by Erica Ridley
Stalwart, she chastised herself. No amount of brawn or swagger is worth the pain of loss. Strangers ye be, and strangers ye must remain.
When at last they reached the kitchen, she motioned him onto a wooden stool near the sideboard. There were no peasants to serve them, and Marigold had long since lost her insistence upon lavish dining environs at the sumptuous table she’d once shared with her family.
How it would have amused her friends to see the princess who refused to sup from anything but the finest silver now bend her royal head over a simple trencher without embarrassment!
“This stew is perfect,” Lance said, somewhere between his second and third rations. “Such a wide array of spices. What all do you put in it?”
She stared back at him in silence. No one had asked her that before, largely because a princess would never have the remotest idea how scullions and sauciers performed their tasks. Marigold was no exception.
“Cumin, I think,” he decided on his own. “And maybe cardamom. Good stuff.”
“You… cook?” she asked in surprise.
He glanced at her askance. “Why wouldn’t I? I wasn’t always a soldier of fortune, but I’ve always had to eat. I bussed tables in high school and landed a food critic gig for the local Buzzfeed branch during my university years. It’s amazing what you can learn about food preparation from being in the trenches, but being paid to eat was a dream come true. I bet I had memorized every menu in a three-hundred-mile radius.”
“You were… paid?” she echoed, appalled. “To eat?”
“Hedonistic perfection,” he agreed in happy remembrance. “Being a mercenary is much more lucrative, of course. And much more exciting than exploring local restaurants. I never had to kill anyone at Taco Town.”
Although Marigold could not conceive what sort of lord would pay his vassals to consume their meals, she had a healthy respect for warriors. Strength of body and character were qualities she greatly admired. Soldiers were strong of limb and loyal of heart. For her, that above all else was what determined whether a man could be found attractive.
Not that she should be finding this one attractive.
And fascinating.
To keep from mortifying herself with continued staring, she rose from the sideboard and busied herself washing her goblet and spoon. ’Twas the first dish she had washed in her entire life, which only proved how dire her straits were becoming.
This Lance would cease to exist when the bells tolled midnight, she reminded herself. The last thing she needed was to miss him. She had a plethora of things—and people—to pine for already. She would shatter if she added another to the list.
When her heart was properly hardened, she turned away from the wash bucket and faced the sideboard.
Lance poked at another of his strange devices. This one, a palm-sized rectangle with a smooth reflective surface awash with shapes and colors, did not seem to be of the explosive variety. Verily, she could discern no purpose to the gadget whatsoever, save for increasing the frown lines on his forehead.
As if sensing her gaze upon him, Lance dropped the rectangle upon the sideboard and pushed to his feet. He was wrist-deep in the wash bucket by the time she realized he actually meant to clean his own utensils. Her mouth fell open. If a princess playing at scullion boggled the mind, seeing a man—a warrior—
Her gaze locked on the strange necklet about his throat. A length of twine threaded what appeared to be bits of animal bone. Its ivory facets provided the sole respite from unremitting black upon his person.
To be so different, the charms must have deep importance. And as much as she knew that personal questions would only lead her further down the dark path to emotional connection, she was struck with the fancy that, of everything in his arsenal, this item would most fully reveal him to her.
“Your necklet,” she said softly, resisting the urge to run her fingertips against it. “Were the bones taken as tokens of your kills?”
“You think it’s real bone?” He slid a finger beneath the studded twine and shrugged. “Maybe. It’s still bunk, though. Supposed to bind me to the thing I value most.” The light dulled from his eyes.
She gazed up at him in surprise. “And that is a bad thing?”
“It would’ve been a great thing if what I valued most was my pirate ship. But I’m beginning to suspect I ended up binding myself to my smartphone.” He stepped around her to retrieve the now-blank rectangle from the sideboard. He glowered at it. “Not the smartphone itself. What’s on it. I tried to fight it, but…” He heaved a great sigh, as if about to impart a shocking confession. “Here’s the thing. I’m addicted to Candy Crush: Warlock Edition.” He pressed a button and the smooth panel lit back up. “I’ve got battery left, but no wifi. How’s a guy supposed to brag about what level he’s on without wifi?”
