by Laura Kenyon
Pretty soon, she heard a door close inside and knew Day was about to nab the shower.
“Do you feel any better?” Dawn whispered, evoking an unconvincing, “Mmm hmm.”
“Would it help if I let you take a bubble bath in the clawfoot tub this morning?” Dawn raised an eyebrow as Morning craned around to look at her. It was the sort of bribe she used to make when the kids were toddlers, navigating those terrible twos and treacherous threes. “If you hurry, you can soak for a full twenty minutes before you need to eat breakfast and get dressed.”
Morning’s bewildered look grew into a mischievous smile. “How about half an hour and I stay home today? We can go shopping in Carpale and get our nails done and have a girls’ day.”
Dawn smiled but shook her head. “That sounds amazing,” she told her little litigator, “but I have to meet your father at Selladóre in a few hours.”
“Selladóre? Again?” Morning had turned all the way around now, and was looking suspiciously at her mother. Dawn eyed her suspiciously back, before remembering that they’d visited the island together just three days earlier, under the guise of making secret inspections. Really, Dawn had just wanted company while she tried to decide what to do about Davin. It had been the first time she set foot there since her parents’ funeral, however, so returning again so soon did sound a little cagey. “What for?” she pressed.
Seeing no good answer—and terrified that Morning might spot something odd between her and Davin, or between Davin and Hunter if she tagged along—Dawn kissed her daughter on the cheek and told her she absolutely couldn’t miss school again. “Move now and I’ll let you eat breakfast in the tub,” she said. “Oatmeal with blueberries. Half an hour of bubbles. Final offer.”
“Deal,” Morning said, hopping to her feet and racing to the door. But the second she slid it open, she spun back around and called for her mother again.
Dawn pulled to her feet and picked her mug up from the railing. “Yes dear?”
“What do you and Dad keep looking at over there?”
“Over where honey?”
“Over there,” Morning replied, raising a finger toward the northeast corner of the balcony—raising a finger toward Davin. Dawn froze. “At the woods. Is something going on there? I thought that area was protected from construction.”
Dawn stumbled over a few incomprehensible words, then stumbled over her foot as she tried to continue forward. “No, I, umm.” Her mind was suddenly mush. “I was just checking that side of the castle,” she lied. “Your father thought he saw a bird’s nest on one of the ledges.”
“Did you see anything?” Morning asked, her voice suddenly full of pep.
Dawn shrugged, crossed onto the travertine tile, and slid the door shut. She could hear the shower running in Morning and Day’s wing. “Nope,” she said, shaking her head and guiding Morning toward the master bath. “Nothing of importance.”
* * *
The press conference at Selladóre went as well as anyone who knew better could have hoped. The ferries shuttled according to schedule. Every seat in the brand new 12,000-seat amphitheater was taken. The sun added a layer of warmth to an otherwise chilly late September day. The media, having been given embargoed press releases the previous afternoon, came out in droves. Angus Kane spoke reverently about the late king and queen, as well as the “fortitude” of the Selladórean people. Dawn smiled, convincingly, as she accepted the ceremonial “keys” to her homeland on behalf of the new Perdemi-Tirion Corporation. The crowd cheered with such force, residents of uptown Carpale reported feeling a minor earthquake. And, most importantly, neither Hunter nor Davin attempt to kill each other.
Standing between them on that twenty-first century stage adjacent to the eighteenth century square where she and Davin played as children, had been the most surreal, uncomfortable thing she’d ever experienced. But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was the fact that everyone with a notepad or a microphone believed it was one of the happiest days in Dawn Tirion’s life. A princess vindicated, they said. A people restored. A fracture stitched.
But as the crowd broke into garrulous clumps and Dawn stood at the foot of the stage, watching Hunter and Davin pose for a few additional photos, she knew it was nothing of the sort. What Selladóre really wanted, much more than an upgraded steward, was its identity back. It wanted its royal family and its flag and its culture without the added flair of a corporate sponsor.
