3. Gwen
Gwen stood in the doorway and surveyed the ballroom. It was full of people dancing and talking, and she wondered how it was possible to feel so alone while surrounded by so many people. Perhaps it was a special talent of hers.
“Gwendolyn.” The sound of her full name on her mother’s lips made her back stiffen.
She had vague childhood memories of liking her name. Princess Gwendolyn. It had sounded so elegant. But it had long since become a word that reminded her of responsibilities and unpleasant duties. And loneliness.
She knew all about how to behave properly as Princess Gwendolyn, but it felt like a role she slipped into in her mother’s presence rather than something that actually belonged to her. And it was a role she always did alone. Was it really too much to ask that in this whole sea of people she might have one true friend?
She suppressed a sigh and pasted a smile on her lips. If she took any longer to enter the ballroom, her mother would say her name again but with an edge. And Gwen never liked what happened after Queen Celandine spoke to her with that edge.
If Easton had been there, he would have looked up at her from the mass of faces and smiled and just that would have been enough to drive back the loneliness. Gwen balled her hands into fists, hiding them in her skirts. Why was she thinking of Easton?
Usually she kept her thoughts under better regulation, but the errant memories of early childhood had brought him to the front of her mind. It wasn’t that he ever completely left it, but she knew she had to keep him walled away from the surface of her thoughts. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to continue the grind of daily living without her mother throwing around phrases like unnecessary melancholy and childish dramatics. All said with the edge, of course.
Apparently, Princess Gwendolyn was not only not allowed to have friends, she wasn’t even allowed to miss the one friend she used to have.
But now that Easton had pushed himself to the front of her mind, he wasn’t easy to banish. She imagined the face of her lone childhood friend among the courtiers who smiled and bowed at her. She had to use her imagination because the last time she had seen him he had been only thirteen—on the cusp of manhood, but not yet with his adult face.
She had spent many solitary hours turning her memory of his childish features into an imagined adult face, and now it was haunting her. She should have listened to her mother and used her time more productively.
Except the responsibilities that fell to the princess of the mountain kingdom seemed to be universally dull. Her mother liked to talk of her duty and the position she would one day hold, but she never relinquished any actual power to Gwen. Any decisions of note or consequence were made by the queen, and if she wanted to discuss them with someone, she always turned to one of her courtiers, usually Count Oswin, the most senior of her advisors. She would never ask Gwen’s opinion—the princess wasn’t even permitted to accompany her while she conducted royal business.
Which makes you wonder, what exactly is the point of it all? she thought, not for the first time.
At least Gwen was circulating in the crowd now which meant her mother was no longer looking in her direction with an expression that managed to convey expectant pressure without breaking a smile. Gwen had attended enough of these functions that she’d long ago mastered the art of moving through the crowd with an unhurried gait that still managed to convey a sense of purpose and direction. Not that she actually had anyone to seek out, of course. But looking as if she was moving toward a goal reduced the false pleasantries she was forced to exchange with people who would clearly rather have been talking to someone else. Anyone else.
She could hear their desire to escape the conversation in their strained voices and see it in the way their eyes darted to her mother after every few words. Even when her mother wasn’t physically present, Gwen felt her specter hovering over every conversation she had with members of her mother’s court. It was why she had long ago embraced solitude.
She passed a server circulating with a tray of drinks, and the briefest flicker of a smile from the older woman lightened Gwen’s steps. She needed to remember that she wasn’t entirely alone. She might not be able to talk freely with any of the courtiers, but they weren’t the only people in the palace.
As if summoned by her disobedient thoughts, Queen Celandine appeared at Gwen’s side.
“Would you like a drink, my dear?” she asked with a false smile.
Gwen gave a diffident response and accepted the drink her mother handed her. Why did the defiance in her mind never manage to translate to her words? No matter what her mother did, Gwen just went along with it, no matter how much she hated her own compliance later.
