“If you’d like, I can pick them for you,” Aurora offered. “But I did list them from most desirable to least desirable to make it easier for you, although they are all acceptable choices.”
“I can help her,” Willa said, taking the list from me before Aurora had a chance to. “I know a lot of these girls.”
She immediately flipped to the end of the list, and I felt a small satisfaction in knowing she’d pick the ones that Aurora liked least.
“Can’t I just have Willa?” I asked. “I’m sure Tove doesn’t have that many friends for groomsmen either. We could have a small wedding.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aurora said. “You’re a Princess. You can’t have a small wedding.”
“Aurora is right,” Willa said, sounding sad to be agreeing with her. “You need to have a huge wedding. You have to let them know that you’re a Princess to be reckoned with.”
“Don’t they already know that?” I asked honestly, and Willa shrugged.
“It doesn’t hurt to remind them.”
“Since your father is out of the picture, Noah can walk you down the aisle,” Aurora said, writing something else on her paper.
“Noah?” I asked. “Your husband?”
“Yes, he’s a suitable choice,” Aurora replied offhandedly.
“But I barely know him,” I said.
“Well, you can’t walk down alone,” Aurora said, giving me an annoyed look.
“Why can’t Matt walk me down?” I asked. “He practically raised me anyway.”
“Matt?” Aurora was confused, and when she remembered who he was, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That human boy? Absolutely not. He shouldn’t even be living in the palace, and if others were to find out he was here, you’d be the laughingstock of the kingdom.”
“Then . . . fine.” I scrambled to think of someone other than Noah. “What about Garrett?”
“Garrett Strom?” Aurora was appalled, but I think it was because he was actually an acceptable candidate.
“He is nearly her stepfather,” Willa pointed out with a sly smile. Having her father walk me down the aisle would give her and her family more prestige.
That wasn’t why I picked him, though. I actually liked Garrett, and he was the closest thing I had to a decent father figure around here.
“If it is as the Princess wishes,” Aurora said, and grudgingly she crossed out her husband’s name and wrote Garrett’s instead.
They continued that way for a while, and eventually I had to excuse myself. I needed a break from their subtle jabs and bickering. I wandered down the hall. My plan only went so far as to be anywhere that they weren’t.
As I got closer to the War Room, I heard voices. I stopped and poked my head inside. The pasty Chancellor sat at the desk with a stack of papers spread out before him. Finn and Tove stood on the other side of the desk, talking, and Thomas was at the bookshelves, searching for something.
“What are you guys doing?” I asked as I came into the room.
“The boys here have an idiotic plan, and I’m indulging them,” the Chancellor said.
“It’s not idiotic,” Finn said, glaring at the Chancellor, who was too busy dabbing sweat from his forehead to notice.
“We’re trying to find a way to extend the truce,” Tove explained. “We’re going through old treaties with the Vittra and any other tribes to see if we have a precedent.”
“Have you found anything?” I asked.
I went over to the desk and touched some of the papers. Most of them were written in a language I didn’t understand. It was all symbols, almost like Russian or Arabic. When I looked in the library, I’d found that to be common of the older documents.
“Nothing useful yet, but we only just started,” Tove said.
“You won’t find anything useful.” The Chancellor shook his head. “The Vittra never extend their deals.”
“What kinds of things could extend the truce?” I asked, ignoring the Chancellor.
“We don’t know, exactly,” Tove admitted. “But often there are loopholes in the language that we can use against them.”
“Loopholes?” I asked.
“Yeah, like Rumpelstiltskin,” Finn said. “They usually throw in something clever like that when they make a deal. It seems impossible, but sometimes you can break it.”
“I heard the deal. They didn’t say anything like that,” I said. “Except that the peace only lasts until I become Queen. What if I never become Queen?”
“No, you need to be Queen,” Finn said and picked up a stack of papers.
“But that would make indefinite peace, wouldn’t it?” I asked. “If I was never Queen.”
