Kingdom of Ruses Page 21

  “How?” she screamed. “I made no mistakes! There were no other nifaran here!”

  The Prince tucked Viola protectively behind him. “You made the cardinal mistake: you enslaved the weaker counterpart first, Natalia.”

  She was covered in vines, poisonous-looking things that oozed purple against her even as they tightened their grip around her. A couple of wood imps were pulling at her hair while other strange creatures contemplated her limbs as though observing their next meal. “What are you talking about?” she snarled as she struggled to be free. “I enslaved you years ago, with Bruno, before your vicious kind murdered him!”

  “You enslaved me, yes, but I don’t have any bonds to Viola. I’m not her counterpart. In fact, the only blood-bond she has, that I’m aware of,” he added with an amused glance over his shoulder to where Viola still stood, “is with the land itself. You didn’t bother to subjugate the land before you went after her, did you, Natalia?” he asked with a pitying sort of tone to his voice.

  Natalia’s eyes were huge, rage-filled as the Prince continued. “Lenore has been bound to the Moreland family for centuries,” he said, “but Viola completed the bond and the land adores her. It’s almost funny, because I have a secondary bond with the land as well, and you might have controlled it through me if you hadn’t gone after her. If you’d known about it, that is.” He smiled then and pulled a sword from his waist—Viola had not noticed that he carried one until this very moment. She wondered if he knew how to use it.

  “You can’t kill me,” said Natalia fiercely. “You’re still incapable of that, at least.”

  He stepped forward, his eyes mocking. “My dear Natalia,” he said with a condescending smile, “I don’t have to kill you. There are plenty of other creatures here that are willing to do the job.”

  And so saying, he handed the blade to a rapacious-looking satyr, who snatched it with glee and thrust it through the villainous woman’s heart. Natalia’s eyes bulged and her fingers flexed taut, but the next moment she went limp, lifeless. A tight restraint around Viola’s own heart—a restraint she had hardly noticed in the panic of this morning’s events—loosened and dissipated.

  The strange menagerie of creatures howled in delight as more vines and leaves twisted around Natalia to cover what little of her body still showed. The large bundle then pulled back into the street, out of the rubble of the ruined building. Viola watched it go as beasts danced and screeched around it. The plants and animals retreated in a savage frenzy.

  Her knees were weak, she suddenly realized, but as she started to fall, a strong pair of arms caught her and swept her off her feet. “I’m not sure I can ever forgive them for damaging this dress,” said the Prince as he carried her. “You still owe me a dance in it, you know.”

  Viola looked to him in wonder, astounded that he could say such a thing at such a time as this, where there were far weightier matters at hand. “Where’s Edmund?” she asked. She clutched at his shirt as she peered up into his face. “Where is he?”

  The Prince stopped walking. A puzzled furrow appeared between his golden brows as he suddenly turned back to the ruined building. “I would have expected them to find him,” he said vaguely.

  “Expected who?” said Viola. “They wouldn’t tell me what they had done to him. If he was here—”

  “Viola!” crowed an all-too-familiar voice, and her heart quickened with relief at the sound. She looked up to discover Edmund with his arms thrown around the neck of a winged horse. “It’s a Pegasus!” he cried with joy. “A real, live Pegasus!” From the looks of it, he was hanging on for dear life as the creature’s enormous feathered wings beat a steady rhythm in the air.

  “I don’t understand,” said Viola in wonder.

  “I’d be delighted to explain,” said the Prince, “but at the moment we are somewhere near the center of the city, my dear, and making quite a spectacle. Although, this does seem like an oddly appropriate way to start off your midsummer festival, now that I think about it.”

  For the first time, she looked at the surroundings beyond the ruined building, only to see more structures and the telltale cobblestones of the streets of Lenore. In the brightness of dawn, citizens peered out their windows, and some lined the walkways at a safe distance, watching in awe the procession of flora and fauna that stretched all the way back to the palace grounds and beyond to the forest.

