But I knew better, by now, than to complain about either sister to the other – and if I couldn’t manage against the younger princess’s hostility, then I couldn’t hope to save my position here.
No excuses.
‘Please,’ I said instead, ‘let me try again. I’m already finding out useful information for you! If you’ll only give me one more chance …’
‘Oh, really.’ Katrin turned away from me to gaze down into the fireplace. Shadows flickered across her face. ‘Tell me exactly what valuable secrets you’ve learned for me today.’
I drew myself up like a soldier on inspection. ‘I can tell you exactly what the fairies are here for. Dragons.’
The crown princess’s reaction wasn’t what I had hoped.
‘Dragons.’ She let out a crack of laughter, shaking her head to herself. For the first time since I’d met her, her straight shoulders sagged. ‘After all that kerfuffle and nonsense with doors, that’s all you have to tell me? That the fairies are here because of our recent treaty?’
‘Well …’ I ran my tongue nervously over my upper lip. ‘I thought –’
‘Even an infant could have picked up on their fascination with our allies,’ Princess Katrin said coolly. ‘Added to the fact that they brought that foolish handbill of yours along with them, it hardly took much deduction to puzzle that much out.’ Her upper lip curled. ‘Please, Silke, do trust me to have some wits of my own. What I would be interested in hearing …’ She cocked her head as she studied me. ‘Did you happen to find out, in all of your unusual efforts today, exactly what they have planned for our allies?’
‘Not … not exactly,’ I admitted. Not at all. ‘But it really can’t be anything good, because –’
‘I thought not.’ She sighed and turned away, silencing me with a wave of her hand. ‘Never mind. It was an interesting experiment while it lasted. At least I needn’t waste any more time wondering about your usefulness.’
Her tone firmed, turning businesslike. ‘You may spend one more night here, so as not to cause suspicion among Sofia’s other ladies-in-waiting. But I can promise you that after the events of today, none of them will be surprised to see you leave in the morning, as many other regrettable ladies-in-waiting have left before. Moreover, you’ll receive a payment for your time that should be more than enough for you to forget everything you saw and experienced while you were here. So –’
‘Wait!’ Lights were flashing in front of my eyes. Dizziness swept over me until I staggered.
I couldn’t fail. I couldn’t leave! Not when I was so close to finding my parents.
‘Please,’ I begged. ‘I have found out something important, I swear. The dragons are the reason the fairies went underground in the first place! If you’ll just give me one more day to find out exactly why, and what they’re planning … I’ll give up my payment. I’ll –’
‘To what purpose?’ Katrin pinned me with an icy glare. In her eyes, I saw the ruthless ruler who’d chosen the fate of her city over my best friend’s life four months ago. ‘There’s no use in arguing,’ she said. ‘You may have picked up one intriguing titbit, but you certainly won’t find any more. You should have known it was too late from the moment you attracted the fairies’ interest. Even if you were the cleverest spy in the world, you’d never learn anything of value with two fairy sentinels marking your every move – and after the number of questions I’ve already been asked about you by our royal visitors, you can rest assured you would be followed by their spies for the rest of your time here.’
With a swish of her skirts, she settled down in the wing chair closest to the fireplace. The light from the flames mingled with the candlelight nearby to burnish her light brown skin and make her dark eyes glitter. She was by far the most beautiful person I’d ever seen in my life, and she was crushing every hope I’d ever had for my future.
‘Goodbye, Silke,’ said the crown princess. ‘We thank you for your services, which will no longer be required. Enjoy your final sleep in the palace.’
‘Your Highness,’ I murmured through cold lips as I swept her my finest ever curtsey.
My final sleep …
If she thought I was going to sleep now, she was mad!
As I glided like a lady through the corridors of the palace, I felt as if I were floating above my body, light with panic and too full of purpose to even feel the ground beneath me.
I had one final night to prove myself. I wasn’t going to waste a single minute of it.
