“Impossible,” Anouk said honestly.
December started smacking him again with the brush until he fled.
The Goblins frantically fixed her fallen hair and smoothed the wrinkles from her dress, and when the clock chimed noon, they opened the same door that Beau had walked out of, but the hallway beyond had vanished with the changing of the hour. Instead, a set of frosted glass doors with white ironwork stood before them: the entrance to the rooftop garden. Anouk twisted her hands in the folds of her dress, hoping the Goblins couldn’t see how they were shaking. With a grin, December threw open the doors.
Anouk braced for a blast of winter air. Her shoulders and arms and décolleté were bare, but instead of a harsh chill, she felt buttery warmth. Her muscles eased as she blinked into the sunlight. Summer sunlight, rich and bright. Just moments ago, snow and sleet were pounding against the windows. The rooftop garden, the last she’d seen of it, had been dreary and wet, the furniture covered with tarps, frozen puddles on the stone paths, rosebushes scraggly and bare. She tipped her head up and nearly tripped on her hem. It was still snowing. Someone—Rennar, probably—had cast a spell to create a dome of summertime over the rooftop garden. Beneath the spell, it was all flowers and the trills of birdsong. The rosebushes now burst with soft pink blooms the same color as her blush.
She felt eyes on her.
The rooftop garden was filled with more Royals than she’d ever seen in one place. She’d met the leaders of the various Courts at the Coal Baths and again at her engagement party, but in the days since, lesser Royals had also arrived. Dukes from the Minaret Court dressed in a bold vermillion. Ladies-in-waiting from the Barren Court with their arms overflowing with cherry blossoms. Knights bearing the crest of the Crimson Court dressed in shades of blush. Court of the Woods nobles in flowing coral robes. Duke Karolinge, a reluctant-looking officiant, stood at the front of the assembly in a red suit so dark it was almost black. The Goblins huddled in attendance around the edges of the garden, crammed in amid the rosebushes. They’d each donned a pink hat or a pink scarf or put on a smear of pink eye shadow. The only one not dressed in shades of red was Petra, who was wearing her black coat and champagne-colored sunglasses.
No one told a witch how to dress.
Rennar stood beneath an archway of vines in the center of the garden, dressed in red, a crown of gold antlers on his head. His eyes, normally such a cool blue, seemed to crackle like embers.
Anouk took a step forward and promptly tripped on the hem of her dress.
“Careful!” Cricket, standing by the doorway, moved to help her. Her hands were cool against Anouk’s burning skin. Cricket was wearing her ripped jeans but she’d put on a pink lace top for the occasion. A bouquet of roses was balanced in the crook of her arm.
Cricket gave her a dry smile as she helped her stand. “Try to make it down the aisle in one piece?” Her voice dipped low. “If we must go through with this ridiculous ceremony, at least let’s not make a fool of ourselves in front of the entire Royal Court.” She shoved the bouquet into Anouk’s arms. “Here. This is yours. I’ll hold your train. Apparently, I’m your maid of honor.”
Anouk blinked down at the roses. Someone had removed the thorns and wrapped the stems in lace. A wave of doubt suddenly washed over her. “Cricket, I’m not sure about this.”
“Me neither, but it’s too late to get out of it now.” Cricket prodded her in the backside. “Hurry up so we can at least eat cake.”
Anouk’s glass shoes wobbled on the uneven stones. On either side of her, the Royals observed her with cool indifference. She wondered what was going through their heads. Just months ago she’d been sweeping floors. What did they think of the leader of the Parisian Court marrying a maid? A beastie? Not the most likely individual to button up in a feathered dress and march down the aisle. Not the kind to lead a realm.
She could feel their judgment beating down on her. She swallowed, swaying slightly, then gripped the rose bouquet in determination. Well, she’d never asked to join their ranks. She was going to save their necks—ungrateful though they were—but she was doing it to save her own. None of them were risking their lives to set foot in London and face the Coven. They’d be here, in their protected penthouse palace, drinking rare wines and bemoaning the decline of the Haute.
She tipped her chin up.
Rennar watched her with an unreadable expression as she approached and took her place beneath the arch. Duke Karolinge loomed over them, looking uncomfortable in a suit instead of his robes. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses.
