“Are you all right?” I said.
There was no answer, which confirmed my fear: he must have been knocked out cold. The only time the court minstrel was ever silent was when he was unconscious.
A moment later, though, he groaned and sat up. He peered at his lute, running his hand over the neck and strings to make sure they were intact. Only then did he look at me. “Princess Briony! Your parents are terribly worried about you and your sister.”
“I’ll go find them,” I said quickly. The last thing I needed was for him to run back to my parents and report on my whereabouts.
“Good, good.” He got to his feet. He was wearing black hose, a long black cape, and a black bandanna around his forehead with a black feather sticking out of it. (Why a feather? Who knew? It wasn’t even the kind of feather you would use for a quill.) “Where is your beautiful sister?”
“Um,” I said. Rosalin hated the minstrel, who never tired of writing songs about how doomed and tragic she was. “She’s…busy.”
Wrong answer. His eyes lit up. “With her brave and handsome prince?”
“Uh…”
“I must find them.” The minstrel swept his cape behind him. “I have already started writing my song about her awakening, and I need to talk to everyone of importance so I can get the details right.” He strummed his lute. “Finally, the time has come for me to perfect my masterpiece. Do you want to hear the first stanza?”
“Not real—”
“The sleeping beauty rests abed,” he sang, his voice soaring and dipping. “Though all the birds and beasts have fled. Her ladies slumber at her side, all punished for a fairy’s pride!”
The minstrel did have a beautiful voice. My mother often encouraged him to use it to sing songs that other people had written.
“I’m going to call it ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ” he said, lowering his lute. “What do you think?”
I thought it was a ridiculous title. I would have said so if yet another lady-in-waiting hadn’t rushed by us at that moment, her face streaked with tears. She pulled open the door to Rosalin’s room, and we all heard my sister say, “Yes, I know they’re worried, but I can’t leave this room without changing! I’ve been wearing the same gown for a hundred years!”
The minstrel rushed past me toward the room. The lady-in-waiting glanced at him, stepped swiftly inside, and shut the door.
“Princess!” the minstrel cried. He pounded on the door. “It is I! I must have the chance to gaze once more upon your beauty, now that we are all saved! I must hear how it happened and speak to your prince! Let me in!”
Part of me wanted to stay and see how that worked out for him.
But of course, what the minstrel didn’t know—yet—was that we weren’t saved. If anything, we were in worse danger than ever. At least with Rosalin’s enchanted slumber, the fairy had told us how the spell would end. Now that the spell had ended, we knew nothing about what would happen next.
The minstrel cleared his throat and began to sing. “He woke the princess fair. Then she felt sunlight on her hair. But does the sunlight shine on your bed? Let me in, Princess! Let me in so I can check my facts!”
I turned my back on my sister’s room and headed down the hall while behind me, the minstrel’s voice faded into the distance.
Going unnoticed is one of my most valuable talents, and I put it to good use as I made my way through the castle, searching for my parents.
They had apparently already checked my room. So not only were they worried about me, they probably thought it was my fault that they were worried.
My parents loved me, but I knew they also found me difficult. (I knew because they often said, Briony, why do you have to be so difficult?) When I was born, they had been hoping they would get another beautiful, graceful daughter, only this time without the nasty curse hanging over her head.
Instead, they got me.
My parents tried. They didn’t have much time to spend with me—they had a kingdom to run and a spinning wheel ban to enforce—but despite our financial constraints, they spared no expense when it came to my governesses or my tutors. (Or my hairdressers.) They threw huge birthday parties for me and bought me magnificent presents. But they never seemed to know what to say to me. Once they determined that I was in good health and hadn’t gotten into any serious trouble, they usually fell back on reminiscing about puppet shows I had loved when I was five years old.
But they were good monarchs, even if they weren’t amazing parents. Once I found them and they knew I was all right, I would tell them about the Thornwood, and they would…
I couldn’t finish the thought. I didn’t really believe they would know what to do. When it came to fairy curses, there usually wasn’t much humans could do. And it wasn’t like my parents had been able to save us the first time around.
Still. They commanded the king’s guard: over a dozen highly trained men with a whole armory of swords. Surely if all those men worked together, they could cut down the Thornwood.
On the other hand, if ordinary men with ordinary swords could cut through the Thornwood, wouldn’t the villagers have done it by now?
My parents will know what to do. I clung to the thought. Even if I didn’t fully believe it, I believed it enough to keep myself from panicking.
I passed three people on my way toward the stairs: a squire, the housekeeper, and a chambermaid. Even so, as I crept through the corridors of the second floor, the castle seemed a lot emptier than I remembered.
Before the curse, I couldn’t walk down a hallway without passing several visiting nobles, two
