Chapter 20
Lem
The room is not large, with a single bed—large enough for two, but only if they actually like each other—pushed against one wall. Bright moonlight streams in a large open window, the sounds of a city evening floating up to us from the street below.
I sigh, my eyes dropping to the braided rug dotted with bits of mud.
I took the floor last time. It’s Agatha’s turn, I think, and then I remember that she’s the only reason we have a place to stay at all, so I should probably let her have the bed again.
Agatha stands by the wall, arms folded across her chest tightly. She looks lovely, as she always does, but there’s an air of … weariness? … around her.
I frown. “You sang too long.”
“They kept wanting more,” she says, quiet but stubborn.
“You aren’t a trained monkey, Agatha.” Foolish woman. Performing for so long, just because the crowd kept clamoring for more? She should know well enough when to stop—
“Aren’t I?” she says, even quieter this time.
My frown deepens, and I take a breath, ready to say something, but a knock on the door interrupts before I get the chance. I’m closer, so I turn to answer it.
It’s one of the serving girls, with a full teapot, steaming hot, and a single, plain teacup. She curtsies. “Anything else for the lady?”
I never thought I’d miss being a prince, but I find I do, sometimes, chafe at this constant overlooking. Don’t I have needs, too? Why should Agatha get all the deference, just because she’s beautiful and perfect and gifted?
I turn my head to peer at Agatha, who’s making puppy-dog eyes at the teapot. “Anything else for the lady?” I repeat, surly.
“No,” she says, sinking to the edge of the bed with a little sigh.
I notice that she doesn’t think to ask after my preferences, either, and allow the knowledge to fester in my heart. “No,” I repeat to the serving girl, who curtsies again as I shut the door on her.
I cross the room in a few steps, handing the teacup to Agatha and filling it for her as she perches on the bed.
Her little fingers, dirty and scratched from our days of hiking, curl around the cup tightly, and she sips with an almost desperate air.
As if she’s lost, and sad, and tea is the only comforting thing in her life right now.
Bah. Foolishness. The great Lady Agatha could be neither lost nor sad. Where has she gone where she has not found an audience? What has she received that could sadden her? Everywhere she goes—everyone she meets—greets her with a sickening amount of awe.
There’s no chair in the room, so I prop my guitar in a corner and settle myself on the bed next to Agatha. She doesn’t acknowledge me.
It would be nice if I had a cup of tea, too.
But no, no one has thought of me.
“Would you like some?” Agatha’s voice isn’t quite hoarse—but it’s something close.
“Can you even get hoarse?” I’m aware that my grouchiness is slightly irrational. “Or is that another of your unfair gifts?”
Her laugh, short but not cheerful, is her only reply for a long moment. I let myself look at her in the moonlight. It traces her face in silver lines and makes her seem somehow older, thinner, faded.
She’s a child of the sun, I think, golden and warm; moonlight doesn’t suit her. She looks as if she could fade away like an ephemeral fairy gift.
Unthinking, I lift a finger to trace the smooth line of her silver cheek. My good sense kicks in before I touch her.
Agatha angles toward me, pressing her teacup into my still-raised hand, and rises to pad across the room.
I can only stare at her as she unties her special teapot from her hip, drains the last of its water into the basin on the washstand, and pours the hot, fresh tea into it. “What are you doing?”
She doesn’t waste time looking at me. “It will stay warm now.”
“What will?”
She leaves the two teapots—hers full, and the one brought by the serving-girl empty—on the washstand and returns to me. “My teapot was a gift from Melusine,” she reminds me. “It’s meant to keep tea hot forever, although I’ve not put it to the test before.”
“Why ever not?” I hand her cup back to her, or try to. She presses it back toward me.
“Don’t you want some?”
I look from Agatha to the tea and back again, brows furrowed. “It was just for you.”
Perhaps my voice is sulkier than I intend, because Agatha laughs again, a tired sort of chuckle. Then, to my great surprise, she leans against me and rests her head on my arm.
I freeze.
“Oh, Lem,” she says, “are you jealous because people paid more attention to me than to you?”
“Of course not,” I say stiffly, even though that’s precisely how I’ve been feeling.
“I don’t get hoarse,” she offers in a tired voice. “I got the Gift of a Charming Voice when I was twelve; the next day, I ran out to the woods and screamed for hours just to test it.”
“You screamed for hours,” I repeat, because I can’t think of anything more intelligent to say, not with Agatha all silver and insubstantial and yet warmer and realer than anything I’ve ever felt before.