How many angry speeches had she composed in her mind, only to have them wither on her tongue? She tried to remember the last time she had truly spoken her mind, only to wince. More memories of Easton—and the worst sort this time.
She had never managed to entirely stop thinking of him, but she always tried to avoid remembering those awful days after he had disappeared. She had confronted her mother then, and the punishment had been terrible.
Before that, her mother had responded to defiance by confining Gwen to her room with only the barest of rations. Gwen had quickly learned that continued defiance meant she would be moved to smaller and smaller places of confinement and given less and less food, so even back then she had usually backed down quickly. But after the awful confrontation over Easton’s disappearance, her mother had gone straight to a pitch-dark closet so small Gwen couldn’t even lie flat, and she’d provided no food or drink whatsoever.
Gwen had believed she would die in there and might have done so if her mother hadn’t relented and sent her a single glass of juice each evening starting from the second night. After several days in the dark, her mother believed she had succeeded in breaking Gwen’s spirit, and sometimes Gwen thought her mother had been right. In the years since, she had certainly always capitulated at the first stage. Being locked in her room over a mealtime brought back too many memories of the closet for her to brave further escalation of the punishment.
But still, hidden deep inside, she protected a small flame of defiance. As long as it continued to burn, she could tell herself that Easton’s Gwen still remained, not yet entirely subsumed by her mother’s dutiful Princess Gwendolyn.
“You were late,” her mother said, again without breaking the smile.
Gwen dared to give a small, audible sigh. Perhaps it was the effect of the memories.
“Why must we always have the balls in the afternoon?” she asked. “In the books I read, they happen at night. It would give everyone more time to prepare if we had them later, and they wouldn’t interfere with the day’s activities.”
Her mother’s eyes sharpened, and Gwen knew she had gone too far. Talk about nighttime always brought out the edge.
But her mother’s response remained light. “But, my dear…” She ran gentle fingers over the frothy blue material of Gwen’s gown. “You look so beautiful. Everyone does. What a waste to hide such magnificence in the darkness. You deserve to shine in the afternoon sun.”
This time Gwen didn’t let her sigh sound aloud. “Of course, Mother,” she said dully. “I wouldn’t want to prevent anyone gazing on their beautiful princess.”
Her mother either didn’t pick up or chose to ignore her irony. And when a courtier approached the queen, Gwen was able to escape entirely, considering herself to have gotten away from the interaction lightly.
Conversations such as those were the reason she couldn’t indulge in thoughts of Easton. He had always brought out her true self—had made her feel brave—and there was nothing Queen Celandine hated more.
As soon as a small crowd gathered to talk to her mother, Gwen allowed herself to escape to the fringes of the room. She was tempted to hide behind one of the elaborate ice sculptures that decorated the edges of the ballroom, but it was safer if she remained in her mother’s view. The queen always watched her most closely at this sort of event.
“I couldn’t risk bringing my mother, of course,” one of the courtiers said to another, catching Gwen’s ear. “You know what she’s like these days. She can’t remember what she should or shouldn’t say, and she keeps reminiscing about how things used to be before we were all—” He cut himself off.
His companion tsked, shaking her head. “Poor woman. You won’t be able to bring her anywhere the princess might be now. Just imagine if she let the truth slip to Princess Gwendolyn! The queen would throw you all to the bears.”
The original speaker winced. “One word on what has happened to this kingdom, and I tremble to think of the consequences. No, Mother will have to stay safely at home from now on.”
Gwen stared at them transfixed. She knew the courtiers were uncomfortable speaking to her and that her mother was the reason for their discomfort. But it had never occurred to her that they might all be actively collaborating in keeping a secret from her. Or was it more than one?
What did the courtiers know?
She almost started forward, questions trembling on the tip of her tongue. But another courtier joined them, glancing at Gwen as he did so and giving a small, formal bow. The movement made the original two turn to look, expressions of horror transforming their faces when they saw how close Gwen stood.
They hurried into their own bow and curtsy, exchanging worried looks as they did so. Gwen attempted her warmest smile, trying to convey that they need not fear her. If they told her their secrets, she would never betray them to her mother.
