“You haven’t a coat!” the King yelled. “You are going to fall off!”
The King would saddle Thackeray and be after her in a heartbeat, but Azalea pushed Dickens hard through the cobblestone streets of snow and ice. Holiday market people clogged the roads, with rattling carriages, everyone bustling about before the storm came. Azalea searched fervently for the chestnut the steward had ridden away on. She would find him and make him see reason.
The crowds thinned as the cold wind began to bite, and in a moment of luck, Azalea spotted the chestnut and the steward’s emerald green overcoat. She kicked Dickens into a gallop, gripping tightly to his mane to keep from jostling off.
Snow began to whisk in the wind, and it seemed all at once the streets were deserted. By the time she reached the Courtroad bridge, snow had formed over the carriage ruts, making everything icy and slick. Dickens shied.
“Dickens, please,” said Azalea. “Just through the bridge!”
Dickens shied again. Her fingers burning, Azalea dug her boots hard into his flank. He leaped forward with a jolt.
In a heart-stopping moment, the scrabbling of hooves on ice, and a hard clang, Azalea was falling.
Her stomach realized it before she did. Dickens had lost his footing, and together—Azalea’s hand tangled in the reins, so tightly it numbed—they slid down the rock-crabbed, muddy embankment. Her hand slipped free, and she tumbled off, skirts and crinolines twisting in the air.
She slapped into the water. It enveloped her, frigid. Breaking to the surface, she wheezed for air and had to fight the current as she crawled to the bank. Her clothes clung to her skin like a heavy sheet of ice.
Dickens, dripping, had righted himself. Mud matted his fine coat. Coughing and sputtering, Azalea used the reins to pull herself up.
What was she doing? The cold water had slapped the heat from her temper. Had she run mad? Galloping off in the middle of a blizzard? She had nearly killed both of them!
Home. Azalea had to get back, or she would freeze to death. The storm whipped through her frozen wet clothes. She had to change and get to a fire. Shivering hard, Azalea tried to grasp Dickens’s saddle. She missed, her hands frozen blocks; they knocked against the leather casing of the sword.
The sword! Azalea fumbled at the top metal ring and felt as though she had fallen into the icy water again. Except this time, it drenched her inside, coating her stomach.
The sword was gone.
CHAPTER 25
Shivering violently, Azalea sludged through the icy water for any glint of silver or flash of light. She searched through the blizzard, up and down the bank, the wind so cold she couldn’t feel it.
The sword was gone. She knew it. She had known it the moment she heard the hard clang of it against the rocks when they fell, and had had the same choking, empty feeling she felt when the King had unmagicked the sugar teeth. Except this was a thousand times worse. Azalea fell against Dickens. She had to find the King.
Azalea didn’t know how she managed to mount, or how Dickens picked his way up the rocks and muddy embankment and through the thick foggy snow to the palace. She let him steer his own way back. When he trotted into the stable, Azalea hadn’t the strength to hang on anymore, and she fell.
She was awkwardly caught just before she hit the dirt floor.
“There now, Miss! You’re frozen up!”
“Mr. P-P-Pudding,” she chattered. She had to blink several times to see him and a partly saddled Milton clearly.
“Where have you been, then, Miss? The household is in a right state of worry for you, and the King has been out and about for you, Miss! You’re soaked through—come along, we’ll get you warm then, I’ll send for Sir John. You’re burning up and up!”
“The K-k-king—”
Mr. Pudding spoke in his gruff, soothing way, but it filtered into Azalea’s mind as vague wuh-wuhs, and the words needled through her ears. She was only vaguely aware of being carried to her room, Mrs. Graybe and the girls fussing over her, changing her dress, and putting her to bed with masses of blankets. They brought hot bricks from the hearth, wrapped in cloth, and tucked them between Azalea’s sheets. Sir John came, and Azalea was too weak to even acknowledge his poking and prodding.
“Look at this” came Eve’s voice, and Azalea felt the red scars, the burn of the reins, the cut skin of her palms being inspected, before blackness faded in on her.
