Penelope and Prince Charming

  Petri snored in the hall. Damien left him there and ascended the stairs to the attic. The first servant’s room he looked into held a mob-capped maid, fallen backward on her bed fully dressed, one foot dangling. She must have felt the lethargy, retired to her room, and was overcome with sleep before she could even lie down properly.

  In another bedchamber, he found Rufus and Miles, or at least, he assumed it was his footmen in the tangle of at least eight bare legs, four ending in the dainty plump feet of English maids. He rolled his eyes and closed the door.

  He left the servants’ quarters and journeyed downstairs. In the still house, he found sleeping guests and servants everywhere. The butler, Mathers, sprawled on a padded bench under the bust of Damien his footmen had erected, his hands resting on his ample belly.

  He found Michael Tavistock in the sitting room with Lady Tavistock’s head on his shoulder. Meagan was curled in a chair nearby, and Egan McDonald lay on the hearthrug, his kilt hiked above his brawny knees. He had a fine Highland snore.

  “Damnation,” Damien muttered, more to keep himself awake than for need of expression.

  If the sleep were enchanted, why? Why would a mage go to the trouble of sending an entire household to sleep?

  To kill Damien and Penelope in peace, of course.

  Then where was the assassin, and why had he not struck? A trickle of sweat rolled between his shoulder blades. He softly left the ground-floor rooms, making for the stairs again.

  Another question, who was the mage? No sorcerer was powerful enough to cast a spell all the way from Nvengaria, and he knew of no other sorcerers than Nvengarians. Oh, there were tricksters and women in villages and stargazers across Europe who called themselves sorcerers and witches, but in truth, they were not.

  The thought that someone in his entourage was betraying him nauseated him. He’d been so careful, vetting the men and servants who’d volunteered to take this journey with him. He and Petri and Sasha had scrutinized every one of them, but he supposed Alexander would send only a very clever man.

  And if it were Sasha…

  No, he could not quite believe that. Sasha had been fiercely loyal since the day Damien had unlocked and opened the cell door of Sasha’s prison with his own hand. Sasha, filthy and stinking and looking barely human, had heard Damien’s voice and crawled to him, weeping. He’d clung to Damien’s boot and said brokenly that he’d never given up faith that Damien would come for him. The guards had tried to pull Sasha away, but Damien had lifted the man, so emaciated he weighed next to nothing, and carried him out of the dungeon himself.

  His old tutor was fanatically devoted to Damien. Sasha would have tried to stop any spell, not cast it himself.

  Damien gained the upper hall again, where Petri slept on. As he reached to shake his valet again, he sensed another presence that he hadn’t noticed before, a menace that tugged at his attention.

  Slowly, he turned his gaze along the length of the hall, and then upward.

  The logosh crouched on the wall in a shadowed corner. It was utterly still, its presence merely a darker blotch on the dark wall covering. Damien gripped his knife and walked toward it, making his footfalls noiseless.

  The logosh never moved. It must have seen him coming; perhaps, it was readying itself to spring when Damien was in the choicest spot. Well, it would spring onto Damien’s knife in that case. His pulse raced, his blood up, ready for a fight.

  But the logosh remained unnaturally still. It could not be dead, because surely it would lose its grip on the wall and fall. But what did Damien know about logosh? The fact that one lived at all was astonishing.

  He stopped directly beneath it. He noticed then that its eyes were closed, and its ribs moved in and out in a deep, even rhythm.

  Good God, the thing was asleep.

  Damien smiled to himself without letting down his guard. Whoever had cast an enchantment over the house had caught the logosh in it, too. Perhaps the spell-caster was there, too, sound asleep.

  These obstacles were beginning to annoy him. Time to clear them out.

  “Starting with you, my friend,” he murmured. He took another step and thrust his knife up into the sleeping logosh’s ribs.

  That was his intention, anyway. At the last moment, the logosh opened its wide, luminous eyes, shrieked, and sprang out of the way. The knife bit into its flesh, but not enough to kill it.

