“I’ll leave you ladies to get acquainted then.” The prince gave Cynthia a wink, bowed low to the princess and wove through the crowded dance floor, a gaggle of women in his wake.
Princess Marcella turned her icy eyes to Cynthia and asked in a polite, distant voice. “How do you know Wilhelm, then?”
In the presence of the stately woman, Cynthia suddenly felt short and dowdy, her beautiful costume silly and garish.
“I don’t,” Cynthia admitted. “We just bumped into each other.”
“He seems very interested in you for such a casual acquaintance,” the princess said. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”
“Cindy.” She gave an awkward little bow, startled at the princess’s comment. Did the prince seem interested? “Your highness, I’m an emissary for King Landry. I apologize for approaching you at a party, but his majesty has urgent business to discuss with you.”
Cynthia and Remi had concocted this story during the long hours of her imprisonment that day. Remi admitted it was a bit of a stretch, but under the circumstances it was close enough to the truth and would get them a minute or two alone with a princess. Hopefully.
“With me? Not my brother?” The princess ' s pale eyebrows rose so far they dis appeared frim behind her mask. “Could he not communicate this in a letter?”
“With you, P rincess. And as I said , the business is urgent and rather recent.” Cynthia clutched her little bag in both hands and could feel Remi’s warm body tense. “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”
Princess Marcella’s gaze swung around the ballroom. Cynthia followed her eyes to a tall young man with the same white-blond hair and blue eyes. He was dressed as a pirate and speaking to a mouse in a fluffy gray dress and tail. That must be King Rothstein. It took her a moment to recognize the woman under the ears and mask, but the king was leaning very close to none other than Christina Levinson.
Cynthia turned her body, paralyzed with fear of being recognized.
“Let me tell my brother where I’ll be. I’ll meet you in the garden.” Her cold blue eyes found Cynthia’s. “Your request has me most curious.”
Cynthia bowed her head and hurried to the sweeping staircase that led from the ballroom to the gardens. She passed several guards standing at attention who paid her no heed.
The fairy lights from last night were still suspended in the trees, causing the entire garden to glow. Fruit trees and low decorative hedges along with flowers and herbs dotted the landscape—ordered in straight rows that nature never intended. It was such a far cry from Cynthia’s abandoned little garden at the edge of the Wellington property.
A few shadowy couples strolled the grounds. Cynthia found a quiet bench and sat down to wait. She freed Remi from her bag. He immediately stretched his limbs like a cat and jumped into the dew-wet grass.
“This could be it, Remi,” Cynthia said.
He jumped back on the bench and turned his dark eyes on her.
“I need to do this by myself, Cindy,” he said.
“What? No, I’m going to introduce you. Explain what happened. It will be less of a shock —” —“
“I need to do it by myself,” he repeated, a stubborn set to his tiny jaw. “It’s embarrassing enough that I have to be carried around like an object all the time .” —“
“I—why are you telling me this now? I didn’t know you minded —” —“ Cynthia sputtered, confused as to why he was acting this way.
“Look, it was necessary, it’s not your fault . , ” Remi rubbed one webbed hand along the back of his neck in a very human gesture. “I just—I don’t want you here—to watch me fail.”
“Remi — ” —“
“It’s humiliating,” he said in a low voice, staring at the bench.
“Fine.” Cynthia stood up, smoothing her dress. “But you’ve been present for every single one of my most mortifying moments for the past week. And no, it wasn’t fun looking the fool in front of you, but it was comforting having a friend there.”
She stalked away, ignoring Remi’s shouts that followed her. She wandered the gardens aimlessly, dodging in and out of the blue and pink pools of lantern light. Last night they had seemed magical. Now they seemed to deepen her melancholy. She wandered past an extravagant fountain with a base large enough to swim in and a tall pedestal shooting jets of water. She wound through a knee-high hedge maze and came to a stop at a tall brick wall. This must be the edge of the castle’s extensive grounds. She leaned against the rough brick and tilted her head, searching for the moon past the fruit of a pear tree. She hummed a few of the haunting opening bars from Fantasie. The tune fit her mood tonight.
“That was quite a concert last night.” The prince slid from the shadows.
Startled, Cynthia slid down the wall a few inches before she found her feet and curtsied staring hard at the ground. He k n n o e w s , he kn o e w s it was me. Her heart thundered in her chest.
“Poor girl,” he continued. “But I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed that hard. Snowdrop was traumatized.”
Cynthia picked up her head. It had been an off-handed comment. He had just recognized the tune she had been humming.
“You are a difficult girl to find,” the prince said, offering her his arm. “I had to borrow the magic mirror to locate you.”
“A magic mirror?” the skepticism was heavy in her voice as she laid her hand on his arm and he led her through the gardens.
“All very hush, hush, you understand,” he said.
“You’ve been spying on me?” Cynthia asked, worried he had seen or overheard Remi.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on you,” the prince replied with a wolfish grin.
“To what end?”
“I’m hoping if I keep you on my arm all night, it will keep the wolves at bay,” the prince said, reaching up to pluck a pear from the tree they were passing under. “Fending off wom e n all night is exhausting.”