“So how does it feel?” someone asked, sidling up behind her.
Dawn pasted on her smile and turned around, expecting to see a cameraman or a jittery reporter with a cardboard-backed steno pad. But instead, the flip of her head brought her face-to-face with the man she secretly wanted to lock in the stockades—reproductions of which were currently holding a grinning adolescent girl and a boy offering a double thumbs up.
“Oh. Hello Angus,” she said, trying her best not to growl as he parked his walking stick between his shoes and leaned into it, his bony fingers covering the marbleized purple sphere on top. As usual, he was wearing a ridiculous fedora on his head and dressed as if hell was about to freeze over, in a knee-length maroon overcoat with black velvet trim. Even a woman born three centuries earlier knew his style was outdated. “How does what feel?” she asked.
Angus smirked and eyed the men on the stage. “Oh come now,” he said, nudging with his elbow, as if they had some sort of candid relationship. “Such a beautiful reunion after so many years apart. And you know what they say about true love…”
He trailed off as Dawn’s bottom lip curled in and her top teeth pinned it down. A bolt of terror and anger raced up her spine and shot into all ten fingernails. What did he know? What had Davin told him? What did that vindictive, social-climbing opportunist tell her greatest enemy about their relationship?
“Actually I don’t know what to say,” Dawn answered, feeling suddenly nauseous. “I’m not very good at twenty-first century catchphrases.”
Angus sucked on his lips as if trying to clear a shard of spinach from his teeth. She thought she detected a minor shrug of amusement. “Well, people say true love starts at home, of course. That, and it never dies.” His head tipped toward the stage again, toward Davin. “So you must be over the moon about getting your true love back.”
Dawn made her face so hard, it probably could have cut glass. “True love is a misnomer,” she replied, her words sharp and short. She kept her gaze forward—at Hunter—while the shadowy figure in her peripheral vision tilted its head. Then it pivoted ninety degrees and stared at her. “If it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t be love to begin with. And my love belongs with my husband.”
“Of course it does,” Angus said. “But certainly you can love both a man and a place.”
She faltered. “What?”
“Selladóre,” he clarified, though something about his tone kept her on guard. “You must be overjoyed about its return. But that’s reassuring to hear about your marriage. With all that’s been going on lately, I don’t think the monarchies could take another rift.”
Dawn grabbed a chunk of her peach eyelet skirt and balled it up in her hand. The last thing she wanted was to stand there trading thinly veiled threats with Angus Kane. She wanted to let him have it. She wanted to tell him that she knew he didn’t take Hunter to Selladóre that day to scout its real estate potential. She knew he brought Hunter to break her curse while he was wafting some smelling salts under Davin’s nose and whisking him away to Pastora.
But instead of launching into an emotional tirade, she put on her political face and took aim at his statement about the monarchies.
“Oh come now,” Angus said, chuckling. “Surely you’ve read the papers.”
“I have. Braddax and Tantalise are working through some things, sure. But what’s wrong with the other three?”
“Oh, my dear,” he said, causing the blood to boil up to her eyeballs. “You may be able to fool the cameras with the whole out-of-place ingénue act, but I know there’
s more to you than that. Surely you must see that Riverfell is a civil war just waiting to happen. When in history has one brother stepped aside from the throne and been permanently happy with that decision? Carter LeBlanche may not think so now, but one day he’ll regret it—especially if my niece wakes up and realizes he’s given away her only chance at becoming a queen. And as for Carpale…” He trailed off as his eyes swept the cobblestones beneath them. “Well, I fear the Charmés’ second honeymoon may have been a cover-up for their abdication.”
“You know that’s not true,” Dawn snapped, immediately wanting to take it back. But the cat was out of the bag now. The mask was lowered. Guns were drawn.