  The logosh charged for the window. Damien leaped onto the sill, knife ready. Damned if he was letting it get away again, to heal itself and attack another time.

  The logosh leapt at him, but its wound made it clumsy. Damien dragged the knife down its side, drawing black blood. The logosh jumped away, and Damien sprang from the windowsill and followed it. He struck again, but missed this time, the agile logosh managing to slither away.

  Suddenly, he found himself slammed back into the wall, the logosh landing on his chest, its thin hand closing around Damien’s throat. His head hit the wall and his breath deserted him.

  He still had his knife, though. He brought it up and around to the logosh’s body.

  A door crashed open. “Damien!” Penelope cried, horrified.

  The logosh glanced her way and froze. Damien used the distraction to jam his knife straight into the logosh’s side.

  The creature screamed. It half fell, half leapt from Damien, turned in a dizzy circle and crashed into the wall. Penelope, wrapped in the coverlet, scurried forward on bare feet, her eyes wide.

  Damien held up his hand, arresting her movement. The logosh turned its gaze to her again, and he swore that its expression was pleading.

  “Damn it, sir.” Petri was awake and off the bench. He took in the wounded logosh, Damien panting and holding a blood-streaked knife, and Penelope wrapped in the coverlet. “I never meant—”

  “Never mind, Petri. Help me finish it off.”

  He took a step toward the logosh. Suddenly the air around it shimmered, and then the logosh was gone, to be replaced by a small, very dirty boy, bleeding with knife cuts.

  He heard Penelope gasp. The child could have been no more than ten, perhaps eleven, and he looked for all the world like any other Nvengarian boy Damien ever seen, the exception being that most Nvengarian children couldn’t turn themselves into demons.

  The boy pulled his arms and legs in on himself, hiding his nakedness, and began to cry, the small, terrified sobs of a child.

  “Damien, don’t,” Penelope said.

  Damien lowered his knife. It was one thing to carve up a demon, another to kill a child, even though that child had done its best to strangle him a moment ago.

  “Holy Christ, sir,” Petri breathed.

  “I know.”

  “He’s terrified,” Penelope said. She sank to her knees.

  “He’s playing on your sympathy, love,” Damien said quickly. “Once it heals, it will turn back to a deadly demon.”

  “I know, but…” She bit her lip. “Boy,” she said in halting Nvengarian. “Do you understand me?”

  The child-demon raised its head and stared at her. After a long pause, it nodded.

  “Do you have a name?” she asked it.

  Damien waited, poised to strike if the thing tried to attack her. He felt Petri tense on his other side.

  The boy-logosh took a gulp of air and said, “Wulf.”

  Damien wondered if that was a name or simply a guttural sound in its throat. Penelope took it for a name. “Wulf.”

  The boy gave another nod. “Princess.”

  The word, in Nvengarian, was clear this time. Penelope pressed her hand to her chest, surprised. “Yes. Princess.”

  The boy held out his hand, fingers shaking. “Princess.”

  “He wants me to go to him,” she said.

  Damien gripped his knife. “And you will not.”

  “Princess,” the boy repeated, his voice weaker, tears running down his cheeks to blend with the liquid from his nose.

  “He’s badly hurt,” she said.

  “He
’s a demon who tried to kill us.” Damien spoke in Nvengarian so the boy would understand him as well.

  Wulf shook his head, still staring at Penelope. “No. Princess.”

  “Were you trying to kill me, Wulf?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. His face was white in the dim hall. “Help.” His eyes rolled back, and he slumped against the wall.

  Penelope got to her feet and started forward. Damien seized her in a firm grip. “No.”

  “He’s a child, Damien. A hurt child.”

  “He is a demon.”

  “He has a name, and he said he was not trying to hurt me.”

  “Perhaps demons are liars, my love. Perhaps they simulate being a tearful child to lure their victims.”

  From the look on her face, she did not believe that, and neither did he. He felt both relieved and alarmed that the logosh was not an adult—as a child it was more vulnerable. But if he was a child, how large and strong were the adults of its kind? And, terrible thought, where was its mother?

