FOR A LONG WHILE, Ariana couldn’t move her body much, though she had little trouble moving her jaw. She talked nonstop.
“Why is there a pig trying to climb on top of me?” she’d asked after Kyra let Rosie back into the room. The little pig kept butting Ariana with her head until Kyra reached down and popped the small scrap of green silk out of her basket. “By the Goddess, Kitty, I’m completely naked!” she’d complained, until Kyra found her a simple day dress in the old Choizie Laurent closet. And “I am so glad to see you,” she said as she, at last, started stretching out the kinks in her long limbs.
Kyra grabbed up her friend in a huge hug, and Ariana hugged her back—so hard that Kyra’s tears threatened to spill all over again.
There was no doubt that this was the real Ariana. Kyra didn’t need her Sight to tell her that. “That pig is named Rosie, by the way, and she helped me find you. You should be nice to her.”
The little pig sank down onto her haunches next to Ariana, closed her eyes, and gave out a great big gusty sigh, as though she needed a nap after her exertions.
“Did you really try to kill me? And missed? You?” Ariana asked, drawing the day dress down over her torso.
At Kyra’s confused look, she added, “I was frozen, but I wasn’t deaf. The only thing I could do was eavesdrop. Being a clotheshorse is so boring.”
“Um, yeah. Tried to kill you. And missed,” Kyra said, settling on the floor and petting Rosie. “But obviously it wasn’t really you—you were here.” The giddiness Kyra was feeling swelled into an all-encompassing joy as the thought truly struck home—she wasn’t going to have to kill her best friend.
“And you knew that it wasn’t really me?” Ariana gently pulled on her elbow with her other hand, stretching her shoulder blade and the muscles in her back.
“Well, no, not exactly.”
Ariana eyed her over her elbow.
“Actually…I thought you were possessed.”
Ariana looked at her thoughtfully. “There’s no cure for possession.”
“None.” Kyra squeezed her hands together. “You have no idea how glad I am that I was wrong!”
“Still, Kyra—killing me? That’s a little harsh.”
Kyra was going to have to tell Ari about her vision. She would never forget the look on her friend’s face the day they’d met, when Ari had told Kyra that witches weren’t even human. Ari didn’t know about Kyra’s witch spark, and she wished things could stay that way. The last thing Kyra needed was to lose her best friend when she’d only just gotten her back.
“Don’t give me that look. Did I, or did I not, just save your life?”
“You did.” Ariana reached out and squeezed Kyra’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” Kyra felt the weight of the last three months lift off of her as she leaned against her friend. “So, what happened, Ariana?”
Ariana shrugged in response and put on the long soft pantaloons she wore under her dresses to give her more mobility. “I came down here with my ripped-up wedding gown. I was horrified about what I’d done and thought maybe Gabrielle could fix it and hide the evidence. When I came into the shop, the girl at the counter directed me to the back room. The moment I walked in, I was frozen.”
“A witch’s sticky trap,” Kyra said.
“If you say so.” Ariana shrugged. “All I heard was a man’s voice—an old man. ‘Oh, foo!’ he said. I felt a drop of potion on my hand, and then my body went all—well, you saw what I looked like.” She shuddered. “Whoever it was dragged me into this storeroom, cut my clothes off me, and stacked me with the rest of the dummies.”
“And sent a fake princess back to the palace to take your place.”
“Do we have to get rid of the fake princess? If she wants my life, she can have it. She can marry the prince, run the kingdom, and end up shut inside that palace.”
“The fake princess is evil, Ariana. She’s going to destroy the kingdom.” Kyra could feel her heart pounding, and the room began spinning around her. She’d thought for a moment that she’d be able to somehow avoid this.
But she needed to convince Ariana completely.
The kingdom needed her.
“And I know she’s evil,” Kyra said, her olive eyes meeting Ariana’s blue ones, “because I’m a witch.”
“You’re my best friend—I’d know if you were a witch.”
“I had a vision of the fake princess destroying the kingdom.” Kyra shut her eyes. “That’s my power as a witch—I’m a Seer.”
“A Seer?”
Kyra opened her mouth to explain, when the door burst open.
Fred flew into the room, Langley beside him. He caught sight of Kyra and Ariana sitting together on the floor and shouted, “Stop! I can’t let you do this, Kyra!”
Langley came over to Kyra and put his nose in her palm.
“Fred?” Kyra rubbed the pup’s snout. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
Fred stood blinking, as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing. His clothes were disheveled from his nap on the floor, and he had a spot of springberry pie on his chin. “I dozed off for a minute or two, and by the time I was awake, you were gone.”
