Light strangled out of the pavilion as the vines encased it. A new, weird yellow light sputtered to life on the ceiling, and Azalea gasped as hundreds of candles flickered above her, pressed against the casement of the dome, all melted shapeless and creating eerie shadows.
Azalea whipped about sharply.
“Open it up, Keeper,” she snarled. “Enough of your stupid games.”
“What a shame,” said Keeper, still at the side of the ballroom, smiling lazily, “that you don’t care to dance. I’ve planned such a magnificent ball!”
Dancers burst through the pavilion’s thorn-shrouded lattice, sweeping tight circles with their partners. A gust of air whirled over Azalea, and the dancers swirled past her in a twist of colors, chiffons and satins brushing her own black, shabby skirts. She bit back a scream.
The dancers were masked with ornate, gilded animal heads. A golden-furred jackal, and his lady, with feathers and a gold beak. Masks with eyeholes rimmed in gems and embroidery clung to the dancers’ faces. This was a masked ball, something Azalea had only heard of. In her imagination they had been more innocent; gentlemen dressed as hussars and ladies with white, glittery masks attached to a stick. Not this chaotic meshing of gilded beasts and opulent monsters.
In a garish whorl of colors and ribbons, the dancers settled into two long rows, packed so tightly their skirts bunched at odd angles. At the end of their aisle stood Keeper, straight and at ease. The candlelight seemed to make him darker, no highlights or shading over his black form. A twist of a smile graced his lips.
“Welcome, my lady,” he said, “to the D’Eathe court. Do you like it?”
Azalea glanced back at the entrance. She wondered if she could somehow push her way through the vines.
“I ask you again.” Keeper’s voice was cold. “May I have the honor of this dance?”
“Snap your own head off,” said Azalea.
Keeper gave a smart bow.
“I’ll assume that is a no, thank you,” he said. “Still, I would advise you not to take this dance without a partner to lead you. It could be, ah…precarious.”
Keeper clapped his hands together, twice, and the masked ladies flicked their fans open in unison. Azalea stepped back.
“Don’t haste away, my lady,” he said. “There is a guest I have invited whom I am sure you do not want to miss.”
The music began. The sweet music-box orchestra had been replaced with a symphony starved on scraps of minor key. A chorus of sickly violins grew to a forte, and the dancers stepped smartly together.
Azalea turned to the entrance, and was blocked. A bear, cat, and wolf stepped in front of her, turning about in the dance. Ladies whipped their fans out, their hands clasped with their gentleman beasts. Azalea stepped out of the way, narrowly missing a collision with a lynx, who pushed just past her. There was no room—the moment one couple moved, the next pair stepped in, ladies’ skirts pressed together, squashed.
It’s only magic, Azalea thought, trying to reassure herself. Not real. She pushed her way through the lynx and the wolf. The couple turned sharply, and Azalea was thwacked across the face by the gentleman’s hand.
She hit the marble floor, face stinging, before she realized what had happened. Cringing, she yanked her hand away before it was chasséd with a buckled shoe. That had felt plenty real. The dancers were not going to stop for her.
Azalea scrambled to her feet, drowning in the skirts, before the couples stepped together and turned, hard, into a promenade. Every lady whipped a fan out, broke apart from her partner, and fluttered the fans against their feathered gold-and-black masked faces.
In a blur, they snapped their arms out. Azalea stumbled backward to avoid a hand gripping an ice pink fan. She overstepped, and her arm brushed against the fan’s edge of the next lady. At first she felt nothing, then saw that blood had dripped onto the crush of gold skirts. She grasped her arm and craned her neck. The fan had sliced her sleeve, and a little deeper.
Azalea pressed her hand against the cut and glanced up to see Keeper at the far end of the dance floor, black figure cut against the garish reds and golds. He was smiling at her.
Dancers turned about and crossed arms. In the exchange, Keeper disappeared. Azalea swallowed, her mouth dry, and stepped into position with them, keeping with the ebb and flow. She mouthed the steps, reminding her feet to stay attentive, keeping in time with the quadrille-waltz hybrid, and tried to work her way to the entrance. The heavy metallic taste of fear coated her throat and weighed her down. Her limbs shook, but her fear pushed her onward into the steps.
