Chapter 25
Pip
My sneakers squeaked on the marble. I passed two guards who looked at me with the polite blankness of people who had been trained not to react to anything but a violent threat.
Why hadn’t he said anything? It wasn’t like I would have expected Aeldryc to fall to his knees and beg me for my hand in marriage, but maybe he could have said something Aeldryc-like about how it would be a very good idea for us to be married. For me to sleep in his bed for the rest of my life.
Instead, he was quite focused on getting me home. So focused that he had far more information than he’d ever shared with me. Why hadn’t he mentioned that Liminal Order stuff to me? Was it because he was searching far and wide for a mirror to chuck me back through so he could wipe his hands of me?
I needed to stop thinking about this, because I was three steps from convincing myself the sky was green.
But Aeldryc had gone still, the way he did when he was calculating battle strategy or deciding whether something was a threat.
Like the idea of marrying me required the same level of tactical assessment as a border skirmish.
Which. Fine. That was fine. People froze when they were surprised. It didn’t mean anything. It definitely didn’t mean that the most powerful fae warrior in Qoksmere had heard the word “marry” followed by my name and thought, Oh no.
Except his face had done exactly that.
I found the stables by following the smell, which was the first thing that had gone right in the last ten minutes.
Thom was there as always. He was brushing a massive grey mare and looked up when I came in, breathing harder than a casual stroll through the palace should warrant.
“Master Pip,” he said, with genuine warmth. “Back so soon? Periwinkle will be pleased.”
“I’d like to go for a ride.” My voice came out perfectly normal and not at all like someone who was experiencing a minor emotional crisis. “Can you saddle Periwinkle for me?”
Thom glanced at my outfit. I was wearing the shorts I’d arrived in and my sneakers. Not exactly riding attire.
“Might I suggest—”
“I’m fine. I can do this.”
Thom, bless him, did not argue. He went to Periwinkle’s stall and the gelding greeted him with a soft nicker, craned his neck around to look at me.
“Hey, buddy,” I said softly, and Periwinkle nudged his nose against my palm, and something in my chest loosened by a fraction.
Thom saddled him quickly and led him out to the mounting block. Why hadn’t I taken a riding lesson? I’d thought about it several times since the night with Davik and Brogan, but I’d never found the time.
Why had I never found the time? The whole point was for me to become so useful that Aeldryc found me irreplaceable.
Tears threatened, and I pushed them back, nodding to Thom.
How hard can it be? People have been doing it for centuries.
It was very hard.
I stepped onto the mounting block. I grabbed the saddle. I put my foot in the stirrup, which was already at its lowest setting, and heaved myself upward. At least all the dance had prepared me for something.
I got halfway up, swung my leg, misjudged the distance and slid back down the side of Periwinkle like a sock falling off a washing line. Periwinkle turned his head. His expression was patient in the way that only horses and kindergarten teachers can manage.
“Okay,” I said. “Attempt two.”
Attempt two was worse. I got my leg over but my shorts caught on the back of the saddle and I ended up draped across Periwinkle’s back like a saddlebag, staring at the cobblestones from an angle that was both undignified and dangerous.
“Master Pip,” Thom said carefully, “would you like a—”
“Nope. I’m good. This is fine.”
I was not good. I slithered back down. Periwinkle huffed through his nose, and I was certain he was beginning to wonder if perhaps I needed a carriage.
Attempt three involved more determination and less technique, and it ended with me sitting on the ground next to the mounting block while Periwinkle gazed down at me with his big brown eyes.
The cobblestones were cold against my ass.
Weeks. I’d been here for weeks, and what had I learned?
How to be carried. How to be fucked. How to wear clothes someone else laid out for me.
Now the Queen wanted Aeldryc to marry me—and he’d frozen like a computer hitting a fatal error—and I couldn’t even get on a horse.
Congratulations, Pip, I thought. You’re the least useful person in any dimension. That’s not how you convince someone you’re worth keeping.
“You know what.” I got to my feet and brushed off my shorts, avoiding eye contact with Thom so he wouldn’t see the tears threatening. “I’m going to walk.”
“Walk?” Thom tilted his head.
