Chapter 31
Some instinct for self-preservation sends me dropping to the floor, arms crossed over my head and neck, as the giant, heavy, overloaded bookcase topples forward, books raining down on my back and my arms. I will admit to emitting a rather less than ladylike shriek during the initial moments of crisis than my mother would have approved of, but needs must. I’m not sure how long I spend, crouched into a ball, being pelted by books; even very old books and very small books, it turns out, have sharp corners, although those are second in consideration to my immediate and overwhelming concern that the entire heavy wooden case will wholly collapse and squash me flat.
It has absolutely fallen forward on me; why it hasn’t squashed me, I can’t begin to imagine.
For a long moment, I’m aware of nothing but the sound of books hitting the floor, and the sensation of being myself hit by them, pummeling my back; none of the experience is at all pleasant.
When it seems that the books have stopped falling on me and the bookcase itself isn’t going to crush me, I open a cautious eye.
I don’t appear to be dead, or even too badly wounded, though it’s hard to know for sure.
I am in near-total darkness, surrounded by books and that peculiar, evocative scent of old paper and crumbling leather and dust. The scent is very much stronger when one is completely encased in a cavern of old books and a broken bookcase.
Everything is very quiet. I take quick stock of myself; I’m under several pounds’ worth of books, and everything aches, but nothing feels broken.
Hard to say, however, given that I’m crouched in a ball beneath a partially collapsed bookcase and hundreds of books.
I shift a little, and a couple of books slide off me. It’s dark and very uncomfortable.
And then I hear someone shouting my name, and realize that the books around me are beginning to shift again; this time, however, because people are trying to move the collapsed bookcase off me.
There’s a fair amount of yelling, and then light breaks into my little cavern of books, and suddenly there’s too much light, and I feel hands clearing the detritus off me.
I groan as I sit up; that makes my entire body hurt.
I unmistakably feel like I’ve just survived a cave-in.
I blink and look around; Sasha is holding up one bookcase—the one opposite the one that collapsed on me.
Perhaps they both fell forward. I should, by rights, be very dead.
Driz and Yenny have pushed the other one, the one that did collapse on me, back up against the wall.
Ternis is standing about a foot away, looking distraught, and the bluecaps are drifting anxiously above me.
I am being supported by a pair of very masculine arms, and I can feel myself going pink at the realization that I’m being held, in a rather intimate fashion, by the pirate.
Who is, for once, not making jokes or cryptic statements.
There are also what must be hundreds of onlookers crowded around us, in the hall and outside, peeking through the door and windows, and it takes me a moment to realize that Ternis’s endless speech before he kissed me gave approximately half the town time to assemble to see the show.
Someone is speaking to me in a low voice, and I focus on that; Bash is looking me over with a gaze of such intense concentration I blush again.
He’s asking whether I’m all right. I think I am.
I raise a hand to my temple and it comes away wet, and I look at my fingertips in confusion.
It makes sense that something would have hit me hard enough to break the skin, but it’s still surprising.
He sees my bloody fingertips and curses, very colorfully.
“You twat,” he says, looking up at Ternis, and the emotion in his voice blunts my own confusion for a moment.
“What kind of bellend knocks someone into something and then steps back when it starts to collapse?” We’re both looking up at Ternis, whose expression is utterly stricken.
I can hardly process the tone Bash has taken, which is so completely different from anything I’ve heard from him before, when he turns his attention back to me and, with infinite gentleness, asks if I can stand.
“Yes,” I say, with significantly more assurance than I feel, and he helps me rise, his hands on my elbows. Everything hurts but nothing feels broken.
“Tandy,” Sasha gasps, and I look up to see that she’s gone as pale as a dracone can go.
I cough and cast the fastest stabilizing spell I can remember on the bookcase she’s holding up.
“You can let go now,” I say. She takes a careful step back, releasing the bookcase cautiously, but it stays upright.
I turn and do the same for the one that fell on me, and Driz and Yenny release it carefully.
It doesn’t even wobble, a fact I’d ordinarily be proud of.
