Fiora tried to come up with some explanation. She knew she ought to say something to Aurora, but what? She couldn’t speak against her beloved brother.
She just couldn’t.
And she tried to stop Aurora from leaving. But when that didn’t work, and Alain rode out with her, Fiora’s guilt grew worse.
Everything had gone wrong, and she didn’t know how to fix it.
That night, Lady Fiora used her key to let herself into her brother’s rooms. His doorframe was marked with a fresh cut in the wood. She ran her fingers over it. Just inside, she spotted a smear of blood at the corner of a carpet.
She knew he hadn’t been hurt, because she’d seen him before he left. But if he wasn’t the one who’d been wounded…
Horrified, she went to his desk, hoping to find answers. Atop it was a silver jardiniere bearing the royal crest, filled with nib pens and blocks of sealing wax. But only the most mundane and dull correspondence was within. His armoire and bedside table were equally orderly. She had turned to go when she noticed that one of the paintings near Count Alain’s bed was askew.
Fiora walked over to straighten it when a thought struck her.
She took the painting down from the wall. Resting it on the bed, she turned it over.
And there, bound to the back of the frame, was a stack of correspondence from Lord Ortolan.
When she took up the first of the letters, her breath caught.
If it weren’t for Stefan’s purporting to have slain Maleficent, your father would have been named King Henry’s heir, it read. Remember that when you kill her. And if the boy follows, make sure you kill him, too.
Chapter 27
That night, lying by the fire and wrapped in her waxed cloak, Aurora listened to the crackle of the kindling and turned on the hard ground. With her godmother missing and Phillip implicated in her disappearance, it seemed more impossible than ever that she would sleep. But she had been awake for far too long, and her body knew it. Her eyes drooped closed.
Aurora dreamed she was wandering through the woods. Dawn was turning the horizon gold, and a light frost covered the green plants.
On she walked, her steps crunching frozen leaves. She came to the place where Diaval had stopped the night before. But now the area was covered in ravens.
Closer she crept. The stillness of the forest made her try to be quiet, too.
Dozens and dozens of ravens cawed at her approach. And beneath their shining black feathers, she saw a pale hand sticking out of the freshly turned earth.
Aurora rushed forward. “Godmother!” she cried.
The ravens took to wing at once, in a great rush. Aurora fell onto her hands and knees. A body had been shallowly buried in the soil. Frantically, she brushed dirt away from it.
But it wasn’t her godmother she found.
Prince Phillip lay stiffly, not sprawling as one does in natural rest. His face was turned upward and cold to the touch. His skin was the bluish white of skimmed milk, especially around his eyes and mouth. His chestnut curls still shone, even with dirt in them. Sunlight caught in his lashes, turning them to gold. Yet he remained as still as the grave.
“Wake up,” she said in a whisper. And then, in a shout: “Wake up!”
At her shout, the ravens began to caw from the trees above.
“Be silent,” she yelled at them.
And she knew that this was no enchanted sleep. This was death.
She leaned down. Some of her hair fell over his cheek and throat. Were he alive, it might have tickled him.
Taking a quick breath, she brushed her mouth against his cold, soft lips.
Then, sitting up, she prepared herself to take one last look at him. But when she gazed down, he no longer had the same appearance as before. His lips were no longer bluish, but the pink of the inside of a shell. And as she watched, his skin took on a flush of warmth.
Then, impossibly, Phillip’s eyes opened, and he sucked in an unsteady breath.
“Aurora,” he said, grabbing her shoulder hard enough that it hurt, “run. He’s right behind you. Run!”
Chapter 28
No torch burned in the prison. No oil lamp flickered. No window showed the stars. Phillip wasn’t even sure it was night anymore. It was hard to calculate anything in complete darkness. Instead, he sat against the cold metal wall and tried to think.
His side still pained him, but it was a dull pain now, not like the burn of the wound during the ride, when his head had been covered and his hands bound. Then he’d known he was still bleeding and hadn’t been sure how much, only that he could feel the wetness in the way his shirt stuck to him. He’d been passing into and out of consciousness, mostly from shock. And then there had been the brief moment when the bag was pulled off his head in the prison and he’d seen the horror of Maleficent sprawled on the iron floor, her skin burning like she was a piece of meat thrown onto a hot pan.
A moment later, the torches were doused and he was plunged into endless night. He’d bitten at the ropes around his hands until he was free, and then crawled across the floor to Maleficent. He’d shucked off his doublet and pillowed her head on it, using a strip of the lining to bind his own wound. He’d counted to ten and twenty and one hundred, to try to calm his racing heart and focus.
Now that Maleficent was awake, he felt a little calmer. Still, they were in fresh trouble. Phillip had feared they would be killed as soon as they were taken, but something had stayed the hands of their captors. Now he suspected it was only that Lord Ortolan was waiting for Count Alain. Perhaps Lord Ortolan didn’t want to be the one to deliver the order. That way, Count Alain had no opportunity to frame him along with Phillip.
Neither he nor Maleficent had much time. Alain might be arriving any minute.
Lord Ortolan’s plan was remarkably good for being so simple. Even if Aurora suspected the story wasn’t true, there would be no way to prove it once he and Maleficent were dead.
And every moment in the iron prison weakened her further, he was sure. He’d noticed that the instant after Lord Ortolan left, as the last soldier marched out with him, she sagged forward. It must have cost her a lot to hold herself together the way she had, to behave as though nothing touched her.
“How bad is it?” he asked softly.
“I’m well enough, Prince.” Her voice sounded strained, as though she was speaking through gritted teeth. “Or I will be, just as soon as we are free.”
“You’re a bit terrifying,” he said.
“Just a bit?” There was a smile in her voice.
“When I was a child, I saw a faerie—or at least I thought I did. It was a little thing, small enough to ride on the back of a bird. And I believed that if I caught it, it would give me a wish.”
“Why should it do that?” Maleficent said irritably.
“My nurse told me stories about faeries that granted wishes,” he returned. “And I didn’t catch the faerie, of course. But no one even believed that I’d seen it. My mother told me to stop telling lies.”
Maleficent was silent.
“My nurse said that if it had really been a faerie, it would have bit me or put a spell on me.” He gave a long, heavy sigh. “And that if I ever truly saw one, I ought to kill it. So I decided I’d dreamed it.”