I opened the little hatch in the door and took a peek. There it was, the demon, still dangling in the air, waving its arms, looking like a bee set free from a shaken jar…just like one of those Father’s ‘good acquaintance’ boys had demonstrated only last week, which made my blood boil. How childish and cruel was that?
“What’s happening out there?” Rupert said, sounding anxious. “What do you see?”
“He looks like he wants to kill us.” Then the demon crossed his arms and threw a veil of smoke over himself. I stepped back in shock, as he bowed down into the smoke cloud, into that slumped hunch one always saw them doing in picture books, and the next moment, he fell down and rolled around on the floor.
As soon as he stopped, he jumped to his feet and scurried away — heading to the opposite side of the roof from us. Away from us.
I stared a moment more. He kept going. I didn’t even blink, just to make sure I didn’t miss some moment that he suddenly cast some weird demonic spell or curse.
“What’s going on?”
“He got himself free, somehow. He must have cut the rope. He’s running away. He’s going.”
“What? He’s not. Let me see,” Rupert said, incredulous, and pushed me away to see for himself. “Oh. He really is going…Well, good! Phew, right…? Wow, I thought he’d fry us.”
“Me too, and…Oh, my god,” Kate said in a small voice, and I turned to give her an underlined look. “I must have dropped my keys,” she added like the sky had just fallen. “Outside,” she clarified to my stare. “I don’t have them, but I’m positive I had them, when we went out on the roof.”
“We can look for them tomorrow,” I tried to console her. Even if the demon was leaving, I could see why Kate wouldn’t want to go out, now. I didn’t. In fact, I might never go out on the roof again. Well. Maybe tomorrow…Good heavens, we had darklings walking around on our roof. How were we supposed to just go out ever again? Of course, it was supposedly so rare to come across them…Right.
Kate’s small moan turned my focus back to her. “I have to get the horses ready for Duke Jason in the morning…I’m basically doomed! There’s the key to Duke Jason’s summer house on there, too! Duke Jason will kill me, he’ll fire me, he’ll have nothing to do with me…Oh, I can’t have lost his keys…”
I looked out the little window. The roof was silent and dark now. The torches made light dance at spots. Wouldn’t it be hopeless to go look for the keys now? I spotted something on the roof floor, though, a curving thin form that actually looked like Kate’s key ring. It was not even far, fifteen yards away at tops.
“I think I see them.” They really weren’t far. It would only take a moment to get them. I pulled the door ajar, and Kate and Rupert both jumped to grab my arms and shoulders.
“Are you crazy?“
“We’re getting those keys,” I said and slipped through the door.
I had to be mad! I rolled my head, watching every direction, but I grinned to myself as I ran. I got to the mysterious curved thing, and it was Kate’s key ring, so I grabbed it and turned to run back. A strange feeling overcame me, as if someone was close. Dark magic? I strode faster. I couldn’t bear to look to the sides.
Then the door opened for me — Kate was holding it open — and both Rupert and Kate pulled me in and slammed the door shut.
“What were you thinking?” Rupert snapped.
I dangled the keys in front of Kate’s nose and she grabbed them with a disbelieving face.
“Thank you, I guess, but you are out of your mind!”
“Maybe,” I said, smiling. Rupert snorted and started down the stairs already. Kate turned to follow.
That strange feeling from the roof wasn’t leaving me. It was as if I could feel the source of it close. In fact, I could tell something bad — fierce — was right in front, just to my left, and was moving distinctly from my left side to the right…
I bowed to look out the little hatch again, only opening it partway. Then I was lucky not to scream. It wasn’t the demon. It was a witch. A witch with giant, hideous horns. I could tell she was a darkling by the haunted look on her face, even though I only saw her from an angle.
And if not that, then it would have been obvious from the way her magic seemed to grip me by the throat.
I slammed the hatch closed and turned, only to see Rupert and Kate had disappeared into the stairs already.
