14. Gwen
Caution told Gwen she should wait at least until the next day before doing anything else that might draw her mother’s attention. But that instinct was balanced against the object that seemed to burn in her pocket.
How often did her mother visit the secret treasury? And if she did visit, would she notice something was missing? Would she know Gwen had taken it?
The fear of discovery overcame her sense of caution.
Mother and daughter had never been in the habit of eating the midday meal together, and so Gwen took it on a tray in her bedchamber. She found sitting at the small table by one of her windows less depressing than eating alone in a formal dining room. And that meant a servant always arrived at midday to deliver the meal.
It wasn’t always delivered by the same servant, so she waited by the window, shoulders tense as the minutes ticked by on her clock. She was much closer to some of the servants than others, and there was only one she wanted to see that day.
The door finally opened, causing Gwen’s anxiety to peak. Alma appeared, carefully balancing the tray as she closed the door behind her.
Gwen slumped down in relief before her eyes zeroed in on the closed door. Her eyebrows arched.
None of the servants ever shut the door when delivering the lunch tray. If Alma was doing so now, it was with a purpose. Which meant it wasn’t coincidence that she was the servant who had appeared on this of all days.
“What did you hear?” Gwen asked as Alma approached and deposited the tray on the round table.
The servant woman looked briefly back at the closed door before sighing.
“You were outside? In the evening? What do you think your mother will do if she hears?”
“She hasn’t heard?” Gwen should have felt relieved, but she already had larger misdeeds hanging over her head.
“Princess Gwen.” Alma sighed, her manner more motherly than Queen Celandine’s had ever been. “You are fortunate. If it had been different guards that found you…” She shook her head.
Gwen’s brow creased. “Are you saying they had a reason not to report me?”
“Did I say they didn’t make a report?” Alma snapped, only to rub a hand against her forehead as if overcome with exhaustion and anxiety. “How do you think I know of it?”
“I don’t understand,” Gwen said slowly, trying to make sense of Alma’s cryptic words. “You said my mother didn’t know of it yet, and now you’re saying they did make a report.”
Alma straightened and gave a rough chuckle. “Do you think the guards who patrol the grounds report directly to the queen? For someone who grew up here, you have an odd notion of how a palace works.”
“Oh.” Gwen frowned. “Yes, I suppose…”
The situation still didn’t make sense to her, but Alma seemed irritated by the questioning, and she didn’t want to put her in a bad mood before she got to much more important questions.
“My mother intends to marry me off,” Gwen said, getting straight to the point. “Do you know of that too?”
Alma’s eyes widened. “She told you about him?”
Gwen gasped, clutching Alma’s arm. “You know who it is? She wouldn’t tell me, except to say that he’s from beyond the mountains.”
Alma grimaced, her expression suggesting she had made a mistake. Gwen’s suspicion hardened into certainty. The captive servants—her only allies in the palace—knew a great deal more than they had ever revealed to her.
She pushed aside the feeling of betrayal. There would be room for that later. For the moment, she had to make the most of this brief opportunity. She tightened her hold on Alma’s arm, not letting go when the woman tried to gently tug herself free.
“What do you know, Alma?” she pleaded. “You have to tell me!”
Alma’s expression of unease morphed into one of sorrow and compassion.
“Please, Alma,” Gwen whispered, tears coming to her eyes.
She didn’t have to dig for the emotion—it was already there. Her desperation for answers went deeper than even Alma could guess.
Alma opened her mouth and then closed it again, her eyes sliding away from Gwen’s before coming back to her face. She was clearly torn.
“We didn’t like to do it,” she whispered, making Gwen’s fingers dig tighter into her arm. “The few of us who know have often debated if we should…” She sighed. “But it’s dangerous, and you’re not the only youngster we have to consider.”
“Youngster?” Gwen managed a smile although it felt distant and strange on her lips.
Alma smiled softly, finally removing her arm from Gwen’s grip and taking her hands instead.
“To one as old as me, you’re young still, Princess. But so is Miriam, and others like her. Surely you can understand our hesitance. We have seen all you endure, but you are still—”
“My mother’s daughter.” The words slipped from Gwen’s lips, burning on their way out.
“That doesn’t make it right!” Alma said with muted ferocity. “What sort of mother drugs her own child? It’s almost enough to make the rumors about the mountain people seem true.”
“What?” Gwen stared at Alma. “My mother drugs me?” Her voice rose on the final words, and she glanced guiltily at the closed door.
