Chapter 20 Ursula’s Secret #2
“Tell that to my mother,” said Ursula, slumping into the least maimed armchair in the sitting room.
“She does not understand why I wish to throw away my talents to be ‘a cook.’ Then she went on and on about service to the Crown and then my father suggested we come to a compromise and let me enter the tournament. If Arris picks me, then as queen, I’ll live in service of the Crown.
If he doesn’t pick me, then at least I’ve had a run of the kitchens and an introduction to the cooks. ”
“The cooks do seem to, um, like you,” said Talvi.
“They do not like me.”
“They’re terrified of you, which is far more useful than affection,” said Demelza.
Ursula grumbled, but Demelza caught the flicker of a smile.
“This competition is not what I thought it’d be like,” said Ursula. She toed a lemon back and forth across the floor. She did not look up. “I thought I was here to escape my mother … or at least make a new path for myself. I did not imagine I would ever make friends.”
“Aww,” said Talvi.
Ursula looked faintly nauseous.
“When you say you didn’t imagine making friends … did you mean in general?” asked Demelza.
Ursula squawked in outrage and Demelza laughed. What followed was a mostly friendly game of hurling lemons at one another that ended only when Talvi—who really needed to sleep—threatened to squeeze lemons into their eyes if she was not allowed to shut hers.
Smiling and smelling of lemon, Demelza shuffled back to her room. Ursula was not alone in her shock over the tournament. As she crawled into bed, Demelza thought of how the competition was nothing at all like how she’d imagined.
Technically she was supposed to be here to find out everything about the contestants.
And she was. But she was more delighted to discover what she was finding out about herself.
She had always assumed that she longed for crowds, having only ever been in the cozy silence of Hush Manor.
But she found that crowds exhausted her, and although she liked some social engagements, she needed time to herself.
She was shocked at how much she liked the refinements of fancy shoes, considering she had always found her need for slippers an embarrassing reminder that she could not fly around like her sisters.
Yvlle had loaned her several pairs—“a downright hideous collection of pastels, you are welcome to all of them and if you seek to burn them afterward I will be indebted to you”—and after noticing how Demelza had a tendency to pet them adoringly, piled the rest into the corners of her bedroom.
No one seemed to notice except Edmea, who remarked one day at breakfast that Demelza had an endless supply of ugly shoes.
“Oh to possess the means to be a different flavor of hideous every day!” said Edmea.
“It is a shame wealth can buy everything but sophistication.” The statement echoed through the breakfast hall.
Demelza felt the crush of a thousand options when Edmea spoke to her.
Should she be cutting? Was she even a person who could keep up with the endless banter of small, elegant cruelties?
Would her earnestness be endearing or annoying?
And then Demelza dismissed all the ways in which she might be caricatured for the truth:
“I think it’s fun,” she said.
Edmea raised an eyebrow. “It’s about as unfashionable as coating your hair in muck.”
“Perhaps I don’t want the beauty of my hair to intimidate you,” said Demelza.
This was hardly a concern, but it was fun to say and even more fun to hear the thrill of half the remaining contestants sucking in their breaths.
Edmea laughed it off, but it had changed the mood amongst the girls.
Where they had usually shrugged off Demelza’s attempts at conversation, now they engaged her. It was nice to be sought out …
Plus it made it easier to determine which contestants posed a threat to Prince Arris.
The next morning, the queen hosted a concert on the glass wyvern boat. On board, a musical trio of snow sylphs from the Aatos Mountains launched into a performance of mournful singing accompanied by ice flutes and frost-furred zithers.
“Prince Arris adores this music,” said the queen. “He finds it extremely relaxing and often meditative.”
The music was … awful. Of the twenty girls that were left, every face was a stoic portrait of endurance except for Talvi.
Talvi whispered to Demelza: “My mothers made me sit through these performances every year when I was a child and I have always detested them. If the prince wishes for an explanation, I’m happy to give it but there is no way I shall willingly endure this a moment longer.
” Talvi stood, smiled politely at the performers, and descended to the hull, where refreshments were to be served.
Queen Yzara watched her, that cryptic smile still curving her lips.
