Chapter 32
Lem
Agatha kisses me.
She kisses me.
I’m so surprised that I sit, stone-still, as her warm lips find mine for the briefest of moments.
She withdraws, and I curse myself for letting her get away. I should have wrapped my arms around her and dug my fingers into her soft brown hair and kept her pressed against me until the sun set and our tea grew ice-cold.
My face flames. We aren’t even married anymore—or rather, we never were—so it’s terribly improper to entertain that sort of thought.
So she kissed me. It was more of a sentimental good-bye than the start of anything terribly passionate.
But a man can’t be blamed for wanting more, can he?
“Agatha,” I say again, my voice raspy and helpless. “I can’t be king. If the godmother won’t restore the gift, I’ll find another way out. I can’t do it.”
She quirks her eyebrows together. They’re thicker than they were, and one is straighter than the other. I’d like to cup her face in my hands and trace them with my thumbs.
“What will you do, then?” she says. Her cheeks are pink. Her godmother must have taken away that terrible composure, and I’ll confess I’m glad. I like seeing her a bit flustered.
I huff. “You’ve spent so much time with me and still think I’m capable of coming up with a plan?”
“I’d offer to help,” Agatha says, “but I’m not clever anymore.” Her voice is wistful, regretful. I wonder if she’s decided to ask the godmother to change her back, and if this is the only time I’ll see her unbalanced and vulnerable.
It’s up to her, I remind myself, but I let my eyes linger on this new version of her face, memorizing every last detail, just in case I don’t get to see it again. “Don’t be silly,” I say gruffly. “Of course you’re clever.”
“It was one of my gifts,” Agatha says bitterly.
I frown and set my teacup down on the wall beside me. “That doesn’t mean anything. It’s not as if your hair all vanished, just because your godmother changed the color.” I should resist, but I can’t. I slide my hand over to rest it gently on Agatha’s. “You must have your own cleverness, too.”
Tears pool in the corner of her eyes. “I don’t think so,” she whispers. “I don’t think I’m anything, anymore.”
Gently, reverently, I lift my thumb to catch the tear that spills over. “You’re many things, Agatha. With or without a godmother.”
Her eyes lock on mine with a sort of desperation. “I’ll change back if you want me to,” she says, her voice even quieter. “I know you never wanted to be stuck with me, but—”
My other hand reaches up to cup her other cheek. Am I—am I touching Lady Agatha? And she’s letting me? My heart races so fast I can barely think. “None of that,” I say. “You decide for yourself.”
“But don’t you miss how beautiful I was?”
I let my eyes drink in her new face before I shake my head slowly. “No.”
She lets out a long breath and drops her head to my shoulder. “Stop being so nice, Lem. Tell me I’m hideous and worthless until I crawl to Melusine and beg for my charms to be restored.”
She’s going to hear my thundering heartbeat. The hand that was cupping her face snakes around her back, pressing her gently to myself.
“Why?” I ask.
She shudders a sigh and nestles deeper into my arms. When she speaks, her voice is muffled. “Because it would be easier, thinking you only saw the gifts, and never saw—me.”
“But I do see you.”
“I know.” Silence for a moment, then she lifts her head. I let her go reluctantly. “And it’s going to hurt when you go back to Rhylorria and leave me behind and—” She cuts herself off, pressing her lips together until they turn white.
“I already said I’m not going to be the king.”
“But you’ll still have to go figure out something, won’t you?”
I sigh. “I feel like we’re talking in circles.”
Agatha sits up straight and retrieves her teacup from its place on the stone wall. She takes a sip, making a face at the coldness of it, before she answers. “I suppose so.”
I’ve got to tell her. But how can I? I’m not a man of fine speeches and clever words. How can I bare my heart to her, when I’m so unworthy of her?
And yet, she did kiss me.
With a deep breath, I stop thinking and start talking.
“Agatha, you’re—you’re—so much, and I’m not, but I—well, I care, but I know that you—and I wish—” My cheeks flame.
That went even worse than I imagined. I draw my eyebrows together and look down at my hands, clenched in my lap. “Never mind,” I finish sourly.
