Charming, Volume 2 (11 page)

Liz reached Charming's side as he fell. She had never seen so much blood. Her heart was cold with fear as she clutched him to her and heard the rattle of his ragged breathing. Gathering up the bloodied shift, she ripped it in two and started dressing Charming's wounds, her own pains forgotten.

His eyes flickered open at her touch. “Elizabeth . . .” he sighed. His eyes shut and then opened again in slowing movements. He took a few labored breaths and then said, “I'm so sorry, Elizabeth, I never meant to hurt you . . . I was such a coward.” He reached his one good hand up toward her face “You are safe. Everything will be all right . . . now.” She felt his cold touch on her cheek, then his hand dropped and his eyes fluttered closed again.

“No, you don't,” she said as she tightened a tourniquet around his arm and pressed a second silken bandage against his side. “I won't let you go that easy. I won't let you die, not now.”

His breaths were coming in shallow gasps. She tied off the bindings and rested his head in her lap. She stroked her hand across his brow—­it was hot and clammy. Her fingers traced the outline of a pale shadow that was all that remained of the injury he'd had when she first met him. It may have only been weeks, but it seemed like such an impossibly long time ago. Now it was likely that he would die in her arms. She began to hum an old lullaby she used to sing to Will when he was a child and afraid of the coming night. The song seemed to calm Charming, but it might also have been that he was slipping away. A tear fell from her cheek onto his forehead. She had not even known she was crying. Liz wiped away the moisture with her finger, then leaned close and whispered the words she knew he longed to hear: “I do not know why, but I know that I do love you, Edward Charming. You are and will ever be my prince. You are going to marry me, and you are going to love me, and we will live happily ever after.” It was only after speaking them that Liz realized that they were true—­every word.

Charming exhaled deeply, almost sighing, and, for a moment, Liz thought he was gone. But then he inhaled again, his breathing steadied, and his head seemed to cool. Liz looked around. The clearing was strangely empty. The guards had gathered themselves up and slipped away. The captain lay sprawled and unconscious on the ground. And, with the exception of Charming's horse, which was grazing quietly at the far edge of the meadow, there was not a single creature to be seen.

“Now what?” she asked.

 

Chapter 6

Something Borrowed

WHILE MANY A
little girl dreams of a fairy tale wedding, actual fairy tales give the occasion rather short shrift. Typically, a fairy tale wedding, whether it be between prince and princess, commoner and king, or lady and beast, amounts to a few brief words shoehorned between a villain “never being seen or heard from again” and the “happily ever after.” A fairy tale wedding might be boiled down to, “And the prince carried the fair maiden off to his castle in the clouds, they were married, and lived happily . . .” and so on. If Princess Gwendolyn Mostfair had determined one thing, it was that this would not be her fate. Everyone would remember her wedding.

“The wedding is everything,” Princess Gwendolyn announced to no one in particular, or possibly to no one at all, as she paraded through the halls of Castle White surrounded by a halo of shadows that fluttered behind her like a tattered cloak.

She had tried to make everything perfect. The wedding dinner was planned down to the garnish on the dessert. She had hand selected the mythical beasts—­matching unicorns—­that would be used for her processional menagerie. She had threatened the gardeners to ensure that the flowers would bloom on schedule. She had even, despite her better inclinations, descended into the kitchens to explain what type of cake she wanted—­monumental. Of course, there was the moat, with its foul waters. She had to think of some way to fix that.

Her sister came once again to mind. “For Rosslyn's sake, it must be perfect,” she muttered.

As if she had spoken the final incantation of a spell, the shadows melted into the floor. What had Rosslyn wanted for her wedding to Rupert? Was this wedding for her sister, or was it the one she had wished for herself so long ago? Was this still part of her curse? She touched her face, running her fingertips over her cheeks. Was she awake or asleep?

Before her thoughts could travel any further, a question swept them away and the shadows rose again to take their positions.

“Your Royal Highness, Princess Gwendolyn Mostfair, if I may. I am in dire need of your opinion. Do you have a moment?”

Gwendolyn frowned at the Royal Tailor's interruption, but the man was in the middle of a deep bow and did not notice her displeasure. She reminded herself that he would be making her dress, and promptly bent her frown into a fluttering smile. “Of course, how may I be of assistance? As you know, I am keenly interested in every aspect of the wedding clothes.”

The man rose with a high laugh. “Most amusing, Your Royal Highness, but my question has nothing to do with the wedding. No, no, you must come and help me. This is in regards to the coronation!” He punctuated the declaration by thrusting a pair of tailoring shears skyward. Then, with an audacity that she could scarcely believe, he turned on his heel and marched toward an open door in the hall, as if he had no doubts that she would follow. A sudden unwarranted anger rose up in her breast; the candles in the hallway flickered, and she watched the dark black shadows crawl from around her feet and reach toward the man's retreating back. She almost let them go, but then with an enormous effort willed them back to roil at her feet.

