“Leben sorgere, leben consurge,” Laszlo commands. Slowly, the puppets begin to lift the princess, forcing her to stand. Her eyes blaze and she struggles, but the strength of many hands and wooden paws on her body is resolute. Under their insistence, she stands and stays put.
“Don’t do this!” I protest. “Just let us go! Please! You could have any bride in all of Elinbruk or Tavia or Brylov that you wish! What you truly want cannot be bought, or made, or forced.”
“Proceed,” he says to the cleric, ignoring me. Though he seems calmer now, he keeps himself a safe distance from Prima and her wooden sentries.
Vincenzo wipes his graying brow and licks his thumb, trying ungracefully to locate the place in his book at which he might be given some words to address the unseemly crowd before him.
At last, he finds them. “Let us celebrate today, the union of these two souls, who wish to be joined together in accordance with the laws of the territory of Tavia, and the greater laws of Elinbruk, which guide us all, in the most sacred of—”
“I. Do. Not. Wish. It.” Prima says through clenched teeth.
Still rattled, Vincenzo looks to Laszlo. “She objects, my lord.”
“Proceed,” the Margrave says nonchalantly. Because of the spellbound puppets, he now has everything he wants: the princess and the upper hand.
The cleric swallows and continues his ramble.
My thoughts are racing as I try to work out how to maneuver Prima away from here. I’ve given up hope of connecting to the saboteur. She’s lost to me.
When it comes time for the princess to say her vows, she refuses, of course, and Laszlo commands the puppets to move her mouth for her. All that comes out is a garbled snarl, but that is apparently good enough for the Margrave and the cleric and the sovereign territory of Tavia. A jeweled ring, beset with emeralds, is jammed roughly onto her finger by a small monkey marionette; his tiny paws make quick work of prying open her resistant fist.
“And now, by the power vested in me,” Vincenzo hurries, only too glad to be at the end of his part in this whole debacle, “I pronounce you man and wife, Margrave and Margravina.” He bites his lip. “You may, should you wish to, er, kiss your bride?”
Laszlo takes one look at Prima’s incensed face and turns even paler. “Later, perhaps,” he says, handing the boy-marionette to the cleric with an air of loftiness. “We’ll save such things for later. When we can be alone.”
Swiveling away from his bride, he saunters up to me, admiring the immoveable strength of the saboteur holding me in place.
“As for you—I’m finished with you now, puppetmaster.” He grins, his face thrust far too close to my own. “We,” he says, spreading his arms wide to include the entire bastion of marionettes and Prima, “have no need of you or your craftsmanship any longer. The moon is nearly drained, and your father’s precious spell, which I have now memorized for the future, has done its work. And while I would find it vastly amusing for one of your own kind to do the honors,” he says, picking his knife off the floor from where it had been tossed free of Prima’s grasp, “as you know, I have a bad habit of saving the best things for myself.”
CHAPTER 30
FEAR NESTS IN MY BELLY LIKE A BIRD DIGGING ITS TALONS. I look to Prima; her eyes are wide and ferocious. Were it not for the many puppets holding her back, I have no doubts Laszlo would be flattened on the ground, crushed beneath her fury. I squirm in the saboteur’s hands, but no matter how I thrash, I cannot free myself. I cannot help myself at all.
Sudden laughter bubbles out of me, sad and surreal. This is how it must feel. For all of them. To not be able to move of their own accord. Your body cannot obey your will when it is restrained by stronger forces, even one as simple as a string.
Laszlo looks at me as if I’ve gone mad, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “Better for this to happen now. I’m doing you a kindness, Pirouette. Better to die here, a puppetmaster in the company of a Margrave, than a wretched corpse in the bowels of the Keep, eh? What else could someone like you wish for, than a better death than your father’s?”
“You forget that this will be my second death, my lord. I have lived two lives, and one of those began long before you were ever born or thought of,” I spit. “If I die under the light of a blue moon, the same light to which I was born, who knows what will happen? It’s never been done. Perhaps I’ll become everlasting, like an evergreen. Or perhaps my body will be buried, biding its time like a seed, and at the first drop of rain I’ll return to haunt your every sleepless night. Either way, if you kill me now, neither of us knows what will happen next.” I sound far more brash than I feel.
With one final, angry roar he thrusts the knife toward my chest. Prima screams and my eyes squeeze shut. My last breath inflates my lungs like a bellows heaved full of air. I wait for it, for the piercing finality of the blade, but it never comes. Instead, the knife strikes something hard. Something more solid than flesh and blood.
I open my eyes. It’s the saboteur. She’s lifted an arm on my behalf to ward off Laszlo’s blow. Enraged, Laszlo rears back and tries again, this time attempting to slash across my throat. He’s blocked again by a nimble swipe of the saboteur’s gloved hand.
“No!” he