  “You started to tell me a story, remember, before I fell asleep?” Penelope said. “About a beautiful princess and a logosh? How did it end?”

  “The princess healed the logosh after he was nearly killed by hunters. He turned into a handsome prince, and married the princess.” He cast a glance at the halfconscious child. “He is a bit young for you, I think.”

  “Perhaps the story is true.” She held up her hands as he started to argue. “I am certain it has been embellished in the folk tale, but perhaps a part of it is true—that a princess helped a logosh—and he remembers that. Perhaps they will not hurt a Nvengarian princess.”

  “They certainly have no compulsion about hurting a Nvengarian prince.”

  “But when he saw me behind you, in the ballroom, he turned away. And when I came out here, he stopped.”

  “Yes, I noticed.”

  Penelope’s hair snaked about her in beautiful waves, her face flushed with their argument and her eyes bright with determination. The coverlet bared her shoulders and threatened to slide down her torso. She was almost edible, and damn enchanted sleeps and child logoshes that kept him from eating her up.

  “He will die,” she said.

  “He came to kill me. When he is better, he will try again.”

  Penelope gave him a stubborn look. “If I can make him loyal to me, like in the story, he will not.”

  When they thought of all this again much later, each of them realized that neither had argued this logically or made a rational choice. But perhaps the prophecy was pushing them where it wanted to go. At least, Damien blamed it ever after for his decision.

  He stepped aside. “Very well, love. But if you make a pet of him, he will not sleep on the bed with us.”

  Penelope smiled faintly at his joke and moved toward the boy.

  “Sir, are you mad?” Petri asked.

  “Very likely. But wait.”

  Penelope approached the child warily, not foolish enough to rush to it and embrace it. The boy began to shiver, whimpering in his half-dazed state. Penelope reached him. Damien moved closer, ready to drag her away if he suddenly became demon again, but Wulf did nothing.

  She knelt beside him and gently pushed a lock of hair from his forehead, as tender as a mother.

  The boy turned then, but only to fling his arms around her waist. Red blood, human blood, smeared the coverlet. Penelope, tentatively at first, then more firmly, gathered the child to her.

  “It’s all right,” she crooned. He clung to her like any child hurt and frightened. Penelope rocked him and touched his matted hair, without betraying any sign of disgust. She looked at Damien over his head, her eyes so full of compassion that he knew he loved her all the way through and not because of a piece of ancient magic.

  “I’ll be damned,” Petri whispered. “She’s tamed a mother-loving logosh.”

  “Do not tell me,” Alexander said as Nedrak looked up from his scrying stone with an anguished light in his eyes. “It did not work.”

  Nedrak gulped. “No, Your Grace. I am afraid not.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alexander got impatiently to his feet and walked to the window. It was sunset, and the sky was streaked with crimson and gold. Mountains soared above the town, turning the view into a glorious landscape painting that no human’s brush could ever match. The highest peaks were still tipped with snow, the slopes dark green with summer.

  They were harsh mountains, without remorse, but their stark beauty, as always, pulled at his heart. If he could find a way to close the gate to Nvengaria, to keep the rest of the world out and save this pristine place forever, he would.

  But he knew he could not. Nvengaria depended on trade with other nations, and no good came of complete isolation. He’d be damned, however, if he let Austria or Russia or far-off England swallow Nvengaria as part of some imperial conquest. Britannia could go rule somewhere else.

  And there was Damien, hand in glove with the Prince Regent, winding the English aristocrats around his little finger. While Nedrak concentrated on the prophecy and nonsense magic, Alexander watched what Damien did.

  What Damien had done was sweet-talk a girl into believing she was the long lost Nvengarian princess needed to save his kingdom, and buttered up the Regent and men in the cabinet and House of Lords so they’d come running to help at his call. England would sink its teeth into Nvengaria and never let go.

  I will stop him.

  “It is simply astonishing,” Nedrak was bleating. “Astonishing. I wondered what the prophecy meant when it said the princess would tame wild things. I never dreamed it meant she’d befriend a logosh. And there is a mage there working spells, plain as day. That enchantment was not mine.” He mused. “I wonder if she is the mage? She certainly is powerful.”

