Chapter 24
Chapter
I have fought at his side for many years.
Tonight was the first time I wished he’d stumble.
Red embers float up in clouds of smoke, stoked higher and higher with Wolfe’s fire stick. The group is far less chatty tonight than all the others. I suspect my hearing melodies that no one else could hear might have something to do with that.
I swallow my shame with a large piece of stale bread. Since Wolfe and Rhidland’s hunt was unsuccessful, and Merrek and Myrrdin’s foraging venture turned into a rescue mission, it’s all that’s left. That and the ale.
Scratch that.
The ale’s gone too.
I smile, watching Merrek put the lip of the opal colored bottle up to his eye. Searching for the very last drop.
“Oh would you stop, already!” Myrrdin groans, ripping the empty bottle from Merrek’s hand. “You’re embarrassing me in front of the princess.”
Merrek’s jaw goes slack, his hooded eyes widening as far as his buzz will allow.
“I’m the embarrassment? You have jars filled with bugs in your pack!” Merrek argues, staggering to his feet. “What are you going to do if someone tries to attack her? Throw a moon gnat at them?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know damn well a moon gnat isn’t equipped for the likes of battle. That would be like…Well, that would be like sending you.”
“Why you lily-lifting—”
“What’s a moon gnat?” I cut in, not only because I don’t want to see Merrek unwind that tightly spun arm of his, but because there is so much I do not understand about our world. “Is it that fuzzy blue bug you were handling the other night?”
Myrrdin’s furrowed brows lift with the corners of his mouth.
“Oh, that? That was no moon gnat. But it was an insect that could cause a great deal of concern for many people,” Myrrdin answers with infectious excitement. “That fuzzy blue bug was none other than a Neon Nightpiercer.”
He’s looking at me like he’s waiting for recognition to register. When it doesn’t, he comes to sit beside me, pack in hand. He then pulls out a small glass jar with three holes in the top. Inside is a butterfly.
My face falls at the sight of the same pink wings I danced with earlier now struggling against the glass. “You’re not going to hurt it are you?”
“No! Never.” Myrrdin reels back, shaking his head. “I study them, you see. Take note of all that’s changed from the research of old. But mostly, I admire them.”
Relieved, I lean in to admire the sharp edge of its glowing wings, too.
“Why are they pink? The wings?” I ask, studying their subtle movements. “Why aren’t they blue?”
“They used to be. They used to be soft too, their wings as delicate and thin as paper.” Myrrdin sighs, turning the jar in his hand. “But like everything else in the forest, they had to adapt.”
I lean back in understanding. “To survive the curse.”
“To survive us.”
Silence. I meet Myrrdin’s solemn gaze, a quiet desire to understand sitting on the tip of my tongue where denial once lived.
“That’s a heartbreaking thought for humanity.” I mutter.
“What is humanity if not heartbreak personified,” Frog whispers, and when I look up, I find his gaze already waiting for me across the fire.
“Back before the curse,” Myrrdin starts, drawing my attention back to the butterfly, “the Enchanted Forest was anything but,” he adds, setting the jar between us. “The Kings used to host these hunts.”
“The Hunt of Horns and Fangs,” Wolfe clips.
Myrrdin nods toward the amber-eyed knight.
“Precisely. And this hunt would be open to all royalty and their noblemen. We’re talking dozens, if not a hundred or so men.
All running through the forest with their bows and nets.
They went after everything. But none more so than the horses with horns of ivory. ”
“Unicorns…” My shoulders fall as I picture what might have happened to the foal we found trapped in the hunter’s snare.
“The men revered their beauty. They tried to tame them at one time. But the temptation to sell the ivory was one not a lot of men could fight. And without its horn…it’s left to die,” Myrrdin replies solemnly.
“To waste.” Wolfe’s nostrils flare, but for once, I understand his anger.
I pick at my bread, no longer hungry.
“And what of the butterflies? Why did they change?” I’m afraid to know, but even more afraid to remain in the darkness.
Myrrdin lifts the jar, holding it between us.
“They would capture them,” he answers, unscrewing the jar’s top. “Then they’d rip off their wings and crush them into a healing salve.”
The backs of my eyes burn as he sets the small creature free.
“I had no idea. Father, he—”
“Was the one who ordered them to do it.” Wolfe meets my teary gaze, and suddenly I see it. The returning flicker of what I couldn’t place before.
Resentment.