“I believe I’ve given you all the sympathy you’re going to get from me about that problem,” Cynthia laughed. “Why is the king insisting you get married anyway?”
“It’s not the king, it’s—someone else.”
Cynthia noticed the way he shied away from answering the question and for some reason she flashed back to last night. He’d been trying to send a message during his birthday feast when he had at least half a dozen servants he could have sent.
“The truth is,” the prince said, tossing the pear in the air like a baseball. “You’re the only woman who doesn’t seem the least interested in trapping me in your net and dragging me to the altar.”
“I’m not,” Cynthia replied.
“Perhaps that’s what’s so appealing about you,” the prince said. The wicked grin was back. “Well, among other things.”
Cynthia shook her head at him and couldn’t quite make eye contact. She told herself he was teasing. She was unaccustomed to attention—and the prince was very brazen.
A scream shot through the night. It wasn’t far away and Cynthia’s thoughts immediately turned to Remi. She shook off the prince’s arm and began to run toward the sound. The prince jogged after her, worry pulling at his brow.
The bench where she’d left Remi came into view. Princess Marcella stood beside it, shaking. She seemed equal parts mad and shocked. The prince went straight to her , and spoke in a low voice. Others from the garden were emerging from the trees, and two guards were hurrying from the palace, a throng of guests in their wake.
Cynthia scanned the ground, frantic.
“Here,” Remi whispered. She found him blending in with the grass and scooped him up, cupping him to her chest. She began to back toward the castle, in the mind to find Jack and get out of there. The guards reached the prince and guests crowded around, including a woman dressed as a black widow flanked by a girl whose hair matched her koi costume and a very round looking butterfly. Her stepfamily.
Cynthia turned and ran back into the garden.
Chapter
1 4
“Thin gs didn’t go as planned tonight. ”
“SO, HOW DID IT GO?” she asked Remi as she struggled for breath in the tight costume.
“Can we please just go home?” he sighed.
Behind her she could hear the prince addressing the crowd. “No need for alarm, the princess just had a little fright.”
She reached the brick wall and cursed under her breath. She jogged along it, hoping to find a gate or opening that would lead her out.
“She was just right here.” The prince’s voice was close by, and there was no doubt he was searching for her again. What was with that man?
She stopped under a familiar pear tree and looked up into the branches. The gardeners hadn’t been as attentive to pruning as they should have and it’s limbs extended over the wall.
She tossed Remi onto a branch. “Climb,” she said, taking off her shoes and throwing them over the wall.
It took her two tries to get her hands around a lower branch—being short had its disadvantages—but she leveraged herself onto a limb.
Cynthia crawled through the leaves, edging onto the branch that hung over the wall. Remi had already hopped on top of the bricks and was waiting for her.
“Come on,” he said, glancing into the garden.
Cynthia could hear the prince and he wasn’t far. She lowered herself onto the wall, shaking the branches in the process.
“This way,” the prince called below her.
She swung off the wall, hanging on to the top bricks with just her hands. She took a deep breath, and let go, praying she wasn’t going to break an ankle. She landed hard and stumbled backwards. She held up her hands for Remi and he leapt after her, his body long and stretched as he aimed for her cupped hands.
He landed with a plop. On the other side of the wall, they could hear the prince hunting for her. She located her shoes, stepped into them, and began the long walk home.
“Do you want to walk—umm, hop?” Cynthia asked Remi. They were on the edge of the evergreen forest that ringed their small town. There was just enough room to walk between the wall and the trees.
“If I do we’ll get there next year,” he said. “Can I—do you mind if I ride on your shoulder?”
“No.” She smiled and set him in his usual spot; glad they were on good terms again. “What happened?”
“What you’d expect.” His face was so glum. “What am I doing wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Remi,” Cynthia said, picking her way in the dark over tree roots. The only light came from the full moon and the pink and blue glow of the lanterns on the other side of the wall. “I guess it’s hard for people to see past the surface.”
“It wasn’t for you,” Remi pointed out.
“Well, I am exceptional,” she laughed.
“The prince certainly seems to think so,” Remi said.
Cynthia was having a hard time deciphering his tone.
“What do you make of him?” Remi pressed.
“He’s funny. Nice. Handsome. Seems used to getting his way,” Cynthia said.
“A common character flaw among princes,” Remi said with a wry twist to his mouth.
“Good thing it’s not one of yours,” Cynthia said.
Remi cleared his throat. “It may have been a small one of mine. Something that being a frog has all but cured.”
“Really?” Cynthia considered this. “I’m having trouble picturing it.”
They’d left the brick wall surrounding the castle garden far behind. Cynthia couldn’t risk walking along the road dressed like she was. She kept to the woods and wound through faint animal trails. Her legs ached, but with shoes on her feet, she was confidant she could make it home.
It was peaceful in the woods with Remi dozing on her shoulder and the moon keeping her company as it tracked its familiar path across the sky. A feeling of contentment she hadn’t felt in a long time settled over her. Things were far from perfect in her life, and Remi’s disappointment this evening was just as frustrating for her. But a change was coming, one way or another—her life was different than it was just last week. Despite everything , Cynthia considered it better. She had a friend.
