She sighed and threw herself back on the bed without disrobing.
“We’ll figure this out, Frank. I promise.”
Get some sleep. You’re still exhausted and it’s only a few hours till dawn.
She didn’t need my encouragement. Her eyes were already closed and I had the strange sensation of being able to hear myself snore before following her into slumber.
• • •
We didn’t have time to dream. I heard shouting and commotion and shot up from bed, blinking sleep from my eyes. I ran to the window where I heard shouting and galloping hooves. Looking out past the construction below my window, I could see the front gate open to admit a small crowd of disheveled riders who shouted at the guardsmen with some urgency.
I couldn’t make out all they said, but I could hear the word “dragon” quite clearly.
Oh crap.
It was about this time I realized that I had done all this under my own power. At least, I thought I had. Once I came fully awake and tried to move consciously, my body remained where it was.
Lucille’s body.
She blinked a few times and shook her head. Then she glanced at the purple sky. “Too early,” she whispered.
She turned around and headed out of our bedchamber.
I decided that our dash to the window was so obvious and reflexive an action that I had just convinced myself that I’d been in control. That realization unleashed a crushing wave of self-pity. The illusion of autonomy, however brief, made it much much worse when I couldn’t so much as blink an eye on my own.
I barely paid attention until Lucille met the newcomers at the entrance to the inner keep of the castle. Once I focused on where we were and what we were doing, Lucille was in the midst of a ragged rabble of wounded guardsmen and commoners from one of the border towns near the Northern Palace.
Apparently the Dragon Prince hadn’t exhausted his hostility on our banquet. He had taken his aggression out on at least one village.
Lucille kept questioning the victims, as if trying to poke some hole in their story. I tried not to listen. I had seen the kind of destruction they talked about, the last time a truly evil soul inhabited that dragon’s body. I understood Lucille’s panicked attempts at denial. I’d felt similarly back then because I’d thought the dragon had been her.
By the Seven Hells, it’s not me!
While Lucille stood in the courtyard with the refugees, a guard came out of the keep and called for the spokesman of the “latest group” for an audience with the royal war ministers.
“Latest group?” Lucille repeated.
Another nearby guard overheard her. “Yes, Your Highness. This is the third.”
“From the same town?”
The guard shook his head. “No. Three different towns. They all arrived in the past hour or so. From the north, east, and west.”
“What about the other two? What happened?” I know Lucille had the same worry I did. Had troops already begun to move against Lendowyn? But if it was in response to the attack at the banquet, that reaction would have been impossibly swift. If the refugees were reaching Lendowyn Castle now, the attacks would need to have been within hours of the incident at the Northern Palace. Other kingdoms wouldn’t have had time to receive the news, much less rally an armed response.
The guard’s explanation was only slightly more plausible. “Dragon attacks,” he said.
“Three towns? He attacked three separate towns in one night?” Lucille’s voice came uncomfortably close to hysteria. “How is that even possible?”
She had a point. Leveling a village takes some time. I had some trouble imagining how our dragon could pull off a trio of attacks at once.
Before the guard had a chance to elaborate, someone screamed. Everyone turned in that direction, toward a commotion by the main gates. Next to us, the guard drew his sword.
By the closed gate, the crowd backed away. One man was being half led, half dragged away. He still screamed, weakly now, cradling his right arm. That arm was blue-white below the elbow, and glittered slightly in the growing dawn light.
Frozen? What the—
Lucille turned from the injured man to look at the main gate. Wisps of unnatural fog seeped through, between and beneath the timbers of the gate. As she watched, fans of frost spread across the wood, wrapping it in the same glittery blue-white that had coated the screaming man’s arm. In moments, the gate seemed frozen solid behind a wall of icy fog. Fog that seemed oddly localized and refused to burn off in the dawn sunshine.
In another few moments, the fog became dense enough to completely hide the gate itself from view. The swirling mists now seemed to be lit from within, the cold blue light source appearing from some place much farther away than the gates immediately behind the fog.
There was something strangely familiar about it all.
Lucille stepped forward.
CHAPTER 6
Please, Lucille, this isn’t a good idea.
She didn’t listen to me.
Lucille walked toward the edge of the fog, quickly flanked by every armed guardsman stationed in the courtyard. I still yelled in her head not to step out into the open toward this—whatever it was. However, Lucille’s time as a dragon had made her more assertive—even when it might not have been appropriate.
Fortunately, while something moved in the fog, we weren’t about to face the evil hordes of the Dark Lord Nâtlac. Not unless the Dark Lord had recently suffered from the same budget constraints that had plagued Lendowyn’s treasury since the kingdom’s inception.
The fog swirled, wrapping a tunnel leading off to somewhere else. A single shadow slowly appeared through the mists, walking toward us from someplace beyond where the castle gates still stood. As the figure moved toward us, one of the guardsmen stepped in front of Lucille and called out, “Halt! Who approaches? What is your business?”
