“That’s where Pet is staying,” Pansy said, and Oliver heard a rustling as she came closer.
“That’s right,” Oliver said.
“So you really are an earl,” Poppy mused.
The guard snorted at this, but Oliver and Poppy ignored him.
“Yes, I am,” Oliver said simply.
“Then why didn’t you come to Bruch and explain to Father what had happened?” Poppy studied him for a moment. “Or, your father would have, I guess.”
“My father died in the war,” Oliver said. “I became the earl when I was seven. My mother’s family did not approve of the marriage; I doubt anyone even knew that I existed. My mother tried to have me confirmed in my title and to petition for the return of our lands, but that was during the uproar over the worn-out slippers and the dying suitors. Since my mother is Bretoner, she was afraid to bring attention to herself.”
“Bretoner?” Pansy had crept even closer. Oliver could see the edge of a pink muslin gown just peeping around the edge of the door. “Did she know Mother?”
“Indeed,” Oliver said. He felt like he was holding out breadcrumbs for birds, and any sudden movement would make them take flight. Or, in Poppy’s case, peck him. “She was one of your mother’s ladies-in-waiting. But her family wanted her to return home to marry a Bretoner lord, and my father’s family had a second cousin handpicked to marry him.”
“No wonder she didn’t dare come to the palace,” Poppy said. “Bishop Angiers would have had her on trial for witchcraft in a heartbeat. But don’t worry, the Church has long since made things right, and he got what he deserved.”
“That’s good,” Oliver said. The way that Poppy kept looking over her shoulder made Oliver think that they would leave soon. It was time to ask his own questions.
“Are my men all right?”
“For now,” Poppy said. “Until Father decides what to do with you.”
“That’s good,” Oliver said again, not sure what else to say. He wanted them released, but he supposed that they were just as guilty. “And Petunia? Have you heard from your sister?”
“Not since the first day,” Pansy said.
She pushed in next to Poppy so that she could see him around the guard’s elbow. She was as tall as Poppy, with shining dark-brown hair and blue eyes. An utterly lovely girl, as all the princesses were, yet Oliver thought Petunia was far more beautiful.
“We got one letter explaining that she’d gotten lost and had to find her own way to the manor, but nothing since. Did you really kidnap her?”
“It was an accident, but yes,” Oliver said. “She saw me and my brother with our masks off, so we snatched her before she could raise the alarm. She stayed with us one night, and then I took her to the manor. Quite unharmed, I assure you.”
“And things at the estate, they seemed … all right … to you?” Pansy pressed.
Oliver started to say that they had been fine, but then he stopped. “I don’t know.” He leaned forward a little, conscious more than ever of the guard. “Your Highnesses, I saw … creatures in the garden of the manor. People … made of shadow. I think they were trying to get to Petunia.” Oliver moved back a little, waiting for Poppy to scoff or Pansy to squeak in fright.
But both the princesses surprised him.
Poppy shrank back, and her hands twisted in her skirts. It was Pansy who stood up straighter and looked him in the eye.
“Shadowy creatures?” Pansy’s voice was shrill despite her stern posture. “What nonsense! Come, Poppy, we’re going.” She tugged Poppy’s arm to make her move.
Oliver stared after them. They’d believed him—he knew they had. But why were they pretending they hadn’t?
The guard glared at Oliver. “If you’re lying, there’s a special place in hell for you.” He slammed the door in Oliver’s face, locking it with a scraping of metal that made Oliver’s teeth ache.
He hadn’t been dreaming the shadows in the garden. One look at Poppy’s face told him that much, and Pansy’s and the guard’s reactions had confirmed it.
“But what are they?” Oliver asked his empty room.
After another night and morning spent pacing the tiny room, Oliver was frantic. His mother and Simon would be beside themselves with anxiety, he wanted reassurance that his men were all right, and he couldn’t stop wondering if the shadow creatures had gone after Petunia again.
Poppy had sent books to him with his dinner tray, but he couldn’t concentrate for more than a pair of minutes. Besides his personal distractions, the books were both rather dry histories of Westfalin. Oliver wasn’t sure whether Poppy was joking or she really thought such things riveting reading for the imprisoned. A scrap of paper fell from one as he leafed through it, but if it had been marking a particular page, he couldn’t find it now.
And then, just when he was expecting his lunch tray, King Gregor sent for him.
Oliver was taken to the same room where he had first met the king, with its long, dark table and the high-backed chairs full of scowling men. The king was at the head of the table, a broad-shouldered man with wiry gray hair and wild eyebrows at his left, a gentle-faced priest at his right. The men along each side of the table were all uniformly older, grim, and dressed in black. This made the pair sitting at the end of the table all the more striking.
Opposite King Gregor at the foot of the table was a young man with unfashionably short hair and a pair of silver knitting needles in his hands. By his side in a cushioned chair sat the only woman in the room. She was gravely beautiful, with golden brown hair held up with garnet-studded combs, a gleaming gold watch pinned to the bosom of her green gown. She was untangling a skein of gray yarn with her slender fingers, and Oliver thought that together the two of them looked remarkably like a woodcut he had seen of the Destinies. If the older man seated on the woman’s other side had been holding a knife, with which the Destinies sever the thread of a man’s life, it would have completed the picture. He was toying with a pen, to Oliver’s relief.
Oliver bowed to the king. “Your Majesty,” he murmured. Then he turned and bowed to the pair at the other end of the table. “Crown Prince Galen, Crown Princess Rose.”
“Smart lad,” grunted the man with the eyebrows at the king’s side. “I’ll give him that.”
“If you’re that smart, why did you turn yourself in, hey?” King Gregor barked.
“Because it was time,” Oliver said.
“Time to stop stealing from the innocent … time to stop stealing the innocent themselves?” King Gregor’s face was red. “If you did indeed abduct my youngest daughter—and why you would boast about it if you hadn’t, I don’t know—she hasn’t said a word about it, nor has the Grand Duchess Volenskaya von Hrothenborg, who is hosting Petunia at her estate!”
“My estate, if it please Your Majesty,” Oliver said, cutting across the bluster. He could see how his mother had quailed at the thought of facing the king.
Gregor thumped the table with his fist. “Still pretending to be an earl?”
“I am an earl,” Oliver said. “The Earl of Saxeborg-Rohlstein. My father was Caspar Gerhard Saxony, the twenty-fifth earl of Saxeborg-Rohlstein. My mother is the Dowager Countess Emily Ellsworth Saxony, once lady-in-waiting to Queen Maude, may her soul rest in peace. My father died in service to the crown, leading a regiment in the war with Analousia. When my mother brought me to Bruch to be confirmed in my title, she found that my earldom had been divided up and given to others, and Bretoners like herself were being accused of witchcraft.”
This statement was followed by the sharpest silence Oliver had ever experienced.
“Your Majesty, I believe that Heinrich might be some help in this matter,” said Prince Galen after the longest minute of Oliver’s life.