In their room, the King nudged the sugar teeth. They fell to their side, clinking against the polished tabletop. The girls crowded about them, biting their lips.
“They look poorly,” he said. He picked them up and examined them, drawing his thumb across the poking-out teeth. He made to bend them, but stopped when he saw the metal would only snap if he did. He set them down. “What happened to them? Who bent them like this?”
A cold tingling feeling washed over Azalea, prickling and giving her goose bumps. She coughed and tried to shake it away. Everyone must have felt it, for they all shifted on their poufs and beds, rubbing their fingers and cringing. Eve tugged on the ends of her dark hair. The oath…
“Come to think of it,” said the King, “where is the rest of the magic tea set? I haven’t seen it for some time.”
The girls cast nervous looks at one another, but Clover spoke up.
“It’s all right,” she said, sitting on the edge of her bed and stroking Lily’s dark curls. Lily lay asleep on her lap. “It’s my fault. I’ll tell him.”
Clover told the story of how, in a foul temper, she had bashed up the set and thrown it into the stream. She told it all with her chin up, her beautiful face pale—but, surprisingly, without a stutter. The King’s eyebrows knitted at first, then rose, until he was just staring at her with his mouth slightly open. Azalea guessed that he would have been cross if any of the rest of them had done such a thing. But with honey-sweet Clover, the King just gaped.
“Your mother often thought,” he said slowly, when she had finished, “that one day you would do something truly surprising. I certainly did not expect this.”
Bramble flashed a grin at Azalea.
“What now, sir?” said Flora.
“What now?” The King turned his attention to the quaking sugar teeth. “Well. I suppose we ought to unmagic them.”
He left the room. Some minutes later, he arrived again and shut the door behind him. In his stiff hand, he held the old, mottled silver sword. He gazed at the sugar teeth, lost in thought.
“Unmagic,” said Azalea, turning the odd word in her mouth. “You’ll take the magic from it?”
“Just so.”
The girls watched, rapt, as he gently and solemnly lowered the sword to the sugar teeth. He touched the silver to silver with a soft clink.
As quick and quiet as a snuffed candle, the sugar teeth…lost their luster. They looked the same, but…Azalea couldn’t describe it. No longer shuddering, the teeth somehow seemed at peace. Everyone exhaled silently.
“Well,” said the King. He picked up the teeth and slipped them into his waistcoat pocket, as delicately as a lifeless sparrow to be buried. He turned to the girls.
“What did your mother do?” he said.
“Sir?”
“When it was time for bed,” said the King. “Tell me.”
The girls exchanged nervous glances. He was talking about Mother.
“She used to help the girls with their prayers,” said Azalea, hesitant. “And—sometimes she would read stories.”
The King set the sword on the table, next to the vase.
“Very well,” he said as the girls whispered to one another. “I will read you a story.”
The whispering stopped.
Jessamine slid from her bed to the ground, the untied purple ribbons of her slippers trailing, and dug a storybook out from Eve’s trunk. She held it out to the King in her tiny four-year-old hands, her crystal blue eyes hopeful.
The King sat on the rug and leaned against Delphinium and Eve’s bed, and the younger girls shyly sat next to him, peering at the pictures. Clover smiled, her right dimple showing, and hugged Lily to her chest while Bramble, sitting on her pouf, cast a wry, surprised grin at Azalea.
“‘In a certain country…’” he began, his voice stiff with the words.
He read the stories of “Hans and Gretchen,” “The Goats of Hemland Shire,” “The Dainty Princess.” He wasn’t like Mother, who read with all the voices and a bubbled laugh at the words, but…he was all right. Everything felt warm and safe, among the linens, the flickering fire, and coziness of their room.
The girls’ eyes grew heavy, and their heads drooped. The King himself grew drowsy, his voice reading slower and slower, until finally he shook himself, and with Azalea’s direction, put the right girls in the right beds. Then he left with the sword and a good night.