by Erica Ridley
She grinned back at him. “If we escape the curse, they’re yours. I’ve already read them.”
“Nah, I couldn’t.” He turned another page.
She frowned. “You couldn’t what? Read them? Because of the differences in language?”
He glanced up at her in surprise. “I couldn’t take them. They’re not mine.”
“They would be if I gave them to you.”
“But why would you? You love these books. Plus, they’re priceless. ” He narrowed his eyes. “If we do get out of here and I catch you trying to give them to anybody, I promise to lock you back inside the castle.”
“Knave.”
“And worse.” He smiled devilishly.
Her heart fluttered. “What about the Golden Bloom? You were going to take that if you found it.”
“It belonged to no man, remember?” His dark gaze appeared solemn. “Someone may take my life, but I will never give up my honor.”
Marigold crossed her arms. “What about the playing cards? Were you not planning to swindle the patrons of the pubs?”
He burst out laughing. “Swindle? Princess, times have changed. People love to be swindled. They vacation on lavish cruises and spend weeks at expensive casinos, expressly for the experience of being bent over and swindled. As long as you’re up front going in, and say, ‘Two-to-one odds say I can fleece you out of any money you have,’ people will happily go for it, on the off chance that maybe you’re wrong and they can beat the house. It’s all about being one in a million.”
She couldn’t imagine such a world, but ’twas obvious Lance was one in a million. She wished to please him as he had pleased her. “Would you like me to read to you from one of the manuscripts?”
“That might not be necessary. I just found one with some very interesting artwork.” His eyes twinkled at her involuntary blush. “Wanna switch books for the day?”
She frowned. “Switch them with what?”
“Seventy percent battery life, baby.” He reached into one of his pouches and tossed her the smartphone. “Yours, all yours. Passcode is 6174.”
She clutched the smartphone to her chest. A bittersweet mix of happiness and sorrow flowed through her. Now that she held brand new reading material in the palms of her hands, the only thing she truly wished was hers-all-hers stood with his dark head bent over a gold-embossed copy of the Kama Sutra.
Memories of the previous night came flooding back, but he had won her heart much earlier. She’d been lost from the moment he’d invented an art museum just to give her a new experience on her birthday. That told her more about his character than a thousand courtly dances ever could. Lance wasn’t just another explorer. He was flawed and thoughtful and passionate and determined and wonderful.
Forever wouldn’t be so bad if they could share it together.
Chapter 8
Lance leafed through priceless manuscripts until his stomach forced him to the kitchen for a late lunch. Marigold joined him at the table. The fresh bread and spiced stew were just as delicious as the day before, yet he pushed his bowl away after only a single serving. The thought of eating it forever…
Not that he had to worry about that, did he? He might have slipped through the cracks last night, but he clearly hadn’t broken any curses. He wondered if there were any chance for him to survive another night. Evidently no one could beat the curse. There was no strategy to even try.
He decided to go for seconds on the ale. Why not? It would reset at midnight anyway. He was actually kind of surprised Princess Marigold hadn’t become a raging alcoholic. Then again, maybe she had, and gave it up after a century or two. Drinking away troubles probably wouldn’t work any better from inside a cursed castle than it did on the outside.
At the moment, his princess was destroying, rather than eating, a hunk of bread. Jagged pieces littered her plate. He bet she hated bread by now. And stew. And cardamom. If so, he couldn’t blame her.
Not that her limited dining options were the worst part of her curse. He honestly couldn’t imagine which was more horrifying: decades of unending solitude, or the occasional arrival of a visitor who was doomed the moment he stumbled through the door. The temporary interruption would make the passage of time all the more real—and the subsequent lack of company all the more painful. She would be reminded all over of everything she was missing. Everyone she had lost.
She nodded toward his empty bowl. “Sated so soon?”
“Just saving room for dinner.”
“Splendid. Tonight’s the castle specialty: day-old stew.”
“Ooh, my favorite.”
He made no move to rise from the table. He was too transfixed by the picture she made before him. A beautiful princess, swathed in jewels and silk, picking apart a chunk of bread at a scarred wooden table. Someone ought to paint her. The sadness in her eyes would break any museum-goer’s heart.
She frowned and pushed away her plate of bread. “What are you thinking?”
“Just that I wish I could paint you.” He saw no reason to add the rest.
To his surprise, a smile lit her face and she leaped up from her stool. “Then come. I’ve an easel and paints in the upper observatory.”
“Observatory?” He rose to his feet and offered her his arm. “You’re a fellow stargazer?”
“I gaze upon everything,” she said wryly. “On a clear day, one can see o’er the cliffs to the city below. I have watched rolling hills become farmland, farms make way for towns, and towns grow into cities. Lately, ’tis nigh impossible to see much more than a low gray cloud.”
“Smog,” he groaned. “Sorry about that. Probably doesn’t make you feel much better to know we can’t observe anything from down there, either. At least you’re up high, I guess. I know people who have never seen the stars.”
She stared at him, aghast. “You navigate solely by compass?”