Breathing hard, she fell into step behind the diminutive but forceful man. “Of course, the coronation is just a prelude to my wedding, when I will become queen!” He seemed not to hear so she quickened her step and, catching the tailor at the door, turned him with a firm hand on his shoulder and gave him her best smile.

He blinked at her and, pointing with the tips of his pinkie fingers to the skin beneath his own eyes, said, “You need to get some rest, Princess Gwendolyn. You have terrible dark circles around your eyes.” Gwendolyn's smile evaporated, replaced by an icy glare, but he was completely unmoved by either her charms or her anger. He fluttered his hands around his head and clucked, “Now, where was I?” He snapped his fingers after two taps of his chin. “Oh, yes! As I was saying, we must make sure that this great moment in history is not lost.”

They reached the doorway, and the tailor pirouetted and made a flourished gesture that drew her eyes to the contents of the chamber. The room was a chambermaid's nightmare. Bolts of cloth and satin, yards of dyed leather, boxes of beads and feathers, and hundreds of spools of ribbon and lace and thread were scattered about with no apparent design. It was such a blinding riot of color and texture that it took Gwendolyn a moment to realize that, in the middle of the chaos, standing as still and quiet as a tailor's mannequin, was her future husband, William Pickett. She gasped.

“Behold, the form of man in all its glory, the Lord Protector, William Pickett, who on this day will be our true King. Stunning.” The tailor snapped his fingers with one hand while pointing with the shears. “See how straight and unmoving the Lord Protector stands. He understands the magnitude of this event. It is truly the greatest moment any of us will experience, and we must have perfection.”

“You mean, the greatest moment, until the Royal Wedding,” the Princess said sternly, folding her arms across her bosom.

“Look at the fit of these clothes,” said the Royal Tailor, ignoring her and tapping Will's rear as his assistants moved aside for him. “To have the honor of framing this solid masculine bu—­
um
, these calves for all to see, why they are magnificent! But, have we done enough? I ask you.”

Gwendolyn had to admit that Will did look impressive standing on a stool in the center of the room, his back ramrod straight and his arms outstretched. The Royal Tailor prattled on about the coronation, picking up different colored silks and velvets to hold against Will's body for her consideration, but Gwendolyn did not hear a word. Across Will's face was a mask of shadows; where the warm brown of his eyes once lay were empty black pits, like raven's eyes. Something in her heart caught, and Gwendolyn felt real doubt, both as to what she was doing and as to whether she could still control the forces she had unleashed.

The Royal Tailor's voice sliced through her thoughts like a knife. “You don't like it, Your Royal Highness?” the man said with an edge of desolation.

The Princess shook her head clear of this new and troubling attack of conscience, but Will's mask remained and she turned away, unable to look. Will would be fine. In time, he would learn to love her and she him. The focus at the moment had to be on the wedding and clarifying—­in no uncertain terms—­the Royal Tailor's priorities.

“He looks fine,” she said, addressing the opposite side of the room so that she was in no danger of catching sight of Will. “I like that shade of blue on him, and the gold accent will work as well. Besides, it's only for the coronation. It's just a formality, and other than the King and the Archbishop, hardly anyone will be—­be . . . will be there,” she stuttered as she watched one of the tailor's mannequins draped itself in ragged black. Then it turned and stared at her—­with Rosslyn's eyes.

The Royal Tailor gasped. For a second, Gwendolyn thought he had seen her vision, and fear and hope battled with each other for her heart, but the tailor stepped around so that he stood in front of her and said, “But
why
? How can we deny the ­people the glory and spectacle of this man, our beautiful, powerful, majestic Lord Protector becoming King?” As the question left his lips, a tremor went through the Royal Tailor, shaking the shears in his hand.
“Why?”

Gwendolyn dug her nails into the palm of her hand to keep from screaming, then said in a voice tight with fear, “Now, now, you have done well, and there will be time enough for everyone to see him
at
the
wedding
. Do you understand?”

The Royal Tailor swallowed and nodded slowly, but she saw that he was not convinced. She had to get out of this room—­now—­but he also had to be made to understand. So as Rosslyn mouthed at her wordlessly over his shoulder, Gwendolyn reached out with her thoughts and pulled at the magical strand connecting her mind to Will's and said in a voice that rose and rose until it was a shrill screech, “WILL! TELL HIM.”

“It is-­all-­about-­her. It-­is-­her-­wedding”—­he said dully, but then ended with a whispered, “her plot.”

She paused. She hadn't intended him to say “her plot.” For a flickered second, the shadow mask had slipped. She glanced around to see if the tailor had noticed the odd wording of his response. To her relief, he merely bowed with a frown.

