“Careful,” Brunhilda warned, mouth tight.
“Can’t you turn him into a dragon for the duration of his journey and make him fly there? That must be safer thangallivanting across the kingdom.”
Brunhilda paused, thoughtful. “A dragon isn’t a terrible idea…” She shook her head and waved away Risa’s suggestion with a pockmarked hand. “But then he might remain a dragon forever—or the magic would unravel halfway through his flight—and I’d never hear the end of it from the king.”
Risa narrowed her eyes at that. The implication that magic was impermanent was something she’d never imagined possible.
“Then what do you suppose I’ll do?”
The witch shrugged again. “I haven’t a clue. Provide some sense of safety. Be a friend. What do teenage humans like to do?”
Risa wanted to scream. It wasn’t like she knew. She’d spent her friend-making years avoiding pelted rocks. But she swallowed the screech in her throat and used her words. “You must have a better idea than that. With my luck, I’m sure to get him killed.”
“It’s against witch rules for me to interfere with human affairs too frequently; you provide an easy loophole,” Brunhilda said with a dismissive air to her gravelly voice. “Just ensure the prince says ‘I do’ when he arrives in Madros for his wedding to the general’s daughter.”
Risa stilled at the words. It was as though a heavy stone had landed in the pit of her stomach. Half thoughts ofMadrosswirled like a fog through her mind, dissipating into darkness the harder she tried to grip them.
Little was known about the kingdom. Its newest leader was admired, having brought the sickly nation back from the brink of devastation. Emigration had halted years ago, and the borders had been closed. Shedidremember its affinity for science and its aversion to magic, and she frowned at the thought of the Kheadish king wanting to ally himself with a nation that greatly disapproved of magic, when his own kingdom seemed to run amok with it.
Like the very witch leading her toward certain death.
“I don’t understand,” Risa said, the fog in her mind thickening as she tried to conjure more thoughts of Madros.
Brunhilda released a long-suffering sigh. “I tire of talking. Now, shut up.”
Risa did as she was ordered, not because she wanted to—and she did not—but because she had somehow lost the ability to speak altogether. A flash of heat raced across her skin. Words clogged her throat as she opened and closed her mouth.
“Much better.” Brunhilda cackled like the witch she was as they traveled deeper into the woods.
CHAPTER THREEIn Which the Girl Meets a Prince
There were several factors that made Brunhilda’s plan—could it even be called that?—a very stupid plan. The most important being that Risa wasjusta girl. What could a girl do on a quest across the kingdom when she had barely even stepped out her front door?
She would have liked to let Brunhilda know what she thought of the plan, but unfortunately, the witch’s spell made it impossible. Risa struggled against the magic that had stilled her tongue, unable to utter a word. The spell coiled tightly around the base of her throat, trapping her voice behind the cage of her teeth.
Great.
She resigned herself to glowering at the woods, silently cursing the witch and all the circumstances surrounding this moment.
But—she perked up at the idea swirling in her head. There was a way she could benefit from this arrangement. After all, el principitomight have been the youngest and most useless of the royal brood, but he was still a prince.
He wasn’t the smartest of the seven—that honor belonged to the fourth prince. Nor was he the strongest—that was the second prince’s claim to fame. He wasn’t a leading military strategist like his third brother, or the tortured artist his sixth brother was, or a prodigious musician like the fifth. And most of all, he wasn’t the golden child, heir to the throne and inheritor of their great nation, like the first. Prince Javi was a boy with no skills besides somehow making everyone fall in love with him.
If Risa played her cards right and convinced el principito that she was crucial to getting him to the wedding, then he might gift her something in return. Riches, a magical object, or best of all: a connection to a witch who might be willing to break her curse. Or at the very least, to acknowledge she had one.
Something snapped within her chest, like a taut line that suddenly went slack, or a growing vine turning into a dried husk. It fell away, and she was unable to stop herself from asking, “Why would the king use his youngest—and arguably most hopeless—son to attempt, what, some kind of peace treaty?”
The question sent a flock of birds in the nearby trees squawking into the air. It even made Risa jump and look around, searching for the source of the sound before she realized it had been her own voice.
Brunhilda did not react. The witch sighed and spared Risa a long, withering glance. The hollows beneath her impenetrable eyes looked darker under the shade of the tall trees.
“Well,” Brunhilda declared, more to herself than to Risa, her voice not much different from the dry leaves crunching underfoot, “that didn’t last long.”
“I deserve an answer if you’re going to throw me to the wolves—”
“I hardly believe Prince Javier of Kheadon constitutes awolf. More like a puppy. Or a lizard.”
“—and force me to roam the kingdom for a ridiculous plot to, I don’t know, convince the prince to go through with some political marriage.”
