17. Chapter 17
Lily collapses face-first on her bed. Bella leans against a nearby bookshelf and pulls her knees against her chest. Maxine positions herself on a rug and begins fiddling with a spool of yarn in a feeble attempt to braid it into a bracelet.
Meanwhile, I stare up at the canopy of multi-colored rhinestones glittering above my head.
They soak in refractions of light before spitting them out in a dance of radiance.
Wait. How did I get here?
The last thing I remember was that I was floating.
No. I was falling.
Plummeting to the ground in centrifugal motion.
Landing in a pair of perfectly carved, muscular arms.
His arms.
“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Maxine says, hardly bothering to bat an eyelash in my direction.
Her voice echoes through the four-cornered chamber like a siren of the sea, making the room hum like it’s alive.
It’s a cacophony of sound and vibration that mimics the nerves humming through my body.
A feeling that leaves me burrowing into the depths of my blanket, and even deeper into my soul, as I try to carve out what happened earlier to the best of my ability.
“Now I see why the God of Dreams picked you,” she adds without missing a beat.
“You’re always tucked away in some pocket of a dream, aren’t you?
Not that I’m judging. I’m envious, really.
I think such an existence would be quite peaceful.
Although perhaps next time, try not to fall asleep while you’re leaning over a railing? ”
Lily grumbles incongruently from across the room, with her face pressed against her pillow.
“Sorry about Lily.” Maxine sighs melodramatically. “She’s still bothered by the notion that someone tried to poison her this afternoon and got away with it.”
Lily screams into her pillow.
I think of the maids, and my heart lurches in my chest cavity.
“What… what happened?” I pull myself into a seated position as I wrap my silken blankets tighter around my chest. I feel so dizzy.
In fact, if it weren’t for the four pillows tucked around me on every side, I’d probably tumble straight off the bed.
Just like I tumbled straight off that balcony and landed in the arms of…
“Augustine…” I whisper, running my fingers over my cheek as it all comes flowing back to me.
The way that he’d nuzzled his lips against the shell of my ear, the sweet kiss he’d planted on my forehead.
The thumb brush that he’d swept across my cheek as he’d carried me to the safety of my bedroom and tucked me beneath the sheets, creating a fort of pillows around me.
“Yes. Quite the catch if you ask me,” Maxine says, as she plops another bead onto the string she’s now balancing between her teeth.
“Actually, he caught her, if you want to get all technical,” Lily amends.
“Right in the nick of time, too. I was beginning to think that her guts were going to splat all over the courtyard.” She sits up, fluffs out her pillow, and then presses her face back into it once again.
“Bird splat. I thought she was about to become bird splat,” she garbles unintelligibly.
“Gee, thanks,” I huff.
She grunts in response.
“You know,” Maxine says, dropping her bracelet and leaning against the palm of her hand.
“You’re lucky the gods showed up when they did.
And whew, were they angry. I thought for sure the queen was going to strike Regent dead after he allowed Master Flint to poison us like that.
I imagine Regent will be reduced to burnt toast after this afternoon’s mishap.
I wonder if he prefers rye or sourdough? ”
“Are you seriously comparing Regent to yeast at a time like this?” Lily asks, her voice deliberately even.
“I’m simply seizing an opportunity.” Maxine scoffs, inclining her head as she threads another bead onto her taut string.
“How else are we supposed to cope with the fact that we all just watched Shadow nearly plunge to her death? There’s also the matter of the queen splaying Master Flint from head to toe right in front of us.
But we’re all good with pretending like that didn’t happen, right? ”
“The queen did what?” I squeak.
“She killed Flint,” Bella says between tight lips, her voice barely audible. “Drained all of his bloodmagic into a vial and carried it back into the castle. Left his body in the courtyard for the birds to pick at.”
“Yes, quite tragic. Anyway, back to my original question,” Maxine says with a brisk wave of her hand.
“If the queen decides not to turn Regent into toast, then perhaps she’ll turn him into a crumpet instead.
Maybe she’ll even dip him in a glass of wine as punishment.
Do you think he can swim? Wait.” She sits up straighter, her back cracking loud enough to make me wince.
“Do you think she’ll let us watch him try to swim? ”
Bella gives her a disapproving look.