Alma bit her lip. “I didn’t…You mustn’t…Princess, you mustn’t say anything! There’s no one else who knows about it, so if the queen finds out you know the truth, she’ll know who told you. You must promise me—”
“She drugs me!” Gwen repeated, at a quieter volume but with no less heat. “How often? Why?”
But even as she asked, she already knew the answer, at least to the first question. Her unnaturally deep slumber every night had seemed unnatural. But even knowing her mother, she had suspected illness rather than deliberate poison. Why had she never drawn the connection with the sleepiness that always overtook her after the evening meal?
She could only conclude it was because it had been her reality for so long. And she sometimes felt sleepy after a large lunch as well.
It was all excuses, though. She should have been able to feel the difference.
“Where is it?” she asked, new steel in her voice she’d never heard in it before. “Where does she have you put the drugs?”
Tears ran down Alma’s cheeks. “I never wanted to do it, Princess Gwen. I swear it. But if I refused her order, she would punish the others. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Never mind that.” Gwen still spoke in the hard new tone. “Where are the drugs?”
“In your drink,” Alma admitted softly. “It’s always in your drink.”
Gwen groaned. All her efforts to eat less had been pointless.
“What else aren’t you telling me?” she asked, suddenly remembering the rest of Alma’s words. “You said something about a rumor about my people. What rumor?”
Alma hesitated, clearly nervous, but Gwen could see she was wavering. The fevered light in Gwen’s eyes wasn’t scaring her—quite the opposite. The longer she gazed at Gwen’s determined expression, the more hopeful her own face grew. Gwen just needed to convince her old friend that she was serious this time.
“I have to get away from her.” Gwen’s voice came out hoarse, although she’d been aiming for strong. “I always dreamed of escape, but I always thought it was nothing more than a fantasy. This is different, though. This time I’ll do anything to get away.”
Alma stiffened, her face closing up. Whatever she had wanted to hear from Gwen, it wasn’t that.
But it was too late for Gwen to take back the words, and she didn’t know if she wanted to do so. She had made the declaration as much for her own sake as to convince Alma, and she had no idea what the woman had been hoping to hear instead.
Alma let Gwen’s hands drop, stepping back and bowing formally. “I apologize, Your Highness. I hope you can forgive me for my role in this. And I hope you will see fit to keep our secret.”
“Alma,” Gwen cried. “Please! Will you not help me?”
Alma hesitated. “I think that’s all the help I can provide. After all, I’m securely locked away each night. Just like you.”
For a second she held Gwen’s eyes, a message in her gaze that the princess didn’t understand. Then she left, gently closing the door behind her.
Gwen stared at it for at least a minute, trying to make sense of the interaction. Her thoughts were too muddled to think clearly, and her emotions were even more of a mess. Should she feel gratitude to Alma for telling her about the sleeping potion or anger at her betrayal in keeping it a secret all these years? And why had she refused to tell Gwen anything further?
Or had she…? What had she been hinting at?
Gwen’s circling thoughts slowed, focusing. Something in Alma’s eyes had been pleading with Gwen to understand, but what exactly had she wanted her to grasp?
Just like you. The words echoed in her mind, and Gwen drew in her breath sharply as she realized she hadn’t spoken of her recent discovery. Alma knew Gwen was locked in every night. Were the servants the ones to turn the key, just as they were the ones to place the potion in the drink they served?
Betrayal surged up again, but Gwen tamped it down once more. If they locked her room, it was at the queen’s command. Her mother was the one hiding things from her, not Alma. Alma was locked up herself.
Gwen’s mind circled around that thought. Alma had mentioned it specifically, although she knew Gwen was well aware of the captives’ predicament. Almost as if she wanted to remind Gwen of their limitations.
What was it she had said at the start? She had mentioned rumors of the mountain people as if the servants didn’t know the truth of those rumors—even after so many years in the heart of the mountain kingdom.
The two thoughts came together in Gwen’s mind, making a conclusion that seemed so obvious she couldn’t think why she hadn’t seen it from the start. Alma hadn’t been refusing Gwen information so much as goading her to go in search of it for herself. And she had been telling her where to start. Nighttime.
Everything pointed to the hours of darkness. And now Gwen knew why those hours were always lost to her. Which meant she could reclaim them. The answers were finally in front of her—she just needed to work out how to make it through an evening meal without drinking and without her mother noticing it.
Her fork clattered against her plate, and Gwen could barely restrain a wince. Years of discomfort during the meals she shared with her mother hadn’t prepared her for her current level of tension. At any moment she expected her mother to stand up and accuse her of not drinking. Would she turn on the servants immediately or wait to order Gwen’s punishment first?
