All around, Farland Phelps was a prime slice of fella if you were a young lady of the court who was not quite so delusional as to hope to sink your talons into the prince himself, but still delusional enough to think you could sink one of his most powerful underlings.
Still, all these fine qualities of Farland’s aside, the true reason Mirabella would have loved Farland if she could was that he was pure evil, and, if she was ever to pledge her affection to a man, he had to be evil. It was Number One on her list. A young lady should have a pre-set list of priorities when man-hunting so she can refer to it when her head gets clouded. Man-hunting is a most dangerous game, after all. (You’re welcome for that advice, girls.)
Yes, Farland was pure evil. Even as he pretended to be the Prince’s best friend, Farland was secretly planning to murder the whole royal family, saving the Prince for last. Farland didn’t even want to take over as the king when the dust settled; he just wanted the Prince to suffer, consequences to the kingdom be darned!
The seed of his foul plan had been sown when he and the Prince had been mere lads—it had been some youthful dispute on the croquet field, something to do with the Prince picking the gardener’s son, Walter, for his team instead of picking Farland. Over the years the initial reason faded until it no longer mattered, morphing from revenge for the Croquet Episode to various different revenges for all kinds of accumulated little wrongs both real and imagined. Then, eventually, when Farland was in his young twenties and fancied himself a revolutionary, his revenge became the takedown of the entire monarchy (because monarchy just wasn’t the wave of the future, man1).
Mirabella knew his plans, and she was helping to make his dream come true. How did she know, you ask? Well, let me tell you. The reason she knew that he was evil when the rest of the kingdom thought he was a pretty awesome guy was because he needed her help: if Farland wanted to murder the entire Royal Family he needed a vast quantity of powdered asparagus tips. He couldn’t just buy it, because the sale and purchase of asparagus powder was closely monitored by the Magical Commerce Division. He needed an accomplice on the inside of Big Asparagus—an accomplice who knew the best asparagus and could make the powder for him. An accomplice who, also, happened to be evil.
In his Evil Lair, Farland had gazed into his magical pool of raven blood and asked it to reveal to him the person who would assist in his evil plan. The magical pool of raven blood was quite temperamental and rarely condescended to divulge any information to Farland, so he was quite surprised and pleased when, as he stared into its deep red depths, he saw a vision of Mirabella shimmer into sight. Then the magical bowl of raven blood had heartily warned him against confusing Mirabella with her twin sister who was the essence of all things good and not even a little bit evil.
And that’s how the wizard Farland Phelps found, and then secured the help of, Mirabella. On his very first visit to the farm, Prince Conroy came along on a whim in order to do some mingling with the commoners—his PR guy had been hounding him about rubbing elbows with the peasants lately, saying mingling was a good way to keep public opinion high without having to actually mess with things like taxes or employment or whatever else goes into making a populace happy through competent governance. Conroy had no clue, really, since he’d zoned out when his private tutor had gotten into all that stuff. Boring! Anyway, Conroy came along with Farland, and there Conroy met Lillian, and bam! Love at first sight. Said love was deeply reciprocated, so the Prince kept visiting, handily supplying Farland with an excuse to continue coming to the farm to collect powdered asparagus tips from Mirabella. It all worked out quite nicely, actually.
As Mirabella watched the procession draw nearer, she became acutely aware of her sister beside her, hopping giddily from foot to foot and clapping her hands. “Oh, Mirabella! It’s Prince Conroy!” Lillian squealed. “Oh, but Mama and Papa aren’t at home! I cannot see him without a chaperone!”
“What are you blithering about?” Mirabella spat in her cold voice of venom, never taking her eyes off the handsome face of Farland Phelps.
“People would talk if word got around that Prince Conroy and I conversed without appropriate parental supervision!”
Mirabella doubted this. If that is what counted as gossip these days, then life in the royal court was dull indeed, but she didn’t bother wasting her breath trying to convince her sister of this. For one thing, there was no point telling Lillian to do anything if she had already deemed it improper. And for another thing, Lillian was already making a beeline toward the house, probably with the intention of barricading herself inside.