Rennar leaned forward to whisper, “You have grass stains on your hem.”
She looked down. Zut alors. If anyone could manage to ruin a magic-infused couture dress in thirty steps, it was her.
Cricket artlessly arranged her dress around her, kicking at the lace train to make it cooperate, and then joined Beau, Hunter Black, Luc, and Viggo, who made up the motley wedding party. Beau tugged on his tight collar. His eyes flickered to Anouk but he couldn’t seem to make himself hold her gaze. Cricket gave him a sideways hug.
Duke Karolinge slammed his staff against the ground and Anouk jumped.
“Let us begin.”
Those were the only words spoken in an earthly language. He switched to the Selentium Vox, rattling off a litany of oaths from a dusty volume he cradled in one hand. He seemed to be the only one interested in the ceremony. The other Royals looked bored. One of the Minaret Royals stifled a yawn. Queen Violante didn’t even bother to hide hers.
Anouk, with her basic knowledge of the language, tried to follow along, but it was so dry that when he launched into the history of Haute rites in the twelfth century, her mind wandered. Was she truly doing this? Marrying a prince? She thought of the wrinkled playbill she’d once pasted to the wall of her bedroom. Princes and princesses, daring rescues and sword fights. At the time, she’d dreamed of such things as she darned Mada Vittora’s socks into the late hours of the night. Such lives had belonged to other people. Special people. Not maids or gardeners or chauffeurs.
Overhead, the sleet turned to snow that pitter-pattered on the dome that Rennar had conjured. She let her gaze drift over the crowd. Viggo had moved to stand with the Goblins, slapping away their mischievous hands as they tried to steal things from the Royals’ pockets. Hunter Black in his suit, Luc, and Beau—a trio of misfits. Cricket beside them, prettier but no less out of place.
And then, without warning, Rennar took her hand. She realized Duke Karolinge had stopped talking. The entire rooftop garden was silent, heavy with anticipation.
“What’s happening?” she whispered urgently.
“This.” He drew her toward him and, before she could take another breath, pressed his lips to hers. Her pulse leaped to life. She felt like she was in the sky on downy wings, snow falling on her while she watched the scene happening below. Rennar’s lips were soft. Beau stood just paces away. Would Rennar do something crass to humiliate him? Paw her bodice? Kiss her like he had in the dessert pantry?
But almost as soon as his lips had touched hers, they were gone. A quick, chaste kiss. He released her hands.
She blinked, not sure what to do with her hands. “You . . . you promised no more stolen kisses.”
“That wasn’t a kiss. That was ceremony. Trust me, if I kiss you, you’ll know it.”
She flushed and glanced at Beau to make certain he hadn’t overheard. “So . . . is it finished? We’re married?”
“Not quite.”
He crooked a finger at Duke Karolinge, who blew his whistle for Saint. The bird took wing from a rosebush and landed on the Duke’s shoulder. In his beak he held an achingly beautiful crown, as fragile as gold dust held together with spider silk. Rennar gently placed it on her head.
“Princess of the Haute,” he whispered. “Ruler of the Parisian Court.”
The crown was so light that she had to reach up to make sure it was real. Duke Karolinge said a few final words in the Selentium Vox, but her
head was spinning and she couldn’t hear them. She hadn’t expected to feel anything. The marriage was a sham. But a maid who became a princess—it meant something.
Rennar took her hand once more. The rooftop garden was a sea of pink and crimson and blush. The Court of the Woods delegation approached and knelt at her feet. She barely had the sense to lift her grass-stained hem for them to kiss her toes. She almost laughed deliriously. It wasn’t long ago that Mada Vittora had cut off her toes to make her a better plaything with smaller feet to play dress up. Now kings and queens were on their knees to kiss those toes.
“Princess Anouk,” the Woods Queen said. “We welcome you to the Haute. We swear our fealty to you.”
Rennar prodded her, and she remembered what she’d been instructed to say. She fought with the billows of her skirt to kneel down and kiss her toes in return. “And I to you.”