“GPS,” he corrected. “Which isn’t always an improvement.”
When he entered the observatory, the view stole his breath. The observatory was the highest level of the castle, even higher than the towers and turrets marking the four corners of the exterior walls. With nothing but clear ice overhead and comprising all four exterior walls, it was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree bird’s-eye view stretching for miles.
Miles and miles of smog.
“It’s like having your own Space Needle,” he told her, impressed. “You can see how completely we’ve ruined the environment. The only things piercing the smog are the skyscrapers. There isn’t a speck of green in any direction.”
“Portraits are much nicer with grass in the background,” she agreed. Small stools dotted the entire perimeter of the room, but she chose one between the easel and the outer wall. She nodded toward the easel. “Feel free to use as much paint as you wish.”
He inspected the paint set on a small table beside the easel. He selected his first color. If Marigold wanted grass, he would give her grass. Reality be damned.
Half an hour later, he declared his masterpiece complete and motioned her over. Clapping her hands in excitement, she sprang up from her wooden stool and bounced over to see how he’d chosen to depict her.
Her confusion was palpable.
“’Tis… modern art?” she guessed hopefully.
“I like to think of it as modified minimalism.” He began to point out the key characteristics. “The top half is blue, because the sky sometimes is blue. The bottom half is green, to symbolize the grass we’ve now lost.”
“And the little yellow circle with the long, pink X beneath?”
“That’s you!” He placed his hands on his hips and scowled at her. “Obviously.”
She shoved him out of the way. “Go sit, Botticelli. My turn to paint.”
He instantly obeyed. Although she wouldn’t recognize his face-on-hand, elbow-on-knee pose as belonging to The Thinker, Lance hoped it made him look more profound than her average would-be hero.
She set his canvas on the floor and placed a new one o
n the easel. When she selected a brush with one hand and lifted the palette in the other, enough mischief sparkled in her eyes to warn him she fully intended to one-up his masterpiece with an even more ridiculous one of her own.
He grinned at her. Challenge accepted. Very few people were more ridiculous than he was.
Paint began to fly at the canvas, speckling the ground and her nose, providing an ’80s-flashback splatter look to her medieval tunic. Lance now suspected his painting would legitimately be the better of the two. He wasn’t sure if that meant he’d won or lost the game.
In no time at all, she set down her brush and palette and called him over. He could hardly wait to see what she’d painted. Smiling in anticipation, he jogged back over to the other side of the easel.
The smile wiped from his face the moment he saw what she’d done.
Her haphazard brushstrokes had actually signified an impressionist style not unlike Degas or Cézanne, giving a dreamy not-quite-real quality to the portrait.
She hadn’t placed him in the observatory, or even on a chair—he was astride a white stallion, clad in his black superhero gear, holding a jousting lance in the hand closest to the viewer. His other hand was just overhead, as if waving.
He was outside the castle in some sort of huge arena, filled to overflowing with thousands of onlookers. The sky above was a clear, crisp blue, with only a few wispy clouds. The grass beneath the horse’s hooves was thick and lush.
The only other item in the foreground was a young woman with long, flowing hair standing before the mounted knight with her arms outstretched in offering.
Marigold. Crowned and resplendent.
The wind had just plucked what appeared to be a hair-ribbon from her fingers, but the swirl of bright blue seemed destined for the knight’s open hand. A gift from her to him. The knight had won her favor.
Lance glanced down at her, words that usually came easily failing him completely.
“’Tis my ribbon. For luck.” Marigold’s voice cracked. “A lady bestows her token upon the knight she hopes will come back home to her.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her fiercely. He wished he could promise to come home to her. He wished he could whisk her and this painting free from the curse and out of the castle forever.
The princess was way out of his league and would have no use for a driftless soldier-of-fortune once she had the entire world at her fingertips, but Lance knew precisely where he’d hang this painting, if he could keep it. Right above The Lost Triptych of Atlantis in the galley of his pirate ship.
That way no matter where Marigold went after she left him, he would always carry a part of her with him.
Chapter 9
By the time night fell, the stress of not knowing whether he’d be alive the next morning was driving Lance out of his skin.
When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he gathered up his belongings and a few makeshift picnic supplies from the kitchen, and ushered Marigold into the solar to await midnight’s inevitable arrival. She could not have been less excited.
She frowned up at him, her eyes entreating. “Why must we remain here? This chamber fills me with naught but dread and sorrow. Can we not await the toll of the bells in some other chamber?”
“Nope.” He spread a wool blanket before the tree and plopped down. He gestured to the grandfather clock along one wall. “This is the only room with a mechanical clock, so it’s the only place we can actually see my life dwindling. More importantly, it’s the holidays. And holidays ought to be spent by a tree.” He glanced down at the sorry-looking picnic. “The day-old bread is kind of optional.”
With a sigh, she moved the loaves to the other side of the blanket and nestled against him.