Both of them responded to her expression, relaxing and shooting each other relieved looks. But her momentary swell of triumph died as they quickly turned back to their own small circle. Her smile had achieved nothing except to convince them she hadn’t overheard after all. And from the alacrity with which they started another topic of conversation, she guessed they would never again risk saying something so revealing inside the palace walls.
As always, Gwen was left standing alone. But it felt different this time.
She looked slowly around the ballroom, heat bubbling up inside her. It started low in her belly and reached toward her throat. She had always been alone in crowds like this, and she had always wondered what was wrong with her to make it so. But suddenly she saw the scene in a different light.
What if the problem had never been with her at all? She had always known the palace held secrets, but she had never grasped the magnitude of the deception. It wasn’t just the queen keeping things from her daughter but a conspiracy by the entire court. For so many people to keep a secret must have required a concerted effort of extreme proportions. No wonder the courtiers feared being caught in even a moment’s conversation with her. They must have been living in fear of slipping up and saying something revealing.
Gwen had thought herself incapable of connecting with the people of her mother’s court, but the fault hadn’t been hers after all. It had been the courtiers who were actively working together to exclude her completely—from their friendships, their lives, even their simple conversations. Gwen might have lived in the palace and attended all the court events, but she existed in her own bubble, firmly outside the court itself. It must have been the only way to keep a secret so large.
She slowly turned to look toward her mother. She had no doubt about who had orchestrated her exclusion. But why? What was she hiding?
For a horrible moment, her stomach roiled as she wondered if it was because of her weakness and failings. The queen didn’t want the court to know about the depth of her heir’s flaws. But the face of Easton, which had plagued her since her arrival, flashed before her eyes again, and she stubbornly rejected the thought. Easton would never have befriended her if she was so terrible. Gwen might have faults, but she wasn’t such a shameful heir that the queen would be forced to such lengths. Whatever secret lurked in the court, it was a secret being kept from Gwen, not from the courtiers.
Her feet kept walking as her mind worked, considering many things in a different light. Most of the courtiers had apartments in the palace as well as homes in the city, but she rarely saw children within the palace walls. She had always assumed the courtiers wanted to avoid bringing their youngsters to her mother’s attention until they were old enough to be properly trained in respectful behavior. But perhaps they had a different reason for keeping them in the city where Gwen wasn’t permitted to go. Children were notoriously bad at keeping secrets.
And the same explanation might account for why she never saw any of the mountain kingdom’s regular citizens. The palace was surrounded by a large city, but of its many inhabitants, only the courtiers ever visited the palace. Among her future subjects, Gwen knew only the courtiers, and her mother’s guards and servants who lived inside the palace itself. She had always accepted that fact—initially because she was too wrapped up in Easton to care about anyone else, and later because she knew it would anger her mother to question anything. But the strangeness of it burned in her mind now.
Had her mother excluded her subjects from the palace because she feared what might happen if Gwen ever had a conversation with someone not utterly loyal to the queen? Did that mean Gwen was the only one of the mountain people not to know her kingdom’s secrets?
The heat of fresh anger washed over her. What secret was so important that her mother had completely isolated her in order to keep it?
It’s because you’re too weak. It was her mother’s insidious voice in her mind. You’re too weak to be trusted.
But again, another memory swooped in to override it. Come on, you can do it! If I can do it, so can you! Easton’s youthful voice was as clear as if he was speaking the words in her ear at that moment. She could even picture his easy smile, and the challenge in his eyes as he called her to match every feat of strength or dexterity that he attempted in the castle corridors. Gwen had sometimes doubted herself, but he had never done so.
Voices swirled around her, their words indistinct but alluring. The ball, which had seemed unutterably dull only minutes before, now sparked and fizzed. How many of the conversations hinted at truths she didn’t know?
