the course of an entire day, sunup to sundown, to celebrate the last snowfall of the winter season, while the heat of one’s bodymelts the ice throne) echoes through my mind. It’s a duty that generally falls to the eldest child of the royal family, to my relief. My sisterdeteststhe ceremony. But this year, the duty will fall to me. All of her most onerous duties will fall to me.
The thought of adding my sister’s duties to my own fills me with dread. I’ll still be meant to travel from town to town, cutting ribbons and kissing babies. But I’ll also be expected to host every royal ball, every feast, open and close parliament,and, as soon asthiswinter’s season is over and I’m released from the more constrictive corsets, and my waist has gone back to its normal size and shape, I’ll have to begin training it again fornextwinter’s season.
“Can’t we figure out a way to…not have me do so much stuff?” I say, a little desperately.
“Not have me do so much stuff?Tandy, really,” Mother says. “Your language. We’ll have to bring a tutor back in, to elevate the tone of your conversation a bit; a few months in the middle of nowhere, with no one to talk to, has wreaked immense damage. Though, I’m sure, everyone will consider it an adorable little freak for a week or two. But there will be no more speaking ofstuff.”
“Duties, I mean,” I clarify. “Surely we can ease me back in, or offer a more limited calendar of events for the next few months…”
“Surely we cannot,” Mother says. “Your sister will be out of commission for months to come; the first months spent with a new baby are precious, and we willnotdeny her that time. You’ll have to make peace with the idea that getting yourself cursed—which, really, would be just wildly inconvenient at the best of times—has been an even more significant inconvenience now than it would have been a year ago, and doesnotchange the facts of your birth, your duties, or the respect you owe to your people and the people of the Shining Realm as a whole, as a representative of this family.”
At her words, something inside me breaks.
“I don’twantto do it,” I shout, and then clap a hand over my mouth. A wave of nausea rolls over me as I realize what I’ve just said. I stagger and reach out a hand and steady myself against the wall, but the horrible sense of seasickness persists; what have I justsaid? I sink to the floor and then, for the second time in my adult life, I burst into tears.
I can hear commotion around me: Someone has gasped, and other someones are whispering, but I can’t bring myself to look up. I bury my head in my knees and sob, big ugly dirty wetsobbing; the room feels like it’s swaying around me, and I’m dimly aware that I didn’t eat anything this morning, just sat on the floor with Bash and talked about nothing. Someone puts a hand on my shoulder and I shrug it off; I’m the worst person in the world because I’d rather spend my life stuck in a bookshop, never able to go farther outside than my garden, never unlocking my heart’s desire, than sitting on a melting ice chair and training my waist. But those are myduties; that is mylife. My sister is going to have a baby, and that’ll be her first break from royal life in twenty-five years. My mother, who ascended the throne at age sixteen with no siblings to help share her burden, has only ever had two periods of relative peace in her life: the few, brief months after her children were born. Us. My sister and me.
All the while I’ve been pantsing around in this little village in the middle of nowhere, making up love stories with cursed pirates and pretending I’m not excruciatingly who and what I am. And what that is, is an ungrateful slug for wishing my unexpected break wouldn’t ever have to end. For wishing I could give up a life of privilege and play shopkeeper and kiss pirates without anyone gossiping about it to theRoyal Tatler.