  “Best that we get you two back to your family as soon as possible, yes?” said the Prince. “They’ve been worried sick.” The great dragon’s head dipped down to the ground, and he gingerly placed Viola atop the beast before climbing on himself. “The ride is a bit bumpy, dear, so do hold on tight.” He fisted one hand into the dragon’s hairy mane and made a cavalier wave toward the crowds with his other. Viola threw her arms around him as the creature suddenly lurched into the air.

  “Well, I had expected you to hold onto the dragon like I am,” said the Prince, much to her embarrassment, “but I rather prefer your method.”

  Behind her, Edmund hollered with joy as the winged horse sped through the air toward the palace ahead. Seemingly hundreds of other creatures—birds and beasts that looked like they had flown out of the pages of a fairytale—streamed alongside them.

  “This is absolutely unbelievable,” said Viola. Below, the citizens of Lenore ran from their homes and peered up into the sky to see the great spectacle. Many cheered and waved. The Prince waved right back, a broad grin plastered to his face.

  The dragon circled in its descent to the palace and landed rather gracefully in the garden outside of Viola’s house. As the Prince helped her down, her mother burst from the door and ran down the stairs in near hysterics as she called to her two children. She had Edmund and Viola in her arms in a matter of seconds. She clung tightly to both of them while her youngest chattered about winged horses and glorious flights.

  “Come into the house, come into the house,” Elizabeth said as she ushered them toward the stairs. She paused, though, and cast an uncertain glance toward the Prince.

  He smiled wistfully and raised one hand in farewell. Then, he climbed back onto the great dragon. The beast launched in the air and twisted away toward the forest.

  “Where is he going?” Viola asked in sudden alarm.

  “Come inside, Viola,” said her mother. “Come inside and we’ll get you cleaned up—oh my dear! You’re bleeding!”

  Viola’s attention turned downward to discover that the wound at the crook of her elbow was indeed bleeding in a stream down her arm. She couldn’t remember at what point she had lost the rag that Governor Negri had given her. Blood pattered from her fingertips to the ground. “It’s all right,” she said vaguely, and she shook her hand to send a few more drops of blood to the earth at her feet.

  Her mother was horrified and pulled her up the stairs quickly. “Bandage, bandage,” she muttered once they were inside. She pressed a clean washcloth to Viola’s arm. “We’ll have Dr. Grayson here to do a proper job, but this should do for now. Keep some pressure on it, Viola, or you’ll faint dead away from blood loss!”

  Viola’s mind was wandering, but she snapped back to attention and pressed her fingers to the spot more firmly. Edmund also had some scratches for his mother to tend, but he had emerged from the encounter largely unscathed.

  Once those injuries were addressed, Viola’s mother shuffled her away to get cleaned up. Viola had a hot bath, and then, while she was bundled up in a warm robe, Dr. Grayson appeared to bandage her arm. He checked the back of her head for any trauma but pronounced that she would be as good as new in no time. Her mother managed to bully some food into her—she wasn’t hungry in the least, she found—and then she was alone in her room, where she dropped off to sleep from sheer exhaustion.

  Chapter 16: Missing Pieces

  Charlie fetched my journal from the library for me. He swears he did not read it, and I’m inclined to believe him, for he seems fairly shaken by everything that has happened in the last several hours. Everyone is a
t the midsummer festival right now, except for me and Mother. She has forbidden me from leaving the house and has remained behind to make certain of my safety.

  I don’t know what they are going to do about the Prince. I suspect that Father has conjured a doppelganger, for they said that he—William, that is—had disappeared with most of the strange creatures back into the forest. I’m still unclear on what happened, exactly.

  Father says that they discovered our disappearance almost immediately, that he had gone himself to fetch me and Edmund from the Prince’s quarters, and the Prince had dissolved into wrath. It seems that somewhere around half the palace guards had been coerced to join their allegiances with Lord Conrad, and the palace itself descended into utter chaos when the Prince came storming from his quarters, demanding to know what had become of me and Edmund.