“And no one could tell.”
Utterly against my will, I feel a sympathy for the young Lady Agatha. What would it be like, I wonder, to have your very body changed to fit the mold some temperamental fairy determined was best for you?
Agatha’s head rustles against my arm as she shifts to peer up at me. I feel my face heating under her gaze, so I snort.
A logical and attractive thing to do, under the circumstances.
“You smell very bad,” is her next observation, and I snort again.
“I could say the same to you.”
“I know.” Agatha pushes herself away from me, stifling a yawn behind one of her slender hands. “I’d give anything for a bath. And some clean clothes. Even semi-clean ones would be an improvement right now.” She bends down to remove her boots.
“How are your feet?” I ask. “There’s still a bit of Berta’s salve.”
“Is there?” Agatha brightens. She hops up to find the basket I’ve deposited on the floor next to my guitar and rummages until she finds the pot of ointment. “It will mask our mutual smells, too,” she says.
I blink. Agatha almost sounds … jocular? happy?
At the very least, not angry?
I’m not sure how I expected her to feel.
I’m not particularly gifted with foretelling what will happen and how people will feel about it.
But now that I think about it, I guess I was anticipating that she’d be more upset about the fact that we’re still stuck together with no annulment and no Henry to help us, either.
She sits back down next to me and slathers her heels with Berta’s fragrant concoction, nudging me with her elbow after a moment. “Don’t you want some?”
“Oh,” I reply, surprised out of my reverie. “I suppose so.”
Setting the teacup carefully on the floor, I remove my own boots and reach out to take the pot of ointment from Agatha. She brushes me away and scoots to the floor.
“My fingers are already coated,” she says. “May as well keep your hands clean.”
I hold very still while Agatha works the pungent balm into my blisters. Her fingers, slender and nimble, dance lightly over my bare skin.
“Whatever we do tomorrow,” Agatha says, wrinkling her nose, “we have got to get baths. You smell terrible.”
“You already mentioned that,” I grumble.
“Yes, but it bore repeating.” Finished with her work, Agatha rises and replaces the lid on the pot of ointment before tucking it back in the basket. She washes her hands in the chipped washbasin, then pauses in the middle of the room.
“I suppose,” she says slowly, not looking at me, “that it’s my turn to have the floor.”
I stand, careful not to step on the teacup. “Nonsense,” I say with more gentlemanly courtesy than I feel. “You can have the bed.”
Agatha hesitates, the barest trace of uncertainty dancing over her features.
It’s not fair that she always manages to look so in control of herself—
“It’s a gift,” I burst. “It’s a fairy-gift, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t what?”
I gesture wildly. “Why you never look flustered! Why you barely broke a sweat climbing that mountain! Why you look so—so perfectly everything all the time!”
I think I’ve startled her, but it’s hard to tell around this fairy-given composure.
Although, now that I’m recognizing it as a gift (I may not be clever, but I am sure of myself when I do have a breakthrough), I think I can catch her tells: the way she pauses to collect herself before responding, the slow cadence of her words when she’s exerting an extra measure of self-control, the tiny twitches that bely her real feelings.
Truly queen material. The fairies knew what they were doing when they molded her.
If I were still in line to be king, she’d be a worthy companion to take into court battles and state dinners, able to say exactly what everyone needed to hear—as long as one of those insulting moods didn’t sweep her up again, like it did the night of the ball.
It’s almost a pity that we’re not going to stay married and I’m not going to be king.
Almost.
Agatha
I feel exposed, even though the room is dim with silver moonlight and my face must be as serene as ever.
Lem noticed my unnatural gifting. He named it for what it is.
He … he sees me, in some way that I’m not sure I’ve been seen before—except, perhaps, by Melusine.
I find the idea terribly uncomfortable, so I keep my mouth firmly shut while Lem continues staring at me in his adorably thick-headed way.
“You really were made to be a queen,” he says abruptly, his voice gruff.
I’d sneer, if my Poise would let me. “I was.” Bit by bit, piece by piece, gift by gift—I was made, built, manufactured. Not grown. Not developed. Just made.
“I’m—I’m sorry you got stuck with me.” He’s not staring at me anymore. “Once we get this annulled, you can—”
“You keep saying that,” I interrupt. “But how are we going to do it? Do you really expect us to march up to the duke’s front door after the way I insulted him?”
“You’re the clever one,” Lem replies. “Don’t you have any ideas?”
Ideas, maybe. That I’m willing to share, certainly not.