With an eerie, exposed feeling, I ran after them, hopping down a couple of steps at a time.
Chapter 2
I opened my eyes to a fabric billowing above me, lit sharply by moonlight. Once I was awake enough, I understood it was my bed canopy, and the cool breeze was from the open window. I thought I’d heard a howl…or maybe more like a gargoyle demon laughing?
I wanted to brush the sound off as something I’d dreamt about, but it had sent bad chills down my spine, and the feeling lingered. I couldn’t imagine going back to sleep before I at least closed the window and maybe turned on a light.
Then I heard the scraping.
Outside my window, though? I sat up clutching the blanket and reached down for my dagger. The sound seemed to have come from rather close, if I was honest, so perhaps some animal was climbing outside on the stone walls? The only trouble with that was, my room was on the fifth floor. And there could be nothing, nothing, outside my window, that could make a sound like that.
Unless it was a darkling?
It was that gargoyle demon or that witch again, I was sure.
Truthfully, there was a balcony close-by, but this couldn’t have been simply someone on the balcony, because it would have been too far for me to have heard that sound. And it had clearly been much closer. Frighteningly close. I made up my mind: this thing, whatever it was, was climbing the wall, and it wasn’t natural. I felt it. I had to close the window. Like right now.
I pushed aside the silks and wools to kick my feet free and lowered them over the bed’s side. The stone floor chilled my soles, but grimacing, I jumped down anyway and tip-toed to the window, holding up the skirts of my long nightgown, so I didn’t trip, dagger in the other hand. Then I peeked out, barely by the tip of my nose, because I didn’t want this thing to see me, and took a look.
Nothing. Nothing clung to the walls on either side of my window. Could it have been a pigeon or a bat after all? The sound had been so heavy and low, though, so…not a chance in heaven. No pigeon or bat weighed that much. Let alone— let’s be serious — laughed. I was only desperately trying to assure myself it was nothing to worry about and failing miserably. I began to close the window.
That’s when I noticed how a dash of yellowish light tinted the window sill under my fingers, falling from straight up above my head from the roof. I instinctively knew it wasn’t ordinary light from a torch or a lantern. There was something foul about it, but it was hard to put in words. It looked like it could make you sick.
I slammed the window closed, drew the drapes, and pulled my hands in, fisting them under my chin.
Then I went to my drawing table, slumped down onto the floor on my knees, and dug out the small gilded box hidden inside the velvet-embellished footstool, where I normally sat when I brushed my hair or wrote my letters.
I set the box on the floor. I hadn’t had the nerve to check last night, when I’d got to my room and Rupert and Kate had left, but I had to do this now.
In my state, I almost wasn’t sure I expected to find the treasure box unlooted, imagining demons and witches tiptoeing around — who knew, maybe even leprechauns at the same price — but everything was still there, safe and sound. It was my priced treasure box, and I hadn’t even told Rupert and Kate where I’d hid it.
I dug around for the tattered envelope with the writing in wine red ink — Mother believed it was actual wine. Nervously, I picked it up with a stiff hand.
I’d always wondered whether the person who’d written it had really used wine…Could it have been blood, perhaps? It could have been blood. And just as well, the le
tter could have been written by the hand of a full-blood fae or perhaps some wicked witch or even demon kin…My mind had spun many stories about this letter. But I’d never thought I’d be holding it with real darklings walking about.
Mother had given the letter to me when I’d turned fifteen, thinking I had been old enough. The writing itself wasn’t particularly dramatic, but that didn’t stop my wild imagination. The letter only said, short and sweet:
For the eyes of Queen Margaret only, with utmost discretion. Let it be known, there’s a dark witch in the land.
But it wasn’t the writing — it was the photograph.
I pulled it out, nervous. It was done in sepia on thick, sturdy paper, and in the photo was a beautiful but shocked-looking, dark-haired woman of about twenty-five or thirty-five. Her age was hard to tell, because she looked youthful in some ways, but on the other hand, older in some ways…strangely wise and witchily mysterious. I’d stared at this photo a thousand times. This was supposedly the witch that had cursed me. An anonymous informant had told my mother so.
