CHAPTER 1
An hour before Azalea’s first ball began, she paced the ballroom floor, tracing her toes in a waltz. She had the opening dance with the King…who danced like a brick.
But that was all right. She could add flourishes and turns that would mask the King’s stiff, flat steps. If there was anything she was good at, it was dancing. And this year, she was in charge of the ball, as Mother was too ill to host. Azalea was determined it would be perfect.
Unlike the year before, when the Yuletide had ended in a fracas. Too young to attend the annual—and only—ball the royal family hosted, Azalea and her ten younger sisters gathered all the blankets and cloaks and shawls from the palace and hid outside the ballroom windows. Azalea remembered the frigid air, how the rosebushes scratched, and how they had to huddle together for warmth. The ballroom radiated gold through the frozen panes. The girls pressed their noses on the glass and oohed at the dancers, especially Mother, who danced like an angel.
They had fallen asleep right there in the rosebushes, burrowing together like mice. When the girls were discovered missing, Mother had stopped the ball and made everyone—including the musicians—search for them. Prime Minister Fairweller had found them. Azalea had awoken in shivers to see him holding a lamp over them and frowning.
The girls had pelted him with snowballs.
They had lost two weeks of dance lessons over that Great Rosebush and Snowball Scandal. It had been worth it, they all agreed. Even so, Azalea hoped this year the Yuletide would end gracefully. Her toes curled in her dance slippers and her hands shook as she fluttered about the dessert table in the ballroom, rearranging the platters and directing the hired help as they brought in trays of lemon custards and cinnamon candies.
Mr. Pudding found her just as snow started to swirl outside the tall arched windows and the musicians had arrived, tuning their violins in the ballroom corner. Azalea knelt on the marble floor in a poof of silks and crinolines, picking up strewn pine needles. Mr. Pudding was their Royal Steward. He was also the Royal Stableman, the Royal Boot-Blacker, and the Royal Things-on-the-High-Shelf-Getter. With difficulty, he knelt to the floor.
“It’s all right, Mr. Pudding,” said Azalea. “I’ve got it.”
“Right you are, miss, so you do,” he said, collecting the needles with gnarled hands. “It’s only…your mother wants to see you, miss.”
Azalea paused, the needles pricking her palms.
“She does?” she said. “The King is all right with it?”
“’Course he would be, miss,” said Mr. Pudding, helping her up. “He couldn’t be averse if your mum wants it!”
Mother hadn’t been taken with a quick, hard illness that swept a person up overnight. Her illness had come slowly and had lasted for years, robbing a bit of her each day. Some weeks she felt better, better enough to take tea in the gardens with Azalea and her sisters and give them dance lessons, and some weeks—more weeks, lately—the light in her eyes flickered with pain. Still, she always said she felt better, and she always gave a room-brightening smile. That was Mother.
With the baby near due now, the King refused to allow Azalea or her sisters to spend tea up in Mother’s room, or even to visit longer than several minutes a day. Even so, when Azalea arrived at Mother’s room two staircases later, breathless and beaming, it had the mark of her sisters all over it. Mend-up cards with scrawled pictures graced the dresser, and vases of dried roses and pussywillows made the room smell of flowers. A warm fire glowed in the grate, casting yellows over the flowered furniture.
Mother sat in the upright sofa, her auburn hair tussled as always. She wore her favorite blue dress, mended but clean, and rested a hand on her stomach.
She was asleep. Azalea’s smile faded.
Secretly hoping the rustle of her skirts would rouse Mother, Azalea arranged the mend-up cards on the dresser, then chastised herself for hoping such a thing. Sleep was the only peace Mother had of late. From the table next to the sofa, the old magic tea set clinked and clattered faintly, pouring a cup of tea in its pushy way.
Azalea did not care for that old silver-mottled tea set. Several hundred years ago, before Eathesbury had streetlamps and paved roads, the palace had been magic. The reigning king, the High King D’Eathe, had gone mad with it. He magicked the drapery to twine around servants’ necks, made the lamps flicker to life as one passed, and trapped unfortunate guests in his mirrors, never to release them. Azalea’s ninth-great-grandfather, Harold the First, had overthrown him, but still pockets of magic remained in the palace. The old tea set was one of these. It even had a pair of sugar tongs that snapped at the girls’ fingers if they wanted more than one cube. The girls called them the sugar teeth, and Azalea guessed they were quite as evil as their creator had been.
“If you wake her,” Azalea threatened in a low voice, picking up the full teacup and setting it on its platter, “I will have you melted down into napkin rings, I swear it.”
The teacup hopped back onto the sofa arm and nudged and prodded at Mother’s hand. Azalea grabbed it and pinned it between the dented sugar bowl and teapot. The sugar teeth hopped out of the bowl and bit her fingers.
“Ow!” Azalea snapped. “Why, you little—”
Mother stirred.
“Oh, goosey,” she said. She opened her eyes and pushed a smile. “Don’t be cross. They’re only trying to help, you know.”
“They’re bullying you,” said Azalea, whose spirits rose in spite of seeing the pain in Mother’s eyes. Mother had a plucky way of smiling that deepened her dimples and brightened the room. “I’ll take them to the kitchen. How are you feeling?”