The Girl with the Dragon Heart

by Stephanie Burgis

  ‘Why should you?’ She snorted as she sorted through the pile of white underthings. ‘You won’t be doing it yourself ever again,’ she told me. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of servants?’

  ‘Um …’ My eyebrows rose as I bit back a sudden, unexpected choke of laughter. ‘Your sister did tell you where I come from?’

  ‘Oh.’ Shockingly, she winced as if she were actually embarrassed. ‘Well.’ Looking away from me, she shook out a long white garment with a snap. ‘From now on, you’ll have a maid of your own who dresses you three times or more every day. You won’t need to lift a finger. We can’t let her see you wearing a coat and trousers beforehand, that’s all.’

  ‘I understand.’ I finally relaxed enough to flash her a smile as I shrugged off my dark green jacket. ‘Just … don’t let them be tossed away or burned, please? I do like these clothes.’

  ‘If you say so.’ From the tone of Sofia’s voice, I could tell it was beyond her understanding … but she didn’t say anything else until a few minutes later, while she was lacing up a torture device called a ‘corset’ around my waist.

  Standing behind me, her voice was almost too soft to hear. ‘I could have done it, you know.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I started to twist around to look at her, but a jerk of her fingers on my laces forced me to stand still again.

  ‘The spy work,’ Sofia muttered. ‘You know. I told Katrin I could find out anything she needed to know. I am a philosopher, you know. It’s not as if I’m unintelligent! I could actually be useful for once, if she’d only trust me. But –’ she tugged viciously at my laces, and I gasped for breath – ‘of course she didn’t. She never does. That’s why she hired you instead.’

  Oh. Well, I might not be royalty, but I completely understood the difficulty of older siblings.

  So I said, ‘It doesn’t all have to be me, Your Highness. We can work together! Then, if we succeed in the end, your sister will have to see –’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  The pressure at my back abruptly eased. The long ends of my corset laces fell free. A moment later, Princess Sofia was directly in front of me, somehow managing to glare down her nose even though I stood five inches taller than her.

  ‘You,’ she said coolly, ‘will not discuss my sister with me, Silke – not now, or ever – because it is not your place.’

  Ouch.

  Apparently, we wouldn’t be making friends.

  I squared my shoulders despite the corset and stood at attention. ‘No, Your Highness,’ I murmured as meekly as possible. ‘I only meant –’

  ‘I. Don’t. Care!’ Sofia snapped. ‘You can be as charming as you want, since you’re sooo good at it, according to Katrin. You can flatter me all day long, for all the good it’ll do you. But none of it will ever make a difference, because you – you! – are the person my sister chose over me. And I will never forget that or forgive you for it. Do you understand?’

  My eyes widened. ‘I …’

  ‘Do you understand?’ she repeated in a near bellow.

  At that, I dropped my gaze like a good, submissive servant. ‘Yes, Your Highness,’ I said. ‘I do.’

  And I did.

  This mission was going to be even more difficult than I had imagined.

  CHAPTER 8

  Over the next four days, I figured out one thing for certain: I hated pretending to be a lady.

  Oh, it wasn’t the corsets or the curtseys – I learned how to manage all of those quickly enough. Within less than a day, I’d mastered the slow, gliding walk that all proper ladies needed in order to move about safely with layers and layers of cotton and silk swishing dangerously about our ankles. Ladies never ran – because, as I discovered, they couldn’t. Their beautiful, expensive gowns would trip them up if they ever dared to try.

  The other ladies-in-waiting weren’t a problem either. Anja and Lena, two twelve-year-old cousins, were giggly, good-hearted and bursting with boredom in the younger princess’s quiet apartments, so they found it the best new game in ages to teach an unpolished country girl like me how to behave in a royal palace. Proper Ulrike – the oldest and most perfectly correct at seventeen – kept herself at a superior distance from the rest of us … but even she unbent the first time I told a really good story to make the endless, dragging afternoon hours pass a little quicker for everyone.

