Madly (23 page)

But there, on the dresser, is a small television screen. Except, as Granddad quickly makes clear, it's not a TV screen at all. It's another Summons.

He places his palm on it, and it immediately jumps to life.

“Ostanes? Is that you?”

The wrinkled face on the other side of the Summons takes my breath away.

It's the Queen Mother.

Chapter Forty-One

Samantha

“TABITHA.”

“Ostanes.” The look of relief on the Queen Mother's face is apparent. “What have you been waiting for? They're about to administer that vile synth abomination. For a moment I thought you might have failed me.” She puts her hand through the Summons, ready to pull me through.

“The Kemi family have never failed you,” my granddad says. He keeps his hand firmly on my upper arm, not letting me move. “You failed us.”

“Ostanes, please. This is my granddaughter we're talking about.”

“And it is my grandchildren that you have endangered by not taking care of your own family.”

Fire blazes between the two old titans of the world, and if I know anything about my granddad—and from what little I know about the Queen Mother—this
stand-off could go on for a long time. But I don't have a long time. Neither does Evelyn. I tug at my granddad's sleeve. “Whatever is going on here, I don't care. I need to get this to Evelyn.”

His mouth doesn't shift from its firm line. But he releases me, and I take the Queen Mother's wrinkled hand. She pulls me from my home straight into her bedroom. My jaw drops as I look around. There's a big crack down one wall, pictures smashed on dark hardwood flooring, glass sprinkled everywhere. One of the posts on her four-poster bed has fallen, bringing down with it a heavy woven tapestry and leaving it in tatters.

It's chaos.

“Quick, child.” For someone who can look so frail on the casts, she's fast. I struggle to keep up with her through the twists and turns of the palace corridors.

At one point, she walks straight through a brick wall.

A moment later, she reappears. “I forget you ordinaries have to use doors. How inconvenient.” She doesn't magic a door for me to use, though. She simply blasts a hole through the brickwork, leaving me to pick a path through the smoking rubble.

We arrive where Princess Evelyn is being kept. Guards line the corridor on both sides, and an alcove is filled with cameramen and reporters. I'm surprised that they've been let so deep into the palace.

As soon as they spot the Queen Mother and me,
there's a flurry and rush of activity as they turn their cameras on us to get a good shot. It's rare enough to get a video of the Queen Mother under normal circumstances.

“Get out of my way,” the Queen Mother says, commanding so much power despite her small stature. Her isolation from the press also means that she suffers none of their nonsense. I find it refreshing.

She passes through the wall of the princess's room, and this time a door appears for me to step through. In the room is Zain—the first person my eyes find. Zol is there too, along with Renel, the queen, and the king.

They all look shocked to see us.

Princess Evelyn is asleep on her bed. Renel has the synth potion in his hands.

Evelyn stirs, fluttering her lashes, letting out a low moan of pain. Zain keeps staring at me, and although my eyes flicker back to him, what I read in his expression is exactly the last thing I ever thought I'd see there. It's relief.

“You're too late.” Zol smirks. “Our potion has been administered—”

The hair on my arms stands up on end, shivers running up and down my skin. It's power building, gathering. A smell of roses fills the air, so thick, sweet, and cloying it almost chokes me. Magic, pure and raw and uncontrollable.

A bolt of lightning explodes in the room, sending us
all flying to the ground. I shield my eyes with my hands, and when I look over at Evelyn, I see her floating above the bed, lightning sparking from her fingers.

“It didn't work!” Zain cries out. He leaps to Evelyn's bedside, trying to control her.

A storm gathers inside the room, the ceiling threatening to break away from the walls. The trembling ground sends objects flying around the room; everyone's attention is focused on Evelyn, but mine is focused somewhere else: on Auden's Horn, which has been relocated to the princess's room.

I make a dive for it, the potion in my hand. In what I hope will be a moment of calm, I open the bottle over the horn, but another wave of energy surges from the princess and sends the liquid spraying everywhere.

“No!” I scream.

“Sam, hurry!” says Zain. “I trust you. Administer the potion!”