She stared at him, mystified. She couldn’t fathom what any part of his explanation meant, but she had to start somewhere. She settled on asking, “What’s wifi?”
“The devil,” he said with feeling. “The internet is a plague. Rampant wifi access has infected every square foot of developed land across the globe and transformed all remaining humans into zombies. The only place to escape its omnipotent rays is out on the open sea.” The fierceness evaporated from his face and he lifted his uninjured shoulder in a careless shrug. “But since my boat’s on layaway, I play Candy Crush. Wanna try?”
She did not reach for the device. Living through the Black Death had been more than enough plague exposure for a lifetime. She tried to recall what else he’d said. “It’s the… thing you value most?”
“Naw, I hate this game.” He shoved the device out of sight in one of his many hidden pouches. “It’s more a compulsion than actual fun. But Sancho’s on level seventy, and—” He broke off with a growl and lifted both hands to his neck as if intending to rip the bone necklet right from his throat. In the end, he lowered his hands back to his sides and looked at her bleakly. “I really thought this necklace would bind me to freedom. He said it would work. I believed him. But that door… I’m pretty sure I fractured my collarbone trying to bust my way out. And yet here we are.” He flashed an overlarge smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Guess it’s a slumber party.”
She stepped toward him for a closer look at the necklet. “’Tis a talisman?”
He shrugged with his good shoulder. “I thought so. Sancho still thinks so. He’d never lie to me. He’s my best friend. But he also believes everything he sees on TV. Especially if the spokesperson’s an ex-football star. Sancho wouldn’t be underwater on his mortgage if he laid off the infomercials. This thing’s probably as magical as a microfiber blanket is dragon-proof.”
A laugh startled from Marigold’s throat. “There’s no such thing as dragons.”
Lance’s mouth fell open. “Seriously? You’re trapped in an enchanted castle and you’re going to quibble about the existence of dragons?”
Forced to concede the point, she grinned up at him despite herself. “If it be worthless, why do you not remove the necklet?”
“My best friend gave it to me,” he said simply, eyes sad but his resolve firm. “Just because it’s not magical, doesn’t mean it’s worthless.”
His simple words pierced her with the force of a thousand blades.
She deeply understood the need to cling to any reminder of who she’d been and what she’d lost.
In sooth, she and loss were intimate companions. No matter how small or mundane, every reminder of her former life was dear to her heart. A precious link to what she loved most and could never again have. For that alone, she would never part with the figurines in the solar. They were all she had left of her family. The only things that mattered.
His brown eyes sharpened as if they could peer right into her soul. “Enough about me. Tell me about Princess Marigold. How are you? Who are you? Have you ever been on a pirate ship?”
“Nay, though ’twas my lifelong dream to someday see the ocean.” The wistfulness va
nished from her voice as the memories flooded back. She’d had so many dreams.
Her father had broken all of them. Out of fear of losing his beloved daughter, he’d intended to betroth her to a neighboring prince of an equally landlocked kingdom on the morning after her birthday. Curse or not, Marigold had been doomed to spend the rest of her days shuttered within a castle. Mayhap there was no escaping Fate.
“I was very privileged,” she said at last, once renewed grief and frustration had lessened enough to let her speak. “I was not just a princess, but an only child, born to an older king and queen who had despaired of begetting heirs at all. They cherished me more than life itself. I was as coddled and spoiled as you could surmise. Likely more so. As a child, I had maids and tutors and dolls and pets. Cake with every meal, were it what I pleased. Once I was grown, I had gowns and dances and handmaidens and suitors and the most ostentatious library in all the kingdom. Every knight jousted for my ribbon. Every peasant girl dreamed of being the beloved Princess Marigold. Then one day, I awoke to an empty castle and couldn’t get out.” She smiled, but like him, she knew her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “And now here we are.”
