He touched his fingers to her lips.
“I expect,” he whispered, “you are wondering what you could possibly do to keep me from hurting your mother further. Is that not so?”
Azalea cringed.
“I will tell you what I want, my lady,” he said. “My freedom. It is all I have ever wanted. Find the magic object, and destroy it. You have until Christmas.”
He pressed his finger hard against her lips, as though to hush her. They throbbed against his finger.
“This is between you and me,” he said. “No one else. It is upon you. If you do as I say, no more harm will come to your mother. Is that not a fair trade?”
Azalea trembled.
Keeper stood, his cape rippling straight. He pulled something from the air with a flash of silver, and tossed it. It skittered to the marble with a clinkety clink clink in front of Azalea. The sugar teeth shivered.
“And,” said Keeper, his eyes cold. “You are never to refuse me another dance again.”
CHAPTER 19
Azalea did not know how she got back to her bedroom. She only remembered stumbling through the glimmering wall of the fireplace and falling to her knees, scattering soot everywhere.
She lay curled on the floor for a long time, her head pounding.
Eventually she pulled off her dress and mended the cut sleeve, sewing perfect, tiny stitches automatically. After that, she poured water into the basin and washed her cut. In the vanity mirror, her face was drawn and ghastly white. The bruises weren’t showing yet; they would.
She touched her lips. The breath choked in her throat, and she had to turn away.
A dull glint of silver struggled through the folds of her rumpled dress on the floor. She had somehow remembered to put the sugar teeth in her pocket before leaving. Now, as she examined them, nicked and dinged with patches of dull, brassy color, she swallowed. Instead of the tiny prongs facing inward, the sugar teeth had been bent entirely backward, so the prongs faced out.
Azalea imagined Keeper lazily toying with the teeth, bending and twisting them as they trembled, in the silence of the pavilion.
“He’s had you this whole time, hasn’t he?” she whispered.
They shuddered.
In a few minutes, dressed again, she turned up the lamps in the portrait gallery, casting a light over the display of the silver sword. So dull and old…it didn’t even glimmer in the light.
“It has to be this,” said Azalea to no one but the sugar teeth, which she had wrapped up and put in her pocket. She touched the glass over the hairline crack in the sword, and shook her head. “It has to be magic. But I can’t figure out how.”
Azalea sat on the floor, her dress poofing around her, and pulled her knees to her chest. She buried her head in her skirts.
Keeper was the High King. The portrait of the High King, hidden away in the attic, leered at her from her memory. The ancient, melted-wax skin. The painter had gotten him all wrong, painting him old and hideous. But the dead, black eyes were the same. Azalea pushed her head against her knees, trying to stop the throbbing.
He could capture souls….
Keeper was mad if he thought she was going to bring the girls down there again. She would have to keep them from going through the fireplace—without telling them anything. Keeper would know if she had told them. He knew everything. Azalea rubbed her lips into the cotton weave of her dress, wincing. The stitches…
He had promised to leave Mother alone, hadn’t he? He wouldn’t dare—not when he needed Azalea so much to free him. Azalea pushed a quaking smile and put her hand over the sugar teeth in her pocket, trying to comfort them.
“I have until Christmas to figure something out,” she said. “That’s five days. That’s plenty of time, yes?”
The sugar teeth trembled.
Well after tea now, Azalea wandered through the corridor in search of her sisters. She had descended to the second-floor hall when she heard an odd thumping noise, followed by rummaging and assorted clanks. They came from the bucket closet across from the mezzanine.
“Hello?” said Azalea. And, realizing someone had been locked in, she turned the key still in the knob and clicked it open.
Brooms spilled out. Mops spilled out. A gentleman spilled out. He had a bucket on his head. And wore an offensively green bow tie.
“Lord Teddie!” said Azalea.
Lord Teddie sprang to his feet. “Hulloa, Princess A!” he said, taking the bucket off his head and beaming. His curly hair was mussed. “We all missed you at breakfast! I ate your bowl of mush. I hope that’s all right.”
“What are you doing here?” said Azalea.
“Oh! Ha! I bet you are wondering that. I’m here on Royal Business. For the riddle! Unless, of course, you mean in the broom closet, which I’m in because we were playing tiddle and seek after breakfast and…someone locked me in.”
“That would be Bramble,” said Azalea. “Usually she locks them in the gallery. She must really not like you.”
Lord Teddie’s face fell.