Mirabella strolled to the stables and waited for the procession. The Prince and the wizard were the first to reach her. They dismounted, and two pages who had been scampering along behind them scurried up to tend to their horses, who, in the presence of Mirabella, pawed nervously at the ground as if being circled by a predator.
Farland retreated to the shadows where he paced back and forth looking mighty out of place by a big bale of hay, waiting for the opportunity to speak with Mirabella.
Prince Conroy strode toward her with confident, royal strides, head of shiny hair held high, broad shoulders thrown back, hand on the hilt of his fancy sword. His hair and twinkling sky-blue eyes made Mirabella squint, even in the shade of the stable. His black boots shone, and his purple cape fluttered in the almost-nonexistent breeze. A cookie cutter prince if ever there was one, but no less impressive for the fact.
Grudgingly, Mirabella gave a shallow curtsy as the Prince halted before her. “Mirabella. Good morning,” he said in a deep, smooth, manly baritone that was every bit as princely as the rest of him. “A lovely day.”
She shrugged. “Eh.”
The Prince raised a royal eyebrow. “Is your sister home?” he inquired, choosing (wisely) to switch from small talk to the real reason for his visit. As much as he tried for Lillian’s sake to get along with Mirabella, he had to confess it was no cakewalk. He could find no common ground with her, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried. Also, he just couldn’t bring himself to look into those empty eyes of hers without shivering—eyes like those he had only ever seen on dead people. So it was, to say the least, disconcerting to see them in her head when she was quite obviously living.
“Yes, she’s home. Locked herself in the house and will not see you,” Mirabella said, trying all the while to snare his gaze. It amused her to watch him try to avoid her eyes. Most—possibly all—people she encountered were repelled by her gaze, but for all his manliness the Prince had an especially tough time of it. The big tough military captain couldn’t even meet her gaze without quaking in his shiny boots? She sneered.
“Ah, your parents are out then?” he asked the space over her left shoulder.
She nodded slightly. “You must have passed right by them on the way here.”
Conroy thought back and remembered that, not far from the turnoff to the farm, he had seen a wagon with two elderly people who were assessing some damage to a broken wheel—the wheel had sustained damage after being driven off the road and into the ditch by his procession. The moment they’d seen him, the couple had fallen to ground, groveling in the dirt like the peasants they were. Well, not dirt. Mud. He had smirked at them as he’d passed, thrown a few coins their way, and not bothered to stop to try to make out the words they’d been speaking into the mud (they were surely too afraid to look up at his Royal Glory to speak in his direction).
Now he wondered if those groveling peasants had been his future in-laws, and if they had been trying to tell him that Lillian and her sister were alone on the farm, and perhaps wondering whether they should abandon their cart and head back home. “Your sister is quite a proper young maiden,” he said, his eyes glittering with love…or something. Twinkle, twinkle.
Mirabella winced.
“Indeed,” she said and pushed at the dirt with the toe of her shoe. Her game had grown old. Small talk, small talk, small t
alk. When would she get the chance to give Farland the latest pouch of powdered asparagus tips she had prepared?
“Perhaps I’ll take a walk through your garden and wait for your parents to return,” the Prince said lamely, growing irritated with conversation with the soulless girl. Small talk, small talk, small talk. Surely he had spoken with her long enough to come across as sociable should Lillian be watching through a window. Yes, he was through, but it would be rude to leave Mirabella with no one to talk to, so he signaled to his friend, Farland. He was a wizard, after all, and thus probably knew about sticky issues like talking to soulless people with fathomless eyes.
As Farland glided toward Mirabella, arms folded and eyes glinting under the hood of his dark cape, Prince Conroy went off to pick some flowers for his love.
Farland’s black eyes met Mirabella’s empty ones, and they both grinned horrifying sorts of grins devoid of anything remotely related to normal smile-inducing things. Mirabella reached into the pocket of her gingham apron and drew out a small pouch, and then, with a cautious glance around, handed it to him, all overly-sneaky and covert. He would only need a bit more powder now. The batch of asparagus she currently had hanging to dry under her bed would be the last of it.
