Enchanted (21 page)

“As you wish,” said the prince. “But you have nothing to fear.”

“I fear myself,” she whispered.

“I do not fear you,” he whispered back.

She smiled. “Perhaps you should.”

“Erik, please secure a carriage for my honored guest. The evening has taken its toll upon her and she must rest”—he winked at her—“so that she may return tomorrow.”

“Of course, sire,” Erik said grandiosely.

“Discreetly, friend,” said Rumbold.

“Like a thief in the night,” said Erik.

“Thank you,” said Sunday.

“I will convey your whereabouts to your mother and sisters and offer them a carriage as soon as they wish to leave,” said Rumbold.

“Thank you again.”

“And if they wish to stay, I will woo your mother and dance with your sisters until every other woman in the room is green with envy. Now, would you grant me the honor of pushing your humble contrivance to the gate?” He gestured to the wheeled chair.

“I’m sure I can walk.”

“If I were stronger, I would ignore your protests and carry you to your carriage,” he said. “I am the prince, after all.”

She swatted his arm. “You are a beast.”

“I have been called such before, but unfortunately I don’t have the energy to live up to that either. So I will only offer you my arm and hope you will take it.”

She did. He led her to the carriage Erik had called to the north gate, away from the courtyard, and helped her in. Before he shut the door after her, he kissed her hand. “Good night, my Sunday.”

“Good night, my prince,” she answered, and the carriage bore her away into the night.
My prince.
One day soon, he would not have to watch her leave him again.

“Come on, lover boy.” Erik clapped him on the shoulder. “Were needed to save an innocent barrel of wine from a lecherous duke’s son.”

***

Considering the volume of alcohol needed to make a haefairy like Velius as well and truly drunk as he was, it was a wonder there was any wine left in the castle.

“He’s been like this since they discovered the sleepers,” said Erik. Rumbold helped him pour Velius onto a bench at the edge of the courtyard. Slumped over like that, his angelic face pressing into the stained wood, his cousin looked about fourteen. Velius obviously still felt responsible for whatever he’d done to bring Wednesday to the king’s attention. “It got even worse after they woke up.”

“I would know who started this rabble.” Rumbold scanned the sea of victims and servants until he found his father addressing the Woodcutter household.

A woman wearing a silver-pink dress and a circlet on her brow held Seven Woodcutter’s hand.
Princess
Monday, Rumbold recalled. With her long golden hair and bright eyes, she was a vision of what Sunday might look like sitting beside him on a throne one day. Her skirts were pristine; of course she and her husband would have rooms at the castle. She wouldn’t have been in the courtyard when the riot had happened. Monday said something soft and beautiful enough to deflate the king without annoying him. The king actually stepped back, accepting Seven’s reticence and ignoring the trembling Friday, who hugged herself tightly and kept her head bowed.

But there was one Woodcutter sister who was not afraid of the king. Wednesday met the king’s eyes as blatantly as she had the night before, and then completely ignored him while she twisted her hair into a knot and fixed it into place with ... some sort of knife? Rumbold felt sure he had seen a wicked gleam flash from it. Wednesday’s dress tonight was a shroud of tears and trouble, a symbol of the emotions that hung, invisible but palpable, above the courtyard. When she raised her arm to silently indicate the instigators, it was as if they had been marked by Death himself.

There were seven of them, reluctant, regretful, and resigned, and they were brought before the king. Each of them wore at least one bandage. Most of them limped. A line of blood still trickled down one girl’s cheek. The Woodcutter sisters had all fought back. Proudly, Rumbold squinted at Wednesday’s hair again. Perhaps that
was
a knife.

“What would you have me do to them?” the king asked Wednesday. His voice carried on the cool night air down to the water, the Wood, and the next kingdom. “What should be their punishment? Lashes? The stocks? Or perhaps”—his eyes gleamed—“they should be placed naked in barrels staked with nails and dragged through the streets by two of my best chargers.”

What had gotten into his father? But Wednesday was not ruffled. “They know their crime,” she said. “They know their shame.”