To her surprise, he appeared neither curious nor sympathetic. Instead, his eyes held hers with intense concentration, as if weighing each of her words for merit and truth. In the end, he shook his head. “No.”
She blinked. “No?”
He shook his head more firmly. “Nope. You’re talking about yourself as if you were dead. Past tense. Over. But however long that part of your life lasted, it’s a tiny fraction of your past. A blink. I can’t meet that Princess Marigold. I don’t even want to. I’m meeting you. Who are you now? Today? You’re not a girl who teases knights with hair ribbons. You’re a woman who has survived centuries trapped in an enchanted castle and managed to remain sane and intelligent and witty. That’s the only Marigold I’m interested in. The real you.”
It was long moments before her jaw worked again, and even still, no words came to mind in answer. It was as if this Lance with his strange garments and gadgets had taken a battering ram to the walls supporting her world, and broken straight through in a single drive.
He was right. He was actually right, but she could not fully grasp it. That girl she’d been—for nineteen short years—had nothing on the centuries Marigold now counted to her name.
She’d learned more about herself in the first few days of the curse than she had in the two decades leading up to it. She’d learned more about life, about what she could do, what she was made of, than she’d ever dreamed. And in all that time, the possibility that she was in any way better off, somehow a better person, had never once entered her mind.
“I’m stronger,” she answered slowly, warming to the idea. “Not in body, but in every way that matters. I’m smarter. The library I’d once had for show is now my favorite chamber in the keep. I can quote from most anything. And… I can shoot a grape at a hundred paces.” Her voice grew bolder as the words tumbled free. “A few knights left their quivers of arrows, and I practice every day. I also dabble in art. It doesn’t come naturally. I had to teach myself to understand color, force myself to practice until the image on the canvas was as clear as the one in my mind. As to other skills, should I be presented with dice or playing cards, I will annihilate any knave in the game of his choosing.” Her lips curved. This time, her smile shone true.
Lance grinned back at her. “See? That’s a much better bio. Write that one down. I’d swipe right for sure.”
“Nothing can be swiped from this castle,” she reminded him. “Are you done eating, wastrel? I cannot withstand much more of the cauldron’s heat.”
“That’s because you’re bundled up like an Eskimo. I’m guessing spaghetti straps haven’t become a ‘thing’ yet in this neck of the woods?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. She had no idea what Eskimos or spaghetti straps were, and she was beginning to suspect these lapses in communication weren’t as innocent as she’d thought. By the wicked gleam in his eye, the scoundrel had been peppering his speech with such nonsense just to vex her.
“I shall return forthwith.” She turned and strode toward the kitchen door. “I wish to remove some of these tunics.”
He was right on her heels, his eyes alight with roguery. “Oh, I’ll happily come along for that.”
She let him follow as far as her bedchamber, but bade him wait outside the door whilst she attended to soap-and-water.
“Was that a bed I saw in there?” he called through the closed door.
“Aye,” she called back as she donned a fresh tunic. “’Tis my bedchamber, or have you already forgotten?”
“I’m just wondering why it’s one of the only furnished rooms in the castle. I’m assuming you were rich Princess Marigold, not poor Princess Marigold. What with being spoiled rotten and all. So… where’s all your stuff?”
She twisted her long hair back into place and pulled open the door. “Papa sold it.”
“He sold the furniture?”
“He sold the castle. At least, he intended to. I was born on Yule, the night of the winter solstice. A magical time, and considered a fine omen. I was to be betrothed the day after my birthday, and he and Mama had secured a newer castle much closer to my forthcoming home. They could not stand to be far from their only daughter.”
“Wait… what? You were getting married? What happened to that guy?”
“I never met him. Papa chose for me. Only a prince would do. I could not have hoped for a better match. But the prince lived a fair distance away. Plans were made to sell our keep to a young queen in another kingdom. Items of value were being transported to my parents’ new castle.”