Azalea turned into the next dance set, and stopped.
A figure wearing a plain dress stood still among the gaudy, glinting sworls of dancers. Azalea caught the pale face, the dimples, the slightly mussed auburn hair, and her knees nearly gave way.
Dashing back around, pushing skirts away from her, Azalea craned to see the figure. A closed fan smacked her across the face, but she didn’t even feel it. Through the gaps of moving dancers, Azalea saw the woman again, and her heart leaped into her throat.
Her dress was light blue, worn and mended, but clean. A jet brooch was pinned to her collar. Azalea had to blink, hard.
The dancers turned with their partners, hands pressed against hands, then, all at once, stepped back into two rows. A hesitation step; the longest Azalea had ever witnessed. Feathers bobbed as though underwater, and skirts settled even slower. Azalea was again at the end of the aisle they made, and, at the other end—
Mother.
The words from stories Azalea had heard so long ago echoed through her mind.
Their souls—
The High King could capture souls—
Azalea choked.
The dancers joined hands, circling around them both, and turned in a reel. The music sped to a booming, drunken waltz. Jacquards and brocades spun around in a blur. Azalea stood in a maelstrom of dancers, stunned, staring, emotions twisting within her even harder than the dancers around her.
She stepped forward, taking in Mother’s bright eyes and kind face, creased with the familiar look of pain. Her mouth seemed a blurred smile, and Azalea gaped at the scarlet lines about Mother’s lips, ringed with purple bruises. Azalea suddenly realized—
Her mouth had been sewn shut.
Azalea cried aloud. In a panic, she ran to Mother, fumbling for the scissors she usually kept in her apron pocket. Today, however, she had dressed too quickly and her pockets were empty. Her hands shook violently, and her knees could not carry her any longer.
Mother’s arms caught her before she collapsed to the floor. She pulled Azalea into a tight embrace. She felt so solid. Real! Nothing like the gossamer spirits of death in storybooks. Azalea couldn’t bear to look up as Mother pulled her even tighter, pressing Azalea’s cheek against her blouse. Azalea could smell the baby-ointment and white-cake smell as she took shuddering breaths. Mother stroked her hair.
Azalea tried to speak but choked on the words. Mother brought her to arm’s length, and with her thumb brushed away a tear on Azalea’s face, her own eyes wet. And even with her lips stitched and bruised, Mother still tried to smile. To comfort her.
“Mother—!”
The dancers swept between them, breaking Azalea from Mother’s cold embrace. The room spun. Azalea fought desperately through the dancers, pushing bunches of silks and chiffons out of the way. Through gaps in the garish colors that filled her vision, Azalea struggled for another glimpse of Mother, but saw nothing. She had vanished.
“Keeper!” Azalea screamed. “Keeper!”
Billowing skirts shoved her to the floor. A lady’s heel trod on her hand. Azalea scrambled to her feet, hysterical, pushing her way through the dancers. They pushed back tenfold harder.
The music crescendoed as Azalea was shoved against to the ground, this time hitting her head. Colors burst through her vision. The hems of gaudy skirts brushed over her, quiet as snowfall, slow, unfocused. Slower, and slower, and slower.
The
music faded.
Azalea was only vaguely aware the dancers were gone. A glow of silver-white cast over her, and the pavilion eased back to its magic self. Azalea lay curled, her cheek against the marble, chest heaving. The marble was wet. Azalea did not know if it was tears or blood.
A black boot appeared in her vision, followed by a knee as Keeper knelt down in front of her. He was panting, his face drawn. Still, his eyes were lit with triumph.
“How dare you,” Azalea choked. “How dare you! I’ll kill you!”
Keeper reached out his long fingers and caught her arm, drawing his thumb across her cut. Azalea tried to summon all her strength to lash out, but she could not; as though her limbs had no blood she lay helpless on the marble. She hadn’t even the energy to flinch as he drew his fingers to her neck.
“Hush,” he murmured. “There now. Hush.” He traced his finger along her jaw. “That is a sweet thought,” he whispered. “Except, my lady, I cannot die.”
