He bowed and gestured to the mirror. "After you, my dearest."
Swiftly they stepped through, leaving the suite silent and empty, waiting for its new occupants.
Rosa was perfectly happy to put her new crown in the hands of the attendants who were hovering nervously beside her, waiting for her to give it over. She really had no idea how Lily had put up with that much weight on her head. She was already getting the signs of a headache.
Siegfried seemed just as happy about being rid of his. "Are they gone?" he asked, as the attendants took the crowns away to be locked up. Even in a kingdom as wealthy as Eltaria, the two State Crowns were priceless, every gem — and there were exactly one hundred gems, large and small in each crown — matched and flawless, and enough gold in them to stagger the imagination.
"Let me check." Rosa took out her own little mirror, and the face of Jimson's third apprentice appeared in it without her prompting.
"Sylvie, are the Godmother and Jimson gone from here?" she asked.
"Not only gone home, but retired to the bedchamber and locked the door!" giggled the Mirror Spirit. "Shameless!"
Rosa slipped the mirror onto the hanger on the wall and laughed.
"Indeed! You would think that after three hundred years they would have some decorum!"
"l don't know about that," Siegfried replied, slipping his arms around her from behind and kissing the top of her head. "We don't have anything pressing, you know. That sounds like a good idea to me — "
"We still have to say goodbye to Leopold, so he has some daylight to travel by," she reminded him, and he mock pouted.
"All right. Let's go say our farewells to the rogue so we can get back to more important business." At her raised eyebrow, he retorted, "What? Making an heir isn't important?"
"Shush, you." She batted at his hands, and he released her with a laugh that made her shiver a little at the promise in it.
They made their way out to the garden — closed off from the public, and for once, empty of the courtiers. The public were being feted in tents out in that enormous field — after all, it wouldn't do for them to say they had been cheated of a coronation celebration! — and the Court having a celebration of their own in pavilions in the orchard.
Which left the garden free for someone who needed space to say his farewells. Like Leopold.
And Leopold's new wife.
Who was currently berating her father and getting the best of the argument.
As Rosa and Siegfried entered the garden they could already hear her. She had a very impressive voice, and the lungs behind it to make sure people got her point. Siegfried held out his hand, and the royal pair stopped just out of the immediate vicinity of the three. The stunning and statuesque blonde woman in the gold armor had her hands on her shapely hips and, from the look of it, had been dressing her father down for some time. "...and did I, or did I not do exactly what you wanted by helping Sieglinde escape?" she asked the old, white bearded man acerbically. "And never mind what you told Mother about her! And never mind what Mother told you . Goddess of the hearth and marriage be damned, she has no right to go around trying to murder poor pregnant girls who got wyrded into falling in love! That makes no more sense than punishing a fish because it can't breathe air!"
He rubbed at his eye patch uncomfortably. "Well — yes — but — Brunnhilde — "
"So since I did what you wanted,why was I punished for it?" she demanded.
He fidgeted and wouldn't look at her. "I — promised your mother — "
"Promises you had no intention of keeping! And you knew what was going to happen! You knew very well that once Siggy woke me, the whole wretched saga was going to play out. Erda told you. And I know she told you, because she told me she told you!" Brunnhilde actually stamped her foot at him. "Half of your problems are because you keep too many secrets, and the other half are because you bring them on yourself. So why punish me for them?"
Leopold stood to the side, arms folded, lips compressed as he tried not to smile. And when Brunnhilde's father turned to him for help, clearly counting on a man to support another man, he shook his head.
"I have no idea what you two are talking about," he replied. "So don't ask me to take sides here."
Brunnhilde had gotten the bit in her teeth and was not going to be stopped now. Clearly she had been saving this up for some time. "So. You lie to Mother, you manipulate me, you manage to lay the blame for everything that happens on me and set me up to be the instrument for everything that is going to go wrong! You set me up to fall in love with mynephew of all the perverted things, and put everything in motion to make my life total misery and end in — "
"Dooooooom!" trilled the firebird from the tree above their heads.
"Exactly," Brunnhilde glared at her father. "And now you actually have the nerve to come here, think you're going to force me to give up my husband, and take exception to me for wanting to keep doom and destruction and the end of the gods from happening?"
"Your mother — " the old man said feebly.
"My mother is a manipulative idiot," Brunnhilde said bitterly. "You're another. And you two deserve each other, and you should just go home and slap each other to sleep. I am not going to repeat your mistakes." Then, out of nowhere, a slow, sly smile crept over her face. "And by the way,Father, I made sure you can't repeat your own."
Alarm contorted the old man's face. Leopold snickered.
"Brunnhilde — what did you do — "
She turned her attention to her nails, examining them critically, then buffing them on the leather strap of her breastplate. "Oh, nothing much. I just got that ring and returned it to the River Maidens."
The old man's eyes bulged. "You — what?"
"Well, I didn't renounce love!" she snapped. "And Siggy was smart enough when the bird warned him to leave it alone! No one else knew where Fafnir was. So Siggy told me where he'd left it, and I got it and gave it back to them. No more cheating and lying over it. No more trying to barter away the other goddesses over it. And no more betraying your own children over it. It's back in the river where it belongs and now there's going to be no downfall of the gods, either. There's no escape from the consequences of what you do now, Father. You're just going to have to face Mother and learn to deal with each other now."
"I — she — you — "
"What's more, my sisters have decided they aren't going to be so quick to jump to your orders anymore, either. They're tired of picking up dead men. They'd like some live ones of their own. What are you going to do, put them on rocks with circles of fire around them?" She sniffed. "Siggy and Leo will find them Princes if you do. Niffleheim! I will find them Princes if I have to! I'm sure there are entire marshes full of frog princes that would like to find a sleeping princess that can't run away when they try to get a kiss! So there. This whole cycle of family drama is over, Father. You just get on that thing you call a horse, and ride back to Mother, anddeal with it."
She crossed her arms over her chest, in a pose uncannily like Leopold's, and glared at the old man. Rosa and Siegfried hung back — in no small part because Siegfried really would rather not have had his grandfather notice him —
Alas, too late. In the vain attempt to look at anything but his daughter, Wotan glanced to the side and spotted both of them.