Chapter Nineteen #2
The madrigal’s voice was high and sweet.
Smoke glided sideways from the candles, directed by the wind from an open window.
We stood in a circle, as before. Masks slid over faces.
Again, Marguerite orbited us, her gown swishing as she walked, but other than that faint whisper I couldn’t tell where she was in the room.
Then I felt her soft hands in mine. She placed something on my upturned palm. I clutched it quickly before it fell to the floor.
It was pulled taut. Someone had the other end.
A ribbon.
Long ago, Prospero caught me reading a book on Saturn magic he had locked in a closet. He said I was too young to learn about the intricacies of death, but I’d shifted into a rat and managed to pry it out by dragging it beneath the doorframe.
When he found me reading it in a corner by the scullery, I was so ashamed and frightened to be caught, I changed my face, became our cook’s daughter.
He knew it was me, of course. But he played along, smiling down at me as he said, “Mary, how on Earth did you get that book? I could have sworn I’d locked it away. ”
When I was handed Marguerite’s ribbon, knowing where it would lead, I felt the same panic. Knowing I was trapped. Knowing there was nowhere, at last, to run.
So, I transformed. I could only face him as someone else. I followed the ribbon through the drowsy, billowing smoke, my arms outstretched.
My hands scraped up his chest and found his heart was pounding.
It was him—so familiar to me. For a moment, we steadied ourselves, our hands meeting over the ribbon.
I could feel his rings; shapes I knew with my eyes closed.
The king’s signet. A garnet, studded with pearl and Prospero’s sapphire. The smooth, round lapis on his thumb.
He reached for my mask and tugged. Auburn hair spilled out of my hood. I’d lengthened my nose and thinned my lips, scattered freckles everywhere. His mouth quirked as I dipped into a curtsey. “How long are you visiting us, Your Grace?” I said to his boots.
Slowly, he tipped up my chin, so I’d meet his gaze. His eyes sparkled with the ruse, and he nearly laughed, then bit his lip. “Oh, only a day or two longer, depending on business. What’s your name?”
“Mary.”
An arched brow. “Mary? Hmm.” Courtiers paired off and returned to their corners in twos or threes, and Roland backed me against a wall, out of the line of Marguerite’s glare.
He placed his hand over my head, curled over me. “You’ve spoiled all of Marguerite’s fun, Mary. I don’t believe you’re the one I’m meant to be with.”
“Who are you meant to be with?”
A sigh. “Well, perhaps you can advise me, since she’s not here.”
“You’d trust me to advise you, Lord Chancellor? We’ve only just met.”
“Then there’s no one better, because I feel as though I’m not myself at all.”
“How so?”
He scratched his neck with his free hand and murmured, his lips brushing my ear, “It began when an old friend returned to court. Magicians are only meant to take one apprentice at a time, you see, but our master took two. She was the second after me. It was a shock. When I found out, I was so distraught I threw my master’s book at the wall and tore the spine, because I thought he was abandoning me.
He said he’d train us together because she was too powerful to leave untouched.
You see, I had thought myself special. Being trained by Prospero, being chosen by him.
Then she was raised up beside me. For many years, we were rivals, but she was always better than me. It frustrated me to no end.”
“She knew of your torment?”
“Oh, yes. We were just children, but she was in love with me. I took it for granted. Because when she stepped into the throne room mere weeks ago, she didn’t desire me anymore. She even drew a knife on me. So you see my predicament?”
“No,” I said, and he laughed into my neck. “You had grown accustomed to something and didn’t have it anymore, and that irritated you?”
“I’m usually far more articulate than this,” he muttered under his breath.
“Now that we were older, the frustration I felt for her changed entirely. I saw she was clever and determined, and far more deserving of being Prospero’s apprentice than I ever was.
When I couldn’t sleep at night, her beauty soothed me.
” Mouth against the shell of my ear, he let the gates of his mind slide open, and I could feel his hope and his terror, and wave upon wave of lust. “I’ve tried to tell her how I wanted her.
I wasn’t subtle. Yet no matter what I said or how I looked at her, she brushed me aside. ”
“Perhaps,” I murmured, my breath hitching, “since she’s known you since childhood, she’s unsure of your intentions?”
“My intentions are certainly immoral.”
“She must have observed many of your flirtations. Your eye, accustomed to wandering. Perhaps that may have confused her?”
His lips skimmed my jaw. “It has wandered nowhere else since I saw her again. I was only trying to draw a mouse out of hiding.” A low groan. “I didn’t know what else to do. She wasn’t in bed when I woke.”
My eyes closed as our cheeks slid against one another, our mouths an inch apart. “Now,” he breathed. “She’s hiding still.”