The Ring and the Crown

by Melissa de la Cruz

  It was what her mother had always tried to tell her: her life was not her own, and because of that it was glorious. Her small life was so large it encompassed everyone in the realm: everyone’s happiness and safety was tied to hers, because this was what it meant to be a princess, to wear the crown, to rule an empire. Keeping her people safe, and creating a stable, solid foundation for their peace and prosperity.

  Because what was a cottage in the sky, when her castle was about to burn?

  Every bump in the carriage made Isabelle jump. A few times she thought she would vomit on the side of the road, she felt so ill from the journey. But Louis held her hand and had such a strong, resolute look on his face that she knew she mustn’t fear. They were out of the city by dawn, and on the long journey home.

  “I don’t remember Cévennes very much,” she said. They were taking an early breakfast at an inn near the harbor, where they would board the ferry that would take them across the Channel. “But I know we vacationed there sometimes when Papa was still alive, to visit you.”

  “It is just a small estate, nothing to get too excited about,” Louis said with a smile. “But it will be home.”

  “Home.” She nodded. She liked the sound of that very much. She had been looking for home all her life. Now she knew she’d always had one with him.

  They finished their meal and walked out of the inn to look for the hansom.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked, when the driver did not appear. The roads were notoriously dangerous, and no one traveled without at least a team of armed men.

  “Let me see,” Louis said. He walked toward the horses, which were idling by the road, lazily eating grass. What he found when he came closer caused him to shout, “Isabelle! Run!” All their servants had been slain—the driver, the footmen, and even the young pages. Their bodies lay on the side of the road, red with blood.

  She whipped around in time to see a marauder knifing Louis in the back. He fell to the ground, blood pooling in his mouth, a surprised, shocked look on his beautiful face. “Louis!” she screamed, just as a cloth was placed on her head and everything went black. She was surrounded. She tried to kick and scream, but there was nothing she could do—there were too many of them. As she was bundled up and taken away, all she could hear were men speaking in French, and she could understand them perfectly. “Kill the boy, but keep her alive.”

  Meanwhile, deep in the heart of the city, Marie walked quickly through the streets, zigzagging, trying to find her way back to the palace. She had never walked through the city much before, and she got lost quickly. She was horrified to see how people lived—the poor children in the streets with their hands out, begging. The dirty sidewalks were full of horse dung; the sky was clogged with gray smoke. The abject poverty in front of her moved her to tears and mortification. How could she sleep on a comfortable bed, dine on rare and fanciful treats, when children were going hungry just a few blocks away from the palace gates? She had to do something about this…she had to.

  Marie made another right turn, and realized she was in a small, dark alley that was ominously empty. It occurred to her that she was alone and unarmed, and London was notorious for its thieves and criminals. It was one of the things she would have worked on if she were queen—to make the streets safer for everybody.

  “Looky here, boys,” came a low rough voice. A hard-looking man emerged from the shadows. He was not alone.

  “Please, let me pass,” she said.

  “What do you have in your bag, missy?”

  “You can have whatever you need—let me pass,” she said. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “No clue.”

  “I am the Princess Marie-Victoria,” she said, bearing herself up to her full height and speaking to him with her mother’s voice—the voice that inspired total obedience. The voice of the queen.

  “And I’m the King of Romania,” the bandit laughed.

  There were four of them. She wouldn’t get away. But she could scream, and so she did—she screamed at the top of her lungs—and then they surrounded her, and she screamed even more—and she thought she would die, or worse—and they pushed her to the ground—and she closed her eyes then, because now she was too frightened to scream, and she only wanted to live. But then, just as suddenly, someone was pulling the men off of her, and she was safe and unharmed.

  Gill! she thought. He found me. Then she saw it was not Gill, but someone else—a boy with dark hair and blue eyes. “Wolf!”

  “Stay back, Marie—let me take care of them.” Wolf had no weapon. Already he had a cut lip and his fists were red with blood, but the men looked even worse. They surrounded him menacingly, and one pulled a broken pipe out of his pocket.

  “Hey boys, now, that’s not so nice—picking on a girl alone in the city,” Wolf said.

  “Go on, boy, nothing for you here. There’s four of us and only one of ya.”

  “Then it’s an even fight.” Wolf smiled as he dispatched them in quick succession. A flurry of fists and feet: roundhouse to the jaw, karate chops, well-aimed punches to the gut and face. In a few moments they were all in a heap on the street.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, as he helped her to stand.

  “No, just shaky,” she said, taking his hand.

  He pulled her close and held her in his arms until she stopped trembling. “You’re all right now—you’re safe, you’re with me.”

  “How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

  “I went to the Knight’s Arms, but you weren’t there. I thought you might be lost, and I know you—you always think if you keep turning right, you’ll find your way somehow. Remember how we learned the passageways that way? So I kept turning right, and here you are,” he said.

  “You knew I was at the Knight’s Arms?” she said, staring at him. Then she realized she had stumbled upon the answer to another mystery. “It was you—you gave Gill the money. You were the friend who helped us get away.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, Marie, I thought I was helping you,” he said. “I thought I was doing the right thing for you. It was wrong of me—it put you in too much danger. But I only wanted your happiness. I thought it was what you wanted.”