Darn. He hadn’t eaten enough pie. “And how in the world did you find me here?”
“Oh. I, um, nicked your tracking potion earlier and tagged you while you were cutting the strudel. I had a feeling I might not be seeing you again unless I took matters into my own hands. Speaking of which—”
Fred walked over and touched her gently on the shoulder. “That stuff burns.”
“You’ve got pie on your chin.”
He swiped at his jaw with the back of his hand.
Kyra realized that Ariana was glaring at her.
“What are you doing with him?” the princess demanded.
“Fred? I’m not doing anything with him. How do you know Fred?” As Kyra was saying this, something struck her: he’d called her Kyra. Not only did Ariana know who Fred was, Fred knew who Kyra was too.
“Hmmm…let’s see.” Ariana tapped her chin like she was thinking. “Well, there was that whole marriage thing that was supposed to happen.”
“What?”
Stiffly, Ariana stood and walked through to the Choizie Laurent closet. Reaching deep inside, she pulled something from the highest shelf and brought it over: a small portrait. Of Fred. With the words HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, PRINCE FREDERICK LANTANA III, OF ARCADIA.
Kyra felt like she’d been thrown down from a tall height.
Fred—who, less than an hour ago had been kissing her—was engaged to her best friend.
He’d mentioned his dad was a perfumer. Of course the king of Arcadia would be a perfumer. Arcadia was famous for its perfumeries.
Fred eyed her uneasily. “Can we discuss the whole assassination thing? Are you planning to murder the princess any time soon?”
Kyra and Ariana simultaneously rolled their eyes.
“Not at the moment,” Kyra said. “Though, there’s another royal in the room I’d like to see dead.”
“Oh, that’s good. Really good! We’re clearly starting off on the right path here.” He sat down on a giant bolt of purple fabric. Langley had found Rosie and curled himself around her.
“Ugh,” Ariana said. “He’s even worse in person.” She smiled innocently at him and shrugged. “Sorry ’bout that, I can’t help it—Kyra gave me a truth serum!”
“Right.” He smiled nervously. “I’m sorry that I lied to you, Kyra. I can’t say that I wasn’t out looking for the princess’s assassin. I was.”
“So it wasn’t just coincidence that I ran into you.”
“Actually, it was. I wasn’t exactly aggressive in my search for the assassin.” He shifted his weight. “More like, if I happened to run into her and captured her, that would be okay. I never expected to find the assassin crossing a stream in her underwear with a pig on top of her head.”
A puff of laughter escaped Ariana.
“I never dreamed the assassin was you.”
Kyra and Ariana exchanged a look.
“God’s honest. The confusion potion at the witch’s should have been a clue, but I was so sure I knew who you were: Kitty, the dairymaid with the pig.”
Ariana interrupted. “Wait, you said you were a dairymaid?” She started cackling. “Oh, Kitty, you are the best. Why in the world would anyone believe you were a dairymaid?”
Fred pushed his hands through his rumpled hair. “I only knew for sure it was you when I saw that poison in your bag. That’s the truth. Do you want to give me some of this truth serum I keep hearing so much about?”
Kyra shook her head.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I couldn’t let you go. I had to figure something out.”
“Well, you did a great job,” Kyra said. “You only lost me completely for the better half of a week.”
“You are a slippery kitty cat,” Ariana said. “I’ll give him that. A half week’s not too bad, really.”
“So,” Fred said, “you aren’t trying to kill the princess anymore?”
“Oh, I’m still trying to kill the princess, just not this one.”
Kyra let Ariana explain everything to Fred, figuring she should have plenty of energy for storytelling—she hadn’t been on the hunt for the past three months. Right now, several months of vacation on the floor of a tailor’s shop sounded kind of nice to Kyra.
Her heart hurt.
She’d found Ariana, but she’d lost so much—her career, her friendship with Ned and Hal, and now Fred, who was smiling dopily at the princess as she talked. His fiancée.
Kyra’s heart was breaking.
Ariana nudged her. “What do you think, Kitty? Is the impostor princess a shape-shifter?”
Kyra stamped down the feelings that were threatening to engulf her. “She doesn’t have any of the traits of the shape-shifters in the books at the palace library. Maybe—”
The front door of the shop banged open, and in strode an old man.
“Oh, foo!” the old man shouted when he saw the unfrozen Ariana. “What are you—”
Recognition lit Ariana’s face. “You!”
Recognition lit the old man’s face too, as he saw Kyra. “You!”
And Kyra sighed and said, “You.”
Because the old man was Ellie the hermit.