  Some of the traitors put up a resistance and waylaid both my father and the Prince from following after our abductors. A stalemate came when Lord Conrad sent word to Father that Edmund and I would be killed if he resisted the change of power. The palace surrendered to the revolutionaries sometime before dawn, by the Prince’s orders. He told Father to wait for the moment, and that he was going for reinforcements. Then, he disappeared over the hedge into the forest.

  Father doesn’t know what he did, but it seems that at dawn there was an explosion of creatures from the forest, that the very plants in the gardens arose and took captive all who were trying to enslave Lenore to Conrad’s will. Lord Conrad himself has been delivered to my father by some of those creatures, and he now sits in one of the dungeons, awaiting execution for treason. Lady Conrad is with him, for it is believed that she was complicit. They say that Victor has disappeared, though, and I do not know whether this is bad news or good. From what I overheard when I was coming to, he was not a wholly willing party to his father’s plans. It seems he took the opportunity to depart, and I sincerely hope that he is wise enough never to be seen in Lenore again.

  Governor Negri has vanished as well, but I somehow doubt that he will turn up to cause more trouble. The griffin that took him looked hungry.

  The fate of the villains is assured. My main concern lies with the Prince. He came here with the sole purpose of discovering how to break his bond to Natalia. Now that it has been broken, I suppose that he’ll disappear just as abruptly as he arrived.

  What am I saying? He has disappeared already.

  “Viola, dear, are you all right?” her mother asked as she poked her head in the room. “Dear, you’re crying!”

  Viola quickly wiped the tears from her face, embarrassed. “I suppose the shock of everything that’s happened has finally caught up with me,” she said. It was a plausible enough excuse. Her mother rushed to envelop her in a hug.

  “Shh, of course it has. Such a terrible ordeal, to be taken like that in the middle of the night! Of course you’re in shock.”

  “What will happen now?” Viola asked into her mother’s shoulder.

  Elizabeth Moreland was very still for a moment. “I suppose we’ll continue on as we always have,” she said. “Lenore is safe, and your father has everything under control. He and the boys should be home from the festival soon, dear. I have some supper ready for you, if you’re hungry.”

  “I’m not,” said Viola dully.

  Nevertheless, her mother tugged her up from where she sat and pulled her to the kitchen, where a hot bowl of soup lay waiting next to various pastries and sweets.

  “What’s all of this?” Viola asked in confusion.

  “You were sleeping, and I was bored,” said her mother defensively. “And since neither of us could go to the festival, I thought I’d just try to make a few of the treats we were going to miss.”

  Viola looked in exasperation at her mother. “You could have gone,” she said.

  The expression that crossed Elizabeth Moreland’s face was a direct contradiction. Viola supposed that if she had been in her mother’s place—having had two children abducted for several hours and one of them sorely injured—she too wouldn’t have left either of them alone for any space of time. Viola foresaw many days’ future in which she would not be allowed to leave her home by herself.

  With a defeated sigh, she sat down in front of the soup and ate a spoonful to appease her mother’s expectations. It tasted so good that she had finished half the bowl before she even realized it. Her mother pretended not to notice.

  As Viola tipped the bowl to catch the last dregs, the door opened and the rest of her family came tumbling in. Her brothers stopped short upon seeing her. Behind them, her father smiled.

  “You’re awake, then, Viola?” he asked.

  She nodded. “How was the festival?”

  Her brothers exchanged glances. “It was a success as always,” said her father as he stepped past them to peck a kiss on his wife’s cheek. “And what have you two been doing here?”

  “If you’re not full from festival foods,” said Elizabeth, “I’ve been baking. What sort of exhibition did his Royal Highness provide this year?”

  “He brought loads of creatures!” cried Edmund, and he surged forward joyfully. “Not as many as there were this morning, but loads, still! You should have seen them, Mother!”