  “It was, but it isn’t now,” she said. “I made a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her heart ached, because she knew what she had to do. She had always thought of herself as gentle and soft-hearted, but in the end she had been as abrupt and brusque as the Merlin. She had left Gill at the inn without even saying good-bye.

  Wolf nodded. “But when Leo was shot and they said you were missing, I realized my mistake. The palace needs you—you belong back in St. James, and I came to fetch you, to bring you home.”

  Marie stared at him. “Leo was shot? Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know,” Wolf said, anguished.

  She nodded. She could hardly stand him let alone love him, but she felt for her friend Wolf and his loss. Still, she had to act fast. “We must leave immediately,” she said, remembering what had caused her to return in the first place. “When we get back, I need you to do something for me. The five hundred barrels of Burgundy—the duke’s wedding gift—send them away. Put them on a boat and have them destroyed.”

  Wolf took a few of his loyal men, and together they placed the barrels of wine on the boat. He watched from the dock. Moments later, it exploded in a burst of magefire. A large blaze stretched up to the heavens, resounding with a thunder that shook the very air around it and rocking the waves to a churning height. Marie had been right. The barrels under the palace were as good as powder kegs, waiting to explode—to destroy the palace and everyone in it. If Marie had not figured it out…he shuddered to think what could have happened. Everything would have been thrown into chaos. War would have broken out, as warring factions seized the opportunity to take power and control. Everyone would have suffered—more deaths—the people would have starved. Without the leadership of the monarchy and the invisible orders, civilization itself would have bee
n in jeopardy.

  He went back to the castle and found Marie in the main drawing room, talking with several high-ranking ministers, looking worn and tired. She was still in the dress she had worn that morning, when he’d fought off the goons in the alley.

  “How did you know?” he asked simply.

  “Let us talk privately,” she said, and dismissed the cabinet. “I didn’t want to create a big scene out of it,” she said when they were alone. “I didn’t want whoever set it to know what I knew. But last night, when I walked to the basement, I thought it smelled familiar—then I remembered it smelled like when Aelwyn burned down my room. Sour and smoky—the ruby spell.”

  “So the Red Duke…”

  “…is not our enemy,” she said firmly. “He insisted I drink a bottle of the same vintage at a dinner right after the royal ball. They brought it up from the dungeons specially. I thought he meant to poison me, but he was just hoping to curry favor. He wanted desperately to be back in the court’s good graces. No. It was not him. Someone came in after it was delivered and cast the ruby spell on the wine.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s what I want to find out,” she said. “Whoever did it had access to the basement with the spell-key.”

  Wolf shot her a meaningful look.

  She shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. It wasn’t Gill.”

  “Marie—he was planted here. The Iron Knights have a strong presence in Aylshire. I looked into it after we had our picnic. My men said he was clean, that he was no rebel, and I trusted them—and I trusted your judgment—but now I don’t know. Perhaps he was meant to save you so that you would trust him, so that they could destroy the monarchy from the inside, get rid of the princess—don’t you see? It’s the only explanation,” argued Wolf.

  “So he could marry me on a ship bound for the Americas? No. It wasn’t Gill, Wolf. I know it wasn’t,” she said. “And while the Iron Knights can destroy magic, they cannot create it.”

  “Fine, it wasn’t the Red Duke and it wasn’t Gill—but whoever it was, he used them both. Whoever it was knew that the duke had sent hundreds of barrels of wine, and knew how to get to the dungeons without being seen.”

  “You know what, Wolf? I know only one other person in this palace who knows the secret passageways and has an extra spell-key.”

  “Marie…”

  “We found it as children, don’t you remember? I know you still have it. It was yours, wasn’t it? When you gave him the money, you told Gill the wards would be down because you would make sure they were. Because, as I suspected, you had invited an underground sparring ring to meet in the dungeons that night, and you had to let the men in…and maybe that’s not all.…”

  Wolf stared at her and could not speak.

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the Merlin. “Your Highnesses. A word.” Emrys looked like he’d had a rough night; there were shadows under his eyes. “I regret to inform you that Prince Leopold has succumbed to his wounds. The prince is dead.”

  Wolf looked at Marie, who was still staring at him with doubt in her eyes.

  He was now the heir to the Prussian kingdom. He bolted out of the room, unable to believe that his brother was dead.

  “Wolf!” Marie called.

  He needed to be alone, but as he left the drawing room he saw Ronan. She was standing like a beacon of light, looking so beautiful in the sunlight, still wearing her gown from the night before. No one from the party had been allowed to leave after the duel. Most were in the parlor rooms, eating breakfast and complaining about when they would be allowed to go home and change.

  Ronan walked up to him and embraced him. “I heard the news. I’m so sorry about Leo.”

  “I am the heir to the throne,” he said, stunned.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, and then saw the fear on his face. She felt a cold stab through her heart.

  “Nothing will change,” Wolf said fiercely. “Nothing. I love you.”