One by one, the Royal delegations approached, knelt, and swore fealty in exchange for her own. They all viewed her with cold glares. None of them were pleased about this marriage, except perhaps Prince Aleksi of the Lunar Court, who was the only one to give Anouk a wink.
By the time the last of the Royals had sworn fealty, Anouk felt dead on her feet. She had that wobbly sensation that time had either frozen or sped up. Several Goblins were glancing at their pocket watches, holding their forks, eager for the feast.
“With all of you as witnesses,” Rennar said, clutching Anouk’s hand, “it is our right to invoke the Nochte Pax. A wedding gift that you are bound to honor. Our wish is to activate the Code of Courts, which states that if any one of us is under attack by an outside force, the others must come to that party’s aid. Few of you were willing to admit that the Court of Isles was under attack, even after you witnessed the Coven of Oxford possess King Kaspar. But now each of you is bound. Tonight, we will meet in the spell library and negotiate how to protect our borders. Until this is done, none of you may leave Castle Ides.”
The members of the Barren Court looked daggers at Rennar. Anouk worried suddenly that Rennar might not know what he was doing. Forcing the others to cooperate might lead to even more enemies.
He touched fresh champagne-colored powder to his lips and whispered a spell. The dome over the rooftop garden burst like a soap bubble. Soft snow began to fall over the garden. Thick flakes landed on her eyelashes. It dusted the roses and the Royals, who didn’t bother to brush the snow off their shoulders. Goose bumps sprang up over her bare arms. She hugged her shoulders and looked over the crowd to catch Beau’s eye. Snowflakes dusted his hair. He looked as handsome as everything else in the garden, but there was an uneasiness in his eyes that matched her own.
Tension was thick in Paris.
Disgruntled Royal Courts were Rennar’s problem now. They had their own problems. There would be no feast for them. No venison or red velvet cake. (Well, maybe a bite.) No rosé wines or champagne. No first dance beneath the stars while the famous American contest winner sang a ballad. No toasts to love and good fortune. The party would happen, of course—every Goblin was already hopping from one foot to another—but Anouk wouldn’t be there.
The snow fell harder.
She’d be somewhere dark. Somewhere cold. Somewhere she had run from her whole life, somewhere she’d promised herself she’d never return.
Beau held open an umbrella for her against the snow. He didn’t need to remind her of what came next: beastie spells, the Dark Thing, tunnels into an unfamiliar city, a coven they didn’t know how to defeat. For now, he needed only to hold the umbrella over their heads. She rested her cheek against his chest and felt the beating of his heart match her own.
Chapter 27
As soon as they could, Anouk, Beau, Cricket, and the rest of their troop stole away from the rooftop garden. The sounds of the feasting were audible throughout Castle Ides. The other Royal Courts might resent the Nochte Pax, but they were still Royals, and Royals never turned down an opportunity to dress well, eat well, and flaunt their cruel beauty in front of one another.
“This way,” Cricket said, leading them through the maze of hallways. They all had a slightly giddy air, or perhaps it was delirium. There was a point at which reality was so unbelievable that the most rational thing to do was to give in. Anouk couldn’t quite believe that she was truly a princess, married to Prince Rennar—let alone that the two of them weren’t trying to kill each other! And she couldn’t believe that she’d made an absurd promise to fight the witches of Oxford when she couldn’t even cast a simple whisper. She was no closer to knowing what her crux was now than she’d ever been. It was madness. But then again, what in her short life hadn’t been?
Cricket threw open the door to the billiard room and they tumbled in, full of a manic kind of recklessness. Viggo went straight to the bar cart to make himself a drink. Luc joined him. Hunter Black paced before the empty fireplace with tight, silent steps, his fingers toying with the glass buttons of his shirt. Petra shook the snow from her hair and, with a whisper, enchanted a fire in the hearth to warm her hands.
Anouk pulled the crown from her head, though it tangled in her hair and she had to tug it free with a squeak. She tossed it onto the coffee table. They all stared at it. Hunter Black stopped pacing.
“I never thought I’d see it,” Luc said quietly. “A beastie become a Royal.”
“And here I was, proud just to have my own apartment,” Cricket said.
“Along with power,” Hunter Black said darkly, “comes more danger.”
