Chapter Fifteen An Inopportune Interruption
Chapter Fifteen
An Inopportune Interruption
In the warm darkness, a pair of arms wrapped themselves around me. A pair of lips sought mine. I responded eagerly, sliding my hands beneath clothing, feeling the play of muscles under skin. I pulled myself closer until our bodies were pressed together.
Behind me, someone cleared their throat uncomfortably. Someone else tried without success to suppress a giggle.
I leapt away from my lover, embarrassment heating my face. I couldn’t believe I’d been caught kissing…kissing…
Who had I been kissing?
That could wait. “Who’s there?” I shouted, groping about for anything I could use as a weapon. There were assassins lurking in the kingdom. If they had come for me, I didn’t want to face them empty-handed.
“Um, we’re very sorry to intrude,” my older sister said, “but we thought it might be important.”
“Jonquil?” I peered into the darkness. “What are you doing here? And where are you? I can’t see a thing.”
“You can if you want to. It’s—”
“Oh, just give her some light,” Gnoflwhogir interrupted. “By the time you explain, she’ll be awake.”
I heard her hands clap together, and the space was immediately illuminated.
“The space” was the best way to describe it.
What the light revealed wasn’t a chamber of the castle; it was a featureless black void.
My feet rested on nothing, and nothing lay overhead.
There were no walls for as far as I could see, only more nothingness, extending into infinity for all I knew.
I found it somewhat puzzling that I could see the featureless black void better now that it was well lit.
Joining me in the nothingness, standing at odd angles—slantwise, perpendicular, or even upside down—were my sisters and their spouses.
The obvious explanation occurred to me. “I told you to knock first.”
“I tried,” Jonquil said, “but there was nothing to knock on.”
“Which makes it a very boring dream,” Gnoflwhogir complained. “No décor whatever. Are you always this single-minded when you—”
“Darling,” Jonquil said. “Stop.”
Jonquil looked almost as discomfited as I felt.
At least I was wearing clothes this time; things hadn’t yet progressed to the point that I’d removed any.
Gnoflwhogir seemed impatient, and Calla had both her hands over her mouth, her brown cheeks dimpling as she futilely tried to hide a smile.
As for Liam, his attention was focused on something over my shoulder.
“That…” he said. “That isn’t me, is it?”
“What?” I turned to look. The figure I’d been kissing was waiting there motionless. “Of course that’s not you!”
“It’s all right with me if it is,” Calla said. “I don’t mind. No one can help what they dream.”
“It isn’t!” I insisted. Did my sister think so little of me? Did she assume I was jealous of everything she had, no matter what it was? “I mean, just look at it. That looks nothing like Liam.”
I could, in all honesty, see where the confusion came from.
My dream lover had bright red hair—a bit more flame red than Liam’s, but my family had no idea I’d met a dozen other redheads recently.
But while it had Sam’s hair, it also had Angelique’s proud nose.
Beyond that, its body was somewhat amorphous, mostly broad hands, full lips, and…
other parts both masculine and feminine, with the rest of it fading into foggy obscurity.
It reached out to stroke my cheek, but I was no longer in the mood. “Please go now,” I said. Its plush mouth pouted, but it dutifully slunk off into the darkness. I felt bad about that, which was silly, considering it was a figment of my overheated imagination.
“Was it Gervase, then?” Calla asked. “Because that wasn’t what I expected the king of Tailliz to look like.”
“I’m not going to discuss it,” I replied. “Didn’t you say you were here for something important?”
“Yes.” Jonquil looked relieved that the topic of discussion had changed. “Gnoflwhogir came down with a bout of prophecy. It might be about you.”
“She did? What was it?” Fairy prophecies are never to be taken lightly. They can provide a timely warning of grave danger. They are also, however, highly annoying.
Fairy prophecies tend to come in the form of the most appalling possible doggerel, with some repetitive meter that makes them stick in your head for hours.
More aggravating still, they’re rife with ambiguities and double meanings.
The very worst kind fulfill themselves at your expense when you try to avoid them—if you get a prediction that your son will kill you, and you throw your baby out the window to prevent it, then you’ve all but guaranteed that in twenty years’ time, a “stranger” will murder you on the road.
Even the less obnoxious ones are easy to misinterpret.
