Chapter 12
I awaken to blazing heat and the odor of wet fur. Princess Christabel’s hood has fallen back. She is tall and slim, her fingers flying with confidence as she works her way down the line, unharnessing each reindeer and sending them off with a pat on the rump.
“You have no servants?”
She laughs. “I do, but I care for these animals myself. These reindeer are descended from the pair given by the Goddess Aurora to my ancestor, who cared for them like her own children. I carry on that tradition, just as someday I hope to carry on the tradition of passing the obligation to my eldest daughter.”
“You’re not married?”
“No.” She shakes her head, and her pretty mouth flattens. Even the bells sound sad as they hit the floor and she smacks another reindeer’s rump. “I had a beau once, but he disappeared.”
“He left you?” I have difficulty believing anyone would leave such a kindhearted, beautiful woman.
“I don’t know what happened to him. I searched far and wide, but I could never find him.” The last reindeer follows its brethren down a ramp. Steel fortifies her voice when Christabel turns to me and says, “Come, let’s get you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.” I’m starving, but I won’t risk being poisoned again.
“I could hear your stomach grumbling in the sleigh, Princess.”
“I told you, I’m no princess. I’m Gwendolyn, a scullery maid.”
Suddenly, I’m self-conscious of my appearance. Christabel stares at my face like she’s just now noticing—
My scars.
I’d almost forgotten about them. Dressed as a boy, wearing my hair short and unrestrained, few people asked about them. Either boys are permitted to have scars in a way pretty girls are not, or the people I met while traveling were too polite to ask what happened.
“I have my own food.” An ungracious note creeps into my tone.
Christabel taps her lips with one forefinger. “You must have had a run-in with a poisoner.”
“After a fashion.” I explain how I lost two years to the River Witch’s soup. Christabel chortles.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s kind of funny,” she counters. “Who would suspect anything nefarious about soup?”
“I didn’t,” I admit ruefully.
“You’re clearly not the only person who accepted a free meal from an old woman and lost their freedom as a result. You were smart, though. You escaped.”
“There was a raven she kept as a pet. The witch called him her ‘prince.’ Could he be your missing beau?” I ask hopefully.
I’ve been rude in refusing her hospitality, but Christabel saved my life.
I am no longer as trusting as I once was, but part of me wants to return her kindness in some small way.
“I don’t think so,” she says, listening to the details of my story. “My beau wasn’t a prince. He was a lowborn knight.”
“Ah.”
“I fear he died during his travels and lies unburied somewhere.”
I don’t know what to say to her. It’s painful to see her so sad. “Someday, you’ll find a new beau.”
I wince. That was maybe not the best thing to have said.
“Perhaps.” She shrugs sadly. “Come. I’ll show you to a room where you may refresh yourself, and then if you wish to make yourself something to eat, you may help yourself to anything in my kitchen. I assume a scullery maid is capable of cooking herself a decent meal?”
It feels so good and so strange to wear a dress and don an apron again. Christabel’s maid trimmed my hacked-off hair, which has grown back since I took a knife to it, and braided it away from my face. With a wooden spoon in hand, I almost feel like my old self.
Except, after all the hardship I’ve experienced, I’ll never be my old self again. I’m someone new, now.
Will Kai be someone different, too?
“Those scars on your face look like The Snow Queen’s handiwork,” Christabel says quietly.
“They are.”
I braise the meat I’m cooking and close the oven before telling her the story of Kai’s Ascension and the attack. The princess listens attentively.
“What I’m most afraid of is that even if I do succeed in finding him and breaking her hold over him, neither of us will be the same. Is it possible to succeed and fail at the same time?”
I still think of his kisses every time I close my eyes.
The raw hunger. The way his body moved on mine.
The thickness of that ridge I dared to touch on the balcony, before she took him away from me.
I know now that The Snow Queen was angry whenever I managed to reach the real him, and I believe she stole him to keep me from getting closer.
“He might owe you his life, but if you are reunited, you may discover your dreams for romantic love with him were made of air,” the princess says sympathetically.
He won’t want a scarred scullery maid. He only kissed me when I was wearing the queen of Montrace’s cosmetics.
“Would you marry him?” I could live with Christabel being Kai’s queen.
She’s kind and beautiful and strong. I’ve only known her for a short time, but I’m sure she wouldn’t poison someone’s soup to force them to stay with her, for example.
Granted, this is not a very high standard for friendship, but I am so glad to finally have made a friend, other than Kai.
She throws her head back and laughs. “Gwen, I cannot marry a prince who shall become king of his own country. I am needed here. It would never work.”
“Oh.” I deflate a little.
“But I appreciate that you want someone who will care for him. It speaks well of you that you are both willing to fight hard for him, and willing to let him go.”
I’m not sure I am. But I take the compliment and enjoy my time with my friend, for tomorrow, I will be on my way again at first light.