Chapter 30 A Change in the Heir
A Change in the Heir
At the brunch table, as the sun brought forth Halloween in an orange blaze, Sage gave Maggie the biggest and most heartfelt hug that she had ever given anybody in her entire life.
Extreme circumstances called for an overt display of affection.
The revelations within Lilara’s letters had been such a shock for the both of them, but they had also been invaluable, and it was all thanks to Maggie.
Sage really owed her one. Or two, actually, given that she entered the kitchen to find a wobbly stack of fluffy, syrup-soaked pancakes being piled onto a plate from Maggie’s pan.
“How do you always know, Maggs?” Sage said, doing her best to squeeze her spectral friend close to her, with one arm hovering somewhere around her silver shoulders.
Maggie had a knack for knowing exactly the sort of comfort food that was required, one of her many endearing qualities that Sage was so fond of.
“I had a suspicion that it may just be a pancakish sort of day, madam,” Maggie said with a shy smile at the praise. “Will Mr. Everald be partaking in breakfast too?”
Sage shrugged and dove into the pancakes unceremoniously. She was suddenly ravenous. “He’s in a foul mood, always grumpy after a nap. Like a giant baby that way,” she said between careless mouthfuls.
Maggie chuckled as she took the pan to the sink. “Pray tell, did sleep bring any clarity? Or at least, I hope, a burst of renewed resolve?”
Sage swallowed a giant bite of pancake and washed it down with the black coffee that her guardian angel Maggie had already prepared.
“Well, I suppose I should start to throw together something that vaguely resembles a plan, don’t you agree, Maggs?
You know, considering the whole town is smothered in thorns and I have discovered that my destiny was warped around a twisted witch’s heartbroken curse, I feel surprisingly buoyant. ”
“That’ll be the sugar, Treasure,” Maggie replied happily. “Its own sort of magic, I’ve always thought. Icing, syrup, cinnamon spice—it’s all rather important in its own—”
Her theory was interrupted by the arrival of Casimir, who stumbled into the kitchen, still bleary-eyed and looking distinctly grumpy.
He paused in the kitchen doorway and glanced at Maggie leaning against the sink and then at Sage still devouring her food.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sage could have sworn she saw his whole body tighten, the fingers of his left hand flexing ever so slightly at his waist, where the sword was sheathed on his belt.
She set down her cutlery with a clatter and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin as she turned to him. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of bed. Come on, there’s work to be done.”
Casimir said nothing, only continued staring her down.
Sage gave a scowl at his rudeness—she did not have time for his theatrics when there was a plan to be hatched. “I know you’re sleepy and this is exhausting, but that’s no excuse for being an arse. Sit, eat something, drink caffeine. It’ll do you good.” She gestured to the pancake stack.
“Work, indeed. Then let us begin.” Casimir spoke solemnly as he snatched the second chair out from the table, scraping the legs across the kitchen floor, and slumped down tensely across from her.
“When you’ve quite finished,” Sage said, dismissing his morning mood with a wave, “there are only two charms left on the chain, so I’m relieved to say we must finally be near some form of conclusion.
Penultimately, following the spinning wheel, I’ve woken to a wilted rose in the eleventh spot, which”—she gestured to every window of the kitchen, all of which were clouded over into darkness by the dense presence of endless thorns and roses, the beanstalk’s bright green trunk no longer visible—“should be a fairly self-explanatory chapter, I would hope. Particularly apt too, given Lilara’s letter, which documented her gifting her lover his own enchanted rose.
A rather poetic, if not extremely depressing, addition to the curse, I’ll give her that. Poor girl.”
“And the last charm of which you speak?” Casimir asked in a low voice, with such an unrelenting stare across the table that Sage shifted a little uncomfortably.
He was annoyed with her for the rude awakening or…
maybe he felt embarrassed to have woken up in her bed?
Her face burned. Of course he regretted it; it was close contact, even for them.
They had been crossing some kind of unspoken line for days. Not that she’d minded.
Reluctantly, she held out her wrist across the table towards him.
“This. It changed just as I was dressing this morning, once I’d discovered the thorns.