  It was one of the best stories I’d come up with over the years, with a brave, strong girl daring everything to save her family, and after all the nights I’d spent telling it to myself before falling asleep on the riverbank, I knew exactly how to tell it well. All three of them had gathered close about me by the end of it, while Princess Sofia pointedly kept her nose stuck in a book at the other end of her beautiful green-and-gold salon, and a tall grandfather clock ticked with agonising slowness in one corner.

  ‘But what about the youngest prince?’ Lena asked, wide-eyed. ‘He still had one arm turned into a swan wing. What happened to him afterwards?’

  ‘He certainly couldn’t have made a very good marriage.’ Ulrike frowned thoughtfully. ‘Although, perhaps, if –’

  ‘Hmmph.’ Princess Sofia slammed her book shut and stalked towards her bedroom. ‘What nonsense!’

  But even Sofia herself wasn’t the worst of it.

  The real problem was that the palace walls – so strong and so wonderfully, perfectly safe – felt as if they were closing in around me like a noose – a noose that tightened more and more with every minute I spent being a proper lady inside them.

  Because I was a lady, I was laced by a maid into a new dress every few hours, with different colours and styles for different times of the day. There was just one thing that all of those fancy, tightly corseted outfits had in common: they were all designed to make girls look pretty and stand still.

  The princess herself had lessons in statecraft and foreign languages and a dozen other intriguing subjects to occupy her, but she didn’t share any of those with us. Instead, she retreated to a private room with her tutors for hours every morning and afternoon, leaving me with nothing to do but sit and smile with the other three ladies-in-waiting in our colourful silk gowns, like butterflies trapped in a cage for Princess Sofia’s entertainment.

  Ulrike embroidered and wrote letters to pass the hours. Anja and Lena played everlasting games of cards and Twenty Questions.

  I sat with them, I smiled, I kept my feet and hands still, and I tried with all of my might to keep myself from exploding in one big, sloppy, colourful burst of perfectly unladylike frustration.

  Blend in, I chanted to myself. Blend in! You told the crown princess you could do it.

  My gaze slid yearningly, again and again, towards the closed door that led out to the rest of the grand palace … but I never made a move towards it, because in my new life I couldn’t.

  I was a lady-in-waiting. I waited upon my employer’s pleasure every day.

  But in the middle of my second night, I lost my self-control completely.

  I was lying there in that big, stuffy bedroom I shared with Anja, Lena and Ulrike, all snoring quietly on their own soft, cushioned beds.

  In the darkness, there wasn’t a single distraction to save me.

  There was no wind blowing through any thin tent fabric here; no rocks or bumps beneath my back. I should have been sound asleep like the others, enjoying the decadent luxury of a real mattress underneath me. But my entire body was wild with desperation, and every muscle I had was clenched. If I didn’t escape now, I wouldn’t make it through even one more day in Sofia’s stifling apartments.

  I slid out of bed before I could think better of it, and I hurried across the carpeted floor on bare feet, holding my breath the whole way.

  If the crown princess ever found out what I was doing … If Sofia found out and told her … !

  This wasn’t part of my job description, no matter how hard I tried to twist it. Even I couldn’t think of any excuse to sneak around in the middle of the night like a thief. But …

  No
one will catch me, I promised myself as I tiptoed into the grand salon, shrouded now in utter darkness.

  I knew exactly where to go.

  The walls of the salon were hung with silk wallpaper in rich golden and green vertical stripes. Every single stripe was perfectly even and exactly the same width as all of the others … except for one.

  I’d taken careful note of that stripe that afternoon as I’d sat obediently still on the couch for hours. I’d remembered the entryway hidden in the hexagon room’s painting, and I’d memorised that spot on the salon wall until I could find it by heart without any light required.

  When I pressed my hand against it now, I heard a creak that told me I’d been right. The wall shifted against my hand. A door fell open into deeper darkness.

  I was free.