And most importantly of all—how was she going to uncover those secrets? She felt almost as alive as she used to when she ran, laughing, through the palace corridors, Easton always two steps ahead, and Nanny waiting for them with hot chocolate and warm cake. Discovering the conspiracy against her was the first step to laying it bare.
But for all Gwen’s determination, and for all the conversations she sidled close enough to overhear, she learned nothing of note. No one else let any unwise words fall, and the topics that occupied them seemed even more dull than usual. She heard conversations about the weather—spring had started to reach the lower valleys, but it would still be a while before winter released their own vast basin, ensconced as it was by the deeper mountains. And she heard more than enough about who was dancing with whom and what gowns everyone was wearing.
Frustration filled Gwen, unalleviated by the frequent comments on her own beauty of both face and dress. It brought her no comfort to know the people of her kingdom admired her physical appearance even while they were afraid of speaking to her.
For once, the end of the ball brought disappointment instead of relief. Maybe if she had been able to hear more conversations, she might have stumbled on one of note. But at the same time, she was exhausted. Attempting to listen without appearing to do so was more straining than she had expected. Especially given how closely her mother watched her whenever she was among others. Gwen had always thought the queen was afraid of her daughter disgracing her, but that assumption, too, appeared in a different light now. Her mother wasn’t afraid of Gwen—she was afraid of everyone else.
Had anyone ever tried to give her a hint? Gwen sifted back through a lifetime’s worth of conversations, but nothing came to mind. In the early years she remembered only Easton, and in the last ten, her focus had been on avoiding her mother’s disapproval. No one had broken through to her—she didn’t even think anyone had tried. She wasn’t the only one who feared crossing the mountain queen.
All through the evening meal—eaten in state with only the queen and her daughter present—Gwen racked her brain, trying to think of how she could uncover more information. Asking her mother outright was out of the question. Not only would that approach fail, but it would be far too dangerous. It had been years since she had been confined to the closet and left to starve, but she didn’t consider herself safe from such treatment. Her mother would consider questions such as the ones that burned inside Gwen to be defiance of the highest order.
Gwen knew it would make no difference to her mother that she had officially been an adult for some years now. Gwen’s age had never affected the punishments her mother meted out. And always there was the added horror of the unknown. Gwen still didn’t know what had happened to Easton, and no one in the palace had ever been willing to speak of it. The queen had punishments Gwen didn’t even know about.
No, talking to her mother was the last thing Gwen would consider.
And since the courtiers avoided conversation with her whenever possible, that left only one option. The servants.
Gwen shook her head in silent, stubborn denial of the title her mother gave to the people who served in the palace. In the privacy of her own mind, she would name them as they really were—captives.
She vaguely remembered a time when the palace had employed regular servants from families in the city. But she could no longer remember any of their faces, except for Nanny who had been more family than servant. After Easton had left—when she had emerged from those terrible days in the closet, weakened and dazed—they had all been gone.
When she asked after them—dully, and without great interest—she was told they had been sent back to the city. But the palace couldn’t function without servants, and so others had soon begun to appear. It was obvious from the beginning they were different. They spoke with unfamiliar accents, for one, and their faces shone with desperation and fear. It hadn’t taken much to discover they were captives, valley folk snatched from their lives and carried off into the mountains to work for the mountain queen.
Gwen, cowed by her days of imprisonment and lost in grief at Easton’s unknown fate, waited for someone else to protest this strange new state of affairs. But no one ever did. At least not anywhere that Gwen could hear.
Instead, the court buzzed with the news that a path had been found through the mountains. After generations of isolation, Queen Celandine’s guards had forged the way, led by Count Oswin’s youthful son. They had traded with the valley folk, bringing back delicacies and medicines that were entirely new to the mountain people, and the whole kingdom celebrated their success.
But as time passed, Gwen noticed it was only ever the guards and those most loyal to her mother who went on the trading trips, and it was only the queen who benefited from the new wealth coming into the kingdom. And every time her people returned, they brought new servants with them.