There is just enough left. I take a running leap toward the princess, and at the same time the earth lifts beneath my feet. A gaping hole opens in the floor, leading into the bright blue sky. I jump onto the princess's bed, grabbing Zain's outstretched arm and pulling myself along, like we're trying to fight against a hurricane. Finally I reach her. She's screaming.

I tip the potion into her mouth. At the same time, her eyes fly open and bore into mine, and then a blast of her
magic flings me from the bed, all the way across the room until I land with a crash against the podium, sending Auden's Horn clattering to the ground.

I lie there in a crumpled heap. I can barely move. But I can see the horn. And I can see that it's gold.

The noise, the wind, the lightning, the storm all stop.

“Zain?” I hear Evelyn say.

“Hey, Evie,” he whispers back to her, and the tenderness in his voice breaks me. “How are you feeling?” Zain leans down and picks up a shard of broken mirror that has fallen on the ground. We all wait with bated breath, scattered across what's left of the room. If it hasn't worked, it could be the end.

“Oh wow,” says Evelyn. “I look dreadful!” She pushes the mirror away, and there's a collective sigh of relief. “Hey, what's going on? What happened in here? Did my eighteenth get a bit out of control?”

Now I know she's safe, the pain hits. Darkness edges at my vision and I feel every lump of broken stone under my back. Someone kneels down beside me and cradles my head in their hands.

“You okay?”

It's Zain.

“Unrequited love,” I say, finally able to finish the answer to the question Zol had asked. “That was the missing ingredient.”

“You did it, Sam,” he says. “You won the hunt.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Samantha

I'M STANDING, AWKWARDLY, IN A beautiful dress that they had couriered up from one of the most expensive shops in Kingstown. Nothing in my closet was good enough for one's first royal dinner, apparently. I refuse the heels though. I'm already going to be the ordinary in the room, better not to be the ordinary giant.

But before the dinner, I've been asked to wait. My stomach rumbles in anticipation. They've healed my scrapes and broken bones and applied a top-notch glamour to give me color, but they can't use magic on my weary brain. I feel like I could sleep for a year. Renel ushers me into this mirrored receiving room, adjacent to the princess's bedroom. There's an uncomfortable, lion-footed sofa that I try sitting on, but it's so hard and bulbous that I return to standing. I'm also a little bit concerned that I'll ruin my dress.

There's a snap of electricity, and suddenly the princess is in the room with me. I swallow hard. Despite having been close enough to thrust a love potion down her throat, having her awake and looking at me is intimidating. She's so incredibly beautiful up close.

She rushes over to me and takes both of my hands like we are long lost best friends. “Samantha Kemi.” She kisses me on both cheeks. Up close, she smells of Elixir No. 5. “So you're the wondrous brain that saved me.”

I blush a deep crimson. “I think it was more of a team effort thing . . .”

She waves her hands around dismissively. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how long it took for me to find a recipe for a love potion? Years. I mean, to figure out about the unrequited love.” She regards me steadily through her steel-gray irises. “That takes skill.”

I bite my lip, considering what to say. The princess stops me with a hand. “You saved my life. And I'm sure it made the potion extra potent for me, that we just so happened to be unrequitedly loving the same person.”

Now I don't blush any deeper (because it's not possible), but I want to sink into the ground and have it swallow me up. “And he loves you too,” I stammer out. “You didn't need the potion after all.”

She laughs. It's completely not the reaction I'm expecting. She reaches out and grabs my wrist. “Oh,
Sam, don't be so silly. He doesn't love me at all—not like that, anyway. He wasn't as smart as you, but you'll find out about that soon enough. And honestly, I'm not sure that I ever loved him in the right way either. You have to understand, Zain is my best friend. Winning his heart—however falsely—was the only path I could see that would lead me to some kind of happiness in the future. You see, the truth is, I don't love anybody. Not yet.”

I smile. I'm beginning to warm to Princess Evelyn, despite myself. She must sense it, because she leans in again and kisses me on both cheeks. “Thanks,” she says. “Do you have a phone?”

