Azalea arrived at the creaking kitchen door and pulled back when she saw the King sitting at the scrubbed servants’ table, drinking a cup of cold leftover coffee and sorting through a stack of paperwork in the flickering candlelight. His hand was better now—though it moved stiffly as he shuffled the papers. He looked up when Azalea arrived, and Azalea twined her fingers through the weave in her shawl. His intimidating frown always made her feel as though she were balancing on a three-story banister.
“It is decidedly late, Miss Azalea,” said the King, setting his teacup down. “You should be in bed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Azalea. She stared at his paperwork. He was always doing paperwork. She wondered for the first time if he disliked it.
“Did you come to eat something? You know the rules.”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t eat your dinner.” The King marked a bit of paper with his pen. “You missed breakfast, and tea, and I saw you give your food to Miss Ivy at the table. Am I to believe you haven’t come down here for food?’
“Yes,” said Azalea shortly. “If I were hungry, I would have eaten. I’m fetching something for the girls.”
The King sucked in his cheeks at her tone. Azalea, her fingers still twined in her shawl, opened the cabinet next to the stove and began to sort for the sugar cubes.
“It is gone, isn’t it?” said the King without glancing from his papers. “None of you wore it today. I knew the moment—the very moment—I let you take it from my sight, it was gone. I gave that brooch to your mother, Miss Azalea, and now it is gone.”
Azalea paused, her shaking hand resting on the cold glass of the pear preserves, between the jars of peaches and plums.
Of course he knew it was gone. Azalea doubted anything escaped his notice. He knew everything—
Well…yes. He did know everything. Much more than her, at least, when it came to magic. A glimmer of hope lit inside her. Perhaps finding the sugar teeth would help her solve things after all. Azalea swallowed.
“Sir,” she said, closing the cabinet door and pressing her back against it. The knobbly handle pressed into her corset. Her hands still trembled. “Um. Do you remember…how the sugar teeth were magic?”
The King looked up.
“Were?” he said.
In their room, the King nudged the sugar teeth. They fell to their side, clinking against the polished tabletop. The girls crowded about them, biting their lips.
“They look poorly,” he said. He picked them up and examined them, drawing his thumb across the poking-out teeth. He made to bend them, but stopped when he saw the metal would only snap if he did. He set them down. “What happened to them? Who bent them like this?”
A cold tingling feeling washed over Azalea, prickling and giving her goose bumps. She coughed and tried to shake it away. Everyone must have felt it, for they all shifted on their poufs and beds, rubbing their fingers and cringing. Eve tugged on the ends of her dark hair. The oath…
“Come to think of it,” said the King, “where is the rest of the magic tea set? I haven’t seen it for some time.”
The girls cast nervous looks at one another, but Clover spoke up.
“It’s all right,” she said, sitting on the edge of her bed and stroking Lily’s dark curls. Lily lay asleep on her lap. “It’s my fault. I’ll tell him.”
Clover told the story of how, in a foul temper, she had bashed up the set and thrown it into the stream. She told it all with her chin up, her beautiful face pale—but, surprisingly, without a stutter. The King’s eyebrows knitted at first, then rose, until he was just staring at her with his mouth slightly open. Azalea guessed that he would have been cross if any of the rest of them had done such a thing. But with honey-sweet Clover, the King just gaped.
“Your mother often thought,” he said slowly, when she had finished, “that one day you would do something truly surprising. I certainly did not expect this.”
Bramble flashed a grin at Azalea.
“What now, sir?” said Flora.
“What now?” The King turned his attention to the quaking sugar teeth. “Well. I suppose we ought to unmagic them.”
He left the room. Some minutes later, he arrived again and shut the door behind him. In his stiff hand, he held the old, mottled silver sword. He gazed at the sugar teeth, lost in thought.
“Unmagic,” said Azalea, turning the odd word in her mouth. “You’ll take the magic from it?”
“Just so.”
The girls watched, rapt, as he gently and solemnly lowered the sword to the sugar teeth. He touched the silver to silver with a soft clink.
As quick and quiet as a snuffed candle, the sugar teeth…lost their luster. They looked the same, but…Azalea couldn’t describe it. No longer shuddering, the teeth somehow seemed at peace. Everyone exhaled silently.
“Well,” said the King. He picked up the teeth and slipped them into his waistcoat pocket, as delicately as a lifeless sparrow to be buried. He turned to the girls.
“What did your mother do?” he said.
“Sir?”
“When it was time for bed,” said the King. “Tell me.”
The girls exchanged nervous glances. He was talking about Mother.
“She used to help the girls with their prayers,” said Azalea, hesitant. “And—sometimes she would read stories.”
The King set the sword on the table, next to the vase.