“I doubt it,” Tove said. “The King would find a way around it eventually, and it would only make him more pissed when he finally did.”
“But . . .” I trailed off and sighed. “So he’ll find his way around anything, including an extension. Why are you even bothering?”
“An extension isn’t our goal.” Tove met my eyes. “We’ll settle for a temporary fix if it’s all we can find, but we want to find something that will end this.”
“Do you think something like that exists?” I asked.
“The only thing that King will listen to is violence,” the Chancellor sputtered. “We need to attack them with everything we have, as soon as we can.”
“We have tried that,” Tove said, exasperated. “Over and over again! The King is immune to our attacks! We can’t hurt him!”
It suddenly hit me when he said that. When Tove had talked about Loki, he’d said that only he, Elora, and I were strong enough to hold him, and he wasn’t even sure if we could execute him. The King was even stronger than Loki.
Nobody had ever been able to stop him. Elora wasn’t strong enough, and Tove was too scatterbrained. But I had the King’s strength and Elora’s power.
“You want me to kill the King,” I said. “You want to extend the deadline so I have more time to train.”
Tove and Finn wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I knew I’d gotten it right. They expected me to kill my father.
TWENTY-FIVE
fairy tale
Thomas grabbed a large book from the bookshelf and dropped it on the desk with a heavy thud. Dust rose from the leather cover. Tove had been so busy avoiding my gaze that he jumped when the book banged.
“That might be of some help.” Thomas motioned to the book. “But it’s written in Tryllic.”
“What’s Tryllic?” I asked, eager to change the subject to something that wasn’t patricide.
“It’s the old Trylle language,” Finn explained, and pointed to the papers I’d seen written in a symbolic language. “Only Tove is any good at reading it.”
“It’s a dead language,” the Chancellor said. “I don’t know how anyone knows it anymore.”
“It’s not that hard.” Tove reached for the book. He opened the pages, letting out a musty odor. “I can teach you sometime, if you’d like.”
“I should learn it,” I said. “But not right now. We’re trying to find a way to extend this thing, right? How can I help?”
“Look through the papers.” Finn sifted through some on the table and handed me a small stack. “See if you can find anything about treaties or truces, even if it’s not with the Vittra. Anything that might help.”
Tove sat in one of the distressed leather chairs to read the book. I sat down on the floor with my stack of papers, preparing to dig into Trylle legalese. It always seemed to be written in riddles and limericks. A lot of it was hard to understand, and I had to ask for interpretations.
I didn’t feel so bad about that, though, when Tove called Finn over to help him understand a passage. Finn leaned over the chair so he could peer down at the page, and he and Tove discussed what it meant.
I thought about how strange it was that Finn and Tove got along so well. Finn seemed to turn into a jealous freak whenever I flirted with a guy, but I was engaged to Tove, and he seemed perfectly okay with
him.
Finn looked up from the book, and his eyes met mine, only for a second before he looked away. I saw something in them, a longing I missed, and I wondered again if I had made the right decision.
“Princess?” Aurora called from the hallway.
I’d only been sitting on the floor, reading pages, but she probably wouldn’t approve of it. I jumped to my feet and set the papers on the desk to avoid a lecture about ladylike behavior.
“Princess?” Aurora said again, and she poked her head into the room. “Ah, there you are. And you’re with Tove. Perfect. We need you to go over engagement details.”
“Oh. Right.” Tove set the book aside and gave me an awkward smile. “Wedding stuff. We have to do that now.”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
I glanced over at Finn. His expression had hardened, but he didn’t look up. Tove and I followed Aurora out as she talked about the things we needed to do for the wedding, and I looked over my shoulder at Finn.
Aurora held Tove and me hostage for far too long, and Willa couldn’t lighten the mood. It would’ve been so much easier if Aurora and Willa were just marrying each other. By the time Aurora let us go, even Willa was relieved to escape.