Angus shifted half his weight off the cane and pressed a palm into his chest. He looked like an understudy attempting to act shocked. “Dawn,” he said, shaking his head. “You hurt me. What reason would I have to make something like that up? It’s terrible to think King Aaron and Queen Cinderella may have abandoned us. But frankly, the other conclusion is even worse. It’s not like them to remain in the shadows with everything that’s happened over the past few days. Nor is it in character for them to let weeks pass without contacting their children. Now, I’ve kept this from the public so as not to cause alarm, but my office has been searching tirelessly to find them, all to no avail.”
Dawn swallowed and looked around, struggling to keep her anger under wraps.
“As a regular man lifted to my elected office by the people,” he continued, “I understand I may not be as glittery as your comrades, born on silk sheets in towering castles, but I only have Marestam’s best interest at heart. And my heart tells me the people are uneasy about their future. You, on the other hand, should be proud. At the moment, Regian is the only one that appears stable. I can only imagine what would happen if scandal overshadowed your kingdom too. If, say, the people found out you were harboring a deep, dark secret or had been unfaithful to their king.” He paused, as if to let his words sink in. “Thankfully, I know you would never do such a thing. It’s just not in your nature.”
Dawn sucked her lip up between her teeth. Was that a threat? Was he telling her that if she defied him in any way, her affair would be the straw that broke the camel’s back? That the eighteenth century princess would drive the final stake through Marestam’s heart? She needed to leave. She needed to get Angus out of strangling distance. She needed to find Elmina Goodman, tell her about the triad, and skin this upright snake before it was too late.
Muttering something about using the ladies’ room, Dawn bid him a quick farewell and whipped around. Before she knew it, she was scuttling down the theatre’s crowded aisles, shuffling out into the square, and sliding through a side door of the castle without catching anyone’s eye. Aside from a pair of teenagers kissing beneath a portrait of her great grandmother, the main hall was empty. She tiptoed her way into the ballroom, took fifty-seven paces, and pried open a hidden door that accessed a vast network of secret passageways stretching from the basement dungeon all the way to the highest turret. At the seventh breakaway, she veered west and followed a narrow, meandering, pitch-black hallway that stopped at a windowed loft tucked inside her father’s library.
Centuries earlier, this was where she’d come to hide, cry, or simply clear her head. There were books to read, a hammock to relax in, and a window through which she could watch what was going on in the square below. The only other people who knew about it were her father (who told her about it in the first place) and Davin (who often met her here in their later, less discreet years).
She was only there for a few minutes, her forehead pressed into the stained glass porthole and her eyes closed, when the sound of footsteps made her heart skip three beats.
“Oh. Sorry,” Davin said as she spun around, catching only his back as he tried to retreat right back into the tunnel. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Dawn hesitated for a second, then darted after him.
“Wait,” she called, reaching for his shirt but hooking his waistband instead. She let go immediately, but he’d already stopped. “I need to talk to you.” She felt the butterflies return to her stomach as he about-faced, his hazel eyes panning over the hammock in the corner and the reading pillows lining the floor.
“What did you tell Angus about us?” she blurted before he could even begin to get the wrong idea.
Davin’s eyes grew two sizes in an instant, then just as quickly sucked back into tiny little beads. “Are you serious?” He looked significantly more fatigued in this light than he had on stage—with all the camera flashes and that huge, pearly smile. He shook his head, looked away, pinched the bridge of his nose . . . and then shook his head again. “Geez Dawn, your opinion of me really has plummeted, hasn’t it? Do you really think I’d go gossiping about us to the prime minister because you chose your husband over me? What do you think I am, a twelve-year-old girl?”
“I’m sorry,” she said without thinking. But then she played Angus’s comments back in her head and decided the time for pity had passed. “No, I mean, I’m not saying you swapped kissing stories. But he knew about your father and when the curse was supposed to break and where to find you. It’s not outside the realm of possibility to think he might also know we were more than just acquaintances in our time. Does he know I know who you really are now? Could your father have passed down stories about more than just your skill with a sword or the color of your hair? Is there any way Angus might guess we’d reconnect when you moved half a mile from my door?”
