Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The Midwinter Ball was far grander than the one held in honor of my engagement to the prince.
The silvery decorations covered the interior of the palace, and there was a tree in each corner of every floor, but the ballroom itself wasn’t that different from the first time I’d seen it.
The only difference was how I made my entrance.
Roderick and I appeared in the middle of the room, startling the dancers and ripping shouts and loud gasps from the guests.
We had arrived dressed for the theme, with me in a teal gown and Roderick in a midnight blue tailcoat.
“Sorry we’re late,” Roderick announced, loud enough for the whole room to hear. “Our invitation must have gotten lost.”
At the far end of the room, Wilhelm heaved up from his throne and Heinrich rushed to his side, mouth half-open at the sight of us.
“You!” Wilhelm threw out an arm, accusing finger pointed at Roderick. “You had the princess this entire time!”
“No, I didn’t, considering she spent half of it tumbling around the worst parts of Faerie, and almost getting killed, twice,” Roderick said casually. “Care to tell us all how she ended up in such a place, Your Majesty?”
Wilhelm stomped down from his platform, looking incensed, the prince and two guards right behind him.
As he reached us, Roderick raised a hand. “I’ve come to negotiate a trade.”
“What could the likes of you possibly trade with me?” the king snapped irritatedly, the apples of his cheeks almost as red as his hair.
Roderick’s hand came to my waist, pulling me close to his side.
I wished I could lean into him, to tell him to end this, and just take me away from here.
He gave me a reassuring squeeze before he calmly said, “By faerie law, if you rescue someone, they are now yours, until they repay you, and I rescued the princess. Should you want her back, you’ll have to pay her debt. ”
“She already owes me a debt,” said Wilhelm.
“One that has been paid, thanks to my deal with her.”
“What are you talking about, Ravenstock?” Heinrich asked, stepping closer to his father.
“I am the reason she has the ability your father covets,” Roderick said plainly. “And if I am not pleased by the end of this interaction, I can undo everything she has done.”
Wilhelm’s hazel eyes narrowed into a dangerous glare. “Are you threatening to rob me?”
Roderick smirked, hand on me tightening. “I am just warning you, my liege, of what may happen if my request is not fulfilled.”
“And what may that be?” The king ground out.
“A law declaring that the faeries that live among you are citizens entitled to the protections and freedoms every Orcagean enjoys,” Roderick declared, causing louder gasps and muttering among the crowd.
“Give them equal rights, and you may keep your gold and I will release the princess back to your son. If not, I will break both the enchantment and the engagement.”
“And I take it this means that she never could turn anything to gold, and won’t be doing it ever again,” said Wilhelm, venomous contemplation in his eyes.
Roderick nodded. “Grant my demand, sire, and keep everything you wanted. If you don’t, I would be forced to collect on our deal. It’s in your family’s best interest that I don’t.”
Heinrich now stood over his father’s shoulder, nervous. “Another threat, Lord von Ravenstock?”
Roderick shook his head. “I am negotiating, not threatening.”
“What if I don’t agree to your terms?” Wilhelm asked in a calmness that worried me more than his fury. “I don’t believe your kind deserve the same rights as humans, and that giving them such a privilege will be dangerous for us all.”
“If they posed a danger to anyone, it would have been evident long before I came here to speak on their behalf,” Roderick pointed out. “And you do want to be on good terms with the courts of Faerie, don’t you?”
Wilhelm was quiet for a tense minute, making me grind my teeth with nervous impatience.
“There has to be something else you want for yourself,” Wilhelm finally said. “I could betroth you to my eldest daughter, in exchange for keeping the princess’s ability alive, and leaving us at peace.”
Roderick’s mouth twisted in dismay. “That’s not something I’d ever want, and you know it. Just sign the law, and I leave you with your gold and your son with his bride.”
“I have a better idea.” Wilhelm ripped a sword from the nearest guard’s hip, and aimed it at us, earning shouts from the crowd and his own son, and making my heart leap to my throat. “How about you hand her over, ability intact, and I don’t take your head myself for treason?”
Roderick rushed in front of me, arms out. “On what grounds is my request treason?”
“You kidnapped my son’s bride, and are using her to force my hand.” The king moved closer, the lethal point of his sword approaching Roderick’s chest. “That is treason.”
I tried to meet Heinrich’s eyes from over Roderick’s shoulders, silently begging him to do something, anything, but he was once again just a passive observer to his father’s actions.
Roderick moved sideways, and I followed, until all three of us were moving in a circle, sharp sword between us. “You don’t want to do this.”
Wilhelm cracked an ugly laugh. “Why wouldn’t I? You’ll sic your faerie brethren on me if I harm a hair on your head? Is that it?”
“No, but you will lose what you value the most: your gold. I won’t just undo her impact on it, I will remove it completely. I will bankrupt the crown, and leave you with no choice but to abdicate to anyone who can refill the treasury.”
That made Wilhelm lunge forward with a furious shout, but Roderick transported us a second before the sword could go through him.
We reappeared a few feet away, between the guards and the throne. Roderick’s hand around mine trembled. “I’m warning you, Wilhelm, abide by my simple request, or you will regret it.”
Wilhelm bared his teeth at us like a snarling wolf. “I am the king, I don’t do anything I will regret. Guards!”
As if they’d been barely waiting for the order, the guards charged with vicious cries. I rushed in front of Roderick, putting myself between them and him.
“What are you doing?” he hissed at me, trying to pull me back behind him.
“Saving your life!” I threw back at him.
Hands held up, I addressed the king, stomach in knots.
“This was supposed to be the simplest, most peaceful way to resolve everything. But you’re forcing him to collect on the deal I had with him in return for the ability you covet.