The mountain people traded with the valley folk in the open, but in secret they stole something from them worth more than goods and gold. Gwen could only assume the valley folk hadn’t made the connection, since they continued to trade with her mother’s people. Or perhaps there were so many valleys the mountain delegation could visit a new one every time? Gwen couldn’t be sure, since the distant valleys were one of the many topics she was discouraged from asking questions about.
Thankfully the number of new arrivals had dwindled over the years, and there had been no new faces for the past two. As a consequence, Gwen knew all the captives by name and personality, but she still shied away from the idea of questioning them.
As captives, they could know nothing of her mother’s secrets. There was no point in even asking. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. Servants had ways of discovering information never meant for their ears. She was making excuses to herself to cover her true fear. She didn’t fear their ignorance, but rather the opposite.
It was one thing to think the courtiers had been conspiring against her—they were her mother’s people and had been for as long as she could remember. But Gwen privately thought of the captives as her people. In a life of compliance, befriending the queen’s captives was the one major defiance Gwen had managed to preserve, a secret that had escaped her mother’s watchful eye. In the unwelcoming environment of the palace, Gwen had found the only people who had more reason to hate and fear her mother than Gwen herself did. And while she never openly defied her mother, it had comforted her to know that she had allies of her own.
If she found out now that her allies had been siding against Gwen and keeping their captor’s secrets, it might break what little will she still had left.
So, even knowing the truth of her motivations, she still turned her mind to the courtiers instead of the captives. She determined to spend the whole night coming up with avenues of conversation that might trick the courtiers into revealing what she wanted to know.
But, as always, despite the most earnest resolutions, she had barely laid her head on the pillow before she was waking up to bright morning sunlight.
Groaning, she drove her fist into her soft mattress. Was the secret they were all hiding that their princess was gravely ill? She had always slept deeply, even as a child, and Nanny had assured her it was normal for children to be shut in their rooms before it even got dark and expected to stay there until morning. But what sort of adult still needed as much sleep as they ever had as a child? Was it even healthy?
She had tried raising the matter with her mother, but no topic related to nighttime was ever acceptable to the queen. She expected Gwen to sleep and to not ask questions about it. Given all the other things Gwen wasn’t allowed to question, her mother’s insistence had never seemed especially odd. But now it made Gwen even more suspicious.
On the other hand, if she really was ill—even dying perhaps—what purpose could her mother have in hiding it? If it was any other mother, Gwen might have suspected she was motivated by compassion. Nanny might have kept such a secret in the years before her passing. The elderly woman had been the kindest soul Gwen had ever met, and she wouldn’t have been able to bear delivering such news to her beloved charge. But it was impossible to consider her mother in such a light. The queen considered compassion a failing. At least, she had always seen it as such in Gwen.
Which led her back to where she started. If the whole of the kingdom was keeping a secret from her, there must be a reason for it. And if she was to discover that reason, she needed to find someone who could be tricked or cajoled into sharing it with her.
But after spending the daylight hours prowling the corridors of the palace, searching for people to gently interrogate, Gwen was forced to rethink her plans. She had spent so long doing everything possible to avoid the people of her mother’s court that she had never realized how skilled they were in avoiding her.
It hadn’t only been her melancholy talking when she bemoaned the emptiness of the palace halls. They truly were almost deserted. And when she did manage to corner someone, they slipped away like water between her fingers. She had planned some conversation gambits over breakfast, but she never even got as far as attempting them.
The stark gray stone of the walls and floor mocked her, reminding her inescapably of her mother as she walked dejectedly back toward her room. Gwen would have chosen to alleviate the cold bite in the air with warm colors and soft materials—both on the walls and underfoot. But the queen preferred an austere look.
“Are you all right, Your Highness?” a timid voice asked from behind her.
Gwen ceased her contemplation of the empty wall and swung to look at the newest addition to the palace captives. Not that Miriam could really be counted as new after being at the mountain palace for almost two years. But she still felt new since it had taken the girl over a year to work up the courage to address the princess. And, even now, she still looked around like a startled rabbit before daring so much as a word.
