Una and Felix were both gasping with laughter by the end, not so much for the story itself as for the way the jester told it, with exaggerated expressions of fear, outrage, courage, and beastliness, leaping about the room even as he strummed his instrument. King Fidel chuckled heartily, and when she glanced his way, Una saw Prince Aethelbald grinning.
“Excellent.” King Fidel applauded with his children as the jester played the final sour chords. “Sir Jester, we are glad indeed to have you among us. If you are half as skilled at mopping floors as you are at spinning stories, we may just find ourselves at an agreement.”
An eyebrow twitched on the jester’s face, but he swept the hat from his head and bowed. It was an elegant bow, Una thought. Courtly, even.
12
In her dreams that night Una walked a path she did not recognize through a desecrated garden.
Once these grounds must have been beautiful. The sweep of the hill, the remains of elegant shrubberies and groves, bespoke care and artistry. But all was grim and wasted about her, all the land one great grimace of pain. No growth grew higher than Una’s knees before it was chopped and trampled, as though some brute force could not bear to catch a glimpse of thriving green and had blasted all to grays and blacks. Even the sun, where it shone through an iron sky, appeared as a red scar overhead.
She walked the path she did not know, approaching a great palace she did not recognize. It was not Oriana but some other structure of foreign build. What once may have been elegant minarets were now crumbled towers, giving the appearance of having been chewed. Stones that may have been rich with color were filmed over with ash.
As she looked at it, Una felt hatred rise in her soul. What a wicked place this must have been, what an evil house to deserve such ruin. Never had she loathed a place so much.
Yet her steps took her forward.
He waited in the doorway, the man with the dead-white face.
“Princess,” he said as she drew near, “you have come to me.”
She opened her mouth to answer. But instead of words, a scream filled her throat and poured out like rushing water. The sound filled her inside and out, a blinding, numbing, dreadful noise.
“Where are you?” His voice roared, dark beneath the white shriek of her scream. “Where are you? I’ve waited long enough!”
Una woke in a sweat. The ring on her hand pinched, and her fingers burned. Sitting up, she tore the coverlet away; it seemed to cling and suffocate her like a snake squeezing her in its coils. Shuddering breaths gasped out of her, and she rubbed her face with her burning hands.
“Preeowl?” Monster nosed his way out from under the quilt and tried to insinuate himself into her lap. But Una pushed him away. Drawing a long breath and trying to calm her heart, she slipped out of bed and staggered to the table with the pitcher of water.
It was empty. The maid must have forgotten to refill it.
“Dragon’s teeth!” She pulled open the curtains. The window was already ajar, but the summer night offered no cooling relief. She felt tears sting her eyes and rested her head for a moment against the window frame.
Never before had she remembered her dreams on waking. But tonight the vision stayed in her mind as vividly as if she still walked in that blighted garden. As vividly as if she gazed even now into the eyes of the white-faced man.
Memories of other dreams trickled in on the edge of consciousness as she stood there looking out on the garden. She did not understand them, but she wondered now how she could have forgotten. Her fingers throbbed, and she longed for water.
The moon burst through a cloud and shone down upon her face. Suddenly, even more than water, Una yearned to walk in that light, to breathe it in and feel it cool her inside.
“Meea?” Monster put up a paw and touched her knee.
“Go away,” she said, glaring down at him. She hastened across the room to her wardrobe and withdrew a bedgown from its depths. She put it on and slipped from the room.
A few servants stood at various posts in the long halls of Oriana, but most of them dozed so late in the night. Una moved past without disturbing them and made it all the way out to the gardens without encountering a single waking soul. No lanterns were lit on the garden paths, not at this hour. But the moon was bright, and her eyes adjusted to its light enough to walk the familiar paths. The gravel path hurt her bare feet, but she scarcely noticed for the pain in her hands.
Monster trailed behind her, a silent shadow.
She did not walk far. She did not need to. Breathing in great gulps of moonlight, Una felt the heat slowly leave her. The tightness of her ring lessened. But when she looked at her hands, she was surprised to see scarlet burn lines across her fingers. Even in the dimness of the moon’s glow, the raw red was discernible. She clutched her hands into fists.
Farther down the tiered garden, a wood thrush sang. Its silver voice floated on the warm air and ran like water around her. She turned toward the sound and gasped.
Prince Aethelbald walked toward her, up the garden path. The moon cast his shadow before him.