A hundred times she had reconsidered her plan, wondering if she could truly put others at risk alongside herself. But no matter how many times she hesitated, she always returned to the same truth. Knowing what she did now, she couldn’t sit there and drink the sleeping draft. She couldn’t placidly accept a forced marriage and a lifetime of misery.
A curly-haired face appeared in her mind, the warm eyes laughing at her. She drew strength from Easton’s encouraging expression, even if every part of his image in her mind was imagined. She hadn’t dreamed up his personality and character, and she knew he would tell her to fight. He would never passively accept the queen’s schemes—the evidence of that was in his disappearance.
But he also couldn’t be dead. Gwen couldn’t believe it—she wouldn’t. If this worked, if she succeeded in escaping at last, she would find him, whatever it took.
The thought bolstered her as nothing else had done, and she lifted her goblet to her mouth, tipping it back against her firmly closed lips before taking another bite of food.
Her stomach roiled, but she forced herself to eat well, clearing her plate. If her mother saw how much she was eating, she was less likely to notice she wasn’t actually drinking.
Alma appeared to remove the dishes after each course, taking Gwen’s cup away and replacing it with another. She was protecting Gwen as she had on the night when the princess had attempted not to eat, and Gwen recognized it for the apology it was.
She didn’t know which course’s drink held the potion—maybe they all did—so she drank nothing. Her mouth was growing drier and drier, but she ignored the discomfort, intent on her purpose.
When her mother finally signaled the end of the meal, rising with her normal goodnight platitudes to her daughter, Gwen could hardly believe she had succeeded. Was she really about to experience the night hours?
Walking back to her room, she could already feel the difference. Her overly full stomach gave her a slow feeling that could be described as sleepy. But it was nothing like the irresistible pull to sleep that she usually felt. How had she mistaken that sensation for the ordinary response to a full stomach?
But she already knew the answer. Lack of experience. Gwen might have lived for more than twenty years, but she lacked experience in far too many things. Her life had been bound by walls of stone for far too long.
Waiting in her room felt impossible—at the lightest jump she might bounce off the walls or ceiling. But somehow she endured, even lying in her bed and feigning even breaths. She didn’t know if her jailer usually checked on her before turning the key.
But when the grating sound of a key turning in a lock finally sounded, it came without the sound of the door opening first. After so many years, no one doubted the effect of the drugs.
Gwen leaped out of bed and laced on her boots, fumbling with the ties thanks to her trembling fingers. It only took seconds to retrieve the master key from her dressing table, but she made herself wait longer, peeking out at the darkening sky. She preferred not to wait until full dark, but she didn’t want to risk running into whoever had just come by.
Finally she let herself turn the key in the lock, slipping out into the corridor before locking the door behind her. She doubted anyone rattled the handle in the night, but if they did, they would find it locked as it should be.
She had thought her heart was beating fast when she snuck through the corridors with the girl from the city, but it was nothing to how she felt now. While it only took her minutes to reach the outside, it felt like hours, and she was surprised to discover the last of the light lingering in the sky still. It felt as if enough hours had passed that it should have been midnight already.
Hurrying down the familiar paths of the garden, she considered the best place to conceal herself. Recent experience told her the palace grounds were actively patrolled, even at this hour, and she needed somewhere to conceal herself until the early hours.
Deciding on a place where tall hedges hid a bench seat from view, Gwen settled herself to wait. With the sun beneath the horizon, the last of the light was leaving the sky fast.
An itch made her scratch her leg, but it was immediately followed by one in her other leg. She scratched at that one, too, but it did little to reduce the strange ache which lingered just below her skin.
Her left arm took up the sensation, followed by her middle, and Gwen jumped to her feet. Almost dancing in her efforts to scratch herself all over, Gwen writhed and squirmed until a deep tearing made her freeze.
She was coming apart—she could feel it—tearing all the way up her body in a horrible sensation no person should ever feel. Why wasn’t it hurting? She should be in agony as her final moments passed too quickly.
But no blood appeared, and no pain either. Instead, she dropped to the ground, landing on all fours as her eyes involuntarily closed. Dizziness made the world around her grow distant, her ears ringing and skin tingling.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. All that was left was a strange feeling of being far too large for her own skin. She felt…enormous.
Her eyes snapped open. Sure enough, she was looking at the garden from an unfamiliar vantage point. She looked down at herself and would have screamed if shock hadn’t robbed her of all sound.
She was white. And covered in fur. And a bear.