“What are you, mad?” said Azalea. “Now he’ll really know we’ve been up to something!”
“Who cares?” said Bramble, yanking her arm away from Azalea. “I can’t stand him!”
A firm, solid hand grasped Azalea’s wrist.
“Into the conservatory, young ladies,” said the King. “Now.”
Bramble broke free, gripping the basket with both hands. She bounded in an arc about the newel post and leaped up the stairs.
“Miss Bramble!” said the King.
“Down with tyranny!” Bramble cried. “Aristocracy! Autocracy! Monocracy! Other ocracy things! You are outnumbered, sir! Surrender!”
Sucking in his cheeks, the King did not chase after Bramble, but instead militarily escorted Azalea and the chin-wobbling twins to the conservatory, which was what the King called the nook. Clover, Lily, and all the rest except Bramble stood in a line against the rosebush ledge, cheeks flushed, hands clasped, eyes down.
The King disappeared; several minutes later, a loud crash came from the kitchen, followed by the clatter of spoons scattering across the floor, then a falling lid, ending the chaos with a wah-wah-wa-wa-wawawawawathunk.
In a moment the King returned, firm hand clenched on Bramble’s shoulders, guiding her into the nook, the other holding the basket. He had a spoon-sized welt across his cheek. Bramble’s lips were so thin Azalea couldn’t see them.
The King closed the folding glass doors and set the basket on the table. The twins hiccupped as the King examined the mess; tattered, jumbled, patched beyond recognition. He lifted a used-to-be-red slipper, and the ribbon fell off.
“Well,” he said, after a long, long moment. “Well.”
He set the slipper down, sucked in his cheeks, clasped his hands behind his back. He took in air to say something, then exhaled. He picked up a slipper from the basket, and put it back.
“I am heartily disappointed in you all,” he said quietly. “Heartily disappointed.”
None of the girls could even raise their eyes to meet his. Eve plucked a leaf from the wilting rosebushes in the ledge, shredding it into minuscule bits, and Ivy didn’t even eat a bit of the cinnamon bread she had snuck from the table.
“Please don’t be cross with them,” said Azalea. “It was my fault in the first place.”
The King sighed.
“And I expect you wear every pair out each night, Miss Azalea? Nonsense.” He folded his arms. “So this is why you are behind your time every day. Dancing at night, in mourning, when it is strictly forbidden. You all know it is not allowed!”
“No one hears us,” said Hollyhock, twining the end of her apron string around her eight-year-old hand. “They can’t hear a peep.”
“No, I expect they probably can’t,” said the King. “If there was enough floor to dance in your room, which there is not, it would most certainly make a grand racket, would it not? So. If you cannot be heard from your room, then, where could you be dancing? Hmm? There are no secrets and underhanded dealings in this household, young ladies. If you are harboring a secret, then I will be told at once.”
A strange sensation of cold, tingly prickles passed through Azalea. She cringed, feeling the wash and needles of it to her fingertips, and looked at the other girls. Eve was shaking her hand, as though trying to shake off the feeling. Hollyhock wiped her hands on her skirts. Bramble cast a glance at Azalea, one thin eyebrow arched. They had obviously felt it, too.
“We…can’t tell you,” said Flora, to the floor.
“We promised we wouldn’t.” Goldenrod shrank against the rosebush ledge, looking very much like she wanted to disappear.
“With ’Zalea’s silver handkerchief,” said Hollyhock.
The King’s entire countenance changed, from maligned to staggered. He turned to Hollyhock, his eyebrows furrowed, his eyes searching.
“You made an oath?” he said. “On silver?”
Hollyhock flushed so much it hid her freckles.
“We promised t’ not tell the King,” she mumbled.
The King stepped back, pressing his hands against the table ledge behind him. If it hurt his bandaged hand, he did not show it. Instead he fixed Azalea with an icy blue stare. Azalea could not read it.
“What you have done,” he said, “is called Swearing on Silver. It is a very serious oath. Where did you learn such a thing?”
Azalea clutched the handkerchief in her palm, so tightly it dug Mother’s initials into her hand.
Swearing on Silver.
So Mother had made her Swear on Silver. Azalea didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be bad, not if Mother had done it. Azalea bit her lip, closing her eyes against the frigid gaze. She could never tell the King about Mother, how cold her hands were and how she had made her promise.
“Very well,” said the King, when Azalea kept her eyes closed. “Very well.” He took the basket of slippers from the table.
“These will be flung into the stove—”
“Oh!” cried Delphinium, followed by a thump-thumphf.
“—and you are all to spend the rest of the day in your room, considering the implications of mourning,” said the King, stepping over Delphinium on the floor. “At once. You may not take the bread with you.”