Azalea sprung.
“Over the bridge!” she yelled. The girls untangled themselves from the bushes, tripping over one another as they fled. Azalea leaped up the pavilion stairs and shoved her way through the dancers, who screamed again. Ivy stood in the middle of the floor, clutching her nightgown hem to her chest, her chin quivering.
Azalea skidded to Ivy and grabbed her around the middle, scattering tarts everywhere. Ivy let out a cry. Azalea ran. Her soot-streaked nightgown flapped against her legs and her hair streamed out behind her as she dashed to the entrance. The dancers backed away—
—and disappeared.
“My lady! Wait!”
Azalea rushed down the stairs and stumbled to the bridge.
“Please, my lady!”
She careened into the girls at the arch of the bridge, and they scrambled to find their footing.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll make you stop.”
Azalea dared a glance back at the gentleman. Kneeling on the stairs, he dipped a gloved hand into the water.
A rushing, gushing pouring rumbled through the mist.
The girls shrieked as water streamed and frothed over the lower ends of the bridge. They fled back to the middle arc, water surging past the willow branches and lapping at their heels. In just seconds, the lake rose to the top of the pavilion stair, enveloping the silver rosebushes and locking the girls on the bridge’s arched center.
The water settled. The willow branches floated. The girls huddled to Azalea.
“I said please.” The gentleman stood. He was breathless, pale, as though he had exerted himself to sickness. He leaned against the doorway lattice, panting. “Aren’t you supposed to do what I say, when I say please?” He removed his wet glove, finger by finger, then wrung it out. Drops plinked into the lake.
“This is my only pair,” he said. “I do hope you’re happy.”
Azalea opened her mouth to stammer out an apology, or a cry, or anything, but the words caught in her throat. The younger girls clung to her nightgown skirt. The gentleman, still breathless, eased into a smile, and then into the most graceful bow Azalea had ever seen. His arm swooped behind him.
He laughed as he straightened.
“My ladies,” he said. “Do forgive me. Did I frighten you? Oh, dear, I must have. Look at you, all huddled together like that.”
The girls kept their mouths clamped shut.
“You’re pale as pearls,” said the gentleman. His voice was smooth as chocolate. “You must forgive me. Only it is the first time I have seen real people since the High King D’Eathe.”
CHAPTER 8
The reflections of the rippling water danced over them, casting highlights onto the lavender mist.
“D’Eathe,” Clover stammered.
“You’re old!” said Hollyhock.
“No one can live for over two hundred years,” said Eve, tugging on the ends of her dark hair. “It’s impossible.”
The gentleman laughed, though it had an edge to it.
“I am old,” he said. “The inside of me is cracked and faded with dust. But I am not dead. And—I am not living, either. I am…undead.”
The girls cast one another confused glances. Azalea remembered the stories she’d heard about the High King. He could capture the deads’ souls….
“It is difficult to explain,” said the gentleman. “But I owe you this much. Please.”
In a sleek, silky movement, the gentleman produced dainty teacups on saucers by cupping his hands together and unfolding them. Each teacup filled to the brim with tea; he slipped them into the water and blew, sending them drifting and bobbing to the girls like candles on tiny boats.
The girls scooped up the saucers from the water, all exclamations, and Ivy had slurped the last drop from her teacup before Azalea could stop her, smacking her lips with delight. Sighing, Azalea cautiously took a sip of tea. The flavor of butter and berries melted over her tongue, leaving nothing to swallow. Magic tea.
“I am a highborn gentleman,” he said as they pressed the teacups between their hands. “A lord. When the High King D’Eathe reigned, I was a member of his court.”
The girls inhaled a tight, hard breath, all at the same time. The gentleman smiled, tight-lipped.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I was his friend, even. Ah, do take heart. I am not so villainous. I was only a boy.”
And then he spun a story with his smooth chocolate voice, so enthralling the girls forgot the teacups clasped in their hands and hung on every word.
Azalea imagined their small country when the gentleman had been young, with the city’s streets dirt and not paved, with the wood wild and the palace new.