She made no move toward breaking the bread. Neither did he. For possibly the first time in his life, he wasn’t hungry. She laid her head on his shoulder and he pulled her into his arms. It felt so good to hold her. It was likely also very selfish, since moments like these would only make it harder for her once he was gone. He snuggled her closer anyway. He couldn’t help it. This was their last opportunity.
He pressed a kiss into her hair and tried not to be royally depressed. The whole situation sucked. Marigold was awesome, but she was stuck in a castle he couldn’t get her out of.
His throat tightened as a worse realization dawned. Even if he could break the curse, then what? He’d be free and she’d be free, but they still couldn’t be together. Not with the bounty on his head. He couldn’t risk something happening to Marigold. If he somehow got out of there without turning into a Christmas ornament, his best bet was to take to the open sea and never come back.
In other circumstances, he’d love nothing more than to invite her along for the journey. But it wouldn’t be fair to her either way. She didn’t want to be confined within four walls ever again. And if a seventy-acre castle felt claustrophobic, a fifty-square-foot cabin out in the middle of the ocean wouldn’t be much of an improvement. Parting ways would be the best thing for Marigold in every sense.
The tree came back into focus and he scowled. Why angst over it? They’d soon be parting ways whether they liked it or not.
“Tell me about some of these ornaments,” he said, to distract them both from the countdown. He rose to his feet and stepped closer to inspect the tree. “What’s with the squirrel and other animals?”
“The hunting dog and the wolf pups belonged to my cousins. As for the birds…” She joined him next to the tree. “You recall that I mentioned once spying a nest of sparrows atop the roof? Occasionally, a bird finds its way down a chimney. I have no way to set them free, so on the morrow a new figurine appears upon the tree. Same with the squirrel. Animal or human, once you’re in, there’s no way out.”
Lance considered the lifeless ornaments. They didn’t fill him with Christmas cheer. He tried not to focus on what it meant for him. “The bird over there by the bishop looks more like a parrot than a sparrow. Was this area known for its parrot population before modern technology came along and ruined everything?”
“No,” she said with a sad little smile. “Hildegard was a birthday gift when I turned sixteen. I kept her in a golden cage.” She closed her eyes as if in pain. “I’ll never do that again.”
He hugged her tight. “You didn’t know.”
She made no answer. Her face was buried in his shirt.
He reached over her shoulder to straighten what looked like a samurai ornament. Had explorers really come all the way from Japan?
The moment his fingertips touched the figurine, a bolt of electricity blazed through his arm and shot him halfway across the room.
He ended up sliding on his back in the middle of the room with the wind knocked out of him, arms and legs at all angles and his shoulder throbbing like the devil.
“What. The hell. Was that?”
Marigold picked herself up from where she’d fallen. “I told you not to touch them.”
“You didn’t say they would attack me!”
“’Tis the curse. The figurines mayn’t be handled.” She shivered at some old memory. “’Twas part of my torture. That first night, I tried to take my parents back to my chamber so they could watch o’er me as I slept. I ended up four paws to the heavens, every muscle aflame. Just as you did.”
“Good Lord.” He tried to shake the burning sensation from his shocked-stiff arm. Failing that, he pushed to his knees and half-crawled back to the blanket. He left the tree alone. He wouldn’t be making that mistake again.
Marigold glanced over at the mechanical clock on the far wall.
He flopped onto his back and stretched his sore muscles. “How we doing on time?”
“Half eleven.”
Thirty minutes? He sat up fast enough to make his head spin and swung his head toward the clock. Thirty minutes wasn’t nearly enough time. Even as he watched, the hour hand slipped a little closer to midnight. He frowned. Actually, there was only an hour hand. Had minute hands not been invented yet in he
r world? How did anybody get anywhere on time if they couldn’t be more specific than on the hour? Did the concept of being on time even exist? Maybe they—
He clapped his palm over his face. Focus. This wasn’t the moment to channel Curious George. This was the moment to channel Houdini. What Lance needed was a quite literal eleventh-hour plan to save his life.
He yanked his belongings into his lap and began to go through each loop and pocket. The flame swords had already proven their uselessness against the curse. What else? Gloves, flares, blanket, snowshoes, spellbook…
Spellbook?
He pushed everything else out of his lap. At the time, he’d considered the spellbook to be the least useful of the all items Sancho had given him. But now that Lance suspected the only way to fight magic was with magic, a spellbook seemed like just the ticket. He opened the leather cover to the title page and read:
* * *
Bartlett’s Compendium
of Quotes & Curses
* * *
Not a spellbook. A scholarly collection of notable quotations. No remedies.
He slammed the cover shut. Of all the useless… After counting to ten, he reopened it. And heaved a dramatic sigh.
“Gracias, cabrón,” he muttered under his breath. Figured. It had probably been too much to hope for a “How to Escape an Inescapable Prison” spell.
He flipped to the first page and began to read.
* * *
“Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
— Benjamin Franklin
* * *
There. That was helpful. He slammed the book back shut with a growl. These weren’t even magical quotations? If he got out of there alive, his first step would be to kick Sancho’s ass.
“A book!” Marigold snuggled up beside him. “I didn’t know you had this. What is it about?”