He took the pouch, inclined his head in the direction of the house, and began to move toward it, obviously wanting to speak to her out of earshot of the knights and pages and such who were milling about here and there waiting for the Prince’s date to be over so they could go back home. Farland reached the porch and sat in one of the two matching rocking chairs, looking, again, amazingly out of place. He then proceeded to enhance the effect by actually rocking the rocking chair.
Mirabella joined him on the porch but wouldn’t sully her creepy image by occupying the other chair. “My sister is in the house,” she muttered. “We can’t talk here.”
“Nonsense,” he muttered back. “This is the only shady spot on your whole cursed farm except the stables. You see this cape I’m wearing? I’m not going back out in that sun until I have to. Besides, listen.” He cocked his head in the direction of the house. Mirabella crept to the door and listened. At the opposite side of the house, Mirabella could hear Lillian and the prince talking—they must be conversing through the (probably closed) window on the opposite side of the room.
“They won’t be leaving that spot any time soon,” Farland scoffed, as though Conroy and Lillian were hopelessly pathetic for being in love.
Satisfied they would not be overheard, Mirabella said, “One more pouch of powder should be more than enough.”
“Excellent,” Farland breathed. “Excellent. Just a week or two more and my revenge against Prince Conroy will be complete.”
As Mirabella and Farland talked murder without, Lillian and Prince Conroy talked love within. Though really Lillian was the only one within. The Prince was, indeed, standing on the outer side of the shuttered and locked window, his ear pressed to the rough wood the better to make out the sweet voice of his most darling, adored dream. At that moment, he was exercising every ounce of his considerable princely charm, trying to coax her into opening the window just a crack so he could catch a glimpse of her dear, dear face.
“Of course not!” she gasped, scandalized.
“Please, my dear Lillian,” he pleaded, having at this point abandoned eloquent reasoning and lapsed into whining. “Please, won’t you open the window? Just a tad?”
“No!” she reiterated, then, feeling quite flustered, took flight across the room to distance herself from the temptation that was beginning to stir within her, battling with her desire to maintain her spotless maidenly honor. She would not give in and that was that! No princely wiles and snares would tempt her! Why buy the cow when you could catch an unchaperoned glimpse of it through a window? Or whatever the saying was.
Over the thudding of her goody-goody heart, Lillian heard her sister’s voice through the front door she was now standing by. Then, she heard Farland answer. Farland was her dear Prince’s best friend and had been ever since they were kids. Was there some romance blooming between Farland and her sister? Why, that would be perfect! Lillian fought a hard inner battle against eavesdropping, and the side that deemed eavesdropping wrong won out, so she was about to retreat to yet another part of the room when she heard something that nearly stopped her heart.
“—my revenge against Prince Conroy will be complete,” the wizard said. Like lightning, Lillian darted to the door and listened intently.
“You have no idea,” Mirabella responded, “how... happy... it makes me to be the one to supply you with the powdered asparagus tips that will kill the Royal Family. I’ll be especially happy to know Conroy is dead. Those twinkling eyes are enough to make me scream, and that’s even without having to listen to his inane babbling.”
Lillian gasped and fluttered on wobbly legs back to the window where Conroy was still pleading. She might even have opened the kitchen window (such was the gravity of the situation), but her shaking fingers didn’t allow it. One listen showed her the prince hadn’t even noticed her absence. “—please, it would make my day! No, my week! No, my—-”
“Prince Conroy!” she broke in.
“Yes, my only?”
“Sneak quietly around the front of the house and see if you can hear what the wizard and my sister are talking about. Be cautious! For I fear they are plotting against you!”
