Entwined (3 page)

The color drained from Azalea's face.

“I didn't…see anything,” she stammered.

Lady Caversham strode forward, the wispy flounces of her skirts fluttering behind her, trying to peer through the branches. “There was something—oh! There it was again!”

“Lady Caversham,” said Lord Bradford, stepping in front of her. He offered his hand and bowed. “If I may have the honor of this next dance?”

Lady Caversham tore her eyes away from the tree and narrowed them at Lord Bradford's offered hand. She cast a glance at Azalea, and a slight smile crossed her perfect face.

“Well, if you
insist
,” she said. With a look at Azalea that said
I win
, she grasped Lord Bradford's outstretched hand right over the handkerchief bandage—both he and Azalea winced—and part escorted, part dragged Lord Bradford to the dance floor.

He cast a glance back at Azalea. She fought the urge to pull him back and smooth his hair down.

Azalea didn't catch sight of him for the rest of the night. The ball wound down like a music box, the guests leaving as the hours grew late. Near midnight, when Azalea delivered yet another plate of goodies to the girls, she rolled a Christmas apple underneath the trees, and it rolled back out. They had fallen asleep.

The last dance, the Entwine, was Azalea's favorite. She had hoped to be asked it by Lord Bradford, but he had left, and instead she stood in dance position with a young, rather moist gentleman named Mr. Penbrook, who looked as though he couldn't believe his luck. The rest of the guests moved in a ring to watch as she and Mr. Penbrook took the ends of a long sash.

The musicians began, and—

Slam.

The ballroom doors ricocheted open, startling the guests and silencing the music.

Fairweller.

“The ball is over!” he said, striding to the first window.

Polite protestations came from the guests.

“Minister?” said Azalea, stepping out of dance position. “What are you doing?”

Fairweller did not answer. He took a poker from the
fireplace stand and used it to unlatch the high cords that held the drapery up in arches. The fabric rippled to the floor, masking the frosted windows.

“Oh, ho,” said an older parliament gentleman. “It's the little princesses again, is it? Ho, ho! Have you looked in the chandeliers?”

Some of the guests chuckled at this. Azalea flushed.

“Do you need us to find them?” said one of the ladies. “They nearly froze to death last year.”

“I need you all to go
home
.” Fairweller strode to the next window and unlatched the cords there as well. “If you please.”

The guests turned to Azalea, whose cheeks burned.

“Minister,” she said.

Across the ballroom, Fairweller's iron gray eyes met Azalea's. Something hardened in them—something Azalea could not read—and it staggered her. She dropped the end of the sash.

“Oh,” she said. Then, to the guests, “Th-thank you all for coming. Next year we'll…be certain to have a ball that ends normally.”

This brought chuckles and a smattering of applause. While Fairweller continued to drape the windows along the wall, Azalea saw each guest to the door, helped the musicians pack up their instruments, and wished everyone a good holiday as they left.

When they were all gone, the ballroom felt hollow.

“You didn't have to end it like that,” said Azalea. “It was almost over.”

Fairweller finished draping the last window.

“Your sisters, Miss Azalea.”

Azalea sighed. Another debacle. The King would be cross again this year, which meant meals in their bedroom and no dance lessons for at least a week. Worn out, Azalea led Fairweller to the trees. He pushed a tree aside, the stand scraping the marble, and revealed the girls.

They slept, snuggled together like a nest of swans, empty pudding bowls and spoons strewn about them. They used tree skirts as blankets, and looked angelic. Nothing like they normally did.

Fairweller stared down at them, unmoving. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He closed his eyes, then opened them. He turned sharply around—and strode across the dance floor. He cast aside the fire poker. It clanged across the marble. He left, slamming the ballroom doors behind him.

The chandelier lamps flickered.

“That,” said Azalea, blinking at the ballroom doors, “was odd.”

She turned to the mass of sleeping girls, a jumble of brightly colored cottons and shawls among the silk tree skirts, and smiled, suddenly feeling very, very drowsy.

 

“Wake up! Wake up! Wakeupwakeupwakeupwake
up
!”

Azalea groaned as ten pairs of hands poked her awake. She had been so tired last night, she hadn't even bothered going to bed. Instead she fell asleep right there with her sisters, using a tree skirt as a pillow.

“Stop, stop,
stop
,” she moaned. “The buttons of this dress dig into the spine, you have no idea.”

“Poor ickle Azalea,” said Bramble, deep red hair tangled to her knees. “Poor wee ickle wee tiny baby.”

“It's Christmas, Lea,” said Flora. “Christmas!”

“We're to have oranges!”

“And sausages!”

“And, and, and a book from the King, even!”

“Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!”

