Page 85 of Cursed Crowns
Klara frowned. “I don’t get your meaning.”
“Never mind,” said Wren. Clearly the girl knew nothing of the prince. Yet. “Don’t let me keep you.”
Klara bustled into the bathing chamber. “I’ll make sure to set the fire once I’ve run your bath.”
A few minutes later, Wren sank into her bubble bath, letting the soapy warmth chase away the dregs of her nightmare. Her thoughts turned to Prince Ansel, and where the newly undead prince was at that very moment. After Wren had woken up, near frozen, in the dungeon chamber yesterday morning, she had only managed a brief exchange with Ansel—who had clearly been under the impression that she was Rose—before Alarik had sat up in a daze. The king had leaped at his brother with all the sprightliness of a child, throwing his arms around Ansel and pulling him close as if he was afraid the spell would wear off any second.
Wren had watched the moment unfold with a mixture of unease and disbelief. While Alarik embraced his brother, she studied Ansel for any lingering signs of... well, unnaturalness. Ansel’s back was unusually stiff, his smile a touch too wide. And then, of course, there was the matter of him thinking that Rose was his dearly beloved, and that they were about to be married. It was as if he had no memory of theirill-fated wedding or the part where he had ended up dead. But Wren didn’t get a chance to voice any of these concerns, because the second she rolled to her feet, Alarik remembered she was in there with them and promptly sent her away.
Wren didn’t blame him for it. He wanted to take off his mask of callous indifference and be a brother, not a king. And he could not—would not—do that in front of Wren. And so she did as he commanded, stepping out of the room to the curious gazes of the king’s soldiers, who had been waiting all that time in the darkness.
The prince is alive, she informed them, before swallowing the rest of the truth:for now.
Later, when Wren had returned to her bedroom, she threw open the little window and vomited a belly full of ash, retching and heaving over and over until her lungs ached. When her legs gave out, she crawled into bed and had slept, mired in nightmares, until now. Exhaustion still lingered at the edge of her senses and the strange hollowness in her stomach remained. It felt like someone had reached through her rib cage and snatched a fistful of her organs away.
After her bath, Wren examined herself in the mirror, looking for evidence of what she and Alarik had done in the icy catacombs, but apart from a couple of gray smudges under her eyes, she looked the same. She brushed her hair and applied some face cream, pinching her cheeks to return their color. She crossed over to the wardrobe, freezing at the sight of a dead mouse, lying in front of it.
“Shit.” Her little miracle was dead all over again. Wren picked up the poor creature and threw it into the fire. She tried not to think of Prince Ansel as she rifled through the wardrobe. If he had met the same fate as her mouse, surely Alarik would be banging on her door,demanding a do-over. Or her head on a platter. But the fourth floor of Grinstad was silent.
Wren chose a dark blue dress with a flowing skirt, slipping it over her head and tying it at the waist. The fire was heating the room quickly, and all this worrying about Ansel was making the back of her neck sweat. Her palms, too.
She opened the window, inhaling a lungful of crisp mountain air as she looked out at miles and miles of jagged peaks and snow-dusted valleys. A single black bird flitted across the ivory sky. It got closer and closer, its silver breast nearly blinding Wren in the morning sun.
She knew it was a starcrest before it landed on her windowsill, but that didn’t stop her from backing away from it. “Rotting carp! What are you doing here?”
She yelped at a sudden banging on the door. Inga poked her head in, waving a card. “For you, Your Majesty.”
Wren practically sprinted across the room to snatch it from her. Her eyes went wide as she read it. It was an invitation to breakfast... fromAnika.Did the princess know about Ansel? Had she invited Wren downstairs to thank her in person? Or was there something else going on? Wren glanced at the starcrest on the windowsill and swallowed. She didn’t exactly relish the thought of sharing her morning meal with the acerbic Gevran princess, but she would take the unpredictability of Anika’s temper over the endless monotony of these four walls, where her thoughts were much too loud. And, besides that, she was desperate to find out news of Prince Ansel.
She slipped her shoes on and made for the hallway, letting Inga lead the way down to the dining room. It was a long, narrow chamber with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the gardens of Grinstad,which included an impressive courtyard bordered by winterberry shrubs, a maze of boxwood hedges, and the frozen pond that had almost killed Wren. Thanks to this morning’s avalanche, it was all covered with a fresh heap of snow.
“Well, that was quick,” came a familiar snide voice. “You must have flung yourself down the stairs to get here so fast. Are you really so desperate for company?”
Anika was sitting at the end of a frosted-glass table. Her crimson hair was pulled away from her face in an artful chignon that made her cheekbones look even more severe. She was wearing a black dress that hugged her curves, and her pet fox, the same one she had brought with her to Eana, was curled around her neck. But it was not the princess’s unusual scarf that caught Wren’s attention. It was the person sitting in the chair next to her.
“Celeste?” The name came out like a swear word. “What in rotting hell are you doing here?”
Celeste raised her brows. “That’s hardly any way to greet your friend, is it?”
Wren looked between them, trying to figure out what on earth was going on. Celeste’s unexpected presence certainly explained the starcrest on Wren’s windowsill, but beyond that she was at a total loss.
“I expect Celeste was worried about you,” supplied Anika. “She’s been sailing on her brother’s merchant vessel, and she decided to stop in and say hello. She says she missed me, and while I’m sure that’s true—I am a delight, after all—I think, really, she wanted to make sure we hadn’t killed you.” She smirked at Celeste. “I told you she’s fine.”
“So I see,” said Celeste, who had been appraising Wren, no doubt searching for signs of injury. “And well dressed, too.”
“They haven’t supplied me with any trousers despite my constant pestering,” said Wren.
Anika pouted. “Poor little queen.” Her pet fox raised its head and bared its tiny teeth at her.
Wren glowered at both of them. “So you invited Celeste in here, like you haven’t made it abundantly clear that you hate all Eanans, and then decided to have this fancy breakfast with her?” Wren gestured to the stack of pancakes on the table, which sat next to a jug of maple syrup and a teeming bowl of berries. There was a full platter of bacon, sausages, and fried eggs, too. “Instead of, oh, I don’t know, throwing her in a room on the fourth floor and posting a soldier outside to keep her trapped in there.”
Anika laughed like a hyena. “Your ignorance is hilarious. You see, there is onecrucialdifference between you and Lady Celeste Pegasi.”
Wren sank into the chair opposite Celeste. “Do tell,” she said as she nibbled on a strip of bacon.
“Celeste didn’t kill my brother.”
Wren’s appetite curdled. She put the bacon down. “I didn’t kill your brother, Anika.”