I painted on a cheerful smile. “Yes, walk. Me and Periwinkle. Just a nice walk around the gardens. People walk horses, right? That’s a thing?”
I didn’t wait for Thom to tell me how wrong I was, because I was quite sure I was wrong. I took ahold of Periwinkle’s reins and set off, following a stone path that looked pleasant. And Thom, good man, didn’t argue.
If you ignored the fact that I was supposed to be riding him, it was actually nice. Like walking a large, very calm dog who occasionally nudged my shoulder with his nose to show me which way to go.
The palace gardens were gorgeous, with rows of blooming flowers in purples and golds and deep, velvety reds and immaculate hedges trimmed into geometric shapes.
There was even a huge, elaborate fountain, which Periwinkle drank from before I could determine whether horses were supposed to drink from royal fountains.
I decided not to worry about it.
I’d known this was temporary. None of this was mine; not the clothes, not the horse, not the palace, not the beautiful, infuriating man who I’d been spending all of my time with.
Because he was trying to find a way for me to get home.
They all were. And none of them had thought to ask if I actually wanted to go home.
“He didn’t say no,” I told Periwinkle.
Periwinkle blinked at me.
“He also didn’t say yes, which is why I’m upset, but he didn’t—”
Periwinkle shook his mane, which I chose to interpret as “you’re overthinking this.”
“I’m not overthinking it. The man I’m in love with just got told to marry me by his queen and he went completely blank. That’s not overthinking. That’s appropriate-level thinking.”
I paused.
The man I’m in love with.
Well. There it was. Out loud and everything, even if the only witness was a horse.
We’d wandered to the far end of the gardens, where the geometric hedges gave way to something grander.
It was a hedge maze. The kind of hedge maze you’d see at an English country estate in a period film.
The hedges were twice my height, dense and dark green, with tiny white flowers studded through the leaves like stars.
“What do you think?” I asked Periwinkle. “Shall we?”
Periwinkle walked into the hedge maze without waiting for me to decide, which I took as a yes.
It was peaceful in the maze. The high walls blocked the wind and muffled the sounds of the palace, so all I could hear was Periwinkle’s hooves on the gravel path and birdsong from somewhere above us.
Dappled sunlight filtered through the occasional gap in the hedges.
I kept one hand on Periwinkle’s neck and let him choose the turns, because he had a better sense of direction than I did, and at this point I’d accepted that the horse was the more competent member of our partnership.
There were flowers growing along the base of the hedges—small, delicate things in soft blues and pale pinks, the kind that looked like they’d been scattered there by a fairy tale. I picked one, then another, then a handful.
I started twisting stems together. It was fiddly work, and most of my early attempts looked more like a floral crime scene than a crown, but the repetitive motion was soothing.
Periwinkle stood beside me, occasionally lowering his head to inspect my progress, and at one point he ate a blue flower right out of my hand, which I chose not to take personally.
The actual, real problem, underneath all the panic, was that I wanted it.
I wanted to marry him. That was the horrifying truth of it. The Queen had said those words and my first thought, before the fear, before the spiraling, had been a bright, burning
yes.
And that was terrifying, because I was Pip from San Jose who danced in a cage at Club Vortex and whose greatest achievement prior to interdimensional travel was once getting a five-star review on Google for my customer service.
I was not someone who married fae commanders.
I was not someone who stayed in magical kingdoms. I was the kind of person things happened to, briefly, before the universe corrected its mistake and put everything back to normal.
Aeldryc would figure that out eventually. Maybe the Queen’s order had simply made him figure it out faster.
I twisted another flower into the crown. It was actually coming together nicely, if I did say so. Pale blue and soft pink, with a few of the tiny white hedge-flowers woven through. Coachella would have been proud.
Periwinkle, who had been grazing on a patch of something at the edge of the path, lifted his tail and deposited a generous pile of manure on the pristine gravel.
“Oh, man,” I said, staring at it. “That’s—that’s the Queen’s hedge maze.”
Periwinkle’s serene indifference was that of an animal who did not understand property rights and would not have cared about them if he did.
I glanced around. No one was here. No one had been here. The manure steamed gently in the afternoon light.
“We’ll just leave that,” I decided. “Someone probably handles that. There’s probably a whole team. Royal manure team.”