Laszlo’s mouth drops open and for once, words fail him. The three of us are locked in a triangle of wonderment, staring until it becomes apparent that one of us should say something. That one of us, of course, is the Margrave.
“My darling! You’re finally here,” he croons, hastily dropping the pearl-handled knife with which he had been threatening me. He approaches the princess as if she’d just arrived for tea, taking her hand. She stiffens, unused to human touch.
“I’ve been waiting for you. Waiting so long.”
He kneels at her feet and proceeds to kiss her hand. She regards him with the same disdain one might show an unwelcome stray dog off the street; she looks to me, bewildered. I feel an instant kinship with her.
I remember what it was like in those first few moments, the strangeness of the sounds, the feel of skin stretching across my bones, the endless beating of my own heart. The sheer overwhelming sensations of a human body are a lot to comprehend.
But if I’ve built her well, with her many secret strengths, and if some of my blood courses through her veins, she will soon find her words and speak them.
“Why are you fighting?” she asks him simply. Her words come out slow, even. “Why do you hurt her and dishonor the moon?”
Laszlo gets to his feet, waving me off. “Nothing for you to be concerned about, Ulrika dear—that is to be your name, you know, and what a grand one it is! Named after my great-grandmother, on my mother’s side. She was a legendary beauty, though already no one in all of Tavia can hold a candle to you.” He turns around and sneers at me for good measure.
“Now, let’s come in to the gallery so we can have the church cleric summoned. We are to be wed at once!” As Laszlo prattles on, he blocks my view of her, trying to drag her toward the gallery door, intending for me to give them some privacy. Now that he has what he wants, he wants me out of the way.
But I can’t stop staring at her, nor does she stop trying to peer around him to see me.
I sense that she recognizes me, recognizes that I am somehow a part of her, just like the saboteur. But if Laszlo takes her away, I might never get the chance to speak to her. She will need someone to explain everything; I long to tell her things Papa was never able to tell me.
She is having none of this manhandling by a stranger, however. She pulls back from Laszlo’s greedy grip, and I hear the Margrave’s breath intake sharply as she wraps a hand like a vise around his forearm, digging her patrician fingers deep into the cuff of his wedding jacket. With pride, I note how he immediately crumples in pain. Nan and Tiffin’s gifts at work.
“I don’t know you, yet you speak to me as if I belong to you,” she says, dragging out the word “belong,” further entrenching her fingers in the flesh of his arm. “I am new to this world, to this way of being, but I find that very strange. I belong only to the wood, to earth and dew and moonlight. To the wind singing through the trees. If you ever earn my favor, perhaps, someday, I could belong with you. But to you—no, I do not belong to you.”
With that, she releases him, and I exhale a long breath of relief. She is everything I hoped for. Prima begins to traipse around the conservatory, examining the plants and talking to the trees like they are old friends.
I want to go to her, but Laszlo has wedged himself between us, whining and pacing like a rat in a trap.
“You did this!” He turns on me. “You did this on purpose! You’ve made her hate me! How dare you spoil the one beautiful, good thing I would have for myself! The one thing I needed to be real! You’ve ruined everything!” He’s sweating and runs his fingers through his fair hair, which becomes streaked pink from the blood still seeping from the cut on his hand. “My father always said, ‘If you want something done well, do it yourself.’ Well, that old fool never let me do anything and look how it’s turned out!”
Laszlo rails against his father and my treasonous hide, all while yelling for the guards to send in the cleric posthaste. The blue moon remains, though it’s slowly fading. The magic will soon be lost.
But it worked. Prima is alive and real in a way she has never been before.
I take advantage of the Margrave’s preoccupation with my vulgar origins and shuffle over to step on his forgotten knife. The princess’s eyes flash from across the courtyard, lighting up with awareness. I bend down, ostensibly to adjust my shoe and neatly pocket the blade. Now armed with both my splinter and the knife, I know I must find a way to end this.
I will not doom Prima and the saboteur to a life here, tangled up in the strings of the Margrave. If I can somehow convince Prima to help me carry the saboteur and make a run for it, maybe we can find Bran.
Vincenzo the cleric, who I remember from Papa’s funeral, arrives looking like he spent the day taste-testing Wolfspire Chapel’s communal wines. His face registers surprise at the sight of the new Margrave’s intended, leaning against and fondly talking to a gnarled tree growing through the conservatory floor. I inch closer, hoping I won’t scare her into climbing its branches. I’m not sure we’d get her down without a fight.
“Come, my darling,” Laszlo says to the princess, his voice like tightly strung wire. “It is time for you to assume your rightful place at my side,” he coaxes. “Come and stand with me, and I will make you