“It is not enough for me,” said the king. “It is not enough for what they would have done to you, what they have already done to ... the woman I love.” On the humble cobblestones he knelt before her, and the crowd gasped. “Now that I’ve found you, I don’t know what I would do without you. Dear Miss Woodcutter.” He took her pale hand. “Wednesday. I have this kingdom and riches aplenty at my disposal, but my life is as empty as my heart. I can’t remember the last time I was as happy as you made me last night.”

Can you not, Father?
Rumbold wondered if his father had said similar words to his mother, or the woman before her.

“I would be honored,” the king continued, “if you deigned to stay and further your efforts toward my happiness.”

“For how long?” she asked. Every breath held, though each soul already knew the answer.

“For as long as we both shall live.”

“Yes,” Wednesday said without hesitation, though Rumbold suspected her haste was more due to expectation than emotion. “Yes, I will marry you.”

A cheer rose from the assembled crowd, the population of which had more than trebled since the mishap. Hands clapped and feet stomped and wine poured, and three violinists struck up an impromptu jig.

There were some who did not cheer: Rumbold, Erik, the still-not-drunk-enough Velius, and the seven women whose punishment had been postponed long enough for their small insurrection to become attempted murder of the future queen.

After kissing the hand of his wife-to-be, the king addressed the accused. “These women will remember the harm they have caused for the rest of their lives,” he said. “I would have the rest of the world know their dishonor as well. Call for the pigkeep.” A servant scurried to obey. “Each of their forearms will be branded with the royal seal as a reminder of the debt they owe to the crown.”

Slowly, each of them curtseyed, accepting the pain and punishment they had brought upon themselves. Slowly, Wednesday closed her eyes, in patience or prayer or something else. Slowly, the crowd parted along the walk to the Grand Hall.

Sorrow had risen to join them in the courtyard.

“Forgive my tardiness, Highness. I have not been myself as of late.” Rumbold had never seen his godmother so small and pale as she was now, swaddled inside her robes, old beside Wednesday’s ethereal youth. For all that they seemed mirror images of each other, when they were set side by side, the mirror cracked.

The aura of power around Sorrow, however, was rivaled by no one.

“I understand congratulations are in order.” She turned to Wednesday. “Hello, Niece.”

T
HE HOUSE WAS DARK
when Sunday arrived home. She gently climbed the stairs to her tower room, tiptoeing past the rooms where Saturday and Trix and Peter lay sleeping. She bit back pain as she eased the new dress over her bruised body, slid her weak arms into the sleeves of a nightgown, and tossed back the thin covers of her bed. Her journal sat on her pillow, small and lonely and wanting to know her troubles, but after only a few tearstained paragraphs, she simply didn’t have the strength. Nor did her mind have the serenity required for sleep. She dreaded another torrid night of wandering long strange hallways in someone else’s shoes. What Sunday needed was calm and comfort.

Without Mama, the kitchen was just a memory of yeast and herbs and a dying fire. Aunt Joy was waiting for her there. “A little birdie told me what happened. Can I offer you some tea?”

“Yes,” Sunday said automatically. And then, “No. Wait.”

“What, dear?”

“Please,” said Sunday. “No magic tea. I can’t take any more magic today. I don’t care if it will solve all my problems and make everyone’s dreams come true. I just want to be me, with no help from the birds or the gods or the universe”—she glared across the table accusingly—“or you.”

Joy laughed, an expression Sunday was still not used to seeing on the face Wednesday wore most days. It suited her aunt, drew lines in her cheeks and around her eyes that made her seem more ... human. Another word she rarely associated with Wednesday.

“Cheers, little one.” Joy took a cup and saucer from the cupboard, delicate pieces from a set of china Thursday had sent Mama long ago, after her infamous naval elopement. “It’s just tea, I promise. It comes with nothing but conversation. And a biscuit. And sugar, if you like.”

“Some of both, please.” Sunday plopped down in her chair in front of the fire. “It’s been such a very long day. My life has been one string of very long days lately. Ever since...” She decided to burn her tongue on the tea rather than finish her sentence.

“Since I arrived?” asked Aunt Joy.

“Very near then.” She blew the stray floating leaves to the edge of the cup, let the warmth of the porcelain seep into her palms. “Once, not so very long ago, I was just a girl made of nothing but silly wishes and fairydust, who wrote stories and pretended she was a gypsy or a pirate or the queen of the world.”