He made a face. “I bet you loved that.”
“I refused to go. I was not to wed for several more months, and I’d no wish to give up my beloved castle. ’Twas the only home I had ever known, and I could not stomach the thought of it beneath the control of a stranger. Luckily, I convinced Papa to change his mind.”
“You forced a king to renege on a deal he’d made with royalty from another kingdom?”
“I mentioned that I was spoiled,” she muttered.
“So, I’m guessing this queen is the one who put the voodoo whammy on you?”
“Aye.” Marigold let out a sigh. “She was displeased with my treachery.”
He seemed to think that over. “All this was supposed to take place the morning after your birthday, which coincides with the holiday season. And guess what? It’s the winter solstice today, too.”
She frowned. “So?”
“So, it’s your birthday!”
She rolled her eyes. “’Tis always my birthday.”
He stared at her. “What does that even mean? Never mind, don’t tell me. No humbugs allowed. You’re getting cake, and you’ll like it. Except we don’t have any cake, so we’ll have to make do with bread. How many candles do we need? Were you turning… twenty-three or twenty-four? You can’t be much older than that.”
“’Twas the eve of my twentieth year.”
He recoiled as if she’d sprouted baby teeth and pigtails. “Good Lord. You’re nineteen?”
“I’m six hundred and nineteen,” she reminded him. “Give or take a few decades.”
He wavered, then nodded. “True. That’s a long time to be cursed. I’m sure you’ve tried everything one person could possibly try, but… Have you considered fighting magic with magic?”
She frowned. “How?”
“I don’t know. It just sounded good. That kind of thing always works in Disney movies. Magic pumpkins, magic feathers… Prince Charming’s magic lips.”
“Magic lips?”
“If you’re animated, most of your problems can be solved by smooching a stranger.” He paused, thoughtfully. “Or a frog. I’d give one a kiss myself just to try it.”
“I don’t have any frogs,” Marigold said inanely. She wasn’t thinking about frogs at all. She was thinking about magic lips. Lance’s potentia
lly magic lips.
After all, she’d never been kissed. Or smooched, as he put it. She was as pure as the cursed snow. Not for lack of opportunity, particularly at royal balls. She’d fought off plenty of advances over the years, but no man had caught her fancy.
Until Lance.
“We should try it,” she announced before she could change her mind.
He stared at her as if she’d lost hers. “Finding frogs?”
“Kissing.”
This time, he didn’t speak at all… but his eyes spoke for him. They turned stormy. Heated. He might not be thinking about magic, but he was definitely thinking about kissing.
She lowered her voice and lifted her chin to bring her mouth a little closer. “’Tis my birthday, remember? The favor I bid of you is a simple kiss.”
Before he had a chance to reject the notion, she rose upon her toes and pressed her lips to his.
His lips were warm, firm. Surprised. A blush raced up her neck and over her cheeks, and she lowered herself back to her heels. It had been quick, but worth it. She held no regrets.
“I thank you for the birthday kiss,” she mumbled without meeting his eyes.
He growled, “If you’re going to thank me, you’re damn well going to get a real kiss.”
With that, his mouth covered hers. His fingers slid into her hair, cradling her close. She leaned into him. His lips were warm and inviting. She was once again on her toes, this time with her arms twined about his neck, their bodies flush tight. The material of his tunic was as thin as it looked, the muscles beneath as hard and as strong as she’d imagined.
His mouth covered hers again and again, teasing and tasting. When his tongue licked the edge of her lips, she gasped—and his tongue swept inside. A strange, exhilarating pressure began to build deep inside her. Heat spread out from her core, warming her belly, and dampening between her legs.
She clung to him now not out of curiosity, but out of necessity. Her eyes had fluttered closed and all she knew, all she could feel was him. His mouth over hers, his hands in her hair, his wicked, wicked tongue muddling her thoughts and making her press ever closer against him. Her nipples scraped her thin tunic as if hardened to diamond points.