Her eyes were drawn back, against her will, to the dress form. Rosslyn was now robed in a shadowy wedding gown. She was beautiful and sad, and her condemning glare cut to the quick. Panic gripped Gwendolyn.

“I must go,” she said, waving her hands at the Royal Tailor, who blinked at her sudden change of mood. “Carry on. Finish quickly.”

With that, she fled the room, heading for the secret chamber and the fairy. As she walked, she considered Will's momentary rebellion. Her emotions were causing problems again. It had happened before with the Captain of the Guard at the cottage. In that case, though, she had gotten so angry at Prince Charming that she had lost control of the magic entirely; it had been like watching a pantomime of her worst impulses played out to a tragedy. The fairy said it was because violent, uncontrolled emotions were anathema to her race. Of course, the fairy liked nothing more than to make her crazy. Still, Gwendolyn found it increasingly difficult to control her own emotions and sometimes to know what was real and unreal.

There would be time for weakness, but this was not it. There was too much at stake, too many promises to keep. She could not afford to lose control of Will—­not yet. The shadows skipped along beside her, extinguishing the torches and candles along the way so that the hall behind her was thrown into darkness.

WILL WATCHED HER
leave, and, for the hundredth time, he wished that he could lower his arms or utter even a single plea for help. He felt as if he were acting a role in a play. The Princess's every suggestion was an inviolable law, a command from the heavens, which he was unable to resist. He had tried to twist her words, to find some crack in the wall of dominion she had built around him, but they were ironclad in their simplicity
—­Obey me.

He had never felt so helpless. The sickening part was that she controlled the King also, and who knew how many others in the palace. He should have listened to Elle, but he had been so sure that Gwendolyn posed no danger.
She's a princess,
he mocked to himself. This was his fault. He had freed her, unleashed her on the world. He felt his body turn in slavish obedience to one of the tailor's requests.

“RUN YOU, FOOLS! SHE'S MAD! SHE'S EVIL! CAN'T YOU SEE THE MAGIC SWIRLING ABOUT HER!” he screamed.

Except, he didn't scream. No sound was allowed to escape his lips. He was standing stoically while the man measured his waist and then pinned a gaudy pink silk to his chest. He found himself wishing for someone to save him, but who could imagine that the Lord Protector would need protecting? Besides, the only man in the kingdom with the nerve and skill to make the attempt was gone—­banished. Even his borrowed squire, Tomas, was gone, imprisoned by the Princess after he had suggested, in an admittedly undiplomatic way, that the green dress she was wearing was unflattering.
Face it, the man said she looked like a toad.
He giggled in his head, but it died away as he remembered the pained look on Tomas's face as he was hauled away, and that he had been helplessness to stop it.

No one was coming to save the day. If Liz had been here, she would have thought of something, but she was gone too.

And what of Lady Rapunzel . . . Elle?

Always, his thoughts turned back to Elle. Those eyes. That face . . . her smell—­Gwendolyn may have taken control of his mind, but apparently she could not remove his memory of her. Still, he
had
done something—­he'd shown a glimmer of free will. He had forced the words “
her plot”
out of his mouth, though barely. They weren't the words he had wanted to say, but still, this act was the first sliver of hope he'd had since his enslavement.

His body turned again, so that the Royal Tailor could measure him for another suit. Inside his head, he considered his rebellious moment. She was mad, angry with the tailor. Could it be that simple? If it was true, there was an opportunity, a chance. But how could he use these fleeting moments of freedom? If he could speak no more than a single word, what warning could he give? If he could take no more than a single step, how could he escape?

Turned once again by the tailor, Will's eyes fell on the tapestry he had taken from the dragon's tower. Beneath it, half covered by a virulent pink silk, was the golden key. His mind traveled back to the beginning. He remembered how beautiful the Princess had looked when he first found her, bound by that strange lock. Now he was the one whose mind was locked in a nightmare. Was this what it had been like for her all those years? His heart shuddered. Then a strange and disturbing thought came to him.
What if I have only woken her body, but not her mind? What if this is some dark spirit and not Gwendolyn at all?

Then his daydreams shattered and he became viscerally aware of his surroundings as the tailor adjusted his codpiece a bit too tightly.

ON REACHING HER
sanctuary, Princess Gwendolyn snatched up the fairy orb, ignoring the clawing shadow hands as they also encircled the globe. “Tell me what is happening. Why am I having these visions? How was Will able to resist my control? I only need a few more days. I can't chance anything.” She shook the globe holding the fairy violently enough that pixie dust filled it with a small blizzard. “The wedding is coming! The wedding!”

In the swirling tempest within the globe, she saw another reflection of Rosslyn. This time Rosslyn pointed at her, shouting silent accusations. Gwendolyn couldn't hear the words, but she desperately tried to read her dead sister's lips. The Princess pressed her face nearer the orb. “I didn't mean for you to die, Rosslyn. It was just a foolish girl's wish for . . .”