“Aaaand there it is.” Beau rolled his eyes. “I was waiting for Hunter Black to say something bleak.” He came up behind Anouk and circled his arms around her waist. He whispered in her ear, “Don’t listen to them. You did what you had to.”
She leaned back into him. “I’m sorry about the wedding, Beau.”
“I’m not.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise and twisted around to face him.
“To see all those queens kissing your feet? I’d have paid any price for that.” He ran a hand gently through her hair; she’d undone the elaborate chignon. “You know,” he said quietly, “when I turned back in the fountain alleyway on Rue des Amants, there was a second before my memory faded when I was caught somewhere between human and animal. I can’t quite describe it; it was like being in a dream. Like I could sense things I couldn’t when I was human, but I was still human enough to think. And do you know what I thought?”
“What?”
“If I was cursed to spend life as an animal, at least I’d known you.”
She smiled so wide she thought her heart might break.
Cricket started pulling out her knives and arranging them on the billiard table. Then she went around the room plucking various blunt artifacts off the walls and adding them to the pile. Viggo, drink in hand, watched her with a bemused look.
“How exactly are you going to carry all of those weapons?” he said. “Tied to your tail? Hidden in your fur?”
“You’re going to carry them for me.” Her sharp grin bared her teeth. She checked her watch. “We need to leave within the hour. The entrance to the Tunnel sous la Manche is at the Coquelles terminal. It’s a two-hour drive from Paris. We need to arrive when the tunnel shifts change over. With a few tricks, we can get past the guards.”
Beau looked wary until Cricket tossed him a set of keys. “Perk up, Beau. Rennar agreed to lend us his car for the drive.”
His jaw dropped. “The Centenario Roadster?”
“With alligator interior.”
His hands closed around the keys and he pumped his fist in the air.
Anouk shook her head, though she smiled.
“We need to make the potion for the contra-beastie spell,” Luc said. “Petra, what do you need?”
She rattled off a list of herbs and then slid a look to Viggo. “And blood.”
Viggo sighed as he rolled back his sleeve. “Leave me enough so I don’t pass out while I’m dragging these animals from France to England.”
While Luc, Petra, and Viggo worked on the potion, Anouk fought with the billows of her dress. “I’m going to change out of this parachute. I’ll meet you all in the lobby in fifteen minutes.”
She gave Beau a peck on the cheek, kicked off her glass slippers, lifted her skirts to her knees, and made her way to the bedroom she’d been sharing with Beau. She wondered if, assuming they got back from London in one piece, she and Beau would move into a different room. The terms of the marriage allowed her to love someone else, and they didn’t forbid her to share a room with someone else either. Rennar had his own apartments—a master bedroom fit for, well, a prince. And it wasn’t as though there was any space limitation in Castle Ides. Rennar could take an old broom closet and enchant it into a sprawling master suite for her and Beau. She’d paint the walls a midnight blue with stars on the ceiling. A giant bed big enough for them both to stretch out on and never reach the edges. A whole wall of windows looking out onto the Parisian skyline, and a balcony lined with grimacing gargoyles.
She shuffled into her temporary room and fumbled with the buttons on the dress. She was relieved when she heard Beau’s footsteps behind her. “Would you help me with the buttons?”
She felt his presence at her back along with an odd moment of hesitation. He didn’t touch the buttons. She looked over her shoulder and paled when she saw Rennar standing there.
“Oh! I . . . I just came to change.”
“Do you still want help?”
“Um, sure.” She turned around and lifted her hair for him to unfasten the row of pearl buttons, and then she dragged the heavy dress behind the privacy of a dressing screen. Through the latticework, she could barely make out his shape. She struggled to get the dress over her head.
“You’re leaving.” He said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yes.” They’d already been through this. He knew their plan, uncertain though it was. She bent over, trying to shimmy out of the dress. “The others are waiting for me downstairs. Saint can get through the border spell, so once we’ve left, have Duke Karolinge send him into London. If we have any messages to convey, we’ll send them back through him. I don’t think we’ll be gone longer than a few days. By then, one way or another, this will all have come to an end. We’ll either find a way to defeat the Coven or . . .” She didn’t need to finish the thought.
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