Please don’t let that happen. Please just indulge him and the other faeries, and then we all get what we want. ”
Surrounded by palace guards, Wilhelm still had the sword held out, furious heat coming off him in waves, like he was about to combust. “I won’t get what I want if I agree to this. This trickster will take away your power, and you’ll be useless to me! He might as well keep you!”
Roderick shoved me back behind him, blue sparks coming to life between his fingertips. “Then I will, as well as make good on my warning to you.”
“No! I won’t let you take my gold away from me!”” Wilhelm surged forward before anyone else could move, and buried his sword into Roderick’s chest.
Terror locked up my chest, and a low whistling filled my ears, blocking out the reactionary gasps and shouts as Roderick stumbled back onto me, and we fell to the ground with him in my arms.
Blood spread quickly in a dark, sickening stain across his chest and I was at a loss at what else to do but place my shaking hand over the wound, feeling how warm and wet the injured space had become. How fast his warmth, his life, was flowing out beneath my palms.
I couldn’t do anything to stop this, to stop him from fading in my embrace.
In every harrowing situation I had been in since I’d boarded the ship that brought me here, he had found me.
He had found me, seen me for what I was, just as I had just begun to see him for who he was, and what he meant to me.
I couldn’t lose him, not when I had just realized that my happiness could lay with him.
He had found me, and now I was losing him.
“No. No. No, please!” I begged, about to cry, about to wail, about to scream to the sky in the hopes that any god that heard could intervene.
Wilhelm’s shadow came over us. “Get up and get away from him!”
I shook my head, tears pouring down my face. Roderick was looking up at me, pupils dilated and breathing shallow, slowly going into shock.
“I gave you an order,” Wilhelm spat through clenched teeth.
“I don’t take orders from you anymore!” I shouted, no care or worry left for my own sake. “I will never take orders from anyone, ever again.”
He shook the bloody sword in my face, thundering, “I am your king!”
“But I am not your princess!” I screamed back.
Wilhelm froze. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’ve been tricked.”
Roderick pulled on my sleeve feebly, trying to make me stop. I took his hand, squeezed it, begging silently to conserve his strength, not to worry about me. But I wasn’t backing down. I’d bitten my tongue too many times for far too long.
I raised my chin at the king, uninhibited disdain pouring out through my confession. “I am not Princess Gertrude, I am her maid, Ottoline.”
Wilhelm’s eyes widened, but he didn’t put down the sword. “Then that settles it then, I don’t have to keep treating you well, and instead of marrying my son, your purpose in life will be to serve me, before you serve the true princess.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I asked him, high on denying him. “I don’t work for you, and I will never serve you.”
“Either you do as I say, or your life is forfeit.”
Burning with defiance, I spat at his feet in lieu of an answer.
Screaming out his fury, he rushed to run me through but blue sparks covered his sword, turning the handle red-hot in his hand until he dropped it with a howl of pain.
Roderick was sitting up against the throne’s platform, one hand on his bleeding wound, and the other held out, sparks fizzling around it, his pale face sweated profusely. “You don’t touch her.”
Wilhelm looked up from his scalded hand, madness gleaming in his eyes. “Oh, I will do far worse than touch her!”
He launched himself at me, hands going for my throat, but I touched him as well to seal his doom.
I choked, hands buzzing as my hands landed on his face. “If you love your gold that much, then you shall become one with it!”
Panic filled his wild eyes, but it was too late, the gold had spread across his skin and rushed down to the rest of him, turning him into the gleaming yellow metal he would have ruined kingdoms for.
In seconds, what had once been King Wilhelm of Orcage was now just a lifelike sculpture, caught in the last expression and posture he had ever made.
I tore out of his frozen grip, rubbing my bruised throat, regaining my senses enough to register the chaos that had erupted around us. Ignoring everything, I rushed to Roderick’s side just as the guards closed in on us.
“Leave them alone!” Heinrich suddenly said, coming between us to look at what remained of his father.
He touched the sculpture with hesitant hands, a wealth of conflicting emotions on his face until he stepped back and cleared his throat. “Can this be undone?”
“No,” I said, just as Roderick coughed, his voice so low, only Heinrich and myself could hear him. “Only if you want it undone.”
“Then it can’t be undone,” Heinrich decided, coming to kneel by us. “Are you going to die?”
Roderick shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m already healing.”
I gripped the hand on his chest, mine just as slippery with his blood, relief almost making me keel over him. “You are?”
He squeezed my hand back, giving me a red-stained smile. “Did you think I’d leave you, after you ordered me to stay with you?”
I could have slapped and kissed him at once. I only laughed just as I burst out crying.
Heinrich looked between us, no doubt wondering if we were both mad, before he asked, “Is that a perk of being half-faerie?”
“There are many perks, but living in this land isn’t among them,” he said to him.
“I’m sorry.” Heinrich seemed genuinely regretful as he glanced from me to Roderick. “I’m sorry for how he was, and what he did. But now he’s gone, and that makes me…” He paused, as if the reality of the situation had just hit him, before he exclaimed. “That makes me king now!”
Roderick struggled to sit up with a groan. “What’s your first act as king then?”
“I will give you what you want, I will sign whatever law you want, just tell me where the true princess is.”
“Up in my room,” I said. “We swapped places.”
Heinrich’s eyes widened. “You spared her from my father’s cruelty! I can’t thank you enough for doing that.”
Deciding to let him believe that interpretation, I sighed. “You can thank me with some of the gold I made.” I looked to Roderick, nerves still jangling with lingering worry. “But first, get him your best medical attention.”
He smiled back, not caring that his mouth was bloody, and neither did I.
All that mattered was that he had survived. That I hadn’t lost him. Not this way.
But once this was resolved, I’d lose him anyway.