“What? Have you seen him? He’s shaped like a tree stump,” Maxine concludes.
“In fact, I bet he’d sink right down to the bottom.
And if we’re truly stuck in this castle for the foreseeable future, the least she could do is afford us a bit of entertainment.
” She drifts off dreamily as she plops another bead onto her string of yarn.
“Are you making us friendship bracelets, Maxine?” I inquire hoarsely, trying to sound genuinely interested even though my stomach is lurching.
I imagine Flint’s guts being splayed across the courtyard, which is unfortunate, because I’d envisioned a much different ending for him.
Like me being the one to strike him dead.
Now my plan is ruined.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Maxine inflicts me with a defiant glare. “I’m making little nooses. One for each of you in the event that you cross me.”
“Oh, how… lovely,” I croak out.
“Someone tried to poison me this morning and they got away with it. Can we get back to discussing that?” Lily blurts out. “The craziest part is, I’m not even in love with my goddess. Yet apparently, the dragon king believes that the key to shipping her off to Purgatory is killing me."
“The maids got away with it?” I ask, unraveling myself from my blankets. I thought I’d hallucinated the part where they’d escaped. Actually, I thought I’d hallucinated the entire thing.
“We were all as high as you when it happened,” Maxine says, tearing her gaze away from a stubborn purple bead and settling it on me. “But I imagine they escaped through that enchanted doorway in the courtyard wall. You know, the one that split open like it was alive.”
My breath snags in my throat. Sir Valiant was right. The castle is a sentient being with its own mind.
“And the wolves,” I add for good measure, “did they escape as well?”
“I don’t know if I’d call them that,” Maxine says indignantly. “I’m still convinced they were a folie à trois, if you will.” She returns to fiddling with her string.
I stare at her blankly.
“What Maxine means to say,” Bella interjects in a serious tone, “is that the hallucinogenic properties of those poisons are not to be underestimated. However…” She pauses, her gaze intent on mine.
"It’s virtually impossible that we all hallucinated the same thing at once.
And based on how angry the queen was, I would hasten to guess that yes, the wolves were really there after all.
And yes, they all escaped just fine. Now the only question that remains is, why were they there in the first place? And is the castle itself on our side?”
I stare at her in stunned silence as I consider this. But the silence is quickly sundered by the sound of a door creaking open.
A flash of green emerald seizes the doorway as a woman glides into the room.
The air around her is as calamitous as her eyes, which are see-sawing somewhere between demure and universe-defying.
Her eyes remind me of two turquoise stones wrapped in halos of gold, their boldness softened by her braided red curls, which bounce around on her shoulders whenever she moves.
I imagine that if it weren’t for the gods, she would be the queen of Aurora, and we would be bowing to her.
There’s just something about the way she holds herself so distinguishably beneath those fine silk robes, and how that diadem fits so perfectly on her head.
“Sit up,” she directs harshly, wagging a finger at Lily. “Come here,” she beckons to the rest of us as she points to a little table tucked in the room’s corner. I do as she says, only because the alternative seems terrifying.
“Who the hell are you?” Maxine demands with a wrinkle of her nose, acting as though the woman is a foul odor in materialized form.
“I’m Priestess Seraphina,” the woman says, smiling at us like there’s sour sugar coated on her lips, and she has no choice but to curve them. “And I have been sent here by the queen to ensure that you all eat something.”
I cough. Maxine mouths something silently at me, which reads a lot like, “She’s a spy.” Then she ties a knot at the end of her string to hold her beads securely in place before slipping the finished result onto her wrist for safekeeping.
“The queen apologizes for today’s mishap in the courtyard,” Priestess Seraphina says with a graceful motion of her hand. “She sends her warmest regards. In the form of pastries, in fact!”
“Huh?” I ask.
As if on cue, a flurry of servants rush into the room, toting silver platters stacked with baked goods of all shapes and colors.
There’s raspberry madeleines dusted in powdered sugar, macaroons in every shade of the rainbow, gingerbread cookies covered in sprinkles, and lemon meringue bars that smell tart from afar.
More servants carry in carafes of wine and jugs of orange juice, while others work on expanding the table to fit all five of us comfortably.
Not that any of us move toward the table.
Instead, we watch the scene unfold in alarmed curiosity.