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.
“I was young,” he said quietly. “And a fool. The High King had made an apprentice of me, teaching me charms and bits of magic. But he went mad, surely you know of this. When I heard of what he did to souls—” The gentleman touched a finger to a vine at the arched doorframe, tracing it, thoughtful. “Well—I joined the rebellion, naturally.”
The pieces congealed in Azalea’s mind. The same rebellion headed by her ninth great-grandfather, Harold the First. Azalea listened, rapt.
“It was a betrayal the High King refused to suffer.” The gentleman’s long fingers closed over a silver leaf and snapped it from the vine. “I was found, naturally. I was no contest for his magic. And it wasn’t good enough for him to simply kill me. Instead, within his fine magic palace, he magicked me here. I was made the keeper of this pavilion. Because, more than anything, the High King loved to dance.”
Eve choked on her tea.
Bramble said, “You’re making that up!”
Flora said, “Was dancing even invented back then?”
The gentleman laughed.
“You like dancing, do you?” he said. “You would have been impressed with the High King. Every night he brought his court to dance in this pavilion. And I, a part of it, tending to it, the servant and fool of the High King. Humiliating.