Duncan was waiting for me, and we went down to the kitchen to eat supper together. Tove went to the War Room to work, and Willa said she had plans. I knew I should be helping Tove, but I was starving. I had to get something to eat first.
I talked to Duncan about what Tove and Finn were researching, and how some of the papers were written in Tryllic. Duncan said he thought he’d seen a book on Tryllic upstairs in Rhys’s living room, which made sense because he’d explained that a lot of mänks went through a phase where they tried to learn it.
I didn’t really need to learn it this second, but I wanted to get a feel for the language. As soon as we were done eating, I headed up to the living room. The door was shut, but most doors in the palace were kept closed, and I opened it without knocking.
I hadn’t been trying to be sneaky, but since Matt and Willa didn’t hear me, I must’ve been awfully quiet. Or maybe they were too caught up in the moment.
Willa was lying on her back on the couch, and Matt was on top of her. She had on a short dress, the way she always seemed to, and Matt had his hand on her thigh, pushing her hem up. Her other leg was wrapped around his waist, and she buried her fingers in his sandy hair as they kissed.
“Oh, my god!” I gasped. I didn’t mean to, but it just came out.
“Wendy!” Willa shrieked, and Matt jumped off her.
“What’s going on?” Duncan asked from behind me and tried to push past me, so he could protect me if he needed to.
“Quiet!” Willa hissed, fixing her dress so all her parts were a bit more covered. “Shut the door!”
“Oh, right.” I pulled the door shut and averted my eyes from Willa and Matt.
They weren’t doing anything particularly graphic, but I’d never seen Matt in any compromising situations before. He hardly ever dated, and he almost never brought girls home. It was bizarre thinking of him getting sexy with someone.
When I glanced up at Matt, his cheeks were red, and he wouldn’t lift his head. His hair was messed up, and he kept smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt. Some of Willa’s lipstick had rubbed off on his cheek and mouth, but I didn’t have the guts to tell him about it.
“Wow. You two?” Duncan grinned at them. “Bravo, Matt. I didn’t think Willa would ever date anyone out of her class.”
“Shut up, Duncan.” Willa glared at him and readjusted her ankle bracelet.
“Don’t be crude,” Matt growled, and Duncan took a step back, as if he expected Matt to hit him.
“And you can’t say anything to anybody about this,” Willa warned him. “You know what would happen if this got out.”
Willa was a Marksinna, and even though her abilities were nowhere near as strong as mine, she was still one of the most powerful ones left. Matt was a human from a host family, relegating him to an even lower class than trackers and mänks. If Matt was caught defiling Willa’s important bloodline, they’d both be exiled.
Considering they were two of my closest friends, I didn’t want that to happen. Not only would I miss them terribly, but the Vittra might go after them to get to me. They needed to stay in Förening, where they were safe.
“Of course I won’t say anything.” Duncan crossed his heart to prove his sincerity. “I never told anyone about Finn and the Princess.”
“Duncan, shut up,” I snapped. I didn’t need Matt to be reminded of that right now.
“Please don’t be mad,” Willa said, incorrectly thinking my irritation was with her. “We didn’t want you to find out this way. We’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you, but you’ve had so much going on lately.”
“And this doesn’t change the way we feel about you,” Matt rushed to explain. “We both care about you a lot.” He gestured to himself and Willa, but he didn’t look at her. “That’s one of the things that drew us together. We didn’t want to hurt you.”
“You guys, I’m not hurt.” I shook my head. “I’m not mad. I’m not even that surprised.”
“Really?” Willa tilted her head.
“No. You’ve been spending so much time together, and you’re always flirting,” I said. “I kinda knew something was going on. I just didn’t expect to walk in on you like that.”
“Sorry.” Matt’s blush deepened. “I really didn’t mean for you to see us that way.”
“No, it’s okay.” I shrugged it off. “It’s not a big deal.”