It was late when she let herself in the kitchen door, but Ann was still up, working the dough for tomorrow’s bread.
“Don’t you have people to do that for you?” Cynthia teased her.
Ann dropped the lump of dough with a faint splat in the flour.
“Cynthia?” she asked. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, girl!” Ann continued to pummel her bread, taking in Cynthia in her costume over her working hands. “That’s quite a getup.”
Cynthia opened the icebox , and pulling out some ravioli for her dinner.
“That’s for lunch tomorrow,” Ann sighed, taking the pasta out of her hands. “There’s some left over beef stew.” She started to stoke the stove. “No telling when your last hot meal was. Don’t they have all kinds of fancy food at those parties?”
“They do. I didn’t seem to have time to eat any of it,” Cynthia said. She filled a bowl with water for Remi and nudged him awake. “Dinner time.”
“He’s still a frog,” Ann commented.
“Things didn’t go as planned tonight,” Cynthia said, pulling a stool up to Ann’s workspace and perching on it.
Remi plunged himself in the water. Stroking around once or twice before poking his head up. “For the prince either,” he chuckled darkly. “I don’t think he anticipated losing you.”
“The prince?” Ann stopped her work at the stove and gave Cynthia her full attention. “You met the prince?”
Cynthia nodded, nibbling on a stale piece of bread while she waited for the stew to heat.
“And?” Ann asked, exasperated.
Cynthia smiled. “He’s handsome. It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t really know who I was. It was—refreshing.”
“He didn’t know who you were?” Ann asked, placing the warmed stew in front of her.
Cynthia shook her head. “I don’t know how he could have.”
Remi hopped out of his water bowl to investigate dinner.
“Ann,” Cynthia said around her first bite of food. “I need a favor.”
“A favor.” Ann planted her hands on her hips and fixed her with a hard stare. “What kind of favor.”
“I—obtained the key to the basement and let myself out of my room. I still need it to get out tomorrow night.” She returned Ann’s stare. “I don’t want Lady Wellington to know I can come and go as I please.”
“Agreed,” Ann said. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“I would just keep the key, but I don’t want the staff under suspicion for taking it. It really needs to go back on its peg by my door, but then I won’t be able to get out.” She raised her eyebrows at Ann.
“I see.” Ann took her time placing the dirty stew pot in the sink and running water in it. “So you’d need me to let you out.”
“Only after they leave for the last night of the feast. They’d never know.”
Ann was quiet. Cynthia chewed her dinner while she waited for her verdict.
“I’ve never liked the way they treated you,” Ann finally said.
“I know you haven’t, Ann. No one’s blaming you with the way things turned out,” Cynthia said.
“Your parents were good folk, especially your mother . ” Ann sighed, pulling up a stool next to Cynthia and lowering herself on it with a groan. “Your father made a mistake when he remarried. He didn’t have time to fix it before he died, and you got the brunt of it. ” Ann worried her hands together. “Of course I’ll let you out.”
Cynthia handed Ann the key and closed the basement door. She waited until she heard the catch of the lock snap in place before going down to her room with Remi on her shoulder. She’d made sure and stocked her room before being locked in. Firewood, food and water, a stack of books—including her fairy tales. It would be a long day tomorrow. She changed out of her costume and wa
shed her face, watching the water in the bucket turn red from the face paint. She called for a few birds and asked them to take the dress back to her mother’s tree.
“You’re not—keeping it?” Remi asked, interrupted by an enormous yawn.
“I have to destroy the evidence,” she said with a sad smile. “I have to assume my stepfamily got a glimpse of me during the evening. Can you image Lady Wellington’s face if she saw that dress in my room?” But before the birds flew off, Cynthia yanked a crimson feather from the skirt and added it to her collection of knickknacks on the mantel.
She curled on her bed with Remi already dreaming on her pillow and drifted to sleep as the carriage wheels carrying her stepfamily pulled in front of the house.
That night, Cynthia’s sleep was filled with dreams—nightmares. At first the images weren’t bad ones, just everyday pictures. Washing laundry, walking along a dirt road with a lunch pail in hand, wading in an unfamiliar creek, learning to cook at an old potbelly stove. With her constantly was the little sister she had seen the night before and the man and woman she couldn’t help but think of as mother and father. In her dream the little girl turned her head and giggled, her blonde curls bouncing, her gray eyes full of mischief.
Cel i a .
The name fired in her head like a shotgun. More images rushed her, an old man in a black suit with a doctor’s bag, her father with his head bowed in his hands sitting by a dying fire, her sister pale as the sheets she lay on. Two grave markers in the snow—
Cynthia sat up with a violent motion that flipped Remi off the pillow. She scrubbed at her eyes, trying to rid herself of the images.
“What is it?” Remi righted himself and hopped on her knee, trying to peer into her face.
She was disoriented for a second and wondered why a talking frog was sitting on her knee.
“Just a dream. A dream,” she said like a mantra, clamping her hand s between her knees and trying to banish the images of her dream mother dying in the bed beside her.
“Didn’t you have a nightmare last night?” Remi asked, concern still pulling at his eyes.
A Grimm Curse: A Grimm Tales Novella (Volume 3) Page 10