The Rules of Ever After (18 page)

“First, I am going to stop you right there. It’s Queen Bianca. And second, whatever you are about to ask, I will help you, because you already did me a favor.”

“What favor did I do?” Phillip asked as he looked back and forth between Frederick and Bianca. “And queen? But your father is still—”

“See, young man,” King Frederick moaned as he threw up his hands, “I told you that your test had made a mess!”

“It’s not a mess. It’s simple facts, Daddy.” Bianca rolled her eyes and shifted on the throne. She smoothed the purple fabric of her gown across her thighs and reached up to adjust the silver crown on her head. “Yes, Phil, you did me a favor with that absurd princess-test of yours. When I left your castle, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I loved being a princess! If I wasn’t a princess, I was going to have to give up my favorite lady-in-waiting, Lady Fee here. Then it dawned on me, I’m
not
a princess.”

“Well, Bianca, the test isn’t perfect,” Phillip offered as he lifted his hands in front of him.

“No!” She silenced him by raising her hand. “You don’t under­stand. I’m not a princess because I am a
queen
! Why should I sit around waiting for this old lump to keel over?” She gestured toward her father. “I’m ready to be queen now. Queen Bee! It even sounds correct!”

“Bianca,” the king wailed, approaching the throne, “we’ve been over this. You cannot be the queen until I step down and until you are married. Those are the rules!”

“Rules?” Bianca threw her head back and stabbed the air with a sharp, single laugh. “Ha!” Her father scurried down from the throne. “Don’t you see, Daddy? Phil changed the rules when he decided he could just go around convincing people that we aren’t real princesses. I decided that, not only am I ready to be queen, I’m ready to make some new rules. If you don’t like it, Daddy, there are several very comfortable cells in the dungeons where you could have quite a home.”

“But marriage—” the king whined.

“Oh, I’m getting married.”

“To whom?” Marina gasped, ran up to the throne, and grabbed her cousin’s hands in excitement. “Did you find a nice prince to marry? Tell me all about him. Maybe over that breakfast?”

“A prince?” Bianca giggled and cocked her eyebrow. “Not quite. You know, I’ve been shipped all over the kingdoms to meet prince after prince. Gwen’s cousin, Robert? All he wanted to do was talk about pastries and farming. Daniel’s brother was a jackass. Then Phillip convinced everyone I’m a fraud. Every time they shipped me off it never worked out, and every time I couldn’t wait to get back home to tell Lady Fee all about it.” Bianca looked at Fiona and winked. “On my way home from Phillip’s castle, it all became clear. I didn’t want to marry one of those princes. I wanted to spend my time with Fee. Queen Bee and Lady Fee! It just makes sense.”

“You’re going to marry a woman?” Phillip asked with a gasp. He blinked his eyes as he registered what Bianca was suggesting. Though he had suggested marriage to Daniel in the testing chamber as a way to get his stepmother to leave him alone, this was not something Phillip had ever considered as an actual possibility. “Can you do that?”

“Why not?” Bianca asked with a shrug. “Phillip, what’s the point of having power if you can’t use it to be happy?” Grabbing Fiona’s hand, Bianca placed a small kiss on her palm. “It’s funny. When I met you, Phillip, I thought you were the saddest person I’d ever met, but I’ve found true happiness thanks to your sadness. So, I owe you a favor. Just name it, and I’ll do what I can.” Bianca stood; the silver crown slipped a bit. She led Lady Fiona down the steps to stand beside Phillip.

“But what about your people? What will they think?” Phillip asked.

“Phil,” Bianca said, as she placed her hands on the prince’s shoul­ders, “most people are just trying to live their lives and find their own happiness. And that applies to your people as well as mine. When they first see your choice, they may think it’s strange, but eventually they will understand that you want happiness just like they do. They may not realize it now, but your happiness benefits the kingdom, because a happy king is a benevolent king. We’re all better off when we just let people be happy.” Tightening her grip on Phillip’s shoulders, Bianca turned him around to face Daniel and whispered into his ear, “Sometimes happiness is right in front of you. Even if it seems ridiculous, just be happy.”

Phillip looked at the group. In the center of the small crowd stood Daniel, staring at the floor with his dark brows angled down. With his arms crossed over the embroidered acorns on his doublet’s breast and his foot tapping on the marble floor, Daniel looked more like a petulant child than the brave man Phillip had come to know.
Why is he that angry when I merely spoke the truth?
Watching Daniel fume, he wanted to erase that frown and never be the source of that angry look again. He wanted to be a source of happiness for Daniel, too. Phillip knew he wanted Daniel to come and stand with him, and, if Bianca’s words were true, then maybe he could.

“Surrender to the ridiculous?” Phillip whispered with a short laugh.

