Thom looked at Mistaya questioningly. “I’ll be all right,” she told him. “Won’t I, Your Eminence?” she added, giving Crabbit a meaningful glance.
“Perfectly all right. This won’t take but a few minutes.”
A reluctant Thom went out the door, closing it behind him. His Eminence waited a few moments more, cocking his elongated head to one side, giving it a Humpty-Dumpty-sat-on-the-wall look. Then he moved closer to Mistaya and stood staring at her. She could tell from the look alone that whatever was coming was going to be bad.
“I will make this brief and to the point,” His Eminence declared. “You deserve that much, at least. Berwyn Laphroig has discovered you are here and has come to take you to Rhyndweir. He intends to make you his wife and the mother of his children. Of his sons, if all goes well. I have argued with him, but to no avail. The matter is complicated by the fact that he also knows about Thom. The one concession I have been able to wring from him is that if you marry him voluntarily, executing a viable written consent to the match, he will leave Thom in my safekeeping. Otherwise, he intends to dispatch Thom immediately. Am I being perfectly clear on all this?”
Mistaya nodded wordlessly. If she didn’t marry The Frog, Thom would be killed. If she did marry The Frog, she would have to kill herself. Figuratively, anyway.
She gave him a chilly smile. “No one has the right to tell a Princess of Landover whom she may wed. Not even my parents. Certainly not you. I will wed when I am good and ready and not before, and I will wed a man of my own choosing. I refuse to be married to The Frog. What’s more, if any harm comes to Thom, I will see to it that your head is posted on your own gate until there is nothing left of it but bone. Am I being perfectly clear on all this?”
His Eminence stared at her silently, shaking his head. “You do live in a fairy-tale world, don’t you, Princess? All you see is what you want to see. If you don’t want to think about something or face up to something, it simply doesn’t exist for you. Goodness. But this is the real world, not some make-believe story in which you are the heroine. So perhaps you ought to rethink your situation before you start making threats.”
He snatched the front of her tunic and pulled her close enough that she could feel his breath on her face. He towered over her, and she could see the anger in his eyes.
“You are my possession, Princess!” he hissed softly. “You belong to me. I can do with you what I want. Do you understand me?”
She nodded without speaking, her eyes riveted on his. For the first time since she had come to Libiris, she was genuinely scared. She was terrified.
“Well, then,” he continued, his voice still a whisper, “it ought to be simple for you. I don’t choose to make you do anything you don’t want to do, even though I can. But this is the reality—you hold a boy’s life in your hands. So you need to consider your choices carefully and spare me your idle threats. You need to consider the consequences of those choices. Listen now—here they are again. If you fail to walk out of here and tell Berwyn Laphroig that you will marry him and bear his children, I shall be forced to turn young Thom over to him and you will have the unfortunate experience of watching him die right in front of your eyes, knowing it was all your fault! Is any of this not clear?”
When she failed to answer, he sighed wearily. “I shall take it from your silence that you understand. Now let’s try it again. Think carefully before you speak. Will you agree to this arrangement or not? Will you marry Berwyn Laphroig or shall I send young Thomlinson out for a short reunion? Give me your answer.”
She compressed her lips into a tight line. “My father will never countenance this! He will not let me be used in this way! You had better release me right now!”
His Eminence pulled a face, released her tunic front, and stepped back. “Very well. I shall deliver your answer—and the boy—to his brother. Good luck to you, Princess.”
Without waiting for any further response, he turned for the door. He had reached it and was pulling it open when she called to him. “Wait, no. Don’t do that. Don’t tell him that. Tell him I accept his proposal. But I want something in writing signed by him, something in the marriage contract that says he will not harm Thom now or ever.”
His Eminence turned back and gave her a long, searching look. “Done,” he said finally, and went out the door.
Alone again, she collapsed onto the pallet and stared into space. Tears she was unable to hold back trickled down her cheeks. She wanted to bury her face in her hands and shut out everything, but she couldn’t do so while the magic held them bound. The room was dark and empty, and Thom did not return. She wished she were back in school or home or anywhere but here. She wished she had listened to a whole lot of advice that she had chosen to ignore.
What was she going to do?
She knew she couldn’t let anything happen to Thom, no matter what. If she were responsible for his death, she could never live with herself. The trade-off was horrendous, but she kept thinking that even if she went through with this, her father would find a way to undo it. But what if he couldn’t? What if no one could? She kept thinking that something would happen to stop all this, but she couldn’t think what that something would be.
She stopped crying finally and tried to think clearly about how things stood. She didn’t have the use of her magic and wouldn’t have while her hands were bound. She had to find a way to free them, if only for a minute. She didn’t have the rainbow crush, so she couldn’t summon help. But even if she had it, whom would she summon? Not her father—that was what His Eminence wanted. Questor? No, he had been duped once already, and Crabbit was probably the superior wizard. Her grandfather? No, no! She brushed it all aside as wishful thinking. There wasn’t much chance that she would be allowed back into her room unaccompanied, and that was the only way she could get her hands on the crush anyway. Thom could retrieve it if he knew it was there and was free to go get it. But he didn’t and he wasn’t, so that was that.
She got to her feet and crossed to the door and stopped, placing her hands against the rough wood, her mind racing. How could she stop this from happening? There had to be a way!
From beyond the locked door, she heard footsteps in the hallway.
She thought suddenly of Haltwhistle, whom she might still have been able to count on if she had remembered to speak his name and hadn’t gotten so caught up in her own concerns that she had forgotten him. Edgewood Dirk might have sent the mud puppy away, but she was the one who had made that possible. Was it too late to call him back? Was he gone from her forever?
“Haltwhistle,” she whispered, and it was almost a prayer. “Haltwhistle,” she said again, louder this time.
She jumped in shock as the latch on the door released. She wiped her tear-streaked face on her shoulder. She shouldn’t be crying, she told herself. She was tougher than this. She was better than what she was showing.
“Haltwhistle!” she said a final time, bold and determined.
But as the door opened it wasn’t the mud puppy who appeared but His Eminence, Craswell Crabbit. “Time to go, Princess,” he announced. “Your future husband awaits.”
And with a dramatic sweep of his arm he beckoned her through the open doorway.
BRAVEHEART
As she trudged from her storeroom prison into the hallway, dutifully trailing a clearly elated Craswell Crabbit, a strange thing happened to Mistaya Holiday. One moment she was subdued and submissive, riddled with self-doubt and fear, her future a bleak certainty from which she could find no escape, and the next she was so angry that the rest of what she had been feeling was swept away in a tidal wave of rage. It happened all at once and for no discernible reason that she could identify, a shift of such monumental proportions that it shook her to the core.