Chapter 16
101 YEARS AGO
“YOU DON’T NEED to give an answer, you know.”
Amelia felt the brush of Lilith’s dress as the queen gently nudged their knees together. They sat on the plush red carpet at the top of the grand staircase leading into the vacant ballroom, where empty glasses of champagne and crumb-filled plates covered the tabletops. Her tiered birthday cake, once decorated with red roses made of icing, had melted into a pile of buttercream.
The corset of her carmine gown tightened as Amelia let out a sigh. “I do. I have exactly a year left from tonight.”
Now that celebrations for her seventeenth birthday were over, she needed to answer her father about which man she wanted to marry. That was the true purpose of these ceremonies: not to celebrate her birthday, but to find a suitor. To King Victor, this suitor would become the father of the new heir. To the godmothers, he would be the hero who would break her curse with true love’s kiss and restore their status.
To Amelia, however, these were simply men. And she felt nothing for them.
Thunder rumbled from black clouds sprawled across the sky. Flickers of lightning created a brassy glow on the castle walls. Lilith watched the rain patter on bare trees, then laced her fingers through Amelia’s. It was supposed to be a gesture of comfort, and yet, Amelia’s skin tingled as if she were the one struck by lightning. When Lilith pulled away, Amelia found a bundle of wilted flowers tied together by string.
“I don’t want you to throw your life away before you’ve even had the chance to live it,” Lilith said. “You do this because you assume you will die at eighteen. You won’t.”
Amelia remembered Lilith claiming the moonflowers would bloom on her eighteenth birthday. Perhaps she thought if the flowers became alive, Amelia would witness her own miracle as well. How could she tell Lilith that she wasn’t a flower waiting to bloom, but rest? Part of her yearned to turn eighteen and fall asleep, because that would mean not having to deal with expectations or responsibility. There would be no forced interactions with men, no wearing empty smiles, no late nights lying in bed and wondering why happiness was a feeling she could never grasp.
She had also fantasized meeting Malicine, the demon who was supposed to take her away. Instead of fleeing for safety, Amelia would walk right up to the demon and say, Take me. I’ve experienced little of life, and I don’t care enough to see the rest of it.
A flash of lightning crackled the sky, as if conjured from her desperate thoughts. White streaks rippled across glass windows and revealed a raven’s silhouette. The bird appeared like it had been formed by her own darkness. An invisible string pulled Amelia to her feet. She dropped the moonflower crown back in Lilith’s hands and bounded to the double doors, bursting through the exit.
Another flash of lightning revealed the bare arms of trees above her, crooked and gnarled like horns. Her heart thudded against her chest, not from fear, but a twisted version of hope that perhaps Malicine came early to collect her. Amelia ran through the woods as if she could chase after lightning and catch it in a bottle, her own version of a miracle. She heard Lilith call after her, then her godmothers, then the guards too. Thunder exploded in her ears and propelled her forward. She ran as fast as she could. The weather would aid her. No one could spot her through the pinpoint needles of rain, the darkness of trees, the way the woods curled into shadows and took her in its embrace.
Amelia chased that hope for so long that soon her feet felt like they were on fire. She threw her heels to the side and ran barefoot in the mud. Her throat strained from shouting Malicine’s name to the trees, and still, she met no response.
Even if she saw the demon, what would she say? Would she ask why she was cursed to fall asleep? Would she want to know if, when Malicine cursed her, they had also given her the desire to be unconscious forever too?
Rain pounded against Amelia’s face, turning her dress into a sopping bundle of fabric. Panic caused the world to spin as lightning blinded her eyes. She ran forward and crashed into the trunk of her tree, pain blooming across her limbs, bark biting into her skin. Her body fell backward, and she let out a cry as her ankle twisted before landing with a hard thud.
She tried getting up, but her foot felt like an anchor, swelling at her ankle and radiating pain when she tried to move. What a hopeless fate, she thought bleakly. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the world. Still, the world insisted on carrying her along its whims, and several moments later, she felt herself lifted in the air and into another’s arms.
When she opened her eyes again, the stars swayed back and forth in the sky. Someone carried her beneath a dense tree as shield from the rain. His clothes were drenched, but Amelia could hear a slow heartbeat through his shirt, someone cold yet alive. She looked up at his jaw, a straight line that seemed carved from stone. Curls of blond hair slicked wet over sharp cheekbones. She made a sound of surprise that grabbed his attention, and suddenly a pair of eyes gazed into hers, so light blue they turned silver.
“It’s all right. Let me carry you. A girl shouldn’t be walking alone late at night. Especially in your condition.”
He offered a gentle smile, dimples forming on his cheeks. It was the kind of face that would have fluttered a girl’s heart. But the blush that crept Amelia’s cheeks was only from shame. Her eyes glanced down to the wilting fabric of her dress, the tears in the silk and waistband. Mud caked her bare feet, and her heels were gone. She had been too reckless running off like that. Part of her wanted to tell him to put her down and let her run so that she wouldn’t have to face the consequences of returning home.
“You don’t have to do this. I’d hate for my foolishness to burden you.”
“Nonsense. You’re as light as a feather. I could carry you forever and never be tired.”
She recognized the way his words should have shot a thrill up her spine and made her feel special. Instead, she examined his promises with dispassion and wondered how someone could devote themselves so easily. Perhaps he was enthralled by her looks, a gift that she didn’t have to even work toward. Yet when he looked at her, the silver flecks of his eyes burned with something deeper, a determination that she could not place.
He told her his name was Ezran, and that he would take her home after the storm passed. The rain dissipated eventually, and with her ankle sprained, he carried her throughout their journey to the castle.
She was too caught up by his sturdy presence to notice the glowing tall windows as they reached her home. Lilith’s voice called from the entrance, and there it was, the tingle in her skin, the ache of her heart. The way it was supposed to feel with handsome men like the one holding her.
Amelia wriggled from Ezran’s grasp, embarrassed to be positioned this way in front of Lilith. It didn’t matter. The queen couldn’t reach them before the godmothers burst through the entryway, their shrill cries and overbearing sobs tuned like a midnight performance. They stopped when they saw the man holding her.
“Who is this handsome stranger?” Clover gasped.
He introduced himself as Prince Ezran from the kingdom of Zilar. A new energy ignited the conversation, a hum of excitement emanating from the three godmothers. A prince eighteen years of age, he’d originally declined the invitation to attend Amelia’s birthday ceremony because he’d been traveling from diplomatic duties. The thunderstorm had scared off his horse, and as he wandered to retrieve the animal, his detour led to Amelia.
She could see the gears in her godmothers’ heads turning, their smiles widening. They called this not coincidence, but destiny.
The faeries crowded him with several more questions. They brought Amelia inside to heal her ankle, and Ezran to meet the king. There was so much buzz over the prince and their fateful encounter that Amelia barely found respite until she retreated to her own bedroom.
A hand caught her wrist. She knew it was not Ezran, because the touch of skin sent a familiar electric current up her arm. Lilith stared at her, the flicker of candlelight in the dark hall illuminating her grave expression.
“Be careful, Amelia,” she said. “I don’t trust his intentions with you.”
“Why?”
Lilith paused , as if deliberating her next words. “Call it intuition, I suppose.”
Amelia knew she could refuse him, yet her godmothers’ coos of admiration echoed in her mind, matched by her father’s all-too-rare nod of respect upon meeting him. No, love did not matter here. Even in fairy tales, princesses merely existed in stories that others wanted to tell.