“Magic and men don’t mix, princess. This curse is proof of that.”
I ponder Wolfe’s words. Take a moment to sit with the anger he so desperately tries to hide.
Then, as if by habit, I steal a look in Frog’s direction. To see if his eyes have anything to add. Only he doesn’t appear to be paying the conversation any attention.
His gaze is again fixed on me, its warmth enough to make the dancing flames between us insignificant.
And the cold in their absence much more chilling, I think as he abandons my gaze for the safety of the ground. Something inside me quietly deflates. I thought after today, things might be different. But perhaps I lost more than my mind out there.
The thought sours my stomach, more than I can bear.
I refuse to let today’s adventure be tarnished by something as feeble as sanity. Or a lack thereof.
“Rhidland?” I stand, creeping ever closer to his pack.
The old man flicks his helmet up, revealing an already mounting suspicion in his gaze. “Yes, my lady?”
The knights all watch with mixed amusement as I awkwardly bend backwards to grab the large brown pack from the ground.
“I was thinking…”
“A dangerous habit.”
“Indeed.” I grin at the old man, wrapping my fingers around the long wooden instrument tucked tightly at the bottom of the pack.
“Would these thoughts have anything to do with why you’re snooping through my stuff?”
“Yes!” I exclaim, bouncing on the tip of my toes.
He purses his lips beneath his wiry mustache, a failed attempt at hiding his smile. “And am I going to like what you’ve found in there?”
I squint, sinking my teeth into my bottom lip. “Well…no.” I shrug, dropping his bag to reveal what’s in my hands. “But I certainly will.”
“No way!” Merrek pops up from where he’d slumped down in the grass. “Is that a real flute?”
“Of course it is!” Rhidland huffs, his chest swelling with pride.
“There’s no way this crusty castle keeper actually knows how to play that.” Merrek scoffs, rolling his eyes.
“Careful boy, that armor’s squeezing what little sense you’ve got!” The old guard barks as he reaches forward and—grumpily—takes the flute from my hands.
“Can’t play. I’ll show him who can’t play,” he mumbles beneath his breath, then wets his lips and brings the flute to his mouth.
Myrrdin and Wolfe settle on their sides in the tall grass, their gazes curious, whereas Merrek’s is full of doubt. And Frog, well…Frog is avoiding my gaze.
“Come on, Rhidland!”
Today cannot end on this note.
The old man plays a few notes, poorly at first. An off key here, another there. But by the third pass through there is rhythm. There is a beat.
“Yes!” I clap, the weight in my chest already lighter.
“A thousand pardons!” Merrek jumps up. “I think my honor owes you a bow.” He smiles, bending low at the waist.
Then his blue eyes cut to me, and in them, more mischief than I can manage.
“What are you—”
I begin to ask when he strides toward me and whisks me off my feet, stealing the breath from my lungs.
“God, help me,” Myrrdin mutters. Or perhaps it was Wolfe? The world is spinning too fast for me to tell. One thing remains clear though—manners and Merrek do not mix.
Air finds its way into my lungs, only to be pushed out in a brusque laugh as I’m twirled and whirled around the fire.
I think I see Frog rising, but between the full moon above and the yellow and orange flames, his autumn green gaze is lost. There is only the massive smile before me, plastered on Merrek’s face, and the glimmer and glint of the lilac gown as it catches the firelight.
I laugh so hard I nearly lose my rhythm, a new experience given that dance lessons were all the education I was allowed in my formative years.
Still, Merrek puts them all to shame as he one, two steps me beneath the sky full of stars.
Even Buttons seems to appreciate the knight’s fancy footwork, darting between my slippers and his boots, chirping whenever either of us nearly steps on him.
Merrek lets me go with one last dramatic spin and by the time I stop I’m at the fire’s edge, where Frog now stands, half-hidden by the darkness beyond the flames.
The moment our eyes meet, he looks away so quickly it almost hurts. I truly thought he was beginning to like me. Or was that in my head too?
“Uh-huh…”
I blink, tearing my gaze away from the dark knight. “What?”
“Oh, nothing.” Merrek buries his lie beneath a smoldering grin.
I frown, but before I can press him for an answer, he sweeps me into another turn—and then another.
I fall into step as gracefully as one can whilst being dipped and twirled until the field itself is spinning. But there is no outmaneuvering the disappointment settling in my chest when, once more, I am spun toward the fire’s edge and Frog is no longer there.