“Exactly,” Bianca whispered back, before turning to address her cousin. “Now, Marina, what’re you doing here?”

“Oh, cousin! Phillip and his friends rescued me!” Marina stut­tered out. “My father’s mind has gone off the edge of the Pearl Mountains! He locked me in a tower, and I really ate too much, and he was going to behead us all and frame your father and try to take over your kingdom, and he’s just become awful, and I’m starving.”

“Then go home, claim your throne and throw him in the dun­geon!” Bianca belted out, scrunching up her nose.

“Oh, I can’t do that,” Marina said and flipped her strawberry curls over her shoulder. “Especially not on an empty stomach.”

Lady Fiona bent to Bianca’s ear and whispered something. “You are right, Fee,” Bianca said and frowned at her cousin. “I can’t have her staying here. I’ve got to convince my people to accept two queens. Three of us will be just too confusing.”

“Well, I don’t want to go back to that awful place,” Marina pouted and stamped her foot. “You’re much stronger than me. Why don’t you overthrow him and bring the Lips back together? He has no money and hardly any army. You can have that miserable kingdom, for all I care. Just make sure he pays for putting me in that tower!”

“Fine,” Bianca said and nodded her head. “But what will you do?”

“You know,” Daniel interrupted as he stepped up to the two women and shot Phillip a dirty glance, “there is a prince in Sylvania who needs a bride. Why don’t you come home with me?”

“Daniel?” Phillip gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Andrew. My brother, Andrew?” Daniel said with a roll of his eyes. “What did you think I meant? Me?”

“Well, I—”

“Anyway, why would you care, Phillip? I’m just a friend helping you on a quest, right?” Daniel turned sharply on his heel and began to walk out of the room. “Some of us know what we want.”

“What just happened?” Phillip asked, turning to Bianca. His heart sunk into his stomach as heard the other prince’s departing footsteps echo around the hall.

“Ouch,” Bianca said. “Good luck with that, Phil. Now, we can’t have you walking all the way to Sylvania. I’ll have my guards get you a carriage and weapons. If there really is a madwoman intent on killing us all, you’ll need weapons. Fee? Please ask the guards to arrange that, and ask the cooks to send up some breakfast.”

“Finally!” Marina said, clapping her hands.

Phillip watched as Daniel disappeared through the throne room’s doors. Though he wasn’t exactly sure what he had done wrong, Phillip knew this was something he needed to fix. He needed Daniel by his side. However, Phillip felt a nagging worry in his stomach that this was something he couldn’t undo.

“I’ve lost my appetite,” Phillip said as he turned to follow Daniel out of the room.

“W
here’s my baby boy?” Queen Rhea flung
her
arms wide and motioned Daniel to come into her embrace. The full skirts of her forest green taffeta gown rustled with the movement, but Daniel noticed that her perfectly coiffed hair, dark as his own and pulled back into a tight chignon, did not move an inch. The tasteful emeralds she wore at her neck and ears glistened, but not as brightly as her eyes, which were green like his own. Daniel hurried across the room and flung himself into her embrace, pressing his cheek tight against hers.

“Mother, I’m twenty years old. I haven’t been your baby for years.”

“Pish,” she said with a roll of her eyes, “I don’t care if you make it to one hundred, you will always be my baby boy. Now, come,” she said and pointed at the overstuffed green velvet seat of the chair beside her, “sit with your old mother and tell me all about your adventures! I’ve had tea and your favorite cakes sent up from the kitchens. Your brother says you’ve been making front page news in that horrible
Inquisitor
thing that he seems to think passes for real news. You’ve followed my advice, right? Not embarrassing the family, I hope.”

Daniel waited for his mother to sit before he flopped onto the chair. He was glad she had decided to greet him in the privacy of her room instead of making him share their reunion with Andrew and his new friends in the throne room. The small sitting room off her sleeping chamber had always been one of Daniel’s favorite places. On rainy childhood days, she would tuck him into this very chair and read him tales of brave knights and beautiful ladies while they shared his favorite cakes. Over time, the luxurious jade silk covering the tables and windows and the soft velvet of the chair had come to feel like his mother’s own embrace.

“No, Mother,” Daniel said with a blush, “I think Andrew has greatly over-reported the facts of my activities, as usual. To be honest, I can’t believe he noticed a story about me, since it had nothing to do with him. I haven’t actually seen that week’s paper, but from what I hear, it’s just stories about James, our new friends and me being spotted outside a pub where we found lodging for the night. Those absurd sketcherazzi that Andrew adores were there that night and couldn’t resist a troop of royals.”

“And this red-headed girl they tell me you’ve brought to meet Andrew? She was there?”

