“Very well,” he said as the girls whispered to one another. “I will read you a story.”
The whispering stopped.
Jessamine slid from her bed to the ground, the untied purple ribbons of her slippers trailing, and dug a storybook out from Eve’s trunk. She held it out to the King in her tiny four-year-old hands, her crystal blue eyes hopeful.
The King sat on the rug and leaned against Delphinium and Eve’s bed, and the younger girls shyly sat next to him, peering at the pictures. Clover smiled, her right dimple showing, and hugged Lily to her chest while Bramble, sitting on her pouf, cast a wry, surprised grin at Azalea.
“‘In a certain country…’” he began, his voice stiff with the words.
He read the stories of “Hans and Gretchen,” “The Goats of Hemland Shire,” “The Dainty Princess.” He wasn’t like Mother, who read with all the voices and a bubbled laugh at the words, but…he was all right. Everything felt warm and safe, among the linens, the flickering fire, and coziness of their room.
The girls’ eyes grew heavy, and their heads drooped. The King himself grew drowsy, his voice reading slower and slower, until finally he shook himself, and with Azalea’s direction, put the right girls in the right beds. Then he left with the sword and a good night.
The sword! Azalea’s mind whirred. She rolled the dry, crinkly rosebud from hand to hand across the table, sorting things out. Somehow, it was magic after all! How, Azalea did not know, but surely it had unmagicked the palace those hundreds of years ago, at the hand of Harold the First. No wonder Keeper wanted to be rid of it! It could unmagic him!
Hope humming through her, Azalea took her shawl from the peg by the door and slipped into the cold hall. She ran down the stairs, quiet in her bare feet, turning the corner into the portrait gallery. Edges of the glass cases and gold ends of the velvet ropes glimmered in the dim light, and Azalea found her way to the sword display. The King never left anything out of place, and for once Azalea was glad of it. She lifted the glass case from it and, ten minutes later, was back in her room.
None of the girls awoke as she turned up the lamp and smothered the fire in the hearth. She turned everything in her mind, over and over. She would unmagic the passage. They wouldn’t get the brooch or the watch back, but that didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was that Keeper would be rendered powerless—
Or would he? Azalea hesitated. With the blood oath—and the sword broken now—
“Shut up!” said Azalea to her thoughts. She grasped the rapier’s handle with both hands beneath the silver swirl guard cage, stepped into the fireplace, and touched the silver edge to the DE.
Nothing happened.
Nothing had happened before, of course, when the King had unmagicked the sugar teeth, but she had felt something. Something different. Now, as her excitement faded, the logical side of her mind took over.
What was she thinking? Unmagicking the passage would do nothing—Keeper couldn’t die, could he? He would still be there, along with his magic, with the addition that he would be angry. Azalea had the foreboding that he was going to be cross already, since they hadn’t come to dance. If she had truly unmagicked it, Keeper would be left with Mother’s soul—
In a panic, Azalea snatched the handkerchief from her pocket and rubbed it against the magic mark.
It became hot, so hot it burned. Dizzy with relief, Azalea pulled her hand back. The mark glowed for a moment, and faded back into the stone. She swallowed, gripped the sword, and strode from the fireplace, leaving a trail of soot.
After discovering the kitchen empty, Azalea arrived at the library, panting. She didn’t bother to knock, late as it was, but instead shoved the door open. The darkness surprised her; she turned up the nearest lamp, and discovered the King lying on the sofa near the piano, underneath an old blanket. He stirred as Azalea drew near.
“Sir! Sir, you—Do you sleep here every night?” Azalea frowned at the stiff, hard furniture. “That can’t be comfortable.”
The King brought his arm over his eyes as Azalea turned up both the stained-glass lamps on his desk.
“Azalea, really!”
“This is important,” said Azalea. Sword still in hand, she swept to him. The black sheet over the piano swayed with her breeze. “Sir, this sword. Can it be mended?”
The King roused, not in good humor at seeing Azalea with the sword.
“Great…waistcoats, Azalea,” he said. “That is governmental property! Take it back to the gallery, at once.”
“Sir, please,” said Azalea, on the verge of tears. “Can it be mended? Can you fix the magic in it? How is it even magic? Sir, please!”
Something in the King softened. Perhaps it was Azalea’s desperate eyes. He sighed, rubbed his face, and stood.
“Come along,” he said. “It is time you knew.”
CHAPTER 20
The gallery was so cold that Azalea could see her breath, even in the dark. She shivered and pulled her shawl tighter around herself; the King stirred up the hearth beneath the wall of portraits and added coal to it.
“Well,” he said. He set the sword on the red velvet of the pedestal and lifted the glass case back over it. He looked worn and tired but had enough firmness in him that his shoulders remained straight and solid. He was made of starch, Azalea thought. Starch and steel. “It is something that only the royal family, or the prime ministers have known,” he said. “It is not generally spoken of.”