When I joined the other ladies-in-waiting in our room, I turned away all of their worried questions with a laugh.
When Anja asked me to tell them another story, I made a funny, apologetic face and told her that I was too tired at the moment, but that tomorrow I absolutely, definitely would … even as the crown princess’s words burned in my memory.
‘As if any true aristocrat would ever play the part of a court jester!’
There was no time to be hurt, or even to worry that she might have been right. Instead, I stood calmly as our maid changed me into my borrowed nightgown, like a rich girl’s porcelain doll being dressed.
I smiled sweetly at the other girls as I tucked myself under the bedclothes, and then, despite the impatience that burned through my muscles, I held myself still and silent as I waited for their nervous giggles and whispered speculation (‘Do you think those fairies stay awake all night?’ and ‘Do you think they eat worms down underground?’) to shift into rattling breaths and snores.
Finally, finally, nearly an hour later, I crept out of my bed in bare feet and tiptoed across the warm carpet, thankful all the way down to my bones for every illicit trip of exploration I’d made during the previous long nights.
This time, I knew exactly where I was going.
I padded, whisper soft, past Sofia’s closed bedroom door with the ease of long practice. I slipped through the darkened outer salon without bumping into a single couch or wooden side table along the way. The hidden door in the salon wall opened like an old friend at the touch of my hand.
Silent as a shadow, I slid into the pitch-black corridor beyond. Then I let out a sigh of relief and strode forward, giddy and tingling with the exhilaration of finally taking over my own story.
I was a heroine, setting out alone against impossible odds.
I was the underdog on her way to unexpected but inevitable victory!
I was –
‘Argh!’
I was suddenly tripping and crashing forward in the darkness, arms windmilling helplessly as I fell on to a warm, breathing lump on the floor …
Because tonight, I wasn’t alone after all.
Someone – or something – had been waiting for me.
CHAPTER 16
‘Oof!’ I landed hard on my elbows, half sprawled across that waiting figure.
It twisted hard underneath me, and I jerked, trying to jump back to safety …
But the door was already swinging closed behind me. It shut me into the pitch-darkness of the servants’ passageway as a low growl rumbled through the stale air and I scrabbled backwards.
What else had the fairies brought along with them?
‘Couldn’t you have knocked first?’ Aventurine snarled.
‘Ohhh!’ I collapsed across her, limp with relief. My heart was still thrumming against my ribs as if I’d just sprinted across the entire first district. ‘What are you doing here, you idiot?’
‘What do you think?’ Yawning, she pulled herself free. I heard the scuffling sounds of her pushing herself up into a sitting position. ‘Looking after you, of course.’
‘After me?’ I shook my head in bafflement as I sat up, tucking my knees against my chest. ‘You’re the dragon, remember? You’re the one all those fairies want to catch, not me.’
‘Pah.’ Her snort ruffled through the enclosed air. ‘I told you, I’ll eat any fairy who tries.’
‘And I told you –!’ No. I gritted my teeth against the furious response that wanted to spill out of me. I h
ad too little time left to waste my breath. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘aren’t you supposed to be sleeping in the chocolate kitchen while you’re here?’
‘The kitchen’s fine,’ Aventurine told me. ‘Unlike you, it isn’t going anywhere. But I knew you’d do something ridiculous like sneaking around at night with nobody to protect you.’ She sighed with aggravating condescension. ‘You may act like a dragon from time to time, but you don’t actually have claws or teeth, you know.’
I bared my blunt teeth at her in the darkness. ‘You think not?’
‘Not real ones,’ she said flatly. ‘So someone has to look after you.’
It was too much. I started laughing. But as I tipped my head on to my knees, my laughter wobbled dangerously. I had to blink my stinging eyes again and again, gulping back everything that wanted to escape in the safety of darkness.
‘What is it?’ Aventurine sounded suspicious. ‘What are you doing? It doesn’t sound right.’