“And now...?”

“And now,” Sunday said, as if that would suffice.

“Now you are a young woman in love with a prince.”

“Am I?” asked Sunday. “Am I really in love with him? I thought I loved someone once, but I didn’t. Or, rather, it wasn’t enough.”

“I loved someone once,” said Joy. “A street magician, a conjurer of cheap tricks, a shyster, my father said. But, oh, he was so much more than that. He caught my eye and bewitched my heart, and I was a fool for him.”

“How did he die?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re not together,” said Sunday. “I just assumed.”

“No, child. He is very much alive.”

Someone as powerful as her aunt had let the man she loved slip through her fingers? “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know what became of him, in the end.”

Sunday realized she’d asked the wrong question. “What happened to
you
?”

“I had a sister,” she said. “Women began speaking in snakes, children disappeared into the Wood, the king of Arilland lost his name, and I had a dark sister.”

“Can no one else keep Sorrow in check?”

“No one like me,” said Joy. “No one is as close to her, who can tidy as quickly and neatly the messes she makes. I was not there for the first royal wedding, nor was I there when Queen Madelyn—your dear princes mother—died. This is my last chance to undo what she has done.”

“The last?”

“It must end here, because this time it involves my goddaughter.”

“But I’m not going to marry the king,” said Sunday. “I’m in love with the prince.” The word slipped out so easily. “Love.” The echo of it hovered in the air.

“I know.” Joy smiled again. “But, like me, you have a sister.”

A chill settled over Sunday, one that she could not shake and that the small fire could not dispel. “Wednesday.”

“The king has asked for her hand in marriage tonight, and she has accepted.”

“But you were supposed to stop it,” said Sunday. “Why aren’t you there stopping it right now?”

“I cannot stop the unstoppable.”

“Then why are you here?” Sunday cried.

“I am here to right a wrong,” said Joy, “and to teach you.” She took Sunday’s empty teacup. “You should try and get some rest before your sisters get home.”

***

When Mama poked her awake the next morning, Sunday screamed. Her mind was still fresh from dreams that tasted of storms and sea and blood and hunger. Her ribs were still bruised from the beating in the courtyard, but she didn’t want to alarm her mother. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “You startled me.”

“You started quite the scandal, disappearing with the prince last night.”

“I was badly hurt. They carried me inside and took care of me.”

“No one saw you leave the courtyard, and everyone else involved in the ruckus woke up exactly where they had fallen.” Mama rubbed a bruise on her right cheek. “Including me. And then some brawny, fire-haired guard told me you’d been escorted home in the royal carriage.”

“They knocked me to the ground, and I managed to crawl to the kitchen door. That’s all I remember, Mama, I promise. I was very ill.”

“So ill that you lost your dress?” Mama scoffed. “Don’t lie to me, Sunday. It isn’t you.” Sunday opened her mouth, but Mama held up a hand. “Don’t tell me the truth either, because I can’t lie to your father. Just tell me this: are you in love with the prince?”

“Yes.” All her torment filled up that one word and spilled over the sides.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Mama sighed. And then the strangest thing happened: Mama softened. “Come with me, child.”

Sunday dressed as quickly as she could and followed her mother down the tower steps to her parents’ room in the main house. Mama led her to the trunk at the end of her bed, a fixture for so long, Sunday had forgotten it was there. Mama pulled off the quilts and pillows—more of Friday’s handiwork—stacked on top of it. The lid creaked as she pried open the long-neglected hinges. Among the sundries inside the trunk was a box. Inside the box was a dress of silver and gold, the most beautiful dress Sunday had ever seen.

“This was Tuesday’s gift from Joy,” Mama said. “I think she would want you to have it.”

“What happened last night, Mama?”

“The king asked your sister to marry him.”

Sunday didn’t need to ask which sister. “And she accepted?”

“As if she could have done otherwise.”

But Wednesday
could
have refused to marry the king ... and then he could have ignored her refusal and ordered her to marry him anyway. Aunt Joy had said the event was unstoppable. “When will the wedding take place?”