Pain awoke Azalea. Her head pounded with her heartbeat, and one of her ears stabbed into her throat. Her fingers burned. So did her eyes. She felt the aura of a fever burning from her skin. She heaved the blankets from her, dots filling her vision, and stumbled to the round table, where the lamp and a cold pot of tea sat. A note lay next to the stack of teacups. Azalea blinked away the blotches, and read.
Az
Well, YOU have caused quite the scandal. Where the devil were you? The King’s been out all day, and because he wasn’t here Mrs. Graybe made us eat soup for dinner instead of the Christmas Eve pudding. Thank you very much for that.
At any rate, we’re going without you. Don’t be cross, it’s our last night, and we’ve never officially been invited to a ball before. Sir John said you oughtn’t be gotten up for the next few days, but if you wake up, come down. (Did you know Clover had a silver watch? Where did she get that kind of lolly?!)
If not, we miss you, but not enough to stay up here.
Toodle pip.
B
Azalea fled to the fireplace.
She sprang through the passage in such a hurry she scattered hot coals through the billowing curtain, trailing soot as she raced down the staircase. She slammed into the floor at a run, the abruptness making her fall to her knees.
The staircase ended sooner than it had before. Azalea’s head pounded as she grasped her bearings, her eyes adjusting.
The room she stood in was large, the same size and layout of their own bedroom, with brick for the walls instead of wood paneling. It felt sharp, real, and smelled of must. Next to her along the walls, organized in trunks and boxes, lay ribbons and tin and glass ornaments. The Yuletide ornaments! Azalea stumbled to her feet and took one from a hatbox, a tiny gazebo with a ballerina figurine that spun in the middle. It glimmered on its string. The musical movement inside pinged.
“Our storage room,” said Azalea, the ornament trembling in her fingers.
The magic was gone.
A rustle of fabric sounded behind her. Azalea turned.
Soft blue light filtered down from a tiny window near the ceiling, falling over a limp figure. Unpinned hair lay in curls over the wood floor, and a mended dress. Azalea dropped the ornament.
“Mother?” she whispered.
The figure lay unmoving.
Hardly daring to believe herself, Azalea ran to her side and turned her over, feeling Mother’s form, solid and real, beneath her hands. The blue light fell in a ghostly way on Mother’s face; edges blurred as though she were made of mist, or something from a rough pencil sketch. Azalea swallowed a cry. Mother’s lips were still sewn.
“Mother,” she whispered. “Mother, is it really you? Wake up.” Azalea fumbled for the scissors in her pocket, only to realize they were in her other dress. Even so, when Mother’s eyelids flickered, hope surged through Azalea.
“It’s all right, we’ll get them,” said Azalea, touching Mother’s lips, as gently as she could. They were icy. All her skin seemed translucent, swirling beneath Azalea’s touch. “It’s all right. Don’t try to smile or anything. We’ll get you somewhere warm.”
Mother felt lighter than Azalea expected, far lighter than a normal person, but still so substantial. Azalea ascended the creaking staircase, her arm around Mother’s waist, helping her glide up the stairs, her feet moving as though not sensing each step. It frightened Azalea, and she gripped Mother’s cold hand harder, afraid she would simply fade away.
Throbbing, she pulled Mother to the top step, laid her gently as she could against the wood and brick. Mother settled, and her ski
rts settled after her slowly, floating to the ground. Azalea rubbed her own handkerchief against the D’Eathe mark until it burned. The silver glowed and burst, leaving the glimmering curtain of sheen.
Azalea turned to Mother, and though Mother’s eyes hadn’t opened, she saw tear streaks down her cheeks and into the stitches.
“It’s all right,” said Azalea, trying to not cry herself. “Don’t cry—” She brought her handkerchief to Mother’s cheek to dry it.
With the touch of the fabric to Mother’s skin, the translucent swirls of her skin singed and burned and started to melt. Her skin dripped like a wax candle. Azalea yelped and pulled the handkerchief back sharply, her ears pounding as Mother’s skin faded back into place.
“It’s all right,” said Azalea. “I’m sorry…. This magic—it’s—”
Impulsively she turned to the hot coals she had scattered onto the landing not minutes before. One still glowed red. Quickly, she laid the handkerchief on it.