The final chapter.” She angled the chain to find the light, showing him the unspecific swirling vortex-like shape that had manifested as the ultimate silver charm.
Maggie wiped her hands off on a tea-towel and hurried over to see too.
“Perchance I am too optimistic—it certainly would not be the first time—but does it not appear as though it could be a sort of…end?” Maggie said, hope audible in her voice.
“As though the enchantment, the curse, might dissipate into the ether, a swirl much like cream stirred into a cup of tea?” She beamed delightedly at the comparison.
“Perhaps,” Sage said, tapping her chin, “but it is strangely obscure and abominably unspecific when compared to the rest of the chapter charms. They’ve all been, if not clear signposting, then at least highly connected to the latest development of the curse. This one is…different.”
Casimir reached across the table to take hold of Sage’s wrist, just as he had done when he had first fastened the chain into a bracelet. But this time, his grip was rough and tight. Too tight.
“Ow, watch it, Cas…” Sage faltered. She tried to withdraw her arm, but his fingers tightened further, pinching her skin. Sage glanced at Maggie, whose eyebrows were raised.
“Mr. Everald, are you quite well?”
“I assure you I have never felt better. Fear not, my pure-hearted spirit,” he replied to Maggie, but his burning gaze did not leave Sage. “Once you had succumbed to sleep’s embrace upon the night just passed, my mind raced with thoughts I could not still.”
“Always a dangerous start to your sentences,” Sage said tensely, breaking away from his grip.
The quick, curt smile that he gave her in response did not reach his eyes.
Something flickered behind their usual chocolate-brown warmth.
The glint that she knew so well was no longer a fond one of familiarity and concern.
It was calculating, restrained, measured…
His voice was cold and formal in a way that stopped it sounding like his own.
“Were I less certain of my senses, I might well deem you a being not of this realm. Some kind of mischief. A shadow. A spectre…” His hand slipped to his hip beneath the tabletop, and his fingers wrapped around the hilt of his sword. “I sense a strangeness within you.”
Sage swallowed hard. “I could say the same about you. You’re not yourself, Casimir.”
Casimir shot to his feet. In a flash, he’d drawn his sword and lashed it across the table, the point landing directly under Sage’s chin. She shot back from her chair, spine hitting the kitchen wall. Somewhere behind him, she registered a shriek from Maggie.
“Mr. Everald!”
“I see it now,” Casimir said, raising his voice louder, his fingers flexing more tightly around the sword’s golden handle as he glared at Sage. “You have beguiled me.”
“Cas, please…” Sage gasped, pressing herself up against the wall as tightly as she could to avoid being skewered.
“You are no fair maiden, as your cunning facade made claim. But instead a creature masked in false beauty and double-crossing temptation.” He was staring at her with pure hatred.
“Mr. Everald, I really must warn you—”
“This isn’t you, Cas. This is the spell—”
“By heaven and all the realms,” Casimir hissed, “you are the wicked witch!”
She whimpered and swallowed against the sword pressed to her throat.
She had lost him. He had turned. Even someone as clever and quick and good as Casimir could be taken by the curse.
It really would stop at nothing. Hot salty tears streaked her cheeks as she searched his eyes, trying to find any sign of the Casimir she knew and loved still in there, imploring him to recognize her. But there was nothing.
“I fear this realm of goodness and light has no place for one such as you, witch.” He spoke pure bile through gritted teeth, and his words cut more deeply than the blade at her throat ever could.
The sharp point pressed more tightly, nicked the skin.
Sage squeezed her eyes shut. This wasn’t how she wanted to see him for the last time.
Palms flattened against the wall, heels scuffing against the boards, she waited to feel his sword deliver the final blow.
There was a yell. A crash. A caterwaul. An enormous unnatural sound of metal against something solid and a heavy thud against the kitchen floor.
Sage’s eyes shot open to find Casimir collapsed, knocked out cold.
Mal, having leapt down from a kitchen cupboard onto Casimir’s back to distract him, was looking thoroughly smug, a paw resting triumphantly on the prince’s chest.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” he said, sinking a flex of his claws into Casimir’s doublet.
Mal looked up approvingly at Maggie, who was stood over Casimir, wielding her biggest saucepan above her head with shaky arms and heavy breathing.