  As her younger brother started into details of all the creatures he had seen, Viola looked to Charles in quickening alarm. “Doppelganger?” she mouthed to him.

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly. His eyes briefly flitted toward the ceiling, where the Prince’s quarters lay. Viola’s heart pounded erratically in her chest, so that she was afraid it might leap out at any moment. She looked to her father and found him observing her closely, but his expression was unreadable.

  The only thing Viola’s mind could process was that the Prince had returned for the midsummer festival. She wondered how long he would stay, or if she would even see him before he disappeared again.

  Edmund gave a full account of the festival as they sat around together, but Nicholas very soon began to yawn and his wife, taking that as cue, ordered everyone to bed after their long day. Viola lingered to help her clean up, but Elizabeth shooed her away.

  Viola’s father was waiting for her in the corridor. The door of the hidden staircase was open. “If you wish to see him,” he said quietly, “I’ll give you half an hour. Any longer than that, and I’ll come up for you myself,” he added sternly.

  She hesitated. “Is it all right?” she asked, suddenly nervous.

  “You don’t have to,” said her father. “I certainly won’t force you to, but you seem to need answers that only he can give. No one but the Prince knows everything that happened this morning—perhaps even he doesn’t, at that, but if you have any questions beyond what I have told you, then this is your opportunity to ask him. I don’t know how long he intends to stay, and once he leaves we may never see him again.”

  Viola had suspected as much, but having those words said aloud somehow made them more concrete. Before she could second-guess her decision, she stepped past her father to the stairwell.

  “Half an hour!” he called after her. Then, he shut the door behind her.

  At the top of the stairs, Viola hesitated again. What was she supposed to say to him? Her feelings seemed to be in such conflict. She couldn’t ask him to stay, not now that he had finally gained his freedom from Natalia. She did want to know how the morning’s events had come about, though, and she knew that she owed him thanks at the very least. So, she took a deep breath and pushed the panel aside.

  The library was empty, silent.

  Panic struck at her. Had he left again already? Maybe he had only come back to play his part for the festival as agreed. After all, he had nothing to stay for now that he had no more need of their library and its books of lore.

  Somehow, she didn’t want to go looking for him, didn’t want to face the prospect of the apartment being totally empty. “Hello?” she called instead, and her voice wavered more than she would have liked. “Your Highness, are you here?”

&
nbsp; Across from her, the door to his bedchamber suddenly wrenched open, and those wide golden eyes stared at her in surprise. In the ensuing moment of silence, Gregor the jaguar slipped through the opening and trotted over to take up residence on one of the nearby chairs.

  “Father said I have half an hour if I wanted to ask you about what happened this morning,” Viola began. “Would you—” She paused and bit her lower lip nervously. “Would you tell me?” she finished, holding his gaze.

  The Prince stepped through the door and closed it delicately behind him. “What time this morning?” he asked.

  “How did you find me?” she clarified, for this one question had been preying upon her mind.

  “I didn’t,” he bluntly answered. “I went to the well—I thought I would plead for intercession, but the forest last night… Viola, it was in utter turmoil. I’ve always assumed that Lenore was everything beyond the woods, but it’s not. The well lies at the heart of Lenore, and the land itself knew you were in trouble. It just couldn’t act until the threat manifested.”

  “What do you mean?” Viola asked.

  “The higher blood-bond gives each party the responsibility of protecting the other. If Natalia had attempted to subjugate the land, it would have been your responsibility to kill her. Since she went after you first, though, it was the land’s responsibility. But it couldn’t act until she did. The moment she created her enslavement bond over you, the entire forest moved into action—all of the creatures that the land controls stirred from their hiding places, the plants themselves writhed to life. Everything honed in on you, and on Natalia. I was just lucky to be there at the right time.”

  Viola stepped to the nearest chair and dropped wearily into it. “What am I to do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I feel like I’m indebted,” she said slowly, quietly. “I came up to thank you. How can I possibly thank Lenore itself?”