I hear Agatha’s sharp intake of breath and the soft clink of her teacup on the wall again before I feel her hands slide over mine. “I have no idea what you were trying to say,” she says hurridly. “But Lem—I know you don’t want me, but—”
“Not want you?” I say, looking up. “Not want you? I want you more than anything in the world! I’d march back to the palace and be the prince, if you wanted me to. It’s just that you deserve more, Agatha! You deserve—”
“You want me?”
And I really can’t help myself, not when Agatha looks at me with those questioning blue eyes and she’s sitting with her knees pressed to mine and her face only inches away—I can’t do anything except cradle her ever-lovely face in my hands and kiss her with the passion I’ve been banking since the first time I set eyes on her.
I kiss her for the rest of my life, or at least I would, if that blasted godmother didn’t start tittering from the bed of violets beside us.
We break away from each other, breathless and aching to say a thousand things, but the fairy speaks first.
“I knew it!” she crows. “I suppose you owe me your firstborn child, or something?”
Agatha blanches. “I’m not giving you our child—we aren’t having children yet anyhow!”
“Yet,” I repeat. My head spins. My hands sneak across the gap between us to clasp hers.
The godmother’s hair wafts around her in a shimmering curtain. “Oh, well,” she says. “I never liked babies anyhow. Too smelly.”
“Lem’s will be, I’m sure,” Agatha mutters, and I laugh.
With a snap of the godmother’s fingers, the broken pieces of our gifts spread out around us. “Did you decide?” she says, looking mostly at Agatha, although her round eyes are big enough to take in both of us at once. “I want to get back to my glade by sundown.”
Agatha turns to me. “I miss being poised.” She sounds wistful.
One side of my mouth tips up. “I think I like seeing you a bit flustered.”
She flushes. “And, if you can’t figure out how to get out of being king—” She hesitates before continuing, shyly, “I could—I could be of more benefit to you, if I were gifted.”
I shake my head, my fingers squeezing hers. “I want you to be happy with your choice. For yourself, Agatha. Not for your father. Not for me. Not for your godmother.” I hold her gaze for a long moment. “You choose. For yourself.”
She bites her lower lip, and if we were alone, I’d kiss her again. I barely keep myself from it even with the godmother’s too-large eyes watching us like a voyeuristic owl.
“I’ve never—I’ve never had a choice,” she says. She gazes absently over the count’s garden. “It feels more like a burden than I imagined it would.”
“I’ll help you bear whatever I can,” I promise. “If you’ll have me.”
A tiny smile lights her face. “Are you finally proposing?”
“Finally?” I scoff. “We’ve been married for a while.”
“And you never even tried to kiss me!”
The godmother settles back on her heels, evidently enjoying this exchange. My cheeks would probably heat if they weren’t already flushed from the kissing. And the thinking about kissing again as soon as this fairy leaves us. Sundown, she said.
So, soon.
“I didn’t think you liked me!” I protest. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to kiss her. She should realize that now.
“I didn’t, at first,” Agatha shoots back. “But we were married! Theoretically, anyhow! You could have at least asked about it!”
I run a hand through my hair. “What did you expect me to ask? Hello, I know you hate me, but I’d willingly pluck out my own fingernails if you’d kiss me just once?”
“That would have worked. Except I don’t want you to pluck out your fingernails.” Her eyes narrow. “Are you quoting me?”
“Your insults have been branded in my memory.”
Her face softens in an instant, her hand reaching out to rest on my cheek. “Oh, Lem,” she says. “You should really forget most of those.”
I do wish this fairy would go away. I’m not keen on having a witness to this part. Clearing my throat, I say with forced lightness, “If my understanding is correct, you were speaking the truth, so all the times you said I was pathetic …”
“Oh, Lem,” Agatha repeats. Either she’s forgotten that the godmother is watching, or she doesn’t care, for she draws my face closer, turning it at the last second so her lips can brush against my scar. “Forgive me.”
Forgive? Was there something to forgive? I’ve quite forgotten. I clear my throat again as she traces a feather-light finger down the scar she’s just kissed. “Well, anyhow,” I say. “You can’t blame me for not trying anything before.”
“I can, and I do,” Agatha says saucily, “and you’ll have to work very hard to make up for it.”