“Now, I shall have absolutely none of that in my kitchen, Mr. Everald! You are not yourself, sir!” Maggie shouted at him, despite the fact he was entirely out cold.
She straightened herself and squared her shoulders.
“No soul has ever been more welcome in this house than madam, and you’d do most well to remember it. ”
“Maggs!” Sage suddenly came back to her senses, bolting around the kitchen table to her housekeeper’s side. It was as though Maggie snapped out of a trance, suddenly aware of herself and what she’d done.
“Oh, madam! Forgive me! A thousand apologies. I know not what came over me. I was simply compelled to make sure of your safety. I didn’t mean to…”
Sage clapped her on the back before touching her own throat, rubbing at the tenderness that the sword had left behind. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Maggie. You’re a regular badass. Remind me to never cross you and your saucepans.”
“Erm, hello? What about me?” Mal said, climbing up Sage’s leg and batting her knee for attention. “Did nobody see the death-defying manoeuvre I just performed to bring that fool to his knees? Now who’s the little one?”
She stooped down to scoop him up and gave him a grateful scruff on the head.
“Where would I be without you?” she asked fondly. “You’re the bravest cat I know.” He purred in reply.
Even in Maggie’s distinctly grey state, her face was still lit up with a pleased, proud blush at the compliments.
“Madam, you mustn’t tarry. Leave this, ahem, matter to me.
Clean-ups are my speciality, after all, aside from being a simple…
badass.” She gestured to the heap of handsome prince at their feet, who gave the slightest stir and a scrunch of his nose in sleep.
“Mal and I shall deal with the prince when he comes to. Fortune permitting, we may have even knocked some sense back into the actual Mr. Everald.”
“Where will you go?” Mal asked, his pupils wide with concern.
Sage had never felt more grateful for her two housemates. “There’s only one place of note left in the town where I have yet to venture.”
Mal raised his eyebrows in an “ohh?” response.
“The Equinox. The art gallery,” Sage told them.
Maggie nodded excitedly, clapping against her saucepan.
“Lily would choose the grandest building in the town to enact the end of the curse. Oftentimes, when we were younger, we would promenade through the gardens to admire its splendour when the weather was warm.” The ghost’s face faltered at the newest memory.
“ ’Tis the jewel in the crown of Port Sylvan. ”
“It’s taken on the aesthetics of a castle of sorts since the spell took hold.
There’s a strong likelihood of some kind of showdown,” Sage agreed with finality, rushing through to the hallway to gather her coat and shoes.
“I’ll make my way through the thorns, and the most likely probability is that I’ll meet the very last chapter of the curse inside. It seems a satisfying hypothesis.”
“Should you have some books for us to turn to while you continue on your quest, Sage? Perchance a few notes for Mal and me to consult? I always fancied myself as an adventurer; we might discover prior research on fairy-tale castles or—”
“There’s nothing left. I got rid of it all,” Sage said, batting a hand as she slipped on her coat. Now was as good a time as any to drop that bombshell.
Maggie reeled. “Madam?”
Sage sighed. “It’s gone. All of it. Technically, I’m no longer a witch, if you really want to get into the specifics of it all. I banished my magic.” Maggie’s hand flew to her mouth, and Sage was horrified to see glittering, silver tears pool immediately in her friend’s eyes.
“Oh, Sage,” Mal said quietly, shaking his head.
She jutted up her chin and swallowed hard. “I did what I had to do. And now I have to end this, once and for all.”
Blinking back tears, Maggie nodded silently. Despite their many differences in nature, they had always understood each other. The moment was broken as a grumble came from Casimir, who was clutching his head and attempting to sit upright on the kitchen tiles.
“You must go, before he apprehends you once again. I’ll watch over him, madam,” Maggie said, trying to reassure her friend as best she could. “And Mal too. All will be well, Sage.”
Sage gave a singular, defiant nod. Her heart was hammering so fiercely in her chest that she wondered if she might have been having some sort of medical emergency. Whatever it was, it was an emergency that would have to wait until she had finished her to-do list, just for a change.
There was a curse to see through to the end. She had a family to save.
“I know.”