It’s true. Nik returned a different person after our early morning conversation, focusing on Annemette with a renewed intensity.
With tangled hands, we march up Market Street. We are several lengths behind Annemette and Nik, though they are moving at a snail’s pace—Annemette has yet to see much of the town outside of the festival, and she’s poking in every doorway and picture window to see the wares. The sweetshop man already handed her a lollipop, which proceeded to turn her tongue a grisly shade of red. She dared to show us a block back, sticking out her tongue nearly down to her chin. It was quite the picture, a bloody maw beneath the face of an angel. Of course, she thought it was the funniest thing. I thanked Urda that Malvina wasn’t around to see it.
Nik laughed too, endearment written all over his face. He has no idea how far she’s traveled to see these things we walk past every day, to stroll down the street with him.
“I have been to Odense,” Iker starts, sun lines crinkling around his eyes, “and it isn’t Copenhagen, but it isn’t a one-horse village either. By the way she responded to the sucker, you’d suppose she’d never had a candy in all her life.”
“Showing delight isn’t a crime, Iker.” And it isn’t, though I know that answer won’t atone for Annemette’s fierce sense of wonder. Thus, I turn it back on him. “Not everyone is as difficult to amuse as the salt-worn prince of Rigeby Bay.”
His lips turn up and his eyes flash my way. “I laugh deeper than anyone and you know it—whether I’ve lived on only salt herring for three weeks or not.” His fingers squeeze mine and I kiss his shoulder. “What I mean is, there’s just something unnatural about her level of delight.”
My heart starts to pound and my temples grow hot. This line of thought is no good. No good at all. I change tactics.
“Imagine it her way.” I sweep my free hand out in front of him. “She arrived at Havnestad with a chaperone green with illness, knowing not a single other soul. And despite it all, she’s been taken in, given a bed in a beautiful palace, and the dashing prince she’s come to meet clearly believes her to be something special.” I swing up our tangled hands so they’re within view. “That is a whirlwind of delight, is it not? The curl was nearly blown out of my hair just by being a bystander.”
He gives me a courtesy laugh and snags a wayward lock of hair with his free hand, tugging it completely smooth. He lets it go and watches as it bounces back into a spiral. “That would’ve been disastrous. Even the salons of Paris would not have been able to reproduce these.”
My cheeks run scarlet as we reach the end of the cobblestones and the trailhead of Lille Bjerg Pass. Annemette and Nik have already disappeared around a bend. I step in front of Iker onto the single track, and our hands drop.
“I’m just saying,” he says, “what do we know about Annemette? How do we know she is who she says she is?”
I laugh, trying to make it seem as if he’s being ridiculous, and not appropriately concerned. “What, do you think she’s some con artist on the run, stealing crown jewels one Lithasblot at a time?” It’s the most absurd thing I can offer, except for the truth.
“No. No. She’s a sweet girl . . . there’s just something about her I can’t put my finger on. And I don’t like that feeling—especially when it involves family.”
“I know what it is,” I say, hoping to finally put this to rest—for Annemette as much as for myself. “She looks like Anna.”
His step hesitates behind me. “Your friend who drowned?”
“The very one.”
“Sure. She had blond hair.”
“Yes. And blue eyes. And creamy skin. A heart-shaped face—all of it. The resemblance about bowled me over.” And I can’t help it: tears well in my eyes. “I’d thought I’d seen a ghost.”
He stops moving forward. I turn around and he’s watching me, brows pulled together and serious. It’s just as he was on the balcony, suspicion slinking across his skin as fierce as the sunlight.
“Are you sure there’s no way this girl could have known that? Picked the name Annemette on purpose? She could be preying on the both of you—using your memories against you.”
The slope of the trail puts us face-to-face, and he presses his thumbs to the corners of my eyes, wiping away the tears that have welled. I place my hand on his chest. “Who are these scoundrels you meet on the high seas? Does anyone in the world really do such awful things? Do you not have any faith in your fellow man?”
“Evelyn, I am aware that you are not na?ve, but I feel as if I should remind both you and my cousin that people aren’t always who they say they are.”
“You’re not wrong.” I take a step toward him and touch my forehead to his, our lips a breath away, our eyes locked. “And while I find your concern incredibly endearing, I’m through talking about this. Annemette may not be Anna, but she is my friend. I have not been duped.”
I close the distance between us, our lips meeting. He sinks deeply into me, hands wrapping around my back, fingers in my hair. We stand like that for several moments, but it isn’t until he’s so taken he closes his eyes that I know I’ve finally won this round.
“Taking the long way up the mountain?”
I push away from Iker and see Annemette standing a few feet from us, Nik surely around the bend. Her brow is raised, but there’s a smirk on her black cherry–stained mouth.
“Haven’t you heard? I’m never on time.” He grins a bit at his own self-effacing jab, but I swear I still see a skeptical look in his eyes as he stalks past her.
Annemette grabs my hands, and we both burst out laughing. It really does feel like Anna is here.
We make our way up to the games, but by the time we reach them, Nik and Iker have already been plied into competing in the mountain run portion of the games. Royal duty and gamesmanship mean Annemette and I have been left behind to hold court on a fallen log. Normally, I’d run too—I’m swifter than I look—but Annemette’s feet are already bothering her, the burning she felt yesterday more painful than before. Instead, we’ll watch the rock climbers from afar while waiting for the boys to rumble back down the mountain, sweaty, dusty, and full of new tales.
“How do you do it?” she asks quietly.
“What do you mean?” I reply.
“Get Iker to kiss you like that?” she says with more than a hint of exasperation lining her voice. “It’s silly, but I was watching you—”
“For tips?” I want to laugh—the idea of someone watching me for my alluring abilities is ridiculous, and I still have my doubts about whether there’s actually any love behind Iker’s kisses, but Annemette seems so desperate. She is desperate.
Annemette’s cheeks flush, though the pink is tempered by the mountain light. “I’ve done everything I can to show him how I feel, and still no kiss! But I do think he likes me.”
“He does. I know he does!” I push this morning out of my mind entirely. Nik has heeded my words. I know it. It’s going to be all right.
She is quiet for a second, her features mellowing with thought. “My father, the sea king, says that when everything is as you hoped, you are blind to the imperfections.”
Somehow, I’m stunned silent that the sea king in our childhood tales is as real as the mermaid before me. Finally, I nod. “Your father is wise.”
“But I’m not blind. His wise words ring in my ears when I should be enjoying every moment. Instead, I look past the perfect couple we are on the outside and see all the reasons why Nik isn’t in love with me.”
“I know what you mean,” I say.
“No, Iker loves you.”
I shake my head. “I would like Iker to love me. But Iker has a reputation for kissing any girl whose knees go weak at the sight of him—and I’m not the only one in the ?resund Kingdoms with trouble standing. Iker and I are not forever, and I’m trying to be all right with that.”
She looks at her feet. “So, he has other girls he treats like you?”
“Yes. Or he did. I don’t know.” I can feel my face flushing. “The point is, Nik does not! There is only one fish in his sea and it is you . . .”