‘It’s just …’ I shrugged helplessly, drawing a deep breath to push down the last of the tears. ‘Haven’t you figured it out by now? No one looks after me. That’s not how it works. I look after myself. Always.’
And I was good at it. At least, I used to be, before I’d dived in over my head, so stupidly, hopelessly overconfident that I could manage every new challenge at the palace …
No. That was the victim of a story speaking, not a heroine. I wasn’t going to admit defeat now!
I sprang to my feet, slapping my hands briskly together. ‘So! I’ve got to get to work. But you can go back to sleep now that you know I’m fine, and –’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Aventurine. The air of the narrow passageway shifted around me as she rose to her feet. Her warm arm brushed against mine. ‘I’d like to see a real human spy at work.’
‘But –’
‘I know you won’t mind,’ she said coolly, ‘since you’ve got everything so perfectly under control … right?’
I’d been sacked by the crown princess.
I’d been marked out by the fairies.
I had less than six hours left to save my family and my future.
I swallowed a laugh before it could turn into outright hysteria.
‘Right,’ I told her. ‘Perfectly.’
* * *
Unfortunately, dragons had no idea how to be stealthy.
‘Shh!’ I hissed five minutes later as Aventurine slammed yet another door behind her. We were on our way to the hidden passageways of the south-east wing, where the fairy visitors were housed, and the echoes of that slam made my whole body twitch. ‘We don’t want them to hear us coming!’
‘Pfft,’ Aventurine snorted. ‘I told you, I’m not afraid of fairies.’
‘Grr!’ I let out a low, dragon-ish growl of my own as I rubbed my fingers hard over my hair. Exhaustion throbbed behind my temples. All those nearly sleepless nights in a row made it hard to remember how to be clever or diplomatic, or anything but tired and … well, terrified.
I couldn’t fail tonight. I just couldn’t.
‘Look,’ I hissed, ‘I know you’re all about stomping and roaring and taking over territory, but that’s not what human spies do. We need to sneak around very quietly, and try to see if we can pick up any secrets. So if you care at all about me and my family, you’ll pretend that you’re not a big, scary predator, just for the next half hour of your life. All right? Is that too much to ask?’
There was a long, pulsating moment of silence in the narrow corridor.
Then Aventurine said, ‘What does your family have to do with this?’
Oh, mud. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ I promised. ‘But in the meantime, can’t you please just trust me? Just for now?’
‘Of course I trust you,’ Aventurine said.
There was such obvious bafflement in her voice – bafflement that I’d ever question her trust – that I found my chest tightening unexpectedly, a sudden burst of warmth swelling irrepressibly within me.
‘Of course I trust you.’
Who else in my life would ever say that? Dieter would have laughed – or worse, sighed – at the very idea of it. The crown princess, who should have understood me better, had refused to even listen to my explanations today … and she’d called me a buffoon. I’d been trying so hard not to let those words sink through my skin.
I hadn’t realised just how much I did need a friend tonight.
Reaching out in the darkness, I found Aventurine’s arm – strong and muscled from all of her kitchen-work – and squeezed hard.
‘What?’ She laughed. ‘Was that supposed to be a puny human attack?’
‘No.’ Smiling, I let go. ‘I’m just glad that you’re here with me. But you still have to be quiet!’
‘Oh, fine.’ She sighed heavily. ‘But I’ll only do it to make you happy, not because I’m afraid of any puny fairies.’
‘Whatever.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Now, take off your shoes, and let’s keep going.’
But the warmth in my chest didn’t dissipate as we slipped on soft, shoeless feet through the dark of the hidden corridors in the guest wing.
There were, officially, no servants’ corridors in this part of the palace: that was what all the royal visitors were told. The regular servants’ corridors came to a halt at a solid wall before the guest wing, as far as any newcomer could tell, giving a false impression of security. If you knew where to go, though – and which hidden panels to press – there were just as many ways to travel unnoticed behind the guest rooms as behind any others in this palace … at least, as long as you didn’t carry any lights with you to give yourself away.
