Iron Heinrich

by A. B. Keuser

  “Let her be distracted.” He peered at a glimmer that turned out to be nothing but a silver vine shivering in the breeze. “Why do you care so much anyway?”

  “She’s my friend.”

  “But she’s not your responsibility.” He glanced at them both, Danae watched him as though he would attack them at any moment. Ignoring it, Heinrich trekked on, pushing through the trees and hoping he would find some trace of the prince soon.

  FOUR

  Silvia’s stomach growled unmercifully as she descended her tower and darted through the back hallways before taking the servant’s stairs down to the kitchen. The room was warm and smelled of yeast—bread for breakfast already started for tomorrow morning.

  Inhaling, Silvia rolled her eyes when her stomach gave its loudest growl yet.

  The largest portion of the kitchen staff had already retreated to their rooms for the night, but her favorite cook was still hard at work, and the scullery maid, Alice, was rolling out some dark dough in the far end of the kitchen. She waved a flour covered hand and Silvia returned the gesture.

  Pulling her skirt tightly around her, she slipped through the rows of prep tables and slid onto a bench that faced the stove. The cook stood with her back to the table and wide shoulders swayed as she stirred an over-large spoon in a heavy stock pot.

  “Princesses aren’t meant for kitchens.” Mrs. Duun said. There was a laugh in her voice alongside the weariness. It almost made Silvia yawn.

  “Nonsense,” she said instead. “Princesses are meant for every part of a castle. We’re like rats that way. No matter how hard you try, we’ll always find a way in. I might spend half of my time in the walls, watching you through the cracks.”

  “There are no cracks in my walls.” Mrs. Duun turned around, a wide smile spread across her mouth. “But I suppose you want something to eat? Did you get caught up in one of your inventions and forget to go down for dinner again?”

  Smiling sheepishly, Silvia shrugged. “I’m not even sure what time it is now. Didn’t bother to look at a clock on my way down. My stomach started talking and I could only think of you.”

  “You are going to get yourself in trouble.”

  “I’m always in trouble, you should pay more attention.”

  Mrs. Duun set a dessert plate in front of her with a disapproving glare. “One of these days, your mother is going to board up that laboratory of yours and you’re going to have to find something else to do with your time.”

  “That assumes I can’t work anywhere else.” She took a bite of the pie and forced herself to hold in a groan. “How is the stove doing, by the way?”

  Snorting a laugh, Mrs. Duun kicked the oven door in front of her. “This old thing? Runs like it’s full of nails and ferrets.”

  Silvia quirked a brow and took another bite of the fruit filled pie. She could wait.

  The fire in the corner crackled and Alice hurried behind them to pull away the pot that hung above the flames.

  Mrs. Duun watched her for a moment before turning back. “It works like a charm. The plate heats evenly and I haven’t scalded a single pot since you made your changes. I would have loved to see the horrified look on Mr. Needaman’s face when you waltzed in here, and put the thing in place yourself. The man probably wet himself.”

  Alice glided by carrying the pot—slowly so she didn’t spill. “According to Nance down in the laundry, he did.”

  “What else does Nance say?” Mrs. Duun asked

  “He says I’m adorable and that if you’d give me an extra night off a week, he’d take me on a proper date.”

  Mrs. Duun laughed. “Nance wants to take half my staff on ‘proper’ dates.”

  Shrugging, Alice set the pot on the table. “It’s nice to be wanted.”

  Silvia hadn’t met the man they spoke of, but she’d heard plenty.

  Alice began dividing the contents of the pot into three bowls, and glanced at her between ladlefuls.

  She finished her stolen treats while Alice and Mrs. Duun moved their large pot to a far table and began glazing pastries. White, sugary topping followed by a dusting of silver powder. The tiny treats glittered in the light and when Silvia was done with her pie, she walked past the table on her way out of the kitchen. She snagged one and popped it in her mouth before hurrying out with a half-hearted cry of indignation tumbling after her.

  She walked through the quiet halls, humming to herself.

  “I thought you might raid the kitchen since you missed dinner.”

  Silvia froze. Unlike Mina’s attacks, her mother’s preferred method of ambushing her was to sneak up behind her and simply begin a conversation.

  “Time flies when you’re elbows deep in gears.”

  “Our guest asked after you.”

  A trill of excitement rushed through her and she quickly tamped it down. “Maybe he wanted to thank me for helping escape from the room Ivy locked him in.”

  “He doesn’t seem too mad at her for that. After all, he asked her to go with him into the forest tonight. They’re searching for this thing he lost right now.”

  Something sharp and ugly stung at her as she imagined Ivy and Heinrich in the forest… she shook away the thought, but not before her imagination wondered what they might get up to besides searching.

  “Hopefully they find it.” She said when she realized she’d been silent too long.

  Her mother stared, a calculating look passed through her eyes. “Is that what you hope?”

  Letting out a frustrated sigh, Silvia started walking again. “Stop meddling.”

  “Start taking an active role in your social life.” Her mother pulled her back before she’d taken three steps. “Just promise me you’ll take a little time to get to know him. You may be my daughter, but you’ve still got a human lifespan…. I don’t want you to spend the brief time you have in this world alone. Even if you choose to share that time with a Ferrian man.”