Davin sucked on his cheek and rounded the loft again with his eyes. Then he gave a soundless answer, which Dawn didn’t need words to interpret.
She felt her left knee buckle a split second before Davin clasped her arm.
“Dawn,” he said as she regained her footing. “Please just … put yourself in my shoes for a second.”
She gritted her teeth and recalled his accusation Friday night about being unable to see beyond her own problems.
“I wanted to go back for you as soon as I got my wits about me after the curse broke. But I was miles away in a strange land with horseless carriages and flameless lights and not a single person who knew me. I couldn’t just open the door and walk there. So yes, I told the only person I knew at the time. And he told me that you were moments away from marrying a king—a rich, handsome king who was supposed to ensure Selladóre remained free. So I made a tough decision and I moved on.”
Dawn glanced at the window. The stained glass made it impossible to tell what the sky was doing, but she knew rain was expected at some point that afternoon. If it came, all the tourists would flock to the castle and start poking around. A few might even uncover the secret passage and snoop their way to this room.
“So why did you come back now?” she asked, eager to speed this up but just as eager to get all the details. “What changed?”
Davin shrugged. “A few things, I guess.” She found herself leaning in, waiting for him to elaborate. “You stopped looking happy in the news, for one thing. That glimmer you seemed to have at first—even if it was just the cameras catching the right angle—was gone.” Dawn shifted her weight. Not long ago, she would have laughed at the claim she ever looked happy in the days following the Great Awakening. But after perusing Selladóre’s timeline exhibit a few days earlier, she knew it carried some truth. “So all of my reasons for staying away were gone. This world was no longer foreign to me. Selladóre had no hope of being free. And you looked like you were ready to walk off a cliff. That’s why I came back.”
He cleared his throat and loosened his checked necktie. The color matched the gold flecks in his otherwise hazel eyes. “I wasn’t trying to break up a happy marriage.”
Dawn felt the guilt settle over her. Davin knew as well as she did that her marriage hadn’t been happy when they reconnected in the woods a month ago. Happy wives didn’t spend their nights spying on handsome men from overlook points in the forest. Happy wives didn’t accompany supposed strangers over invisible, enchant
ed walkways; beneath tunnels of diamond-studded trees; through magnificent, luminescent gardens; and into breathtaking mansions isolated from the rest of civilization. Happy wives didn’t play footsie with the dinner guests while their husband prattled on at the head of the table, absolutely none the wiser.
Davin was a good man. No matter how this played out, she had to remember that. She couldn’t take the coward’s way out and throw him under the bus. But at the same time, Hunter had to be her priority now. He was the victim now.
“So you never told Angus that we reconnected?”
“Of course not,” he said, crossing his arms in a way that made Dawn more than a little uneasy. “But…”
“But what?”
“But he’s not an idiot.”
“No,” Dawn agreed, feeling her heart sputter. “Not even close.”
“So if I had to bet on it, I’d say he wouldn’t be surprised. He’s not the sort of person to forget something that could work to his advantage someday, even if it was eleven years ago. Plus, he hardly asked any questions when I wanted to build an estate in Regian. He’s actually the one who suggested that enchanted plot of land and forced the permits through.”
Dawn’s head whipped up at this last statement—and the sound of water pinging against the window. Then she remembered what Morning had told her that morning, about the Regian Woods being protected space. Suddenly, it dawned on her: Angus had set the whole thing up. Like Ruby said in the hospital, he was as smart and as cunning as they came. He’d been planning this for years. In bringing Hunter to Selladóre and whisking away the object of her affection the moment Dawn’s curse broke, he pocketed an ace that he could use against the Regian throne whenever he wanted. He knew she and Davin wouldn’t just pass like two ships in the night, or grab an isolated coffee for old time’s sake and be on their merry way. He knew she was disenchanted with her life as it was—everyone did. He knew old passions would reignite. He knew that whatever happened between them, it would give him the means to kick out yet one more of Marestam’s royal legs.