“Oh no, that was in Bellemer. We didn’t find… um… I mean meet Marina until we were in Upper Lipponia.” Daniel laughed. “You should have seen Andrew when he met Marina! I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be quiet that long! All he could say was ‘you’re lovely.’”

“Yes,” the queen joined in Daniel’s laughter. “He definitely inher­ited your father’s gift of gab.”

“She’s a wonderful girl, mother, if a bit chatty. But that won’t bother Andrew, since he never really listens to anyone anyway. I can vouch for her royalty though. I saw her talk to—”

“You know I’m not concerned with such things,” the queen said, with a dismissive wave. “And your little sleeping problem?”

“Curse, mother. You can say curse. No. No change there yet. Ironically, it was an attempt to cure it that let me meet Prince Phillip of Bellemer.” Daniel dropped his chin to look at his feet and shuffled them while he grinned to himself.

“Yes,” the queen responded with a gentle smile, “Andrew men­tioned you had some boy with you. He is the son of Henry and Marie, isn’t he? Oh they are delightful people! Your father almost married Marie but Henry scooped her up first! So tell me all about him. Is he, well, your someone special?”

“Mother!” Daniel said with his eyes opened wide. He shifted in his chair and pulled at the collar of his doublet.

“Oh come now, my dear, I may be old, but I am not an old fool. I told you to look for love out there. So, have you found it?”

Daniel chose his words carefully. “He is wonderful, Mother. I don’t think I have met a kinder soul in my life. Okay, he started out a little timid, but on this trip I have watched him grow braver and truer. And smart? Oh, Mother, he’s so smart. He will make a wonderful king someday.”

“And handsome?” the queen asked.

“The handsomest,” Daniel sighed. “Look,” he said as he pulled the drawing he had snatched from the sketcherazzo from his pocket. He laid the paper on the tea table so that his mother could see. He smoothed the edges of the paper and traced the outline of Phillip’s face.

“Ah, yes.” The queen leaned over to look at the picture. “He has his mother’s looks. I can see why he would—how would I say it—appeal? Yes, appeal to you.”

“Doesn’t matter, though.” Daniel shrugged and pushed the pic­ture away. “He sees me as a friend. He’s not interested.”

“How could anyone resist my darling baby boy?” the queen asked, as she pinched Daniel’s cheek.

“Well, I think he might be interested, but he knows he has to take the throne and that means taking a bride or being alone.” Daniel looked at his mother and frowned. “He takes his future role very seriously and, well, that’s a path that doesn’t really include falling in love with another man.”

The queen sat thinking for a minute before she patted Daniel’s knee. “Daniel, have I ever told you the story of how your father and I met?”

“No.”

“Well, you know he was living incognito in Glorianna to study at our renowned university. Your father was such a smart man! Anyway, every morning, your father would get up and walk out of the house he was living in and turn to the right to walk to his classes. One morning, though, he woke up to discover that a large hay cart had overturned in the street and blocked his usual path. So, he turned to the left to find a different way to the school. The path he took led him past a small café where my ladies-in-waiting and I would go every morning for wonderful little pastries. Oh, I haven’t thought of those pastries in years.” The queen paused, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “I can almost smell them now.”

She opened her eyes again and continued, “Anyway, your father passed by and saw me sitting there. He said he fell in love instantly. After class, he came back and paid the owner of that café an exor­bitant amount of gold to find out my name and to reserve the table next to mine for the rest of the week. The next morning when I arrived, there he sat with a tray of pastries and his beautiful face. He missed his morning class every day that week. Can you imagine? Every day that week. The rest is, as they say, history.”

“That’s nice, Mother, but—”

“Don’t you see the point, my child?” The queen shook her head and poked Daniel in his arm. “Come now, think about it. If your father had not found a different path that morning, we may have never met.”

“Yes but I don’t see what—oh!” Daniel saw his mother break into another smile as her meaning dawned on him.

“Sometimes, my dear,” she cooed, “to find true love, you have to find a different path.”

Daniel sat still and let his mother’s words sink in. He studied the lines of Phillip’s face in the sketch. The artist had caught Phillip staring at the crowd with a look of complete wonder; the eyes in the drawing, Phillip’s beautiful blue eyes, seemed to stare out at Daniel in wonder as well. Daniel had watched those eyes move from tears to fear to quiet strength on their journeys. This was the face that he had seen when he opened his eyes in the testing chamber and that he now anxiously awaited seeing every morning. In the drawing, Phillip’s lips were barely parted, as if he were about to say something to Daniel.
What does he want to say?
What do I want to say
?

“Daniel?” the queen interrupted his thoughts.

He stood up abruptly. “Mother, you have to excuse me—”

“Go, baby boy. Find him.” The queen glanced down at the sketch and then back at Daniel. “You two should take a walk in the West­ern Woods. They are lovely this time of year.”