“You’re him,” said Azalea. And it wasn’t so much a whisper as a choke.
“Quite.”
He touched his fingers to her lips.
“I expect,” he whispered, “you are wondering what you could possibly do to keep me from hurting your mother further. Is that not so?”
Azalea cringed.
“I will tell you what I want, my lady,” he said. “My freedom. It is all I have ever wanted. Find the magic object, and destroy it. You have until Christmas.”
He pressed his finger hard against her lips, as though to hush her. They throbbed against his finger.
“This is between you and me,” he said. “No one else. It is upon you. If you do as I say, no more harm will come to your mother. Is that not a fair trade?”
Azalea trembled.
Keeper stood, his cape rippling straight. He pulled something from the air with a flash of silver, and tossed it. It skittered to the marble with a clinkety clink clink in front of Azalea. The sugar teeth shivered.
“And,” said Keeper, his eyes cold. “You are never to refuse me another dance again.”
CHAPTER 19
Azalea did not know how she got back to her bedroom. She only remembered stumbling through the glimmering wall of the fireplace and falling to her knees, scattering soot everywhere.
She lay curled on the floor for a long time, her head pounding.
Eventually she pulled off her dress and mended the cut sleeve, sewing perfect, tiny stitches automatically. After that, she poured water into the basin and washed her cut. In the vanity mirror, her face was drawn and ghastly white. The bruises weren’t showing yet; they would.
She touched her lips. The breath choked in her throat, and she had to turn away.
A dull glint of silver struggled through the folds of her rumpled dress on the floor. She had somehow remembered to put the sugar teeth in her pocket before leaving. Now, as she examined them, nicked and dinged with patches of dull, brassy color, she swallowed. Instead of the tiny prongs facing inward, the sugar teeth had been bent entirely backward, so the prongs faced out.
Azalea imagined Keeper lazily toying with the teeth, bending and twisting them as they trembled, in the silence of the pavilion.
“He’s had you this whole time, hasn’t he?” she whispered.
They shuddered.
In a few minutes, dressed again, she turned up the lamps in the portrait gallery, casting a light over the display of the silver sword. So dull and old…it didn’t even glimmer in the light.
“It has to be this,” said Azalea to no one but the sugar teeth, which she had wrapped up and put in her pocket. She touched the glass over the hairline crack in the sword, and shook her head. “It has to be magic. But I can’t figure out how.”
Azalea sat on the floor, her dress poofing around her, and pulled her knees to her chest. She buried her head in her skirts.
Keeper was the High King. The portrait of the High King, hidden away in the attic, leered at her from her memory. The ancient, melted-wax skin. The painter had gotten him all wrong, painting him old and hideous. But the dead, black eyes were the same. Azalea pushed her head against her knees, trying to stop the throbbing.
He could capture souls….
Keeper was mad if he thought she was going to bring the girls down there again. She would have to keep them from going through the fireplace—without telling them anything. Keeper would know if she had told them. He knew everything. Azalea rubbed her lips into the cotton weave of her dress, wincing. The stitches…
He had promised to leave Mother alone, hadn’t he? He wouldn’t dare—not when he needed Azalea so much to free him. Azalea pushed a quaking smile and put her hand over the sugar teeth in her pocket, trying to comfort them.
“I have until Christmas to figure something out,” she said. “That’s five days. That’s plenty of time, yes?”
The sugar teeth trembled.
Well after tea now, Azalea wandered through the corridor in search of her sisters. She had descended to the second-floor hall when she heard an odd thumping noise, followed by rummaging and assorted clanks. They came from the bucket closet across from the mezzanine.
“Hello?” said Azalea. And, realizing someone had been locked in, she turned the key still in the knob and clicked it open.
Brooms spilled out. Mops spilled out. A gentleman spilled out. He had a bucket on his head. And wore an offensively green bow tie.
“Lord Teddie!” said Azalea.
Lord Teddie sprang to his feet. “Hulloa, Princess A!” he said, taking the bucket off his head and beaming. His curly hair was mussed. “We all missed you at breakfast! I ate your bowl of mush. I hope that’s all right.”