And the woman on the roof? She’d looked just like this woman in the picture, save for the giant horns that she had sported.
But one thing frightened me like nothing else. Mother had received this envelope when I had been just a toddler. That meant this photo was almost two decades old. It was from when photographs had first become a huge trend in the human world, and the craze had been felt in our world, too, at the borderlands where the human and magical realms met. Twenty years ago — and yet, somehow, the witch on the roof was still the spitting image of the woman in the picture. She hadn’t aged a day. Somehow, that proved to me she was a monstrosity.
What was she after? Had she come to finally end me?
Chapter 3
A piglet scurried under my out-stretched legs as a rooster cackled behind Rupert and me. I pulled my legs in, leaning back on the bench, weary, as I’d hardly slept.
I’d tried to go back to bed, but I’d tossed and turned after that strange wake-up.
I turned to look down in my lap, where I had the wine-blood envelope. I was unsure whether I should open it once again. What would that change? I could parade the photo under Rupert’s nose all I wanted, but Rupert didn’t believe me.
Inside, I was still trembling from the encounter, though it had been hours already. What a night. First, we stay up late to catch our demon — which was supposed to be fun and an adventure — and that turns into drama — so bad! — and we can’t even tell anybody about it. Then I wake up to a witch climbing on the wall, or whatever that even was. What a wonderful darkling gathering we were entertaining here on our very own rooftop…
I paused to push out my right hand in the air, fingers outstretched. I couldn’t see my fingers trembling, per se, but they felt so, and my hands were clumsy. Rupert’s face was pained. A little. He went through his shirt pockets and found a piece of licorice root which he popped in his mouth. Then he thought to offer me one, but I shook my head.
“I know there are witches in the land,” I insisted, though I knew what he’d say, with that face.
“Of course there are, but not here in our castle or in our town,” Rupert said with a warm scoff. “You worry too much.”
“Well, the thing is, you can’t always tell. Magic’s not visible. Anybody in a market crowd could be a witch. Practically anybody. People can have some fae heritage, for instance, and look like perfectly normal people. They might not have tons of power…Except if they’re full blood fae. Full blood fae are of course all chock-full of magic…But it can be so very nuanced. If you have even a smidgen of fae glow in your heart, you can move magic, and nobody would know. So, some witches seem human, but secretly, they can do all kinds of sinister, elusive things.”
“So now you’re afraid of witches? Wow…”
“Why shouldn’t I be? It’s possible! It’s not all that uncommon, either. Not as rare as people think. Mother’s always warning me about it. It’s not something to be constantly scared of, Mother says, but you do need to be aware. Did you know Gabe Woodward’s wife is half-fae? Elsa. Don’t tell anybody! You didn’t hear this from me. But it’s true. I don’t know how it’s possible. She’s lovely, and to be honest, her children seem to flock to her lap and love her dearly. It’s hard to imagine one bad thing about her. So, apparently, fae magic doesn’t necessarily make you bad. But it can. You know what I’m talking about. It’s like we saw in that evil witch, the one that someone accidentally let in when I was a baby and Mama had invited everyone from all the neighboring kingdoms to my christening reception…?”
“Yes, I know about the christening, obviously.” Rupert grinned at me with a ‘duh’ face.
“Yes, of course. Sorry, I know everybody gets to hear about it all the time. The day that a horrid witch managed to break in…Can you believe her, though? I mean, yes, she hadn’t been invited — I can’t imagine why she’d expect to be — and apparently that made her mad. So, what does she do? She curses me, a little baby? For real, with black smoke all over me and everything.” I’d been told the story a million times, and so had everybody else, I was aware. “See, some witches really are evil and deliberately cruel. They’re darklings, Rupert. How else could anyone be so evil that they’d curse nice people just because they weren’t invited to a party?”
