That evening, after coffee in the library, where Lord Teddie taught the younger girls how to play ring-a-hoop with pen and old inkwells, the girls gathered in their bedroom, passing out the mended slippers from the basket and brushing their hair. Delphinium took the vanity chair, dreamily running her fingers through her wavy blond hair and gazing at her reflection.
“I’ve decided I’m going to marry him,” she said. “Lord Teddie, I mean.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Bramble, throwing pillows on the bed behind her. “You only like him because he’s rich.”
“Well, why not?” Delphinium turned. “I’m pretty enough. If he stops making up stupid rhymes, and learns how to dress, and perhaps stifles that silly laugh he has, then in a few years, we—”
“He’d see right through you.” Bramble sat down on one of their threadbare embroidered poufs, crossing her arms. “So don’t rally up your hopes, young peep. Gentlemen like him don’t marry penniless.”
Delphinium’s lips tightened, and she tugged the comb through her hair. Azalea, between the hearth and the round table, chose this time to produce the sugar teeth from her pocket and lay them on the table, to the initial fright of the girls, who leaped back.
When the sugar teeth only lay and shuddered with a faint clinking sound, the girls crept to the round table, forgetting that they had been the scourge of the palace before. Horrified that the teeth had been bent inside out, they spoke in hushed tones.
“Who would—do such a thing?” said Clover, stroking them gently.
“Oh, Keeper, of course!” said Azalea. “Of course it was him!”
Bramble took a dried pink rose from the vase in the middle of the table and snapped off the blossom. “Rotter,” she said, pulling the leaves from the stem. “When I see him, I’m going to tell him exactly—”
“Don’t!” Azalea yelped.
The girls stared at Azalea, hands halted about their slipper ribbons, mid-tie. Azalea rubbed her hand against her aching forehead.
“Look, just—let me handle Keeper, all right?” she said. “And the teeth—well.”
They stared sadly at the twisted piece of metal. None of them liked to see the sugar teeth as such, so forlorn and helpless, shaking. Glumly, they took Azalea’s powder box and shredded bits of dried petals in it, making a little bed for them. Azalea agreed to slip away to the kitchen and fetch some sugar cubes, and maybe a teacup to keep them company. Inside, she clung to the thin hope that if she stayed in the kitchen long enough, the younger girls would have fallen asleep and she could convince them to stay in their room tonight. It hadn’t happened before, but Azalea had seen Kale’s and Lily’s nodding heads, snuggling into the crook of Clover’s arm.
Azalea arrived at the creaking kitchen door and pulled back when she saw the King sitting at the scrubbed servants’ table, drinking a cup of cold leftover coffee and sorting through a stack of paperwork in the flickering candlelight. His hand was better now—though it moved stiffly as he shuffled the papers. He looked up when Azalea arrived, and Azalea twined her fingers through the weave in her shawl. His intimidating frown always made her feel as though she were balancing on a three-story banister.
“It is decidedly late, Miss Azalea,” said the King, setting his teacup down. “You should be in bed.”
“Yes, sir,” said Azalea. She stared at his paperwork. He was always doing paperwork. She wondered for the first time if he disliked it.
“Did you come to eat something? You know the rules.”
“No, sir.”
“You didn’t eat your dinner.” The King marked a bit of paper with his pen. “You missed breakfast, and tea, and I saw you give your food to Miss Ivy at the table. Am I to believe you haven’t come down here for food?’
“Yes,” said Azalea shortly. “If I were hungry, I would have eaten. I’m fetching something for the girls.”
The King sucked in his cheeks at her tone. Azalea, her fingers still twined in her shawl, opened the cabinet next to the stove and began to sort for the sugar cubes.
“It is gone, isn’t it?” said the King without glancing from his papers. “None of you wore it today. I knew the moment—the very moment—I let you take it from my sight, it was gone. I gave that brooch to your mother, Miss Azalea, and now it is gone.”
Azalea paused, her shaking hand resting on the cold glass of the pear preserves, between the jars of peaches and plums.
Of course he knew it was gone. Azalea doubted anything escaped his notice. He knew everything—
Well…yes. He did know everything. Much more than her, at least, when it came to magic. A glimmer of hope lit inside her. Perhaps finding the sugar teeth would help her solve things after all. Azalea swallowed.
“Sir,” she said, closing the cabinet door and pressing her back against it. The knobbly handle pressed into her corset. Her hands still trembled. “Um. Do you remember…how the sugar teeth were magic?”
The King looked up.
“Were?” he said.