I looked from one of them to the other. Willa’s dark eyes were worried, and her light brown waves of hair cascaded down her side. She was very beautiful, and she’d already shown how kind and loyal she could be.
“You guys make sense,” I said finally. “And I want you both to be happy.”
“We’re happy.” Willa smiled, and she and Matt exchanged a look. It was one of those sweet loving ones, and it even made Matt smile.
“Yeah, we’re happy.” Matt nodded and pulled his gaze away from her to look at me.
“Good. But you two have got to be careful. I don’t want you getting caught and banished away from me. I need you both.”
“Yeah, I know you need me,” Willa said. “Aurora would eat you alive without my help.”
“Don’t remind me.” I grimaced and flopped on one of Rhys’s old beanbag chairs. “And I’ve only been engaged for like forty-eight hours. Everyone’s all afraid of the Vittra, but I swear, this wedding is going to be the death of me.”
“If you don’t want to marry him, don’t marry him,” Matt said. He sat down on the couch next to Willa, but he’d turned on his disapproving big-brother voice. “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”
“No, it’s not Tove.” I shook my head. “I’m fine with marrying Tove.”
“You’re ‘fine’ with marrying him?” Willa laughed and looped her arm through Matt’s. “How romantic.”
“You should’ve seen the proposal,” I said.
“Where is the ring, by the way?” Willa asked, looking at my hands. “Is it out getting sized?”
“I don’t know.” I held my hands out to look at them, as if I expected a ring to magically appear. “He didn’t give me one.”
“That’s horrible!” Willa rested her head on Matt’s shoulder. “We have to correct that right away. Maybe I’ll say something when we’re with Aurora tomorrow.”
“No!” I said fiercely. “Please don’t say anything to her. She’d force me to pick out something hideous.”
“How can she force you to do anything?” Duncan asked. He sat cross-legged next to me on the floor. “You’re the Princess. She’s your subordinate.”
“You know Aurora.” I sighed. “She has ways.”
“That’s weird.” Duncan looked at me as if seeing me in a new light. “I thought life would be so much different for royals. That you had total freedom.”
�
��Nobody’s really free.” I shook my head. “You spend like twenty hours a day with me. You know how much of my time is free.”
“That’s really depressing.” Duncan’s shoulders sagged as he thought about this. “I thought your life was like this because you were new, but it’s always gonna be like this, isn’t it? You’ll always have to answer to people.”
“So it would seem,” I agreed. “Life isn’t a fairy tale, Duncan.”
“And you know what they say,” Willa chimed in. “Mo’ money, mo’ problems.”
“Well, that was embarrassing to hear you say that, so I’m good.” I stood up. “I’ve got lots of studying to do tonight. I’m going to squeeze in some training before I meet with Aurora tomorrow. Do you think you can keep her busy until I get there?”
“If I must,” Willa groaned.
“Don’t overwork yourself,” Matt said as I was leaving the room. “You’ve got to make time to be a kid. You’re still young.”
“I think my days of being a kid are over,” I said honestly.
TWENTY-SIX
overture
Willa bailed early on in the planning. She said she had to have supper with her father, but I suspected that she couldn’t take Aurora anymore.
We were in the ballroom. The skylights were finally fixed, but a layer of snow covered the top of them, making the ballroom dark and cavelike. Aurora assured me that the snow would be removed in time for my engagement party, as if I were worried about that.
She flitted about the room, mapping out where the tables and decorations would be. I helped as often as she let me, which wasn’t very often. Her poor assistant was running around like mad to do everything Aurora asked.
When she finally let her assistant go for the night, I was sitting at the grand piano, playing the opening to “Für Elise” repeatedly, since it was the only bit I knew.
“You’ll have to take piano lessons,” Aurora said. She had a thick black binder filled with all the wedding information, and she dropped it on the piano, making the instrument twang. “I can’t believe you didn’t already have them. What kind of host family did you live with?”
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