“I know!” said Azalea as the girls pulled her to her feet. She clawed at an ornament snagged in her hair. Her ballgown made her drag. “Slow down!” she said, stumbling over her crinolines. “I can hardly walk!”

Screaming with unholy delight, the girls ran with neck-breaking speed to the nook, where all their oranges and presents would be set up in piles on the table. Azalea stumbled after them, down the hall and through the folding glass doors, only to see them crowded around the table, gawking at it with wide eyes.

There was nothing on it.

Fairweller stood at the end of the nook, his back to them, staring at the drapes covering the glass walls.

“Our oranges,” said Ivy, gaping at the table.

“Our books,” said Eve.

“Oh, hang,” said Bramble. “Our scandal.”

The girls began to cry. Azalea, now fully awake, crossed her arms.

“Where is the King?” she said, her voice a hard Princess Royale tone. “Minister?”

“He's out,” said Fairweller. “Riding.”

“On Christmas morning?”

Fairweller said nothing.

Azalea smiled and turned to the girls. “I'll bet Mother has them up with her. You know how much she loves Christmas.”

The girls sniffed and rubbed their eyes. Fairweller muttered something.

“I'm sorry, Minister?” said Azalea.

Fairweller turned away from the curtain.

“I said, your mother is dead.” He looked back to the drapes. “She died last night.”

A
zalea smacked Fairweller. So hard her hand stung. She ran from the nook, her hand throbbing, through the old kitchen door and out into the snowy gardens, the ice cold of dawn stinging her cheeks.

How
dare
he! How dare Fairweller say such a thing! When he
knew
how ill Mother was! Azalea had to find the King. Through the garden paths, snow-topped hedges, and frozen topiaries, out of the screeching iron gate, through the meadow, into the frozen wood, Azalea stumbled, following Dickens's hoofprints of upturned dirt and snow. The King would set things right. He would tell her it wasn't true, and—

But you didn't go to Mother's room, a tiny voice whispered through Azalea's angry, burning thoughts. You didn't dare….

“Sir!” Azalea yelled, tripping through the overgrown
woodland path, the cold seeping through her worn dance slippers. “Sir!”

The wood replied with frozen silence.

The trees towered above her, deep blue in the morning light, and Azalea swallowed and coughed as the air stung her throat. Her gloves were streaked with mud, and her heavy ballgown had torn on the snagging, leafless bushes. She leaned against a frozen tree and shivered uncontrollably.

Her lips had been white—

“Sir!”
Azalea screamed.

The hot, tangled ball of anger inside of her turned inside out. Azalea fell to her knees and began to sob. Hacking sobs, so hard it hurt to breathe. She buried her face in her hands and couldn't stop. Every time she tried to say
Mother
, the word broke in her throat. Mother, incomparable Mother!

The sun rose, casting golden light through the shadows of the trees, glistening through the mist and snow. Azalea came halfway to her senses, through shuddering cries. She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve, and the silver caught the morning light.

Mother's handkerchief. Azalea vaguely remembered tucking it into her sleeve after she had left Mother's room, telling herself it was too nice to use. Azalea turned the silver piece of fabric in her hands, numb. When Mother had given it to her, she had said—

Take care of your sisters.

The girls! Azalea had left them there, alone in the nook. Had they tried to follow after her? Were they all right? And what—Azalea closed her eyes against the icy morning—what about Mother's baby? She had been selfish.

Take care—

The odd, tingling feeling, only an echo of what it had been the night before, washed through her, to her fingers and throat. Inexplicably, almost magically, it filled a bit of the hollowness inside her. Clutching the silver handkerchief, Azalea stumbled to her feet.

 

An hour later, still frozen from the wood and streaked with mud, Azalea found the girls in the palace nursery. The nursery was a small, cramped room on the second floor, swathed with lacy white furniture and masses of frills. A nursemaid left as Azalea arrived at the pitiful scene: girls sitting on the floor, among the rocking chairs and the broken dollhouse. They each clutched an orange to their chest with both hands. They were crying. They looked as miserable as she felt.

“You're f-f-frozen,” said Clover, who was fourteen. Instantly she was at Azalea's side, pressing her own warm hands over Azalea's stiff ones. Red rimmed her eyes, and her golden hair was tangled and mussed. Like all the girls, she still wore her clothes from yesterday.

“I'm so sorry,” said Azalea. “I shouldn't have left you all.”

Bramble snapped to attention. She leaped to her feet and threw her orange at Azalea. It hit Azalea's shoulder and bounced to the floor.

“You shouldn't have!” she said. She snatched Flora's orange from her hands and threw it. Azalea didn't move, and it hit her on the side of the head and bounced onto the frilly rug.