I’m finished. Completely done for. I’ve melted into a puddle on the ground and I know with the utmost certainty that whatever the future holds for me, it is mostly Agatha, Agatha, Agatha. “Anything you want,” I manage to croak.
The godmother claps. “Very pretty!” she says. “Very pretty, both of you! But I really do have to go, so—” She stands up, somehow balancing on the edge of a violet. “Lady Agatha, do you want your Gifts back?”
Agatha slips her fingers out of my hands so she can thread them together on her lap. She looks down for a moment, eyes closed, then inhales as she turns her attention back to the godmother. Her eyes flick to me once, questioning, and I nod. Whatever she chooses, I’ll support.
“No,” she says quietly. “I do not.”
The fairy shrugs, but waves her hand to scatter the pieces of the teapot. They turn into white flower petals midair and float around on the same mysterious breeze that tousles the godmother’s hair before drifting down to the courtyard.
Agatha exhales in a long, quivering sigh.
“Prince Limplemoyne, do you want your Gift back?” the fairy asks next.
My mouth goes dry. I blink. “I didn’t think I could.”
“I’m offering it,” the godmother retorts. “But not for long.”
I look desperately to Agatha, but it’s her turn to shake her head, a bemused smile playing on her lips. “If I had to make my own choice, so do you.”
“But this concerns you,” I argue. “Since I’m fully intending to spend the rest of my life adoring you, you should have a say in our future.”
I love the way her cheeks flush. I love the way she bites back a shy, delighted smile at my words.
The godmother clears her throat.
Oh, right. I stop myself from drifting toward Agatha and cough. “Would you like to be a princess?” I ask. “Would you like to be the queen someday?”
“As long as I get to stay your wife, I don’t really care.”
This fairy can’t leave soon enough.
“But I want you to be happy, Lem.” She reaches out to grasp my hands again. “You don’t want to be prince.”
I shake my head.
“Is there any other way to get out of it? Why didn’t you just abdicate?”
“I can’t,” I say grimly. “I was telling the truth—mostly—about the succession laws. The wolpertingers only appear when the country needs a new heir, and it’s impossible to, well, un-slay one.
It was an accident, you know. I was only eight when the king was crowned and the wolpertingers came.
” Agatha tips her head. “When they show up, all the heroic types go questing to see who can slay one first. Very gallant, and all that. But one was wounded somehow, and must have dragged itself into our shed, and I didn’t even know until I heard the squeal …
” Agatha’s eyes are wide. I clear my throat. “It was an accident.”
“You can’t stop there!” Agatha protests.
“I was scared and threw a brick. It was mostly slain already, you know?” I tug on the collar of my shirt. “I didn’t understand what I’d done until everyone started panicking.”
“And the scar?” Agatha asks.
I trace it absently again. “Tripped trying to run away. But I told everyone else it was a sign of my great warrior-ness.”
She leans her head on my shoulder. “Poor Lem,” she says, then pauses. “Is that the name your parents gave you? Or did it come with being prince? Wait, what about your parents?”
“I was always Lem,” I say. “But it was supposed to be short for Lemuel, not Limplemoyne.”
“Oh, good.” Agatha sighs happily. “Because it really is such a name!”
“And my parents died in the same sickness that took the previous king. Henry and I were on our own for just a while before we went to live in the palace.”
If … if I hadn’t slain the wolpertinger, what would have happened to us?
How would we have fended for ourselves? The grief of losing our parents, followed so quickly by my confusing ascent to the throne, has mingled in my memories until I’ve seen them both as one overwhelming tragedy.
But what if it wasn’t an accident that I became prince?
It was actually salvation for Henry and me.
I sigh, brought back to the current dilemma by the godmother tapping her foot on the air, which shouldn’t make a sound, but it does.
Agatha gives my hands a squeeze, a promise that she’s with me.
I’d like to say yes to the fairy, but what can I offer Agatha without my princely identity? I have no other means of providing for her—us—and she deserves everything in the world.
I’ll be the king for her. If she’ll stay with me, I can face the court and the lawyers and all the terrible monotony of princedom. It will be a worthy sacrifice for Agatha.
“So do you want your Gift back?” the fairy repeats.
With a regretful sigh, I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I don’t.”