Overhear their conversation Conroy did, and the long and short of what he learned from it can be summed up in one handy list:
(1) Mirabella and Farland meant to kill Conroy and his nearest and dearest
(2) Farland was not his best friend in all the world
(3) Lillian had saved his life and the lives of the rest of his family, cementing more than ever in his mind the fact that this was the lady he wanted to spend the rest of his life with
(4) Mirabella was a traitor and must be banished to the Forest of Looming Death
(5) He would have to return the friendship ring he had received from Farland in their youth
Farland and Mirabella stood before Prince Conroy as he paced to and fro, agitated, confused, and, yes, a little broken-hearted for friendship dead and gone. Mirabella’s hands were tied behind her back and she was held in place by a burly soldier about four times her size. Farland was unshackled, but only because it would have been pointless to try, he being a wizard and all. The only reason Farland was still there was because he chose to be, and everyone knew it.
Prince Conroy halted before the prisoners and said, “I never would have believed it if I hadn’t heard it with my own two ears. Especially you, Farland!” His voice rang out with anger and disillusionment. “You were my best friend! Remember when we became blood brothers?” he added, hoping at least to elicit a tiny bit of guilt from Farland.
The wizard smiled a reminiscent smile as he thought back to the day he had talked the Prince into becoming his “blood brother2”.
“Blood brothers? I only did that so I could have easy access to your blood when I needed to cast a spell against you!” he explained. He saw Mirabella raise an impressed eyebrow at him and he felt a glow of pride at his cleverness.
Prince Conroy’s jaw actually dropped as this was revealed. “Really?”
“Of course!” laughed Farland. He found, now that he’d been discovered, he wanted to get everything out in the open. He was disappointed that his lovely plans had been foiled in the eleventh hour by that irritating little harpy Lillian, and he wanted the Prince to know a thing or two before he (Farland) disappeared in a column of smoke. “As if a wizard of my caliber could pass up the chance to have your blood in my veins and thus hold power over you and your offspring for the rest of my life!”
“I—I—” the Prince stuttered, still in a state of surprise. “You can do that?”
Farland nodded.
“But—we were seven years old when we became blood brothe
rs!” he spluttered. “Were we ever friends?”
A noncommittal shrug and an “Eh,” were the only answer he received.
Prince Conroy looked at his ex-or-never-really-friend searchingly, then sighed, and said, “Enough of this. Down to business.” He nodded his head sharply as if in response to some inner pep talk, then continued in a much more commanding tone, “Mirabella, traitor, as of today you are banished to the Forest of Looming Death. Set foot beyond its shades again and you shall be put to death!”
She blinked. Nothing more. No reaction in those empty eyes.
“And you!” Conroy went on, turning to Farland as he tried, unsuccessfully, to tug the ring that the wizard had given him—the one on which was engraved Friends 4 Ever—from his princely finger, “You!”
The ring didn’t budge.
Farland sniggered as he watched the Prince struggle with the ring. He laughed aloud. “You dolt. Friendship ring, my eye! That ring is cursed and will never leave your finger!”
“Cursed? Cursed…how?” asked poor Conroy. What a horrible twist of fate! His best friend in the world was turning out to be maybe his biggest enemy. He had access to Conroy’s blood whenever he needed it for a spell, and now there was a cursed ring too? Talk about overkill.
“Cursed how, you ask? Well—” and here Farland would have polished his nails nonchalantly on his cloak and surveyed them as he leaned casually up against something, if he weren’t standing in the middle of a field—“Let me tell you. I was feeling rather creative the day I dreamed it up.” He gave Mirabella a sidelong look; he knew she’d enjoy this this. He looked back to Conroy. “I’m sure you’d appreciate the cleverness if it weren’t your life being mucked up. Yes, I was feeling creative that day—and vindictive. A nice combination of fuel to get the wheels of revenge turning in the engine of—” The engine of what? He mentally berated himself for attempting to use a metaphor he hadn’t rehearsed ahead of time. “Whatever. Here’s the curse: as long as you wear that ring, your firstborn child will never be able to let sunlight touch their skin. Not a single ray of sunshine. If your first child so much as walks past a curtain that isn’t entirely drawn, death shall be the grand and immediate result.” Farland studied the prince’s reaction, frankly a bit disappointed the royal visage was not a mask of horror.
How to Break an Evil Curse Page 2
