Chapter 12 In Which Services Are Rejected and Rooms Are Assigned
In Which Services Are Rejected and Rooms Are Assigned
Up until this moment, Demelza had never seen Prince Arris up close. Even at the entrance of Rathe Castle, he was nothing but a shimmering figure on a balcony. Demelza had hardly glanced at him, turning her attention instead to the crowd of contestants.
All she knew of Arris she had discovered in whispers. A prince who longed for love. A prince who was easily deceived. But now she could see him, and the gossip of him didn’t fit the boy standing before her.
Arris had brown eyes and dark brown hair that curled about his ears, which stuck out ever so slightly.
Arris was nothing like the carved warlords that her sisters described in their letters.
He did not have the lean, rangy look of a wolf.
He did not look like dark corners and sin.
Arris was smooth-faced, his jaw still soft with youthfulness.
There was nothing of his physical features that spoke of danger and power.
But Arris’s gaze was something else. His brown eyes were at once disarmingly gentle and unsettlingly intense.
Feverish, even. As if all that he beheld was worthy not merely of acknowledgment … but awe.
Demelza knew that her father could bully the stars out of the night sky, but if Arris wished the same, she suspected that all he would have to do was ask and the heavens might saunter down simply to be beheld by him.
“You … you just saved my life,” he said. “I think.”
“I did,” said Demelza.
“How? And what was that sound? Did you hear it too?” asked Arris, turning around as if he might catch it.
Here it was, thought Demelza. Her chance had finally come.
Earlier, when Angharad had swooned in the prince’s arms, Demelza saw her opportunity.
She had recognized Angharad in the long line of bridal contestants.
Angharad had kept pushing her carriage to the end of the line and she certainly did not have mussed hair or torn clothes at the time.
It had been easy for Demelza to weave her way through the sleighs and horses, the gryphons and carriages.
When she had passed Angharad’s carriage, she had caught the unmistakable sweetness of dozing daisies and guessed what Angharad had planned.
A draught made from dozing daisies created a soporific effect.
Those sorts of theatrics were her sister Euphemia’s specialty, and in Angharad’s planned deception, Demelza saw a way to survive.
“Prince Arris, I am in need of your protection,” said Demelza, reciting the words she had rehearsed for the past week. “If I may hide in Rathe Castle for some time, then I shall offer myself to you.”
“Oh, no … no thank you? I don’t mean to be rude—”
“No, my services,” said Demelza.
“See, I’m quite certain I don’t want those either,” said Arris.
Demelza groaned. “My voice. I am of veritas swan descent. When I sing, people speak the truth. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Honesty? The certainty that the bride you choose loves you?”
Arris stared. “Veritas swans? If they’re even real, their voices are, forgive me, supposed to be extraordinarily beautiful, and yours is…”
“Horrible?”
“Well … yes.”
Demelza shrugged. “I know.”
“Is this a joke?”
Demelza did not have time for this. She opened her mouth and trilled a quick tune, a snippet of her father’s lullaby for them:
Woe, woe, woe
Shall cry the men who know you!
Sharpen your teeth and stretch out your wings
And the world shall be yours for the taking
Singing it aloud brought tears to Demelza’s eyes. Whenever Prava got to that part of his lullaby, he used to swoop Demelza onto his lap and hold out her arms before tickling her.
You are precious to me with or without wings, little dove, he would say.
Now she wished she had been a little less precious.
“I’m astounded your voice hasn’t driven me to tears either,” said Arris, grimacing as she finished. But his grimace fell away when he saw the air between them. It was spangled with her truth magic, flecks of light dancing between them.
“What is that—”
“Proof,” said Demelza. “Now speak true, Prince. What is a secret you wish no one knew?”
Arris’s eyes bulged. He tried to clap his hand over his mouth but it made no difference.
“I—how did you—” he spluttered out before saying: “I very much wanted a scar on my face because I thought it would make me seem interesting and so for awhile I was always bumping into things on purpose but when that didn’t work, I took a knife to my face, but then my sister frightened me and I poked my cheek and …
and now I have a dimple, which is, in fact, a scar. ”
Arris looked mortified. “I had no desire to share that information.”