  Her mother was oddly tense. Silvia nodded and her mother let go of her arm. “I’ll talk to him… tomorrow evening. I imagine he’ll sleep all day again once he gets back.”

  Her mother smiled, a light expression on her usually severe face. “Thank you.”

  Silvia walked away, not turning back to see if her mother still watched her. She didn’t know why the woman was so adamant about pairing her off. Didn’t know why she seemed certain that her happiness was tied to finding the right man.

  Heinrich scared her.

  The other times, her mother had been almost passive. She would push a man into Silvia’s path and then sit back as he did all the work of trying to win her affections. Somehow, they had never felt like a serious suggestion from her mother. It was why she treated the first of them as a diversion. Three of them had been wonderful to talk to—though they didn’t know a thing about the mechanical world. And one had been delightful in bed. But she’d quickly learned that the more interaction she gave a man, the more likely her mother would take it as a sign of interest. Or worse, the more likely he was to think she could belong to him.

  She might want to know what was under his clothes… how he would move over her and beneath her and in her, but that was a passing desire. It would burn out in a day or two.

  She stopped, blinking at the corridor around her. She’d walked right by her alcove, lost in thoughts of Heinrich.

  Mina was right. She needed to get laid.

  She hurried back to her tower and closed the door firmly behind her before setting the box down and getting back to work. All she had left to do for the key was to file it down.

  Finishing that step, she buffed it with a rough cloth and held it up to the light. Perfect.

  The key fit in the frog’s back with only a small amount of wiggle room. Two twists—just to test—and it hopped away from her in jerking moves. Its first bounce scattered a stack of papers, but she didn’t care, she could sort them later. His second, upended her pen and spattered the silver orb with ink.

  It hopped off the table, onto the floo
r, and toward the heavily curtained windows. Five feet from the wall, it stopped, the key no longer turning.

  She glanced at it and dropped her head to the side, stretching out the sore muscles. Muscles she wished ached for an entirely different reason.

  Heinrich had been a catalyst for change… maybe he was worth keeping around.

  Snorting at her own presumption, she stood and went to the window. Keeping him sounded like something her mother would say, as if he was a toy or a pet simply because he was full human.

  Plucking the frog from the floor, she twisted the key again, this time, going until the key stopped and set the frog down again. And again it went for the window. She turned it around.

  The frog jumped in a long arc and headed back for the window. Glancing from it to the curtains, she said, “What a strange creature.”

  Sighing, she pulled open the heavy curtains and looked up at the stars. The moon was waxing and half full.

  Closing her eyes, she let the light fall over her and breathed in the heady aroma of the trumpet vines climbing up the stones toward her.

  A popping noise startled her and she turned to see the iron frog, bathed in the silver moonlight… breaking. The key fell to the floor and the iron twisted.

  She’d broken it.

  Silvia took a step forward and stopped abruptly.

  It grew outward like a molten bubble, legs stretching, body elongating… Magic. She’d been right!

  Silvia watched in silence, her breath catching in her throat, heart hammering in her chest as a naked man dropped to his hands and knees on the wooden floor in front of her.

  *

  Max had thought the sensation would be familiar the second time. He was wrong.

  The pain passed almost as soon as it hit him. He wasn’t even sore… just the lingering dizziness of suddenly growing from a tiny metal frog into the body he’d had before. The dirt and cuts from the night before were gone.

  He pushed up to kneeling, heedless of the fact that he was naked and not alone. The room spun for a second before righting itself again, and he felt his equilibrium return.

  “What are you?” Silvia asked, her tone delighted and curious.

  The memories of the day flooded back to his conscious mind, telling him more about the princess who had tinkered with him than he could assess from the woman standing with her back to the open window.

  He turned, still on his knees, breathing deeply as he stared up at her. “I… am cursed.”

  With no idea of what she wanted, Max was not about to tell her he was a prince. He’d faced too much betrayal to trust anyone so soon.

  She moved to him. Her skirt brushed over his stomach and the lower part of his legs, and he shivered at the movement of the fabric.

  She looked down at him with unnaturally silver eyes and lips that begged to be kissed.

  That was not the sort of thing he needed to think about, not right now.

  He had two goals. Find a way to break the curse and find Heinrich. Though if Heinrich were here right now, he would fully appreciate the way the bodice pushed up her breasts, the way the skirt gave peeks of her form underneath…. She was exactly Heinrich’s type… and for once, Max understood why.

  He shook the thought away, and Silvia moved around him, her eyes tracing over his skin and he felt the hairs on his neck prickle. He’d heard that fairy blood called to other fairy blood, but he hadn’t believed it until now.

  She swallowed, seeming equally affected and asked, “How did you change back?”

  “It’s the moonlight.” He said, glancing at the window. “For whatever reason, I turn back to normal so long as I’m in it. But once it’s gone, or I lose the last trace of it on my skin….”

  She glanced from him, to the edges of the room where the moonlight didn’t reach. “I can deal with that.”