Cross that river to wage war, and I’ll destroy a vast empire, you say?
Great! Oh, you meant I’d destroy my own empire. Whoopsie.
But while fairy prophecies have their perils, ignoring them is catastrophically foolish. One way or another, they always come true.
Gnoflwhogir closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “The king will ride—”
“Er,” I said, “would you mind turning right side up before you continue? It’s just, it’s distracting this way.”
She popped one eye back open. “I am not upside down. You are the one who is upside down.”
“Darling,” said Jonquil in a tone that implied there would be an argument later if Gnoflwhogir persisted.
The fairy sighed and rotated herself until she was only at about a ten-degree tilt from my perspective. Good enough, I supposed. I gestured for her to continue.
She began again:
The king will ride.
His future bride,
Disguised, will join the royal hunt.
The ground will shake; the earth will quake,
The woods become a battlefront.
Your love one breath away from death
And clinging by his fingertips—
If you would save him from the grave,
The answer lies upon your lips.
In the silence that followed, I tried to make heads or tails of it. It certainly sounded like it was meant for me—the king’s future bride, riding beside him in disguise. But what of the rest of it? Was there going to be an earthquake? And if there was, what in the world could I say that would help?
“So, you can see why we stopped by,” said Calla, “as you’re the only one among us who’s about to marry a king.”
“Or is ever likely to,” Jonquil added.
Liam frowned. “I’m a prince. I could be a king someday.”
“Of course you could, sweetling,” Calla said, reaching up at an odd angle to pat the probable tailor on the shoulder. “But I can hardly be your future bride, can I? Although,” she went on thoughtfully, “I suppose you might marry Melilot if I died.”
“Right. That’s why I wanted to know if I was the dream lover she was—”
“First, that’s morbid,” I told them. “Second, that’s gross, and third, no it wasn’t!” I’d have stomped my foot, but there wasn’t anything to stomp it on.
“The poem made it sound like her love is a king already,” Calla pointed out, as calmly as if she hadn’t just discussed her husband marrying her sister after her death. “So that would make it Gervase, wouldn’t it?”
Would it? I’d hardly met the man. Although that might matter little if our love was a foregone conclusion foretold by prophecy.
Which is yet another reason prophecies suck.
They make you feel like a doll being played with by some omnipotent child.
As if an inescapable force were going to mash me up against Gervase and shout, “NOW KISS!”
“All of this is beside the point,” Jonquil said, trying her hardest to salvage the conversation. “What we really want to know is, do you need our help again?”
“Do I need…?” I narrowed my eyes. That little “again” she’d thrown in rankled.
“We couldn’t imagine why you would be disguised,” Calla said, “or heading to a battle in the woods, but if it is about you, and you want us to step in, just give the word.”
Four different faces regarded me from the endless void. Dark or pale or brown or green, sideways or upright or angled, small or large—distance was hard to judge in the emptiness, and I couldn’t tell whether they were very close or simply very big. But either way, they shared a single expression.
Concern.
And it drove me livid with rage.
I didn’t want their pity. Or their sympathy. Or, least of all, a rescue. Again. Again, again, Jonquil could fuck right off back to Skalla with her “again.”
Apparently, they found it inconceivable that I was capable of handling a quest as simple and straightforward as “go and get married.” People get married every day.
Women who can’t speak for six years while they sew nettle shirts get married.
Men who never bathe or cut their fingernails and sleep in bear skins get married.
My stepmother got married, more than once, even though taking her for a bride sounds about as safe as sticking your hand in a steel trap and hoping it decides not to snap shut; I suppose my father must have loved her, as baffling as I found it.
While I might have failed to measure up to her example in every other respect, surely I could muddle my way through a wedding ceremony. Even a seven-hour-long one.
And yes, all right, my attempt at achieving marital bliss wasn’t going spectacularly well thus far. That didn’t mean I wanted anyone to come and fix it. Couldn’t they leave me this, at least? Couldn’t they leave me anything?
“I don’t think the prophecy is about me,” I said. “I’ve got no reason to don a disguise, and I don’t intend to join any royal hunts. They don’t hold royal hunts here, anyway.”
Jonquil cast a sidelong glance in my direction. “I thought King Gervase was supposed to be a keen hunter. Always out with his beloved horses and dogs, wasn’t that right?”