The figure stepped out of the fog, and as if cued, the fog itself broke apart and blew away into wisps of nothing. He stood tall, a stride or two in front of the still-closed gate to Lendowyn Castle. He wore spiked armor of the coldest blue. The dawn light shone off it and through its rippling surface, like ice from the purest lake. The wind blew past him, carrying a chill that fogged our breath and burned the skin.
I knew him instantly. I don’t think Lucille, or anyone else here, had ever seen him to recognize his face—though the armor made of ice should have been a big clue that he had stepped straight out of the Winter Court.
“I am Timoras, and I am here to speak with the Crown of Lendowyn.”
Given the elvish penchant for grand gestures, titles, and ceremony, I decided the elf-king’s laconic introduction was not a good sign.
Lucille pushed the blocking guardsman aside and stepped out into the courtyard to face Timoras. “Speak then.”
Lucille? Maybe you should let your father handle this?
“My son is dead.” Timoras spoke, and the air itself appeared to freeze, his breath sending twirling crystals to glitter in the dawn light to drift down to the now frost-covered cobblestones.
“My condolences, Your Majesty, but—”
“Do not presume!” Timoras snapped. His anger was stripped of any remotely human element, as if an avalanche could speak. I decided that I’d rather see the dragon angry, or the Dark Lord Nâtlac for that matter.
“Prince Daemonlas attacked the court—”
“Silence!” Timoras snapped, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.
“No!” Lucille snapped. “I will not be silent!”
Uh, Lucille, is this a good idea? Remember, all that diplomacy stuff we’re supposed to pay attention to?
“You dare?” Timoras said, the words so cold the sound left frost in our ears.
Lucille strode forward and glared at the elf-king. “You dare? You stand inside my threshold, in my kingdom. You
are not my king, and you have no leave to command here. Your prince came to our land to engage in an act of war, Timoras. If you are not here to answer for it, you’d best return under the hill.”
I felt our heart pounding in our chest, and sensed the copper taste of fear in our mouth. None of that made it into her words. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or terrified.
Timoras stood unmoving, apparently struck dumb by her outburst.
“Have you no words, King Timoras?”
In response, the elf-king did something truly terrifying.
He smiled.
“Oh, Frank, you have come a long way. And you still remain . . . interesting.”
Wait a minute . . .
Lucille was impersonating me, but the fact Timoras called us “Frank” meant that he didn’t know what the prince had done.
Or he was playing along with Lucille’s deception. I wouldn’t have put it past him.
“Why are you here?” Lucille asked.
The Elf-King Timoras smiled wider. “I am here to declare war on the world of men.”
“What?”
“Were my words unclear, Frank?”
“Make war on the world of men?”
“Was it not men who took the life from my son?”
“If you have a quarrel it is with the nation of Lendowyn,” Lucille said.
“I see,” said the elf-king in a breath of frost. “You admit to my quarrel, then?”
“Your son provoked—”
“Yes, yes.” He dismissed Lucille with a wave of his hand. “But your protests are boring!” At his shout, what seemed like a thousand ravens erupted, cawing, from trees beyond the castle walls.
I wondered if the elf-king brought them along strictly for the dramatic impact.
Lucille stepped forward despite my every effort to move our legs backward. “Are you insane?”
Please, Lucille, shut up!
“I am disappointed, Frank. You’ve argued with gods, yet all you offer me are base insults.” He waved his hand, and the fog reappeared, shrouding the elf-king.
Lucille yelled, “No” and took another step, and the fog shrouded us as well.
“No?” His voice came from behind us. Lucille spun, but we only saw gray-white mists. “You wish me not to raise an immortal army and cleave the world of men in two?”
She kept spinning, trying to find the source of his voice.
She only stopped when we felt an icy hand on our shoulder.
“Then give me something,” he whispered into our ear from behind.
“Give you what?”
He sighed and I felt the breath on the back of our neck. He muttered something that sounded like, “Sure, make me do all the work.”
“What do you want?” Lucille repeated.
“What else would I want? The person responsible for my son’s death. And an equivalent exchange.”
Lucille turned around to face him, little more than a spectral shadow in the fog. “Exchange?”
He sighed again. “Lendowyn took my child. Give me Lendowyn’s child.” He paused a moment. “Alfred, the king? His child. Remember?”
“Me?”
“Frank, you’re starting to annoy me—you were better at this once. No, not you. I want the scaly one.” He let go of her shoulder.
“The dragon,” Lucille repeated.
“Yes, yes.” He tossed something at us, and Lucille reflexively grabbed it, a spherical pendant on a chain. “You have a day to give me the dragon, along with whomever bears responsibility for my son’s murder. If you don’t, we rain destruction on the world of men. Everything clear now? Good.”
The shadow that was the Elf-King Timoras spun on its heel and stomped briskly away through the space where the gates still stood, trailing the foggy shroud like a cloak behind him. Before the shadow and fog vanished completely, I thought I heard his voice in the distance.
“Don’t be so obtuse next time we meet.”