“What are you doing here?” said Azalea.
“Oh! Ha! I bet you are wondering that. I’m here on Royal Business. For the riddle! Unless, of course, you mean in the broom closet, which I’m in because we were playing tiddle and seek after breakfast and…someone locked me in.”
“That would be Bramble,” said Azalea. “Usually she locks them in the gallery. She must really not like you.”
Lord Teddie’s face fell.
“Pudding head,” he said. “That’s me. And she’s quick and smart as a horsewhip.”
Azalea marveled as he snapped back into marvelous good humor, an emotional elastic. His hazel eyes brightened.
“Well, that takes pluck anyway, I should say!” he said. “I’ve never had a girl do that to me before! What a rum girl! Absolute pluck!”
“You didn’t bring Mother’s portrait?”
The spring in Lord Teddie’s spine slumped a tad.
“Ah,” he said. “Actually, no.”
“Oh!” Completely unbidden, the portrait of Mother flew to Azalea’s mind, this time with her mouth stitched shut. It stabbed her in the stomach, and Azalea had to lean against the mezzanine railing, gasping for air, to keep from throwing up. She tried to shake the image from her head.
“I say,” Lord Teddie stammered, as she choked for breaths. “I say—are you all right? Your color—I didn’t mean—that is—Hulloa? I say, hulloa? Are there any servants about?”
“I’m all…right,” Azalea managed. “Just…I need some air.”
Azalea tried to go down the stairs, but the room spun, and she sat on the top stair, leaning her head against the cold iron posts. Lord Teddie did his best to cheer her up. He handed her a candy stick, recited limericks, guessed at all her favorite dances and told her which ones he liked best. Eventually Azalea managed to push the picture out of her mind, and even managed a smile when Lord Teddie tried to juggle the coins from his pocket and they pelted his head.
“…I don’t know where Clover is, she’s probably off helping Old Tom in the gardens, she’s been running off to do that lately—Jess, what?”
Bramble’s voice carried down the hall. Lord Teddie, picking up the coins from the rug, straightened, motionless for the first time Azalea had seen him. Bramble appeared around the corner, followed by the mass of girls, running in tiny steps
to keep up with her stride. When the girls saw Lord Teddie, a ripple of excitement ran through them.
“Lord Teddie!” cried Ivy as they flocked to him in a mass of black skirts.
“Word Teddie!” cried Kale, who was just learning to talk and parroted everybody.
“What ho!” said Lord Teddie. “What ho! What could you all possibly want?” He bounced on the balls of his feet, beaming. “Hmm? Oh…all right!”
He produced from his pocket wrapped ribbon candies, which the girls squealed over and passed among themselves, unwrapping for one another and smelling the mint-and-treacle flavors. Bramble had remained behind, her jaw up and her hands clenched.
“Bramble thaid you ran away to the butterfly forest,” said Ivy, who was reaching into Lord Teddie’s suitcoat pocket for more candies. She had a lisp ever since she had lost her two front teeth.
“I was in the butterfly forest,” said Lord Teddie. “I decided to come back for tea.”
“Tea was ages ago!” said Eve. “You must be hungry!”
“Oh, I’m all right!” said Lord Teddie. “I don’t eat much! Just a bit of ham and a sweetmeat or two and I’ll be right as rain!”
There was a sticky silence. Ivy looked guiltily at the candies in her fist.
“We have bread,” said Bramble. Her voice reverberated in the silence of the hall. “And cheese. I’m sorry if that’s not good enough for you.”
Lord Teddie’s eyes caught Bramble’s mended, shabby dress. For a sliver of a second, his grin flickered. It was back immediately. The tips of his ears shone pink.
“I love bread!” he said. “I love bread and cheese, cheese and bread! I eat them all the time! I’ll probably turn into a great wheel of cheese, I like it so much!”
Bramble turned her head. Her ears were pink, too. When she lifted her yellow-green eyes, they caught Azalea, sitting at the top stair, hidden by the crinolines and skirts of the others. Bramble pushed past the rest of the girls and ran to Azalea.
“Az,” she said, falling to her knees and taking her hand. “You’re white! What happened? What did he do to you?”