  I took my first real breath in ages as I stepped from the lushly carpeted salon into a narrow, hidden corridor, my feet landing on bare wood.

  Finally!

  I already knew every inch of my city. Soon, I would know every inch of my new home, too.

  And then, maybe, I wouldn’t feel so stupidly desperate to escape it any more.

  Long after the other girls fell asleep in their beds, I explored the palace in the dark, flitting like a moth in my long, pale nightdress through the narrow servants’ corridors that ran behind the grand rooms.

  That night and the next two nights, I pressed my hands against panel after panel to search out all of the secret passageways. I memorised the location of every posted guard. By the end of my second night of explorations, I had almost forgotten what it really felt like to step outside in the open air, but I had a map of over half of the massive palace in my head.

  It was enough. At least it meant that I could get out if I needed to. Remembering that helped me breathe through my endless, elegant, ladylike days…

  And then, on my third night of investigations, I found something different. I was wandering through the corridor that ran behind the first floor of the south-west wing, trailing my fingers along the narrow walls beside me, when I suddenly smelt it.

  Chocolate. Unmistakeable!

  It was a twisting, curling scent in the air, elusive and irresistible, and it grew stronger and stronger as I chased it, moving faster and faster until I was nearly running. I followed that smell down a narrow staircase that I had never seen before, and I found myself standing just outside a small room far from any of the huge, bustling main palace kitchens. The door was half propped open to let out chocolate-scented steam. Candlelight drifted out from the room, too, along with a familiar clattering of pans … and the murmuring of two voices I immediately recognised.

  Marina and Horst!

  I took a step closer, drawn in like a moth to a lantern.

  Then a sudden, loud snore broke through their harmony of voices, ending with a sputter and a growl.

  There was a moment of silence. Then two low, affectionate laughs sounded in unison.

  ‘Shh,’ Marina murmured. ‘Even fierce dragons do get worn out now and then, after all.’

  Their voices dropped into indecipherable whispers.

  So this was where the crown princess had put the chocolate kitchen for the duration of the fairies’ visit! Aventurine was sleeping in there just as she slept in the kitchen of the Chocolate Heart, while Marina did some late-night cooking to calm her nerves and Horst kept her company as he often did, the two of them quietly talking over the events of the day.

  I could imagine the warmth and cosiness in there so well, it physically hurt – and at that moment, it welled up inside me like a wave, threatening to wash away all of my careful years of planning.

  I could sleep in there so much more easily than in my airless room upstairs! Curled up on the floor beside my best friend, surrounded by warmth and chocolate and everyone in the world who loved me, Silke – not just some clever story I’d made up so that other people would like me …

  I wouldn’t just sleep. I would rest as fully as I’d let myself rest years ago, the last time I had felt truly safe …

  And that was the problem.

  It would only be an illusion of safety now, just as it had been all those years ago. The people who loved you couldn’t provide real safety, no matter how much they might try. No matter what it took, I would not let myself fall into the trap of believing that kind of promise ever again.

  Losing it last time had nearly shattered me.

  No, the only real safety I would ever find – the kind that I’d dreamed of and worked towards – was waiting upstairs in my stuffy bedroom in Sofia’s grand wing of the palace, full of rich silk and carefully guarded wealth, with armed guards stationed outside to protect us.

  That was where I belonged. It was the life I had chosen.

  But if I walked into the chocolate kitchen right now, I knew I would never be able to make myself leave again.

  Tipping my head forward, I drew in a long, deep, chocolate-scented breath, closing my eyes to absorb every last trace. That luscious warmth, that rich sweetness and comfort, and even that dangerous tickle at my heart that whispered, Home …

  I let myself savour it all for one delicious moment.

  Then I turned and ran up the steps of the hidden staircase in the dark before I could be a fool and give up everything that really mattered.