“Thank you,” Daniel spun on his heel and rushed toward the door. Stopping suddenly, he turned back and ran over to the table to pick up the drawing and shove it into his pocket. “Wish me luck!” he said with a grin, as he turned to run out of the room.

“Good luck,” the queen called after him. Folding her hands in her lap, she smiled and said, “Find your own path!”

Daniel’s mother had spoken correctly. The Western Wood
was just as gorgeous as Daniel had remembered it. Sunlight danced lazily through the thick canopy of leaves and scattered flecks of bright green and yellow across the floor of the forest. As a child, this had been his favorite place to explore with James and Emmaline and every tree, shrub, and path was like an old friend who had been waiting patiently for his return. Even the songbirds in the trees overhead were whistling airs of joy that seemed to say, “Welcome home, boy. Where’ve you been?” Daniel paused in a small clear­ing to let the sunlight play across his shoulders and to feel the warm breeze tickle his hair. Breathing in deeply, he could smell the damp air from the recent rain that covered the leaves with a glimmering sheen.

Ahead of him, Phillip stepped carefully over stones and roots in his path as he worked his way toward the stone gazebo. After his mother’s chambers, the gazebo was Daniel’s favorite childhood hiding place to read or simply lie on his back daydreaming. As soon as his mother had suggested a walk in the woods, Daniel knew he had to share this spot with Phillip. He had rushed to find the other prince and suggested the walk. Knowing Phillip hated the close, leafy embrace of the forest, he had feared he would be met with a “no” but, to Daniel’s relief, Phillip had eagerly accepted, and they had set out.

Now, Phillip paused to catch his breath beneath the spreading branches and deep pink flowers of a large frogberry tree. Daniel watched as the prince stretched his arms over his head and took a deep breath; the hem of his doublet rode up slightly and the fabric pulled tight across his firm chest. The sunlight falling through the branches glinted off the strands of gold in Phillip’s brown hair, and the sky and the blossoms around his head seemed to be mirrored in the blue of Phillip’s eyes and the pink of his lips.
He
is
the beauty of my woods.
Seeing Phillip surrounded by the woods that until now had been his greatest love, Daniel knew what he wanted. Standing there, he felt like one of the forest’s trees, with his feet firmly rooted in the ground, as strength, confidence and courage flowed into his limbs from the dark soil.

“I will tell him.”

A stronger wind suddenly blew through the frogberry’s branches and sent a shower of bright pink petals falling around the other boy. Phillip threw his head back and his arms out to let the petals fall delicately on his body before laughing and spinning slowly, dancing in the flutters of pink and white.

“I think these woods like you!” Daniel called out to him. “They’re offering you a gift.” Daniel chuckled as Phillip stopped spinning and looked in his direction; a grin spread across his face before he clumsily tottered on unstable legs and fell gracelessly onto his backside.

“Careful there.” Daniel giggled as he walked up to Phillip’s side and offered his outstretched hand to the prince.

“Woods are impossible!” Phillip said and then blew his bangs off his forehead with a quick puff of breath. “The sandy shores of Bellemer are much easier to walk on. But the gift is nice,” he said as he picked a few pink petals off his shoulder and let them fall to the ground. Phillip took Daniel’s hand and let himself be pulled up. The two men stood face to face, holding hands in silence until Phillip said, “Thank you for bringing me here. It’s more beautiful than I could’ve imagined.”

“Well,” Daniel said, as he brushed a last blossom off Phillip’s arm, “I really wanted to share this with you and I thought we could use a little time away from everyone else.” Daniel slid his hand down Phillip’s arm and took his other hand. “There are some things I want to say.”

“Yes. I’m glad you brought me here,” Phillip said with a grin, as he squeezed Daniel’s hands. “I was worried you were done with me after what I said in Bianca’s throne room, and I wanted to explain.”

“Phillip, there is no need to explain. She made an assumption,” Daniel said with a shrug. “She wasn’t the only one in the room making assumptions. I wanted to apologize for storming out. I just want to tell you—”

“Please, let me go first,” Phillip interrupted. “There
is
a need to explain. I was caught off guard and I didn’t know what to say when she called you my companion.”

“Well, it was a bit blunt to say to people she barely knew.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Phillip shrugged, “but that’s not what I mean. I was caught off guard to hear someone say out loud what I’d been afraid to think. But a part of me…” he stuttered, “knew… well, knew she was right. I really think I knew that night when we escaped King Rupert in the basket. I know I told you I slept through the night, but that isn’t exactly true.

“At first, I couldn’t fall asleep,” Phillip continued, “because I was terrified we would be dropped or crash into the mountains or who knows what. But then I remembered you were there, just like you have been since that first night in my castle. You have been by my side the whole time, with no gain for yourself.”