It lit, melted, and folded in on itself with an acrid burning smell. The empty feeling of an object unmagicked filled the air as it curled. The fire faded, leaving only ashes with a touch of glimmer to them. Azalea choked down air as she stared at the pile, then rushed to tend to Mother, her eyes still closed, and helped her to her feet. She was light as paper.
“We don’t need it anymore,” said Azalea. “I didn’t realize the magic would—here—” Azalea took Mother’s cold hand. “Let’s go, before it closes.”
Mother’s eyes snapped open. Azalea started, and gaped as the thread around Mother’s lips faded into nothing, leaving smooth, unscarred skin.
“Mind your step,” said Mother.
She shoved Azalea.
Azalea fell down the stairs, skirts and feet twisting over each other. The sound of ice creaked and cracked through the air. Azalea hit the wooden floor and caught her breath in time to see the ornaments rising from the boxes at the sides of the room. They clinked against one another and glinted as they flew into the air, rising above her like white petals in a windstorm.
They stopped abruptly and remained floating in the air, a frozen hailstorm of baubles. Azalea, shaking, peered up the rickety stairs at Mother.
She stood at the top landing. The blurred, unearthly translucence to her skin and form was gone, replaced with a sharp, dead pallor. Bloodred lips. She rested her elbow against her side, and an ornament dangled from the tip of her forefinger.
“Mother?” said Azalea.
Mother flicked the ornament into the air, snapped her fingers, and the ornament stopped at the peak of its arc. A tiny gesture of her hands, and the suspended ornaments swayed, then began to swirl around the room, with Azalea in the middle. A shimmering clinking filled the air.
Mother made a sharp movement, and the ornaments smashed to the ground—
And rose up again like spirits, their silver swirls blossoming into skirts, glass shards forming into fitted suitcoats, silver-toned ladies and gentlemen with powdered faces, white as frosted glass. They had gaping holes for eyes. Azalea shrank as they towered over her.
Mother descended the stairs daintily, her blue dress wafting behind her. She smiled at Azalea, and her eyes blazed black. The same dead black eyes flashed through Azalea’s memory, and she remembered how they glinted when Keeper had leaned in to kiss her—
“Keeper!” Azalea spat. She leaped forward, but the skull-like dancers flocked to her, caught her wrists and waist and shoulders, pulling her back, holding her tight.
Keeper laughed a cheery laugh that bubbled.
“Oh, there now,” he said in Mother’s voice. “You didn’t honestly think I was her? Were you so desperate to believe that a person had a soul, you were willing to believe in anything? Stupid, stupid. Many thanks with the handkerchief. It was the only bit of magic left holding me back. Well done.”
“Where are they?” said Azalea. “What did you do to the girls?”
Keeper pulled away. The dimples and twinkling eyes smothered Azalea. He touched the brooch at his mended blue collar.
“They’re not dead,” he said, his voice light. “Yet.”
Azalea struggled against the hands. They grasped her arms and waist tightly, fingers hard and thin like ornament hooks.
“You know, this would make an absolutely marvelous fairy tale,” said Keeper, dimpling. “Just like the ones your mother used to tell you. You can even pretend I am your mother, if you would like. Let us see…how do they begin? Ah, yes…‘In a certain country…’”
Mother’s voice was sweet as honey, with the added smooth sleekness of Keeper’s chocolate timbre. He touched Mother’s hand to Azalea’s face, tracing it with a cold finger.
“There were twelve dancing princesses,” he whispered. “And their little hearts were broken. But one day, they found a magical land of silver and music, where they could dance and forget all their troubles.
“But, alas! All things do not last forever. There was a debt to be paid; and when the accounts were balanced, the dear little princesses were found wanting. And so, when the young princesses arrived on Christmas Eve, they were magicked into the palace mirrors—”
Azalea screamed, cut short when the wiry hands slapped over her mouth, stifling her. Her heart screamed instead of beating.