“I can’t imagine why,” said Demelza. “Now do you understand what I am capable of, Your Highness?”
“You … you really can bring the truth out,” he said. Arris sank to the floor, staring up at Demelza in a way that made her feel extremely self-conscious. “You … you could change everything.”
In the distance, fireworks shot off the boat.
The smoke twisted through the night sky, forming the silhouette of a dancing couple.
A moment later, the smoke configured into the shape of a great hand, which waved through the air in a beckoning gesture before pointing to a range of towering, glowing mushrooms, which were to house the bridal contestants for the duration of the tournament.
Demelza had yet to be assigned a room, for the whole of her afternoon had been dedicated to spying on Angharad.
The velveteen frets of the mushroom caps emitted a silver light and Demelza understood that it was a summons for the evening.
“They’re calling me,” she said.
Arris looked out the window, frowning. “But we’ve only just … ah, fine. Listen, find me by the lake, yes? At midnight?”
He stood up and seized Demelza’s hands.
“I think you might be the answer to my every wish,” he said.
He was looking at her as if she had put the moon in the sky.
It was all … a lot. She snatched her hands back and then, not really knowing what to do since she had not even thought to imagine this far, she patted the prince on the shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said, as he left the orangery. “Truly.”
All her life, Demelza had never slept anywhere but in the soft rushes of her mother’s nesting tower or beneath the night sky ceiling of her library.
In the past, she fell asleep to her sister’s snores, with a wing shoved at her back and someone’s feathers tickling her nose.
Lately, she had been lulled by the agitated rustling of the library’s philosophy tomes, whose ideas left them in a constantly restless state.
Demelza was not prepared for the alien grandeur of the mushroom residences, which were far larger on the inside than they appeared on the outside.
The whole place looked as if it had been constructed of ice, marble and bone.
Frosted candelabras floated through the air, sifting snowflakes along their path.
Far above, a sky glass permitted the moon’s cold radiance.
Upon entering, Demelza was met with a grand dining hall.
At the center was a marble table decorated with tall vases holding snow roses.
A massive staircase spiraling from the main floor connected the residence’s various levels.
Gilded railings blocked off each landing, so that it appeared as if the interior was constructed of ringed balconies allowing the contestants to peer at one another plainly and watch the goings on in the dining hall.
The main room was crowded with the contestants.
Demelza had caught the names of a few of the girls when she had arrived in the welcome tent.
They had been encouraged to change and refresh themselves and even get to know one another before the evening soireé but Demelza had allowed herself only a bath before following Angharad’s trail to the orangery.
Demelza had never been lonely. She had always had the company of her sisters or the wyvern. Or even Hush Manor itself. There had never been any need to make introductions or ingratiate herself anywhere …
Until now.
A girl with long, sharp teeth and sea-foam hair glanced in Demelza’s direction and recoiled.
She whispered something to the girl next to her, pointing rather obviously at Demelza’s mud-caked hair before laughing.
Demelza smiled. She pointed at her hair and laughed too, but the girls merely rolled their eyes and walked elsewhere.
“Showing up hideous to a bridal tournament is quite the strategy,” said a voice beside her.
Demelza turned and saw twin girls. They were clearly from the Famishing, for their skin had the nacreous shimmer of a pearl and scaled ears poked through the wild tangle of their hair. The twins wore ethereal blue gowns that floated around their bodies.
“Thalassa,” said one, pointing at the girl next to her.
“And that’s Pearl,” said the other.
Pearl eyed Demelza’s hair and clothes and sniffed. “This whole attire is a strategy, isn’t it?”
“It was my mother’s idea of a farewell gift,” said Demelza, scratching uselessly at the helmet of mud.
When Araminta had told Demelza to flee for Rathe Castle, Demelza had imagined that her mother would follow in the tradition of the fairy tales.
Perhaps she would give her a walnut that held three dresses.
One as beautiful as the sun, the next as lovely as the moon and the third as bright as the stars.
But instead Araminta had smeared mud on her hair and face and sent her out onto the moors with nothing but a blade, her wits and a dress of weeds.