  His tone held admiration.

  “Nedrak,” Alexander said dryly. “You seem to be altering your loyalties.”

  The older man looked up with a start, sudden and abject panic on his face. “No, Your Grace. Never.”

  “If you help me break the prophecy, as you promised,” he said, “you will be vastly rewarded. If you join Damien, you will die with him.” Alexander leaned over the table. He was profoundly tired, and he could not say why. “You can, of course, decide to help neither of us. You may retire to the country with your grandchildren and leave politics behind. There are plenty willing to take your place.”

  Alexander saw the offer of retirement stir Nedrak’s soul. Nedrak was always bleating about how heavenly it would be to sit with his daughter and son-in-law and five precious grandsons on the shores of the lake in the north.

  But Nedrak was at heart a greedy and ambitious man. The thought that another mage would take his place ate at him. Besides, he did not trust Alexander not to send an assassin to the lovely house by the lake and to end Nedrak’s life late one quiet night.

  “No indeed, Your Grace,” he said quickly. “I am your man. And your mage. Do not think for a moment that I would desert you.”

  Alexander let his features soften. “No, of course you would not.”

  He turned away, keeping his anger from his face. Nedrak was a fool and a romantic. Damien and his princess were more appealing to him than a stickler of a grand duke trying to pull Nvengaria from the mess Damien’s father had made.

  He couldn’t understand why a man like that was alive when Sephronia…

  Earlier that day, while the Nvengarian sun spilled through the valley, Grand Duchess Sephronia had been laid to rest. It was a bright day, a day for celebration and song, a day when Nvengarian maidens tossed blossoms at Nvengarian men in the town square, and the citizens strolled about in the warmth, smiling at neighbors, sipping coffee in cafés and enjoying respite from the harsh Nvengarian winter.

  A mahogany casket, closed, had reposed at the gates to the marble mausoleum, the resting place of the Grand Dukes of Nvengaria and their families. Alexander, wearing formal military blue and a black band of mourning on his upper arm, kept h
is eyes on the blades of grass the casket had crushed as the priest droned on through the service. He held the hand of his son Alex, who clutched a small bunch of flowers, waiting for the moment when he was to lay them on his mother’s casket.

  The casket remained firmly closed. Sephronia had begged him not to let others see the wreck her body had become. Alexander had respected that wish and allowed no one to look at her as she lay in death. It was the least he could do for her after she’d endured seven years of marriage with him.

  The coffin was carried through the gates of the mausoleum and lowered on lavish ropes into a stone tomb. Alexander led Alex by the hand to the square tomb, and lifted him into his arms. At his prompting, Alex leaned over and dropped his small garland of red flowers onto the polished coffin.

  Alexander stepped back, still holding the boy, and waited for his men to close and seal the tomb. The scraping noise the carved stone cover made as they slid it into place was lonely and cold and empty.

  As orchestrated, Alexander’s men brought the huge mourning wreath of dark leaves and flowers and ribbons that Alexander had had made as soon as they’d brought news that Sephronia had died in her sleep. Setting Alex on his feet, he lifted the wreath himself and placed it carefully in front of the tomb. He stood a moment in silent contemplation, then turned and walked out.

  Outside, in the summer air, the two dozen military color guards came to full attention. The captain saluted stiffly as Alexander passed them, leading little Alex by the hand.

  As soon as Alexander had gone by, the captain gave a brusque order to the sergeant, who then bellowed out the order to raise arms and fire. The muskets cracked, fire spurting into the bright summer sunshine, signaling the end of Grand Duchess Sephronia.

  The color guard lowered their weapons and stood once more to attention. Alexander nodded at the captain, implying thanks. Then he turned and led Alex to the black carriage and horses, and let it take him back to the palace.

  Once there, he resumed his duties. His wife’s death had barely caused a hiccup in the day-to-day routine of the palace. That angered him. The country should have frozen at least a day for her.