But still . . . Foxbrush.
“Anyone else,” Lionheart told the uncaring landscape as he trotted under a heavy sky. The moon did not shine that night; perhaps she did not care to look upon the disinherited prince fleeing his kingdom yet again. But Lionheart kept to the main road leading to Swan Bridge, and it was clear enough even in darkness. “Anyone else,” he growled. “Even the Baron of Middlecrescent! At least he has a head on his shoulders and some idea how to run a kingdom.”
No one could say the same for Lionheart’s cousin. The lad could scarcely run his own estate, preferring to leave it in the hands of his steward while he spent all his time at court, making cow eyes at Daylily. Or plastering his hair down with oil, or conducting research in the expansive court library on obscure and insanely boring topics. Like figs.
He believes he can save the kingdom.
The thought was not a welcome one, and Lionheart shrugged it away. After all, he had thought as much himself, and where had that led? A five-year exile, wandering across the unfriendly Continent, betrayal of the girl he loved, worse betrayal of his only friend. Not a record of which he could boast.
The idea that Foxbrush couldn’t possibly do any worse was no comfort.
So it was in this stormy frame of mind that Lionheart made his way across the Eldest’s parklands. His face was set and his feet strode with a determination that would brook no argument. He had failed in everything else to which he’d turned his hand. He’d not faced the Dragon. He’d not saved the kingdom. He’d not delivered Rose Red from the bondage to which he’d so heartlessly sent her.
“All that’s changed now,” he told himself as he went. “That man died, that Lionheart, that failure. I am made new, and I will rise to new challenges!”
He would enter the Wilderlands once more, and he would rescue Lady Daylily, thereby proving to the worlds that he—
“You understand that you can never absolve your own sin?”
The memory of the Prince of Farthestshore’s words came back to him in the quiet of that hot, still night. Lionheart faltered, stumbling over nothing. His heart raced as though he’d heard the heavy breathing of a predator at his ear, but there was no danger. There was only memory. And darkness.
“All that is past is past.”
Though he knew it was only memory, Lionheart spoke as though making a defense. “I can’t just leave her. I wounded her. I used her and left her, and what has she become now? I can’t leave her to herself. I must rescue Daylily.”
And again he heard in the quiet place deep behind the arguments of his mind: “From this moment forth, you will serve me with the courage of roaring lions.”
“I will!” Lionheart cried. Any who might have seen him out there alone on that gloomy road would have thought him mad, for he brandished his fists and shouted desperately, though there was no one to be seen. “I will serve you, my Lord! And I will rescue Daylily!”
“Walk with me,” the Prince had told him far away, in a place beyond Time, on the shores of a dark and flowing river. For a moment, standing there on the road with only the chorus of chittering night bugs filling the heavy air, Lionheart thought he heard that rush and roar of water again, that sound of Forever, and his face was touched, however briefly, by a cool freshness that breathed of Eternity.
Then it was gone. He stood alone. No voice spoke to him either in memory or in fact.
And yet he felt an overwhelming urge to turn around and march back to the Eldest’s House.
“No!” he growled. For though he had learned a great deal about himself when he’d stood by that water, though he’d looked into the face of the moon and the burning eyes of a fallen star, for all that, he was still himself. Lionheart the stubborn. Lionheart the proud. And he had a long road before him.
“No,” he muttered and set out at a run, but the air was far too hot and he was very soon drenched in sweat. “I’ll save her. It’s my duty! I’ll find her in the Wilderlands, and I’ll bring her safely home.”
Then she would forgive him. Then Southlands would forgive him. Then he could vanish and never return but leave behind at least one good deed in the memory of his kingdom.
He saw the broken stump where the Grandfather Fig had once stood. That tree, so ancient, so gnarled, so stately in its ugliness, had become a familiar landmark to all those who dwelled in the Eldest’s House. Famous artists of past generations had done their best to capture it in paint and pottery, and more than one prince or princess of Lionheart’s line had been depicted on canvas standing in the shade of those twisted, flower-laden branches.