The King pushed her into the hall.
Azalea twisted around to see the heavy wood-paneled library door slide shut. A faint click-click signaled the door locking.
Azalea opened her mouth, but no sound came out. It caught in her throat.
The girls peered down from the mezzanine above, wordless.
“It’s just a guess,” said Bramble after a moment, “but I don’t think he’s in the mood to see us.”
Not until Azalea had tucked in the weepy, sniffling girls in their tiny third-floor room, combing their hair and telling them stories, and made sure that Lily was settled in the nursery with the nursemaid, did she slip away to Mother’s room. Eathesbury tradition required the steward of the family to sit up the first night to watch over the deceased, but Azalea could hear Mr. Pudding’s hacking sobs from across the palace, and she joined him in Mother’s room, pouring cups of tea to soothe him.
Azalea cried, seeing the holly, pine, and dried flowers strewn about the room. She bit her lip so hard it numbed, to keep herself from glancing at the bed, but in the end she had to. And it surprised her. Mother lay on the bed, dressed in white, with flowers in her auburn hair.
She looked peaceful. For the past months, when Azalea had seen her, she had lines on her face and pain in her eyes. Now, she rested. The old magic tea set, still sitting on the end table, didn’t have the spark of feistiness to it anymore. It slumped on its tray.
Azalea sat on Mother’s stiff flowered sofa, picked up the silver teacup, and turned it over in her hands. The silver cooled her fingertips. Engraved on the bottom of the cup was a tiny half-moon with three marks through it. DE. The D’Eathe mark.
Azalea considered the picture of the High King D’Eathe, which she had once found while cleaning the north attic. An ancient, pockmarked fellow with no hair and dark eyes, scowling from the canvas. Even just the memory of his portrait made Azalea shudder. He captured and tortured people foolish enough to wander onto the thorn-shrouded palace grounds. Stories of the High King tearing a person apart, starting with the thumbs, then to the ears and toes, tugging them to pieces like a cricket, to see how long they would stay alive, haunted Azalea in her worst nightmares.
And then, the worst story of all: After they had died, he kept their souls. Their bodies would be found, strewn across the city, but at night, when the palace windows glowed through the thorn vines, the very same person would be seen, silhouetted against the candlelight, walking the halls.
Thinking of it terrified Azalea. Even so, for the first time in her life, she was glad of it. Because if the High King did capture souls, it meant that a person had one. It meant that there was something to the warm, flickery bit inside of you. It meant that Mother wasn’t hurting anymore. Azalea clung to that hope, desperately. If that were true, Azalea would believe in anything.
CHAPTER 4
Azalea dreamed that night of drowning in torrents of hair, and woke up with hair on her face. She vaguely remembered allowing Jessamine and Kale and Ivy onto her bed when they cried the night before, but she couldn’t remember Hollyhock, Flora, Goldenrod, Eve, Delphinium, and even Clover and Bramble coming for comfort. Yet they were all piled together, and those who hadn’t fit on the bed slept on the rug next to it, or propped on the mattress.
The girls slowly awoke for the day, washing their faces, brushing their hair, more out of habit than anything. They shared a crowded third-floor room on the north side of the palace, square, with six beds and window seats about the sides, and a massive fireplace at the end. It smelled of powder, flowers, and old wood. A lot of maneuvering and tripping took place when they readied. Today, however, when they opened their trunks to dress, they were surprised. The trunks were empty.
“Perhaps they’re being washed,” said Flora as Azalea swept down the hall in her nightgown, the girls padding after. “It could be laundry day.”
“Oh, yes, the maids are washing them,” said Goldenrod, Flora’s twin. The nine-year-old twins reminded Azalea of a pair of dainty sparrows, both timid and eager at the same time.
“They don’t wash all our dresses at once,” said Azalea. “Something’s afoot. Mrs. Graybe!”
Azalea rounded the corner to the mezzanine and made to go downstairs, when she spotted Fairweller in the entrance hall below.
“Oh!” said Azalea. Fairweller’s eyes caught her, and he turned his head away to the door. Azalea ducked back into the safety of the hall, blushing furiously.
“Minister,” she called out. “Have you seen Mrs. Graybe?”
“Forget Mrs. Graybe!” said Delphinium, running to the banister railing. Being only twelve, she did not care if Fairweller saw her in her nightgown or not. “Where are our dresses? We haven’t a stitch to wear!”