Aventurine’s eyesight was sharper than a regular human’s, even in her two-legged form, and I’d learned these corridors by feel, but this time I didn’t need to rely on my memory. Narrow streams of light pierced the darkness at odd angles tonight: candlelight from the fairies’ rooms, escaping through the peepholes that had been hidden in their walls.
This palace was designed to steal secrets.
Unfortunately, no matter how many peepholes I stood at, no secrets seemed waiting to be found – only people, glowing strangely but still surprisingly similar to all the humans that I had left behind me. Not a single one of them was loudly hatching plans or helpfully discussing what they did with trespassers like my parents. Instead, each new conversation I overheard was filled with exactly the same kind of anxious speculation in reverse that I’d overheard in my own shared bedroom.
‘… Well, I’ve heard that whenever people disagree with the crown princess, she has them fed to her pet dragons!’
‘… That’s why you don’t see any of our kind in the court! They’re taken prisoner the moment the dragons spot them coming, and then if they won’t give away the secrets of our court, the king and crown princess let the dragons tear them to bits in the public square to frighten their people into submission.’
‘… They probably only agreed to that treaty in the first place so they could attack Elfenwald together. You know every kingdom on this continent wants to steal our silver …’
At the phrase ‘pet dragons’, I’d slammed one hand backwards, reaching Aventurine’s mouth just in time to shut off the explosion vibrating through her. By the third bedroom we passed, though, she’d reached a point of speechless fury. She seethed in silence, the stale air of the hidden corridor pulsing with her outrage.
Unlike her, I wasn’t angry, but I was becoming more and more nervous – and not only about the conversations that we overheard. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t spot a single golden, glowing light floating in any of the bedrooms that we passed. Where were they all? What were they doing?
I imagined them floating out like a golden net through the darkened outer corridors of the palace … and then I stopped imagining that as quickly as possible, because that image – glowing lights in the dark – made my shoulders tighten with much-too-vivid memories.
I peered around the corner before I made my next turn … and let
out a sigh of relief when I didn’t spot any golden lights floating towards us down the hidden corridor.
Whatever they were up to, at least they weren’t doing it here. So we were still safe – for now.
The next stream of candlelight came from nearly twelve feet away, but I recognised the voice that travelled with it long before we reached the peephole. No one had a more distinctive sneer than the fairy crown prince, Franz.
‘… You’d better get used to the flavour, little brother. Once you’re married to the little rat, she’ll probably insist you eat it every night!’
What?
‘The fairies are marrying rats now?’ Aventurine whisper-snorted. ‘Typical!’
I waved a frantic hand to silence her as I pressed my ear against the wall a careful two feet away from the peephole.
They couldn’t possibly mean …
‘She’ll probably try to get you reading, too.’ Franz gave a bark of contemptuous laughter. ‘They say she thinks herself quite the philosopher, you know.’
Oh no.
No wonder the crown princess had sent Sofia out of the room for her negotiations with the fairy royals! She’d been negotiating her sister’s betrothal to the younger prince, Ludolph … and Sofia didn’t know about it, I was certain. There was no way the grumpy princess would have stayed silent all afternoon and evening about that decision!
Of course royals always married other royals in the end. But I remembered the stiff, strained look on Sofia’s face after her private conversation with the fairy princes earlier. The thought of her being sent to live with them underground when she grew up, with no sunlight and no fresh air and no way out ever again …
Even after everything she had said and done over the past week, I couldn’t help grimacing with sympathy. There were some advantages to not being a princess after all.
‘I still don’t see why you can’t marry her,’ Prince Ludolph muttered. ‘It’s not as if she won’t come with a decent dowry.’
‘You mean her dragons?’ Prince Franz laughed. ‘A dowry is supposed to last a girl throughout her entire marriage, remember? Those beasts won’t survive a fortnight once Mama has them in her grip.’
The Girl with the Dragon Heart Page 11