Not that Gwen could blame her. She sometimes felt like a startled rabbit who had wandered into the palace herself. But Gwen had been willing to persist because Miriam was the closest captive to her own age, only a few years younger by her estimate.
“I’m fine,” Gwen said by habit before remembering she wasn’t fine at all. But it seemed too late to take the words back, so she let them stand. “I was just contemplating how lovely this wall would look with a large tapestry hanging on it. And perhaps a carpet underfoot in matching colors? What do you think?”
Miriam cocked her head, examining both the wall and the floor with due seriousness.
“It would be more work to clean,” was her eventual conclusion, the words delivered simply and without rancor.
Gwen blinked. “Yes, I suppose it would be. I didn’t think of that.”
She watched the younger girl vigorously scrub the window on the opposite wall for a moment before speaking impulsively.
“Miriam, am I ill?”
Miriam’s rag stopped moving. “Ill, Your Highness? Are you not feeling well? Should I call for the royal doctor?”
“No, no.” Gwen shook her head impatiently. “I feel fine right now. I mean something bigger.”
Miriam stared at her as if she’d lost her mind, and Gwen couldn’t help laughing at herself. She must sound unhinged. She started again, trying to talk with more sense.
“I feel perfectly healthy. But I’m concerned that I sleep so deeply every night and for so long. I’m wondering if it might be a sign of some illness of which I’m unaware? Perhaps everyone is keeping the truth from me in order not to upset me?”
Miriam’s eyes widened. “Surely not, Your Highness! Could you really be so ill and not know it?”
Gwen shrugged. It was clear from Miriam’s reaction that she had no idea what Gwen was talking about.
“I don’t know.” She sighed and slumped onto one of the chairs lining the inside wall. “Never mind. It was probably a silly thought anyway. I just hate the feeling that I’ve lost so many hours. I’m sure someone could steal into my chamber in the night and make off with every one of my possessions, and I wouldn’t rouse.”
Miriam frowned, her expression concerned. “I would offer to watch over your sleep, but…”
Gwen grimaced, feeling instantly guilty for her complaints. It was rare for one of the servants to speak of nighttime—it would be bad enough if they were caught talking to the princess, but much worse if it was of forbidden topics—but Alma had explained the full situation to Gwen once. The older woman had been among the first captives and had been the first to take pity on the numb, bewildered girl who had taken to roaming the corridors alone once she had lost both Nanny and Easton.
Alma had explained in a hushed whisper that the captives were given free rein of the palace during the day—they needed it to complete their duties, and it wasn’t as if there was anywhere for them to run. Tall mountains encircled the deep valley that held the mountain palace and the city that surrounded it. No one in the city would hide the captives, and only the queen’s people knew how to find safe passage through the mountains. Even Gwen herself didn’t know how they had succeeded when previous generations had failed, and Alma said the captives were all drugged for the journey in, so they didn’t know either. Without knowledge of the route or even appropriate provisions, the mountains would be a death sentence.
And yet, despite the natural forces that kept the valley folk captive in the palace, at night they were locked into a small group of connected storage rooms—ones that were built into the basement level of the palace and lacked even windows. Once the sun was down and the court was abed, the queen didn’t want her captives roaming free.
During the day, the queen liked to pretend her captives were regular servants—a charade she expected them to uphold as well. But at nighttime, they were reminded of their true status. Perhaps it was why Gwen had always felt so connected to them. Since Easton’s disappearance, she had often felt like a captive in the palace herself. But still, she felt bad to have compared her own experience to Miriam’s, however unintentionally.
Miriam resumed polishing the window, but she continued to throw worried glances at the princess. And when she spoke, her words echoed Gwen’s own thoughts.
“I wish I could help you at night, but I suppose we’re both captives in the hours of darkness—me to a locked door and you to sleep.” She paused, shivering. “Perhaps it’s for the best, given the rumors.”