“—and they died in but a few hours, huddled for warmth. The mirrors do that, you know. Something about moving matter mixing with static matter. Magic is quite scientific, really. And the eldest princess; she became trapped in this very room, only to be found weeks later, curled up in a dry little ball next to the passage door. Which was a pity; she was such a good dancer.”
Keeper leaned in closely, so closely Azalea could see her own frightened reflection in the brooch, and the ghostly thin hands that grasped at her and held her back. He touched Azalea’s neck with his lips. They were cold.
Azalea lashed out. The hands did not catch her in time, and she clawed at Keeper’s throat, the fingers snagging at the brooch and ripping it from the collar of Mother’s blue dress. The hands snatched Azalea back, clutching her wrists. Azalea yelped.
The brooch fell in an arc and clattered against the wooden floor. In an instant, like the snuffing of a candle, Mother had dissolved into the dark, handsome form of Keeper. He did not move but remained smiling at her with his dashing laziness.
“Ah,” he said. “And now you know why I keep things. The same reason your father keeps your mother’s things locked away from sight, and keeps you in mourning. Every object a person owns, no matter how poor, has a piece of them in it.”
“The King will never stand for it!” Azalea snarled. “You’ll never be able to take over the country! The regiments will—”
Keeper pressed his hand over her mouth, his fingers splayed, stifling her and gripping her cheeks.
“Hush,” he said gently. “Do you really think I care about your powerless, impoverished kingship? No, princess. There is only one thing I am after.”
He pressed his hand harder over her lips, smothering her voice.
“Ah,” he said. “I never finished my story. How do these things end? Ah, yes. And the palace was magicked again to its rightful owner, who in turn finally murdered the Captain General, and all was well. The end. Ever after happy.”
Keeper leaned in, so close now that his lips nearly touched his hand smothering her face.
“And now,” he whispered. “I have a blood oath to fulfill. Good-bye, my lady.”
He pushed her into the mass of hands.
Everything swam in whites and grays and silvers around her. Azalea was shoved into a dance formation. A ghostly silence muffled everything; no music, no footfalls, no ruffling of dresses as they danced her into a silent schottische.
Azalea thrashed through the formations, trying to writhe free. She kicked and elbowed her way from the grasping hands, and in a moment of luck, broke free and leaped up the rickety stairs.
Her heart fell as she discovered an empty landing. The brick passage had closed up. She clawed the mark.
She had no silver to get out.
Bony hands gripped her ankles and yanked her down the stairs. Azalea half stumbled and was half carried through the formations. Dancers crossed, changed partners, and pushed her into the right positions. If she fainted, they would probably keep puppeting her form about.
Of course it had been a trick. The whole business with souls—fake. And now Keeper, unhampered by any silver magic, was free to magick the palace. And the girls—
Trapped in mirrors…
And the King!
Azalea fought for the stairs with all the energy she could muster. The eyeless, shimmering dancers surged after her. She made it to the third step before their bony hands dragged her back again. She tore against dresses and wigs, squirming and kicking against their grips. They shoved her back, hard, and she fell—
Fell—
Whu—
The rest of the sound never came; darkness cut it off.
When Azalea awoke, she wore her ballgown. She was also standing.
For a moment she just stared down at her dress. She rubbed her fingers on the gauzy folds of the skirt, feeling the weave against her skin. Her head didn’t throb. She looked around.
Mother’s room. Azalea stood in the middle of it, between Mother’s chair and the dresser. Warm, drenched in the scent of white cake, roses, baby ointment, overwhelmingly so. Mend-up cards lined across the top of the dresser, everything lit with the cheery hearth.
The dream! This time, though, every smell, action, heartbeat, focused into a sharp, vivid picture. She could even see the bits of dust that floated in the window light.
In the flowered armchair, a hand on her with-child stomach, sat Mother. She smiled at Azalea, her cheeks dimpling. Somehow, instead of comforting Azalea, it made things worse. It was just a stupid dream, and tears stung Azalea’s eyes.
“It’s not real,” she said. “None of this. You know, you always talked about that warm, flickery bit inside. But now I know it isn’t true. It never has been. I’ll wake up empty.”