“How
dare
you desert us like that!” Bramble threw Goldenrod's orange, and it hit Azalea on the shoulder again. Bramble began to cry anew.

“At least try to dodge them!” she said.

In two strides Azalea was at Bramble's side, pulling her to her shoulder. Bramble sobbed. The girls flocked to Azalea, the younger ones clutching her skirts, all of them a wrinkled mess.

“You're all wet,” said Bramble, between hiccups.

“I know,” said Azalea. Her hair dripped.

“L-Lea,” said Clover. She always had difficulty speaking, as though every word took her entire effort. She pushed a smile. “We…have something…to show—show you. L-look.”

A frilly bassinet stood in the middle of the room, and Clover pulled Azalea to it. A tiny bundle of lacy blanket and dark curls lay inside.

The baby was the tiniest Azalea had ever seen—and she had seen quite a few, now the eldest of twelve. It could fit inside her cupped hands. And a girl, too, judging by the tiny, frilly bonnet. Azalea pulled off her soggy, wet gloves and touched the baby's curled fingers.

“That would be L, then,” said Azalea. All her sisters had been named alphabetically, as the King liked everything very much in order. He was particular that way. He even had the jam jars in the pantry indexed.

“Mother n-named her,” said Clover. “It's Lily.”

“Lily,” Azalea breathed.

Graceful, delicate. The baby reminded her of the white garden lilies that bloomed through the snow. Mother always knew what was just right.

“M-Minister said that Mother…h-held Lily,” said Clover. “Before she—”

Clover didn't finish, because she began to weep anew. Everyone began crying again, sobbing and wet hiccupping. Azalea felt lost, as though she had leaped into the air, a jeté, and kept falling and falling, her stomach turning and waiting to hit the ground that wasn't there. She pulled the handkerchief from her sleeve, and the silver flashed.

Promise me…

The tingling prickled to her fingers.

Azalea took a deep breath and moved her feet into fourth position, then traced her toe behind her and dipped
into a kneel. Dancing always steadied her. She wiped Jessamine's and Kale's tiny faces, which were streaked and wet. She cleaned their noses, too.

“Do you know,” she said, moving to Ivy, “what we haven't done?”

Ivy shook her blond curls.

“We haven't introduced ourselves to Lily.” Azalea pushed a smile. “It's her first day here, and all we've done is cry at her. It won't do.”

Bramble grimaced. “Oh, really, Az—”

“Come along,” said Azalea. She stood and held out her hands. “Join hands, trace the left foot back into a curtsy position number two.”

No one moved.

Azalea didn't give up. The girls looked a mix of surprised, shocked, and disgusted as she dipped into a fifth-position curtsy, lowering to her right knee and pointing her left foot in front of her, so it peeked out from her muddy hem. When she straightened, their expressions had softened.

“Your dip was unsteady,” said Bramble. “When you switched the balance to your other foot.”

“Introduction to royalty curtsy,” said Azalea, holding out her hand to Bramble. “No one balances as well as you.”

Bramble pursed her lips into a thin red line, but she
took Azalea's hand and stood. In a sweep of long red hair, she lowered into a deep curtsy in a lithe, supple movement. She extended her arm out to the bassinet.

“Too late to back out now, young chit,” said Bramble. “Welcome to the royal family.”

Azalea took Ivy's five-year-old hand and bowed to her. Ivy twirled underneath Azalea's arm, and curtsied to Lily. Jessamine took Azalea's other hand, and curtsied with her, and then all the girls, eyes red, joined hands. The dance flowed through them, and they moved as one in a reel. Blood flowed to Azalea's cheeks, warming them in a wash. Ankles together, step back, brush forward, touch, bow, in graceful, practiced movements. Their skirts brushed together.

They raised their heads and broke apart, looking shyly at one another, as though not quite sure what had gotten into them.

It was…magic. But not the sort like the tea set. Last winter, when Azalea had fully realized parliament's role in her future marriage, Mother had brushed Azalea's hair, dried her face, and brought her to the ballroom. There she taught Azalea a midair mazurka.

“Do you feel that?” Mother said, when Azalea had mastered the dizzy, brilliant step. “That warm, flickery bit inside of you? That's magic. The deepest sort. So deep it doesn't have a name. But it is magic, just the same.”

And now, though their eyes were red and puffy, Azalea's sisters weren't crying anymore. It was the warm, flickery bit that did it. They even managed weak smiles.

“Come now, Flora,” said Azalea, taking Flora's dainty hand. “A secondhand curt—”

A fuss from downstairs interrupted her. The entrance hall door slammed; a commotion of servants, the bark of the King's voice. The girls' eyes lit.

