Fairweller turned away from the curtain.
“I said, your mother is dead.” He looked back to the drapes. “She died last night.”
CHAPTER 3
Azalea smacked Fairweller. So hard her hand stung. She ran from the nook, her hand throbbing, through the old kitchen door and out into the snowy gardens, the ice cold of dawn stinging her cheeks.
How dare he! How dare Fairweller say such a thing! When he knew how ill Mother was! Azalea had to find the King. Through the garden paths, snow-topped hedges, and frozen topiaries, out of the screeching iron gate, through the meadow, into the frozen wood, Azalea stumbled, following Dickens’s hoofprints of upturned dirt and snow. The King would set things right. He would tell her it wasn’t true, and—
But you didn’t go to Mother’s room, a tiny voice whispered through Azalea’s angry, burning thoughts. You didn’t dare….
“Sir!” Azalea yelled, tripping through the overgrown woodland path, the cold seeping through her worn dance slippers. “Sir!”
The wood replied with frozen silence.
The trees towered above her, deep blue in the morning light, and Azalea swallowed and coughed as the air stung her throat. Her gloves were streaked with mud, and her heavy ballgown had torn on the snagging, leafless bushes. She leaned against a frozen tree and shivered uncontrollably.
Her lips had been white—
“Sir!” Azalea screamed.
The hot, tangled ball of anger inside of her turned inside out. Azalea fell to her knees and began to sob. Hacking sobs, so hard it hurt to breathe. She buried her face in her hands and couldn’t stop. Every time she tried to say Mother, the word broke in her throat. Mother, incomparable Mother!
The sun rose, casting golden light through the shadows of the trees, glistening through the mist and snow. Azalea came halfway to her senses, through shuddering cries. She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve, and the silver caught the morning light.
Mother’s handkerchief. Azalea vaguely remembered tucking it into her sleeve after she had left Mother’s room, telling herself it was too nice to use. Azalea turned the silver piece of fabric in her hands, numb. When Mother had given it to her, she had said—
Take care of your sisters.
The girls! Azalea had left them there, alone in the nook. Had they tried to follow after her? Were they all right? And what—Azalea closed her eyes against the icy morning—what about Mother’s baby? She had been selfish.
Take care—
The odd, tingling feeling, only an echo of what it had been the night before, washed through her, to her fingers and throat. Inexplicably, almost magically, it filled a bit of the hollowness inside her. Clutching the silver handkerchief, Azalea stumbled to her feet.
An hour later, still frozen from the wood and streaked with mud, Azalea found the girls in the palace nursery. The nursery was a small, cramped room on the second floor, swathed with lacy white furniture and masses of frills. A nursemaid left as Azalea arrived at the pitiful scene: girls sitting on the floor, among the rocking chairs and the broken dollhouse. They each clutched an orange to their chest with both hands. They were crying. They looked as miserable as she felt.
“You’re f-f-frozen,” said Clover, who was fourteen. Instantly she was at Azalea’s side, pressing her own warm hands over Azalea’s stiff ones. Red rimmed her eyes, and her golden hair was tangled and mussed. Like all the girls, she still wore her clothes from yesterday.
“I’m so sorry,” said Azalea. “I shouldn’t have left you all.”
Bramble snapped to attention. She leaped to her feet and threw her orange at Azalea. It hit Azalea’s shoulder and bounced to the floor.
“You shouldn’t have!” she said. She snatched Flora’s orange from her hands and threw it. Azalea didn’t move, and it hit her on the side of the head and bounced onto the frilly rug.
“How dare you desert us like that!” Bramble threw Goldenrod’s orange, and it hit Azalea on the shoulder again. Bramble began to cry anew.
“At least try to dodge them!” she said.
In two strides Azalea was at Bramble’s side, pulling her to her shoulder. Bramble sobbed. The girls flocked to Azalea, the younger ones clutching her skirts, all of them a wrinkled mess.
“You’re all wet,” said Bramble, between hiccups.
“I know,” said Azalea. Her hair dripped.
“L-Lea,” said Clover. She always had difficulty speaking, as though every word took her entire effort. She pushed a smile. “We…have something…to show—show you. L-look.”
A frilly bassinet stood in the middle of the room, and Clover pulled Azalea to it. A tiny bundle of lacy blanket and dark curls lay inside.
The baby was the tiniest Azalea had ever seen—and she had seen quite a few, now the eldest of twelve. It could fit inside her cupped hands. And a girl, too, judging by the tiny, frilly bonnet. Azalea pulled off her soggy, wet gloves and touched the baby’s curled fingers.
“That would be L, then,” said Azalea. All her sisters had been named alphabetically, as the King liked everything very much in order. He was particular that way. He even had the jam jars in the pantry indexed.
“Mother n-named her,” said Clover. “It’s Lily.”
“Lily,” Azalea breathed.
Graceful, delicate. The baby reminded her of the white garden lilies that bloomed through the snow. Mother always knew what was just right.
“M-Minister said that Mother…h-held Lily,” said Clover. “Before she—”