Ulla thought of the spell’s requirements and shuddered. She could not give Roffe and Signy what they wanted. No one could.
And yet, when she found Roffe in the gardens and explained what the apprentice had told her, he did not put his face in his hands and admit defeat. Instead he leapt to his feet and paced, back and forth, crushing green leaves beneath his boot soles.
“It could be done.”
Ulla lowered herself to the grass in the shade of the alder tree. “No, it could not.”
“There are prisoners in the palace dungeons, murderers who will face the gallows anyway. We’d be doing no one any harm.”
That was a lie she would not indulge in. “No.”
“You needn’t sully your hands,” Roffe pleaded, going to his knees like a supplicant. “All you need accomplish is the spell.”
As if that was some small thing. “It cannot be, Roffe.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “I have been a friend to you, haven’t I, Ulla? Don’t you care for me at all?”
“Enough to keep you from this wickedness.”
“Think of what our lives could be. Think of what you might accomplish. We could build a new palace, a new concert hall. I would make you court singer. You could have your own choir.”
The dream she’d held close to her heart for so long. There was no place for her on land or on sea, but Roffe was offering her the chance to make one. A chance to forge the world anew. With a choir at her command, she would have her own army, and who would dare challenge her then?
The want in her was an animal, scratching at her resolve, fretting its claws and saying, Why not? Why not? Safety, respect, companionship, a chance at greatness. What feats might she accomplish, what new music might she make, what future might she lay claim to—if she would only take the risk, pay the bloody price?
“No,” she said, finding the anchor’s chain within her. She had to keep steady. “I will not make this bargain.”
Roffe’s brow lowered. Weeks in the sun had turned his skin gold, his hair white. He looked like a petulant dandelion, gathering breath to throw a tantrum. “Tell me what you want, Ulla. Tell me and I will give it to you.”
She closed her eyes. She had never felt so weary. “I want to go home, Roffe. I want the quiet and the weight of the water. I want you to give this up and stop worrying Signy sick.”
There was a long silence. When at last Ulla looked at Roffe, he had rocked back on his heels and was watching her, his head cocked slightly to the side.
“I could make Signy my queen,” he said.
In that moment, Ulla wished that she and Signy had chosen a humbler song when they had first performed for Roffe, that they’d never raised the royal gardens, or drawn his notice, or come to this place. Cunning Roffe. She should have known he would not be so easy to refuse. Had he always known the truth of Signy’s heart? Had he enjoyed the steady light of her longing? Cultivated it?
“Do you love her at all?” Ulla asked.
Roffe shrugged and stood, brushing grass from his breeches. The sun behind him set his bright hair aglow.
“I love you both,” he said easily. “But I would break her heart and yours to take my brother’s crown.”
I will not do it, Ulla vowed, watching Roffe stride across the gardens. He cannot make me.
But he was a prince and Ulla was wrong.
The beginnings of the spell crept into Ulla’s dreams that night. She could not help it. Even as she’d denied Roffe, she’d started to hear the shape of the music in her head, and though she tried to quell the melody, it found its way to her. She woke up humming, a dull warmth in her chest. The flame would have to be built in her body and be born on her breath. But then what? Could it be transferred into an object?
No.
As she came fully awake, she sat up in her bed and tried to shake the echo of the song and the delicious pull of those questions from her head.
She could not do what Roffe asked. The risk was too great and the price too high.
But at breakfast, Roffe filled Signy’s water glass himself instead of leaving it to a servant. At lunch he peeled the orange on his plate and fed her one of the slices. And when they went down to dinner, he turned away from the human girl on his left and spent the night making Signy howl with laughter.
It was a careful campaign he waged. He found ways to make sure he was seated next to Signy at meals. He rode beside her on every hunt. He lavished his golden smiles on her—tentatively at first, as if he was unsure of their reception, though Ulla knew that shyness was a ruse. Roffe watched Signy now as she had once watched him. He let her catch him looking. Each time, her cheeks flushed pink. Each time, Ulla saw new hope flare within her. Bit by bit, moment by moment, in a thousand small gestures, he made Signy believe he was falling in love with her, and Ulla could do nothing but observe.
The night before the great ball, the last of the parties before they would return to the sea, Signy slipped under the covers of Ulla’s bed, glowing with the hope Roffe had kindled inside her.
“When we said good night, he pressed his lips to my wrist,” Signy said, placing her own lips to the blue veins where her pulse beat. “He took my hand and placed it against his heart.”
“Are you sure he can be trusted?” Ulla asked, so gently, so carefully, as if she were trying to hold broken glass.
But Signy recoiled, clutched her kissed hand to her chest like a talisman. “How can you ask that?”
“You are not noble—”
“But that’s the magic of it. He doesn’t care. He’s grown weary of noble girls. Oh, Ulla, it is more than I could have hoped. To think he could want me above all others.”
“Of course he could,” Ulla murmured. Of course.
Signy sighed and flopped back against the pillows, slender hands pressed to her brow, as if she suffered from headache. “It cannot all be real. He cannot possibly mean to make me his wife.” She bounced her dainty heels against the sheets, kicking the way humans did when they were trying not to drown. She had never been more beautiful. Ulla tasted poison in her mouth. “Do you think I might make a passable princess?” Signy asked.
Charming Roffe. More clever than Ulla had ever imagined. If Ulla did as the prince asked, he would give Signy all she wanted, or at least the illusion of it. If Ulla did not, he would break Signy’s heart, and Ulla knew it would destroy her friend. It was one thing for Signy to have loved Roffe from afar, but how deeply had she let herself fall now that he’d given her permission to love him? The dam had broken. There was no calling back the water.
So it was decided.
“You would make a passable princess,” Ulla said. “But a far better queen.”
Signy seized Ulla’s wrists. “You spoke to the apprentice? You’ve found a spell for the flame?”
“A song,” Ulla said. “But it will be dangerous.”
Signy pressed a kiss to her friend’s cheek. “There is nothing you cannot do.”
And nothing I will not do to protect you, Ulla vowed. The bargain is made.