Silence falls over the room. I should say something, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a prince kissed me (without breaking the curse, naturally), and then a bookcase collapsed on me, and now I’m standing in a dust-filled, books-strewn passage, being stared at by three princes, at least seventeen townsfolk, my teenaged shop assistant, and being held by—
“Oh, cripes,” I gasp, and step out of Bash’s arms. I oughtn’t be held by anyone, really; it’s inappropriate for a single royal when not dancing. “Oh, cripes” may indeed not be the most inspiring words, but I’m still gathering my wits. That said, I immediately feel a little colder.
“What happened?” I add, at a safe distance from everyone.
“That prince—” Sasha begins.
“That demented blowhard—” Bash says at the same time.
“My darling—” Ternis cries out, sounding sincerely agonized.
I hold up a hand. I don’t trust a single person here to say anything remotely sensible. “You”—I point at a townsperson (someone, I note, who has never once bought anything from me, despite having seen at least two of my kisses in person)—“did you see what happened?”
“Yes, your, uh,” the townsperson, a middle-aged elf, squeaks. She blushes, her blue-gray cheeks turning an appealing shade of azure. “Your, um, swain”—she gestures in Ternis’s direction—“pulled you toward him and bent you over his arm and kissed you.”
I knew that bit. I school myself in patience. “And?” I prompt.
“If he hadn’t been so intent on making an absolute ass of himself and just tried to kiss you normally,” Bash says, sounding extremely aggrieved, “it wouldn’t have happened. But he pushed you into the bookcase.”
“And then the bookcase wobbled and sort of overbalanced and fell forward, and you were right under it,” Sasha says, sounding thrilled. I suppose, for her, it’s mostly just an exciting day on the job. That is, since nobody got squashed to death.
“Why didn’t I get squashed to death?” I say, suddenly annoyed with everyone. I should, by rights, have at least broken my back.
“The bookcase toppled forward and hit the one across from it,” Bash says.
He, at least, doesn’t sound delighted. He makes a triangle shape with his two hands.
“So it didn’t collapse on you. Just dumped eight hundred pounds of books on you.
” He shoots another furious look at Ternis.
“Your swain saw what was happening and stepped out of the way.”
I feel all my royal training bubbling to the surface. I want nothing so much as to shoo everyone away and have a good yell, and then find a spell to ease the aches of recent percussive injuries, but someone’s got to take control of this mess.
“Just as well,” I say, trying to inject a bit of airy unconcern into my voice. “Otherwise we’d both have been trapped. A diplomatic nightmare, to be sure.”
“He could have pulled you away with him,” Sasha points out, because no teenager has ever met with a polite fabrication she didn’t feel the immediate urge to dismantle. So much for diplomacy. Beside me, Bash emits some sort of noise that, under different circumstances, I might describe as a growl.
“Well, no harm done,” I say lightly. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me—”
“But the curse,” Ternis says, his voice a little high-pitched.
Of course. The entire reason he kissed me in the first place.
“It’s not broken; I’d have felt it,” I say, as kindly as I can manage.
I still don’t know that for sure, but it’s as safe an assumption as any.
Ternis opens his mouth to protest, and I sigh.
“Look, I’ll show you,” I say, stepping over the books strewn about the floor and walking to the still-open door where, oh joy, the other half of the town appears to be collected.
They’re chattering excitedly; they fall silent as I approach.
I press my hand against the invisible barrier. It is, of course, unaltered.
“See? Can’t leave. The curse is alive and well. Now, if you wouldn’t all mind…”
It seems I’ve finally reached the limits of my ability to be hospitable. I suddenly want everyone gone.
“We’re closed!” Sasha hollers, from somewhere behind me.
I turn and march back into the bookshop as disappointed townsfolk stream out the door around me.
After a few moments, only the princes, Sasha, Bash, and I are left.
Ternis still looks utterly shell-shocked.
Even Driz appears to have lost his normal bonhomie.
Bash is glowering at the floor. Sasha is trying to conceal a smile.
“Driz,” I say, “will you take Ternis to the Inn of the Howevermany Princes and buy him a drink?”
“Of course,” he murmurs, at a totally normal volume.
“Ternis,” I say, since someone must say something, and he doesn’t appear to have recovered his voice yet. “You weren’t going to break the curse anyway. It’s my own fault for de-spelling those damned bookcases during open hours without taking any precautions. Anyone could have knocked one over.”