  I ran all the way through the darkened servants’ corridors until I reached Sofia’s apartments, and then I sped directly to my bed without letting myself turn and look back even once. I tucked myself in so tightly under my feather-filled duvet that I could barely move, and then I stared, panting, into the darkness overhead.

  The other three girls were snoring quietly. The thick mattress beneath me and the velvet-lined covers around me were warm and lush and all enveloping.

  I’m going to win myself a real place here forever, I promised myself. By the end, no one will ever imagine I don’t belong here.

  Not even me.

  I closed my eyes, gripping the duvet tightly, and then I finally fell asleep, with the smell of chocolate floating tauntingly through my dreams.

  CHAPTER 9

  The next morning, it was time to meet the fairies.

  Stepping out of the royal apartments during daylight should have felt like escaping from a cage. But as I glided through the long galleries and broad, open corridors with the other ladies-in-waiting, in our rustling gowns and petticoats, my head felt stuffed full of fog and dreams and my heartbeat thudded in my ears.

  Elfenwald. The name breathed through me, leaving behind the distant echo of poisonously sweet, high-pitched bells. Fairy laughter. I had never forgotten that beautiful, terrible sound. I still heard it in my worst nightmares.

  After all these years, I was about to come face-to-face with the creatures who had stolen my parents from me.

  Waves of blood rushed up and down my arms, leaving my fingertips tingling and goosebumps scattered in their wake.

  I wanted to run, but my long skirts wouldn’t let me. I laced my hands in front of my stomach and squeezed my fingers so tightly together that they burned.

  It wasn’t enough to let the whirling energy out.

  There was just one moment, when we passed a line of narrow windows that looked out over a bustling square, when I lost my focus for an instant. It was so strange to see the life of the city outside continuing just as it had before I’d moved here, all those busy people completely unaware of what was happening in the closed-off world of the palace.

  There was even a light shimmer of snow falling outside. When had it started snowing? I’d been stuck inside Sofia’s stuffy rooms for so long, I’d almost forgotten that there was such a thing as changing weather in the outside world.

  A group of adult courtiers stopped to bow low in our direction, and I wrenched my gaze away from the window to smile and nod in return. If Dieter could have seen me accepting their bows as my due, he wouldn’t have believed his eyes. I really did fit into the royal court, at least on the outside. I’d transformed myself into a lady.r />
  But I couldn’t stop my tightly laced fingers from trembling as I followed Sofia and her stern-faced honour guard of soldiers into the grand gallery where the court was gathering to await our visitors.

  Sweat and perfume filled the warm air. Nobles made way for Sofia in rippling waves of respectful bows and curtseys, and we ladies-in-waiting swept past all of them, following our princess across the tiled floor to where the king and the crown princess stood with their own entourages assembled behind them.

  A high, arched ceiling rose overhead, painted with magnificent white clouds, a bright blue sky and portraits of past kings gesturing graciously down at us. Tall, skinny windows lined the wall on our right, framing a courtyard full of statues and softly falling snow.

  As we took our places, four muscular footmen stepped to the giant wooden doors before us and began to heave them open.

  Now.

  My breath stuck in my throat with sudden, choking panic.

  This was really happening.

  Elfenwald …

  Frantically, I tried to capture a memory of my parents’ faces, to keep my feet anchored solidly in place despite the voice in my head that whispered: Run. But it had been too many years since I had seen them; I couldn’t put the pieces together any more. All I had left was the echo of their voices and a vague memory of how they’d felt to me as a child: my father’s warmth; the comfort of my mother’s stories washing over me before bed every night … I clung to those fragmented memories with all of my might.

  I won’t leave without you, I promised silently. Not this time.

  A sliver-thin crack opened between the doors. The footmen panted with effort.

  The crowd behind us rustled with anticipation.

  ‘What’s taking them so long?’ Anja whispered behind me as another two footmen hurried over to help the first four. ‘Those doors were never that heavy before!’

  Something sparkled and blurred between the doors, almost too faint for me to see. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my eyes. It couldn’t be … !

  But it was.