“If you two are so bored you can think of nothing to do but be nasty,” Lustacia said, standing, “I can offer an option.” Not missing a beat, she dumped the bowl of pearls atop their perfectly coiffed hair.
“How dare you!” Avaricette screeched, shaking her head so the beads fell from her curls and tapped the floor like petrified raindrops.
“I’ll tell Mother!” shouted Wrathalyne, spitting out three pearls that had dropped into her mouth—opened wide on a gasp during the dumping.
“Oh, will you?” Lustacia asked, leaning across the table. “Or will I tell Mother how you offended our future queen? We’re all that’s left of the royal family. We’re to be kind and support one another now.” She then pointed to the pearls careening across the room, some vanishing beneath the chaise lounge and others behind the harp and a collection of instruments propped against the walls. “Pick up the mess.”
Avaricette and Wrathalyne snarled as they knelt, cushioned by the multiple ruffles on their silky dresses, and gathered the beads, returning them to the bowl with tiny clacks. Lustacia scooted her chair closer to Lyra’s, putting her sisters out of earshot on the other side of the solar, where they were united in their efforts to gather pearls from beneath the chaise lounge.
Lyra smiled a thank-you.
“You’re welcome,” her cousin answered, as if she’d been deciphering Lyra’s expressions all her life. “There’s actually been some lovely news. I heard it from Mother myself.”
Lyra cocked her head, half-curious, half-wary. She often rode this pendulum, swinging between trusting people and her own cautious nature.
“The midnight shadows and stardust have arrived from Nerezeth.” Lustacia picked up her organza swatch and resumed her vine embroidery. She was careful to use a thimble today, having bruised her thumb the week prior while pushing a needle through the fabric. “The enchanted seamstresses will begin construction of the nightsky fabric in a few days. There’s enough to make an entire suit, so you’ll soon accompany us outside the castle!” She paused and her lashes lowered. “And . . . the prince sent a note for you.” She dipped her fingers into the lacy cuff at her wrist and dragged out a black vellum cylinder. “Mother intended to save it for when you’re older, but I slipped it away while she wasn’t looking. I’ll need it back, so she won’t know.”
Lyra nodded and took the soft, pliable cylinder; it appeared they used calfskin vellum like the scrolls from which Prime Minister Albous taught her the ancient sign language. Though theirs was dyed black. As she unrolled it to read, she smelled a leathery scent and something cool and crisp, like the taste of winter she used to experience each time she held her mother’s panacea rose. Nostalgia tickled her nose. She glanced up to ensure her other two cousins were still preoccupied, then spread it open on her lap with the table’s edge covering it for protection.
The gold ink stood bright against the dark vellum and called to her. She traced the slanting, elegant script—her fingertip held just above it. The ink moved. It seemed drawn to her, drifting upward across her skin in tiny glittery particles like dust motes swirling in dim light, as if rays of tender sunshine lived in each line. Lyra swallowed a surprised gasp and looked up at Lustacia, but her cousin was watching her sisters with a keen eye, motioning them farther across the room for some beads they’d missed when they moved too close.
The sparkles stung Lyra’s fingers with heat—not uncomfortable but intrusive—as if wanting to fill her up. Disoriented by the sensation, she withdrew her hand and the ink fell back into place on the vellum in a dusting of gold, then blended again into words.
Shaking her head, Lyra caught a breath. She kept her hands at her side this time and concentrated only on the message.
Dear Princess Lyra,
Minutes ago, I watched our night sky flash with that fleeting glimpse of dawn. For one instant, I was in your world beside you. The colors swirled in a riot of violet, lilac, and silver, much like your hair and tears. I’ve yet to see your face, but I know your song. It lights my imaginings with the same wonder each flash of daybreak brings. I’ve heard what your kingdom thinks of mine, but do not let them make you fear our future. I will keep you safe. And know this: there is beauty here, too. True, we have no trilling mockingbirds, blue jays, swallows, or thrushes. What would they celebrate, without the sun for inspiration? Yet we have symphonies of our own. Crickets, nightingales, owls, and wolves who laud the glory of our snow-swept moon. Even the tinder-bats rejoice with a melody unique to the night. Upon your seventeenth year, I will bring you to Nerezeth to share all of this. Until then, I will keep you ensconced in shadows and stardust chosen by my own hand, so you might know the splendor and comfort of your daylight world within the safety of darkness, and so you might trust the scope of my devotion. Think of me each time you see the dusting of dusk, as I will think of you at each blink of dawn.
Yours in both night and day,
Prince Vesper
Lyra’s pulse sped to a dizzying staccato, her skin flushing warm, but this time it had nothing to do with intrusive sparkles of ink. She’d never read such pretty words given so openly from the heart—at least not directed to her. Her hands covered her cheeks to hide the veins that must be glaring through her sheer skin. She wanted to answer the letter with one of her own, but Griselda would never allow it.
Lustacia retrieved the vellum and rolled it closed without making a sound. As she did, Lyra noticed the ink didn’t respond to her cousin as it had with her. She raked a palm across the blank side to test it once more. The script lit up, showing through backward from the front. For an instant, the tips of Lyra’s fingers glowed gold in response, as if the light she’d absorbed earlier remembered its source.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I looked over Mother’s shoulder as she read the missive earlier.” Lustacia held her attention firmly on Lyra’s face as she tucked the cylinder away in her cuff. “Isn’t it wonderful? He’s overseeing all your supplies!”
Lyra opened her palm, too preoccupied with her skin’s odd reaction to the ink to care that her aunt and cousin had read her note before her. The glowing at her fingertips had vanished and Lustacia seemed unaware it was ever there. Could Lyra have imagined it? Perhaps she had been swept away to a world of make-believe and wishes upon reading the prince’s poetic sentiments.
“I see you’re as enchanted as I am,” Lustacia said under her breath, a dreamy smile softening her features. “The prince’s own hands gathered and wrapped the pieces that will form your shield from the sun. Only fifteen, and already he’s making romantic gestures. Can you imagine what he’ll be like as a grown man . . . as a husband? As your king?”
Romantic. Lyra had no real concept of such a thing. But kindness? That she knew. She had yearned for so long to step outside one day . . . to breathe the summer air and look up at the swans as they blended into the clouds with their matching feathers; to watch frogs and fish flop in and out of the Crystal Lake and catch a spray of cool water upon her face through her hood; to gather the silvery pebbles that littered the banks and nestle them within satin-lined boxes, for those were worth more than all the jewels and gems within the kingdom’s treasury. Now, at last, this could be a reality—at the prince’s very hands.
Hope of such a day was the reason her father had insisted on the supply of materials for nightsky fabric in the peace treaty. Even with him gone he was taking care of her—helping her belong—and it appeared the prince shared her father’s compassion.
The resulting happy swell in her chest reminded her of Eldoria’s end of the bargain, and how Nerezeth needed the panacea roses for medicines. She’d given up her mother’s keepsake to be planted atop their iron stairway. She needed to know it had been worth the sacrifice.
Lyra gathered her organza scrap into spiraling folds to mimic petals and held it out to her cousin, a question in her raised brow.
Lustacia knotted off her thread and snipped it free of her embroidery. She studied Lyra’s upheld hand, then her eyes widened. “Oh, yes, the roses. They are doing well. There are enough buds that I could bring you back a clipping of your own to fill your mother’s pot again. Should I?”
Lyra nodded enthusiastically, then frowned, worried for her cousin’s welfare. She took her needle and demonstrated being pricked in the finger.
“Oh, don’t worry for the thorns. I’ll wear my heaviest gloves.”