“Umm . . .” I fumble open my tiny handbag, which is also brand-new. I've never had need of a tiny handbag before. “Here,” I say, handing it over to her. She taps her number into my contacts.

“There, that way, we can be friends, and you can come to the wedding.”

“The wedding?” My eyes open wide.

Evelyn smiles sadly at me. “I tried to cheat my responsibility, and look what happened. I still have to get married. It sucks, but what can you do. I'll see you at dinner?”

“Oh, I'm not sure where I should go . . .”

“Don't worry, I'll send someone up to escort you.”

And before I can say anything else, she's gone.
Luckily, this room isn't doorless, or I would have really felt trapped.

I explore the room. This was where it happened, according to the casts. There's a small table by the window, with a couple of glasses on it. A sparkling crystal carafe sits on a little silver tray, but there's no liquid in it.

“I don't trust women who stand by that table,” says a voice from the doorway.

I spin around. It's Zain. “What do you want?”

If he's hurt by my curt tone, he doesn't show it. Instead, he bows. “I'm here to escort you to dinner.”

“Seriously? You're escorting me? Look, I'd rather just go home than suffer any more humiliation, okay?”

Finally, his expression falters. “Sam—”

“No, you don't get to ‘Sam' me. You put me through hell, you know that?”

“I know. My father, he—”

“You can't just blame your dad for this.”

“Sam—”

“You think just because the princess has messed with her emotions, that gives you the right to mess with mine in order to save her? There are some things that are just as strong—no—stronger than love potions you know. Like real feelings.”

“Sam—”

I can't help it, I am so, so angry at him. “I thought we had something . . . but you couldn't stand up to your father in this? Everything was just one big lie.”

“It isn't.”

“What?”

“It isn't a lie. I do feel that way about you, everything I said. I thought Evelyn told me that the final ingredient was love. I told my father, and he said that meant the potion had to be made by someone who believed that they were in love with the intended taker.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “That's why you did that television interview.”

“Exactly. I thought that if I made a public declaration of my love, the potion would work. But my dad was wrong, and so was I. It was unrequited love. And you figured that out, even though you didn't have to. I can't believe that I broke your heart. But listen, in a way, I'm glad that I did.”

I narrow my eyes. “And why is that?”

“Because I hope I can spend the rest of the summer trying to make it up to you.”

I want to say something, find some witty repartee to come back with, but when I open my mouth absolutely nothing comes out. Treacherous mouth. Then: “Aren't you marrying the princess?”

“What? No.”

“But she said . . .” Then I stop. She didn't say she was marrying Zain. Only that she still had to get married.

Zain seizes his opportunity. He reaches out and grabs my hand. “You're one of a kind, Sam Kemi. Will you let me earn back your trust?”

I allow myself a small smile. “I'll think about it.”

He takes my arm. “We're going to be late for dinner.”

“Let them wait,” I say, and I lift my face to his and kiss him.

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK HAS POSSESSED ITS own special alchemy right from the start: The idea came from a random tweet in 2010, which was then blended with many months spent writing in the darkest hours of the night, and now, with the help of so many people, it is finally ready to be served.

My first thanks must go to Juliet, to whom this book is dedicated, and Sarah—the dream agenting team whom anyone would be lucky to have in their corner. Their hard work means I can keep on doing what I love for a living, and have a lot of fun doing it.

Next up, so many thanks to Elv and Zareen, my editors at S&S UK and US, for your tremendous efforts in helping me whip this book into shape. You have both gone above and beyond the call of duty, and this book would not be the same without you. To Liz at S&S UK, thank you for your awesome marketing and publicity work and for being a cheerleader for this book right from the beginning.

No writer should be without trusted writing friends, and mine are two of the very best. Thank you, Kim and Laura. Without your early thoughts, sound advice, and shoulders to cry on, I wouldn't have survived this journey! I hope there are many more retreats in our future.

To Mum, Dad, and Sophie—thank you for always being the first to read and the first to delight in every milestone I achieve.

And lastly, to Lofty—thank you for not needing a potion to be the love of my life.