  “You promised you would come back to me.”

  “And I have,” he said, and held her tightly in his arms and would not let her go, not even when Marie came out to the hallway to find him and tell him that they were needed in the crown room, because King Frederick and Queen Eleanor and the Merlin wanted a word with the two of them.

  When Marie left the crown room after the meeting with the Prussian and Franco-British advisors to return to her apartments, Gill was stationed at her door as usual, back in his place. She nodded to him and motioned for him to follow her inside. When they were alone, they sat side by side on the settee, where they had spent so many wonderful moments reading together, talking and laughing. He slumped down in his seat. There was no happiness on his face. He looked betrayed, lost, and so miserable. She wanted to tell him nothing would change between them.

  But that was not why she had asked him inside.

  “Don’t say it,” he said, his brown eyes dark and angry. “Don’t apologize, Marie, I don’t think I can stand it.”

  She sat next to him and looked down at her hands. Was it only last night that she had left the palace with no intent of ever returning? Was it only last night that she’d run out through the passageways, never to turn back? Was it only this morning that she’d put her gray dress on, thinking she would be a bride? She looked up at his sad, drawn face. If she had not left him, they would be married now; she would be his wife.

  “You’re leaving me, aren’t you? You’re not coming with me to the Americas. You’re not leaving St. James,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You said you loved me.”

  “I did, and I do.” She wanted to touch his face, wanted to hold his hands, wanted to reassure him nothing was different between them—but everything was different. Everything was wrong. There was no such thing as personal happiness. One hoped that it would come with duty, like a flower you stumbled upon in the wilderness. One could only hope—but one could not desire it, could not live for it. She lived for others. Her life was not her own, because it was everybody’s. She understood that now. As much as her heart was breaking, she had never felt as alive and as vital as she did that day.

  She had fallen into her mother’s arms in the crown room, and she had told Eleanor she understood now. She understood so many things about her life. She had been a silly little girl before, but now she understood. Now she understood what it meant to be a princess. Royalty meant sacrifice and not privilege, and it would entail the hardest sacrifice of all. She felt a wrenching in her stomach, and she felt like crying but she had to be stronger than that. She had to do the right thing for everybody, including him.

  Gill would never feel like he deserved her, she realized. He would work so hard, but it would never be enough for him to forget who she was and where she came from. He would have worked himself to death, trying to make it up to her, trying to make up for what she had sacrificed for him. The cottage she’d dreamed of was indeed a cottage in the sky. She was playing a child’s game, for fantasy and escape. She would have been happy with him, but she wondered if in her happiness she would have been depriving him of his. He would never have believed his love was enough for her. He had grown up in the palace as well—he had seen its splendor and grandeur—and for the rest of his life he would have blamed himself for taking it away from her.

  “I do love you, Gill,” she said, because she did love this sweet boy who would have risked everything for her. He had loved her enough to try and make a new life for the two of them.

  “But you are leaving, regardless.”

  “It’s because no matter what happens, I can’t—I can’t change who I am. No matter how hard I want to be someone else, no matter how much magic is at my disposal, however many spells Aelwyn can cast, I can’t change the fact that I am Marie-Victoria of House Aquitaine.”

  “You don’t think it was me, do you?” he said softly.

  “What?”

  “Your friend, Wolf—he grilled me earli
er. Did I tell anyone else that the wards would be down? Who else knew about the secret passageways? He thinks I betrayed you—that I would do that to you and the queen,” he said bitterly. “Because my damned brother is an Iron Knight, because of what happened during the coup—he thinks I set you up, that I was part of a conspiracy. They tried to recruit me once, but I told them to go to Hell.”

  “I know it wasn’t you, Gill,” she said softly. “I know it wasn’t you.” She stroked his back, remembering how he had consoled her when she had discovered she would have to marry Leopold.

  Gill hung his head and gripped her hands tightly in his. When he looked up again, she could see that tears were falling silently down his face. “You’re going to marry him now, aren’t you? That Prince Wolf. You have to. Now that his brother’s dead. Because that’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

  Isabelle woke up in an unfamiliar room. She was covered in gauze, and everything hurt. She looked outside the window at the rolling hills, the rows of vines. The familiar smell of vinegar. Home? She was home? Why was she back in Orleans? She sat up with a start, suddenly remembering the attack on the road outside the city.

  Louis? Where was Louis?

  “Louis?” she called. But it was not Louis who was sitting across from her. It was Hugh. She recoiled. “Why am I here? Where is Louis?”

  “You’re awake,” he said. “Good.”

  “Why am I here? Where’s Louis?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer in her heart. “Louis!”

  “Louis is dead,” Hugh said flatly. “You can call for him all you want, but he’s gone.”

  “No,” Isabelle said and fell back, sobbing. “No, he can’t be dead. Not Louis. What did you do, Hugh?” She remembered the last words she’d heard before she blacked out.

  Kill the boy, but keep her alive.

  “You killed him,” she screeched. “You killed Louis. Oh my God, you killed him! Leave me! Leave this room! Leave me alone! Oh my God, Louis…my beautiful Louis…”