“The King,” said Flora.

“He's back!”

“Steady on.” Azalea pulled the younger girls back and smoothed their skirts and hair. Then, with shaking hands, she wrapped Lily in a blanket and herded the girls down the hall. The King. Finally! He would know what to do. He was the most steady gentleman Azalea knew. And he hadn't seen Lily yet—surely he hadn't.

The corridor on the second floor opened to a mezzanine, which overlooked the entrance hall. The King stood at the bottom, speaking in low tones to Mr. Pudding, who kneaded his cap.

Like all of them, the King wore his clothes from yesterday. His uniform was muddy and wet, and several of his medals had been torn off. A streak of blood smeared across his face into his closely trimmed beard. Even so, he stood stiff and formal, regal and proper as always.

“…in the library. I have business to tend to. I will not be disturbed, Mr. Pudding.”

“Aye, sir, but th' princesses, they've been eager to see you, sir—”

“I cannot abide them,” the King snapped, in a loud-enough whisper that it echoed in the hall. “I cannot! Keep them away from me, Mr. Pudding!”

Azalea looked quickly from the King below to the bedraggled, wide-eyed girls next to her. Clover held her hands over her mouth.

Azalea blinked away the shock, pursed her lips together, tucked Lily's blanket about her tiny neck, and descended the stairs to the entrance hall in a glide.

“Er—no—miss, I wouldn't do that,” said Mr. Pudding as she strode past him to the library door.

Azalea knocked but didn't wait for an answer. She slid the door open. The King stood over his desk, sorting through the top drawer. He pulled out a key.

“Sir!” said Azalea. “We've been waiting for you!”

The King walked toward the door. Azalea ran forward to meet him.

“Look,” she said. She pulled the blanket away from Lily's face and showed him the tiny, bonneted bundle.

He didn't stop to look.

“Mother named her,” said Azalea. “It's Lily. We thought you'd—”

The King clamped his hands firmly on Azalea's shoulders, turned her about, and guided her almost roughly to the library door. Azalea tried to shake off his iron hands.

“Sir—you don't—sir—”

The King pushed her into the hall.

Azalea twisted around to see the heavy wood-paneled library door slide shut. A faint
click-click
signaled the door locking.

Azalea opened her mouth, but no sound came out. It caught in her throat.

The girls peered down from the mezzanine above, wordless.

“It's just a guess,” said Bramble after a moment, “but I don't think he's in the mood to see us.”

 

Not until Azalea had tucked in the weepy, sniffling girls in their tiny third-floor room, combing their hair and telling them stories, and made sure that Lily was settled in the nursery with the nursemaid, did she slip away to Mother's room. Eathesbury tradition required the steward of the family to sit up the first night to watch over the deceased, but Azalea could hear Mr. Pudding's hacking sobs from across the palace, and she joined him in Mother's room, pouring cups of tea to soothe him.

Azalea cried, seeing the holly, pine, and dried flowers
strewn about the room. She bit her lip so hard it numbed, to keep herself from glancing at the bed, but in the end she had to. And it surprised her. Mother lay on the bed, dressed in white, with flowers in her auburn hair.

She looked peaceful. For the past months, when Azalea had seen her, she had lines on her face and pain in her eyes. Now, she rested. The old magic tea set, still sitting on the end table, didn't have the spark of feistiness to it anymore. It slumped on its tray.

Azalea sat on Mother's stiff flowered sofa, picked up the silver teacup, and turned it over in her hands. The silver cooled her fingertips. Engraved on the bottom of the cup was a tiny half-moon with three marks through it.
DE
. The D'Eathe mark.

Azalea considered the picture of the High King D'Eathe, which she had once found while cleaning the north attic. An ancient, pockmarked fellow with no hair and dark eyes, scowling from the canvas. Even just the memory of his portrait made Azalea shudder. He captured and tortured people foolish enough to wander onto the thorn-shrouded palace grounds. Stories of the High King tearing a person apart, starting with the thumbs, then to the ears and toes, tugging them to pieces like a cricket, to see how long they would stay alive, haunted Azalea in her worst nightmares.

And then, the worst story of all: After they had died,
he kept their
souls
. Their bodies would be found, strewn across the city, but at night, when the palace windows glowed through the thorn vines, the very same person would be seen, silhouetted against the candlelight, walking the halls.

Thinking of it terrified Azalea. Even so, for the first time in her life, she was glad of it. Because if the High King did capture souls, it meant that a person had one. It meant that there was something to the warm, flickery bit inside of you. It meant that Mother wasn't hurting anymore. Azalea clung to that hope, desperately. If that were true, Azalea would believe in anything.