Lucille held up the chain so she could look at the pendant. Carved inside a crystal sphere were two teardrop-shaped champers connected by their narrow ends. Black sand filled one chamber, and as we watched, sand slowly leaked into the other.
In other words, exactly like an hourglass—except, at the moment, the sand fell sideways.
“That was not the smartest thing I could have done,” Lucille whispered to herself as she clutched Timoras’s pendant in her fist.
Welcome to my world.
She spun at the sound of commotion by the front of the inner keep. “What is happening out there?” King Alfred’s voice carried across the courtyard while someone else yelled, “Make way! Make way! Make way for the king!”
Lucille sidestepped until we were shadowed by a doorway next to the gates. As we backed into the shadows inside the outer wall, Lucille watched the keep’s entrance. A crowd massed by the keep’s wall and a trio of royal guardsmen sliced into its heart like an arrow through pudding. An obviously cranky and sleep-deprived King Alfred followed the guards. He reached out and grabbed the collar of one of the nearest guards who’d been on duty in the courtyard. Even though the man was twice his size, the king moved him easily, as if the difference in status actually translated into physical strength. Before the guard’s back faced us, I could see the white mask of fear slide over his face.
Never pleasant to be in proximity of an angry monarch.
King Alfred’s voice sliced across the courtyard, silencing the crowd noise around us. “What happened here?”
The guard’s voice stammered and wasn’t really audible. I made out the words “elf” and “princess.”
King Alfred unleashed a string of profanity so vile that it might have made the Dark Lord Nâtlac blush. He released the guard and faced the courtyard. “Frank!” He called out. “I want you here right now!”
Lucille swallowed and backed away from the open doorway, deeper into the shadows. She shook her head. “No talking to him like this,” she whispered.
She gasped when she backed into someone.
“Your Highness?”
She half jumped and half spun to face another guardsman, one of the men who manned the main gates. “The king is requesting you.”
“Ah y-yes,” Lucille said with an uncharacteristic stammer. She clutched the pendant so tightly that it cut into our palm.
The guard reached for us. “Perhaps you should—”
Lucille recovered quickly. Looking directly in the guard’s eyes, she said, “You did not see me. I was not here.”
His hand stopped. “But, Your Highness?”
Even though her volume had dropped to a whisper, her tone, and the hardness in her voice, dropped to registers that could rival the dragon’s. “Do you really want to step into a dispute between me and the king?”
The guard, being sane, did not. He took a step backward.
“Good,” Lucille said. “Go back to your post and forget you ever saw me.”
He nodded.
As Lucille slipped away, I couldn’t help thinking that she was still—for all intents and purposes—standing in for me as far as everyone in Lendowyn was concerned. That meant the guard was backing down from a threat by Princess Frank.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
• • •
“Only a day,” she muttered as she reached the stables on the other side of the castle wall. “The dragon? The person who killed the prince? Does he think I’ll just give him Sir Forsythe?”
She paused by the entrance.
“As if I have him. Or Fr—the dragon.”
After a moment catching her breath, she whispered, “He didn’t say ‘killed,’ did he?”
She echoed my own thoughts. Timoras had said, “You have a day to give me the dragon, along with whomever bears responsibility for my son’s murder.”
r /> “Is this some sort of game to him?”
Of course it is.
She slipped inside the stables, and almost immediately collided with Krys, who’d stepped out into our path just as we entered. Lucille fell one way down the aisle, the saddle the other.
“Your Highness!”
“Ack,” Lucille responded in the closest imitation of myself she had managed up till now.
“What are you doing here? You’re at least an hour before—”
“Change of plans. We need to leave now!”
“But Rabbit hasn’t had time—”
“How many horses?”
“Two, maybe three?”
“That will have to do. Saddles, tack?”
“Enough bridles, and provisions, but I only have one saddle—”
“Including that one?” Lucile pointed as she dusted herself off.
“Two, then,” Krys said.
Lucille threw the pendant’s chain over her neck to free her hands. She gestured toward the door Krys had emerged from. “The saddles are in there?”
“Yes, what are you—”
Lucille ran into the dim storeroom and pulled a saddle off of the rack closest to the doorway. She grunted with the effort. “Just in case Rabbit had time to free that third horse. Let’s move!”
She pushed past Krys and turned left at the end of the aisleway.
“No,” Krys called, “Other direction!”
Lucille spun around and ended up following Krys past a series of empty stalls. Rushing with our loads meant we had no pretense at stealth, but the stable hands who glanced up from their chores to look at us saw our clothing and quickly looked back down at their work.
One of the many perks of nobility. Look the part and none of the folks shoveling manure will see fit to challenge you, even if you run full tilt into a pasture with a saddle and no horse.
CHAPTER 7
Lucille ran with Krys toward the woods at the edge of the royal pastures. Between gasps for breath, Lucille brought Krys up to date on the situation.
“You said what to the elf-king?” Krys shouted over her shoulder.