Even if said ‘party’ was the most talked about event of the time, and everyone of status had shown up in their utmost fanciest outfits and taken tons and tons of servants with since everyone had surely begged to be brought along. Even so. It had to take a witch for that kind of logic. Normal people would simply not show their faces.
“What had I ever done to her? I was just a baby. To be honest, I can’t understand how the sisters aren’t trying to hide the fact they’re witches, too. They seem nice, and I’m sure they are, but they do still harbor magic…”
“Didn’t the dark witch actually try to aim the curse at your father and not you?”
“Yes…Well, that’s what they say.”
Rupert always said ‘your father’, instead of ‘The King’. I loved how we could talk about Father with Rupert, as if Father were just a regular person, as, in so many ways, he was, of course, and I desperately needed someone who understood that.
My father and I weren’t I close at all. And I had a hard time watching him carry on like he did out in the world. Much of it didn’t make sense. Most of it didn’t, to be honest. I didn’t understand why he had to be like that, and I rebelled. There were days when I had to talk to someone.
“But you’re right. Most of our family friends who were there at the christening think the witch didn’t necessarily want to kill me. Apparently, the witch tried to curse Father instead, but things got awry, and she must have changed her mind, and then she threw the curse at me. Something like that. So really, she wanted my father dead.”
“So they say, so they say.”
“Kings get that, don’t they,” I offered and worried Rupert would tell me to watch how I talked about my father.
“They do.”
“Kings have enemies,” I said and gave Rupert a look. Internally, I was begging for Rupert to say something for me, when I couldn’t.
My father and I really weren’t close; I was angry at him more often than not; I hated him. I rarely ever saw him, nowadays, as he was always on his conquering missions, attacking the nameless, harmless, little villages around the outskirts of Kingdoms, which didn’t belong under any rule. That was the kind of king he was.
“Kings have enemies, all right. This one certainly does,” Rupert agreed, but he had an air of sadness and kindness about him. There was no snark or glee accompanying that at all.
“Yes. And he deserves them. How sad to admit.”
I knew I could say I wished my father never came back at all, and Rupert would silently understand I didn’t really, really mean it, but that I was only angry over how I never ever saw Father, and over the things he did out in the world. And the fact that he had no tim
e for me among all those super-important — horrible — things he spent his time on…And Rupert well knew how angry it made me to watch Father carry on with all these sick things, ruling like some tyrant.
“I feel so guilty thinking this. I’m not always sure what Father is even thinking underneath those stern, weird looks of his, but then, he’s never raised his hand to me, and he’s always treated me with…What can I say? Reasonably, I guess. How do war-waging kings normally treat their daughters, I don’t know. But, truly, we hardly even know each other. He’s always gone. I wish he found some more time for me, now and then, and maybe we could talk. Perhaps, on the Day of the Prayers, when he won’t have to meet up with his men, as everyone is taking time off, he’ll find a moment to visit Mother and me? But that’s what I thought the previous time, when everyone had a holiday, and he wasn’t with us. Father has never spent a holiday with us. His family. What am I to think of that? Am I to keep missing him? Honestly…can I say this…I hope he does not show up for my birthday! I’d rather invite the dark witch! There!”
Rupert gave me a softly mocking look.
“I don’t really mean that…”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’m so lucky to have you and Kate as my besties. Honestly, you two keep me sane.” I laughed, trying to pull off a more upbeat mood. “I’m not kidding. I can’t even dare to think about how my world would look, if you two didn’t drop me back to earth from time to time. Of course, there’s Mother and Hanna, and…You know. But living among all this craziness takes a toll on you.”
“I know exactly what you mean, Aurora, believe me.”
Yes. Court life. People being guillotined in the market square for stealing an apple and suchlike. So many things that didn’t make any sense. I’d grown up watching my father grow crueller by the years. Or perhaps I’d only understood it better and better by each year?
Kingdom of Crowns and Glory Page 45