“Right, but you could stand there holding up signs. Have you tried carrier pigeons?”
A lot of eyes blinked at me. The prince wasn’t frowning anymore.
“In three years,” I said, totally unable to keep the disbelief from my voice, “you haven’t once tried different ways to communicate with the other courts?”
They all looked to the prince, who sat up to splay his legs and use every inch of his throne. It was hard work keeping my gaze on his face and not on the bulge between his thighs. Was that just him or some kind of medieval codpiece? He looked like he was smuggling kumquats.
“Once the landscape changed to prevent animals from crossing the border,” the prince said, low and even, “we ceased all attempts at communication for fear of causing further damage.”
I nodded and just had to look anywhere else. “Sure, I can understand that.” I changed tactics. “So what have you tried to do to break the curse?”
When no one said anything, I looked again at theprince in time to see him wave his hand. That must’ve been permission, because Badru started talking again.
“A curse is a spell like any other, so our spell workers have been investigating what they can.”
“I’m told,” a woman said, “that it can be compared to unraveling a particularly terrible knot made of threads and being about the size of a cottage.”
Now I was the one blinking at them as I tried to imagine that. “And I’m guessing they haven’t gotten very far with it.”
“They have not,” Badru said with a shake of his head. He smiled. “But we won’t give up hope.”
Only two other people seemed to share his optimism and neither of them was the prince.
I pulled my blankets tighter around myself. “Well, what do you think about taking me to the border and seeing if I can pass through?”
Again, all of them looked to the prince. He was still staring at me.
“To what end?” he asked.
I didn’t know what they might’ve tried other than the horse. Maybe they’d spent weeks throwing things at the barriers, losing their minds over the implications of what being cut off would mean. Maybe they’d scrambled to get those greenhouses going, like Lars had said. Maybe these people had little holes in their hearts from every single one of their people who’d died in those early days because nothing had worked to save them.
The fact that no one seemed motivated to try right now, though, was pissing me off.
I took three fast steps that brought me square infront of him and heard the creak of armor as the guards jerked in alarm. The prince sat back, away from me, his pale eyes widening.
“What if they know more about the curse than you do? What if they’ve broken through to a court you can’t reach?” I grabbed that staff he held and wrenched it from his grasp. “If nothing else, if I can get through, you can get rid of me.”
He stood fast and shouldered past me, nearly knocking me on my ass with a strength I hadn’t expected. As I caught myself and stood straight again, I watched him storm off and realized he had a set of lacy, icy-looking butterfly wings. I wasn’t even sure his feet touched the ground as those wings fluttered madly, propelling him from the room. A moment before he passed through the doorway, the wings stilled, and then they disappeared. He only brought them out when he needed them?
To get away from me.
Badru stepped over with an apologetic look on his face and his hands out. I still held the staff and so gave it to him and decided he might be one of the good guys.
“Prince Flurris is frustrated,” he said and set the staff in something just behind the throne. I imagined an umbrella stand full of intimidating batons and cudgels.
“I’m sure he is.” I stepped back down onto the main floor, wondering who’d take me where this time. Back to the dungeon? My stomach gurgled noisily.
“By any chance,” another woman said, “are you attracted to men, Mister Hawkins?”
“Giselle,” Badru chastened, but she only shrugged.
I cleared my throat, all eyes on me again. “I don’t see how that?—”
“There’s a theory,” Giselle went on, “that the curse seeks to change the prince—perhaps all of them—for the better through lessons learned. Like isolation from each other can and has killed more than any war had done.”
I jumped ahead. “And you think he needs to learn about love, too?”
She smiled and shrugged. “I was one of the first citizens he made after his own creation and I have never known the prince to have a beloved of any kind.”