When Aster, another Aatosian girl, got up and left, Demelza followed after her.
Drowned out by the din of the terrible music, Demelza waited until they were alone on the staircase before uttering a single note.
The ice ribbons on the banister melted at the sound.
“Do you intend to kill the prince?” asked Demelza.
“Not today,” murmured Aster thoughtfully. “Though I don’t think I’d need much cause … if he didn’t like this music, I’d do away with him within a week!”
Demelza frowned. “Wait, you like this music?”
“Oh, I adore it,” said Aster, wiping a tear from her eye.
“Then why did you leave the performance?”
“I am out of handkerchiefs and the music is so poignant that I know I shall soon weep and I do not wish to disturb my cosmetics.”
“Oh,” said Demelza.
She stepped aside and Aster continued on her way.
Demelza had discovered that for some reason, no one seemed to remember speaking to her when they heard her sing.
It was odd, considering that Arris had remembered …
but perhaps that was because she had wanted him to, an impulse that was absent from her dealings with the other contestants.
After Aster left, Demelza waited in the shadows of the staircase until another contestant appeared. Zoraya. Zoraya looked faintly ill and when she saw Demelza, she flashed a sympathetic smile.
“I see we had the same idea,” she said. “That music is wretched.”
“Not as wretched as some,” said Demelza, and then she sang.
Zoraya’s gaze went unfocused. “You’re right. That is dreadful.”
“Quite,” said Demelza. “What would really be terrible is if the prince stayed alive and someone actually had to go through the process of marrying him, don’t you think?”’
Zoraya’s eyes suddenly welled with tears. “I would only find it terrible if the person who married him wasn’t me.” Zoraya started sobbing. “We were made for each other! All the prince has ever wanted is love and that is all I have ever wanted too!”
Demelza found it a little hard to believe that no one had ever loved Zoraya.
“Are you truly telling me that no one has ever told you they loved you?”
Zoraya sniffed, drying her tears with the end of her long braid. “No … never.”
“That’s … shocking.”
“I know,” said Zoraya. “I mean, I fend off a marriage proposal every other month and men have pledged their hearts to me, brought me exotic animals, one gentleman had a gold sculpture carved in my likeness … but no one has ever said they loved me. I want that. I deserve that! My dearest friend, Niko, says that I deserve all the beauty in the world for that is what I bring to the world. He says—”
Demelza had passed the realm of incredulity and into deep annoyance. “So you have no desire to murder the prince?”
“Of course not!” she said. She looked suddenly stricken. “Why? Does the prince think I am capable of such a thing? Because Niko thinks I am the soul of gentility!”
This continued for some time until Demelza began to ponder the merits of throwing herself down the staircase for the sake of being unconscious and thus spared more of Zoraya’s woeful tales of her own beauty.
Eventually, however, the horrid concert ended and Demelza’s covert interrogations came to an end, which she was extremely grateful for as her back was beginning to ache from hiding in the boat’s stairwell.
When dusk fell, the mushroom residences unfurled out of the ground and the girls trooped inside for dinner.
“I was sure Prince Arris would have joined us today,” muttered one of the contestants, a girl named Oliana. She pouted. “I nearly snapped my ankles wearing these shoes because he said he liked the color gray, and they are most uncomfortable.”
“Perhaps he is deliberating which one of us should go home next,” said a girl with the spotted and swiveling ears of a deer. “Did you notice that Erinya wasn’t there when the boat docked? I heard she got thrown overboard!”
“Serves her right. She was so pompous. And I hated her perfume. She smelled like a wet dog.”
“Well that’s fitting considering she’s an absolute—”
Demelza tuned out the chatter, dragging herself up the stairs and into her room, where she wanted nothing more than to peel away every thought and throw herself into her bed.
Soon, she thought, trudging to her room and opening the door. Soon she would be gloriously alone—
“Hello!”
Demelza blinked. Sitting very comfortably in her room was Prince Arris. He was dressed in a rumpled tunic and brown trousers that were rolled at the cuff. He was, oddly, barefoot. And even more oddly, Prince Arris was holding a plate of pie. He grinned and Demelza recalled the other night.
Call me Arris.
He held up the plate. “Pie?”