  Throwing open the curtains to all of the windows that wrapped around three quarters of the tower, she hurried to the far corner of the room. There, she started shuffling through a stack that leaned against the wall. From his vantage point, they looked like paintings. When she bent over to wrestle one out, he looked sharply away.

  Her skirt was not see through, but the way it wrapped around her set Max’s imagination into overdrive.

  How utterly tragic that a woman existed for both of them… and Heinrich wasn’t here to help him seduce her. Though the universe was cruel, and if his luck ran true to form, she would want nothing to do with him, let alone his lost lover.

  She pulled three large mirrors from the stack and set about placing them around the room to stave off the shadowy corners. She cocked each to the side, and, after moving the mirror from the corner the entire space was lit with moonlight.

  “There. Now you don’t have to worry about making a misstep.”

  She turned back to him with a smile that lit the room brighter than the moonlight and flopped backward to sit on the bed that was tucked against the wall opposite him. He could imagine tangling up with her in those sheets.

  He shouldn’t imagine it.

  He stepped behind the table trying to hide the very visible effect she had on him.

  She sprang upright as though she’d forgotten something and hurried to the floor where she plucked up the key she’d made. She paused, looking from it to him. “Are you conscious? Aware… when you’re the frog?”

  He nodded, watching her work back through the day’s events.

  “How interesting.” Setting the key on the table across from him. She pulled her hair up, securing it and looked at him with a pinched frown. “So, how do we break your curse?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What are the usual things?” she asked, ticking off a list on her fingers. “Kill the fairy that cursed you, a kiss from your true love….”

  “I don’t suppose either of those are options right now, are they?”

  “We could always try the latter.” Max said, a smile touching his lips a moment before one touched hers.

  He’d expected her to blush. He didn’t know why—she’d just spent the last ten minutes politely ignoring the fact he was naked, though impolitely failing to offer him a blanket or some other item to cover up with.

  Her eyes went to his lips and she chewed on her own. “We can try that in a minute.”

  A spike of desire shot through him. Damn. He’d need to stay behind the table a little while longer. “The only other cursebreaker I know is my own death, and I’m not up for that one, myself.” Though, it might release Heinrich from his curse, and in the end, that might be worth it.

  “We’re in Argentelle, correct?” He watched her nod and said a silent thank you that he had not gone too far from where he’d fallen. The period of time he’d spent in her cloak pocket was still a blur. “You could go ask your mother.”

  She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. He saw the covetousness in the way she glanced away from him. Remembered how she wouldn’t let Mina touch him. Whatever else Silvia had planned, she wanted to keep him all to herself. He could live with that.

  “That is not a good idea. If she knows you’re here…”

  She glanced at the closed door as if expecting the fairy to come after her.

  “We are going to figure out how to fix this… but probably not tonight.” She moved five things off the table, clearing a spot and then she climbed up, using the bench beside him as a step.

  “Sorry,” she said as her skirt brushed against him.

  She pulled on a spun silver orb that seemed purely decorative, and the chain that attached it to the ceiling pulled down a circular bookshelf. She turned a slow circle, muttering out book names.

  He saw her movement a moment before she took the next step. It was too late to tell her to stop. When her foot hit the air beyond the table edge, she let out a panicked shriek.

  She toppled and he barely caught her.

  Wrapped up in each other, they fell to the floor.

  Every fiber of his being tingled with the aw
areness that the only thing separating them was the thin fabric of her dress.

  Silvia pressed her hand against his chest and looked up at him, her silver eyes wide. “Are you alright?”

  He laughed in spite of himself. He was in pain, but he wasn’t about to tell her why. “I’m fine. Are you?”

  “I had the pleasure of using you as a cushion.” She glanced down his chest until his body disappeared in the fabric of her dress. “You’re not very soft though, are you?”

  She moved and he cursed. If she didn’t get off soon, he was going to die.

  “Are you sure you’re not—oh.” She pursed her lips together, and he was thankful her response was a smile.

  “Sorry about that,” Max said.

  “Don’t be.”

  He tensed as she adjusted again.

  “What would you say if I told you that you could solve a problem I’ve had….” She drew a lazy circle on his chest.

  Her fingers sent tendrils of warmth and desire through him, only making him want. He had no idea what she was about to ask… but he could hope.

  “I’d ask how I could help.”

  “I’m going to try to fix you, no matter your answer to this question… don’t think that saying no will mean I won’t help you.”

  He blinked, waiting for the request. After she glanced at the door with a worried look, he wondered if he should be concerned.

  Lips parting, she leaned into him.

  The question was in her kiss, and as soon as she pulled away he answered with one of his own. Wrapping his hand around her neck as her fingers pressed into his chest.

  Heinrich had never cared about a woman sharing his bed. As long as there was no chance of her replacing him Heinrich wouldn’t fault him for indulging.

  He pulled her down, claiming her mouth as though it had been his all along. When she melted into him, all the tension bled from his shoulders. It would be good to forget for a while.

  The taste of her was sinful and he would gladly go to hell if that was the price.

  Nothing this divine would come without a heavy cost.

  Her dress was held together with latch-like fastenings instead of the heavy ties that most Ferrian women wore, a lucky thing too. His other hand was busy.