A sudden shout of alarm rings out. A small figure ducks under a guard’s arm, running for Verette—
And it’s as if the princess tosses her mask aside. Verette throws a hand up to the guards as a little girl comes to a wheezing stop before her, something clenched in her cupped fists. Verette kneels, her face breaking into a warm smile, her voice too low to catch beneath the crowd’s murmurs. The little girl nods. Her hands open to reveal a curious little charm: a pale, crude seashell butterfly threaded on a loop of blue ribbon, the ribbon ends weighted with misty sea-glass beads and dangling like twin tails.
“I’m so sorry, Your Highness,” a man calls from behind the line of guards, wrought with worry and chagrin. “She just slipped away from me—she was working on it all last week—”
Verette stands, palming the charm as she takes the little girl’s hand in her own, then walks her over. “No, don’t apologize, this is lovely. Only a week? That’s incredible. I worked a whole month on my first one.”
“And the moth still came out lopsided,” King Enver calls after her. He makes a face at Teophine. “So much for staying on schedule, hm? Might as well get in the carriages so we can move along when she’s done.”
That feeling is back again, not so much a hair in her lashes now. No, this is like every time she’s looked at a sketch, andeven though she couldn’t see where just yet, sheknewsomehow it was—unbalanced.
Something’s not quite right with this picture.
Rapunzel would be lying if she said she didn’t actually appreciate that, for a moment, she gets the carriage to herself. Councilor Teophine, Minister Cressien, and King Enver are all in the first coach, and without Verette in hers, Rapunzel can take the chance to just breathe and stop worrying about the eggshells she’s walking on. (Or the shoes she was walking in.) As she looks out the window, her eyes are drawn up to the palace high on the hill, where hopefully Eugene is having a much easier time. Especially since she’s going to bore him senseless chattering about the sunmills later. There’s even one in the palace that she can…
Rapunzel’s train of thought snags. The palace sunmill’s sails are perfectly still.
If that’s how the palace gets its water, shouldn’t they be moving?
The door rattles and opens to admit Verette. A ghost of a smile still clings to her lips, and the charm still swings in her grasp. With a jolt, Rapunzel realizes the butterfly—no, moth—has a familiar iridescent shimmer to its surface, just like—
“What are those shells?” flies out of her mouth before she can give it the layer of polish it needs.
Caution darts through Verette’s expression, though Rapunzel wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t spotted it inEugene the past month when he thinks she’s not looking. The princess holds up the trinket as the carriage jolts into motion. “It’s a charm called a verette. According to an old legend, the moon is really a faraway cocoon woven by moths each month, and when they hatch, they carry blessings down to the earth, and their bodies are left behind as seashells. You make verettes for others so the blessings find them, and since it’s my namesake, people like to give them to me around my birthday.”
“That’s really sweet,” Rapunzel says with a touch of envy. Of course she’s grateful for the extravagant gifts everyone gave her at the ball, but everyone likes wine, jewelry, expensive things. There’s something irreplaceable in a token that’s made just foryou.
There’s also a critical part of her question that’s gone unanswered.
“So,” she tries again, “do those white shells have a name too?”
Verette tilts into mild bewilderment again, bordering on suspicion. “Verai, in Old Asteran. Moth-shells. Why?”
“I’d love to find some before I go. They make this fantastic paint that’s really hard to find. Nothing else catches the light the same way.” Rapunzel sees Verette frowning at the seashell moth and realizes she skipped a step. “They’re ground into powder and mixed with a binding medium—”
“You crush them up?” Verette asks, voice verging on strangled.
“Is that wrong?” Rapunzel wrings her skirt in her hands.
For a brief moment, the only sound is the staccato of hoofbeats and the creak of the carriage. Then Verette’s expression closes off again. “No. It’s fine.”
It isexcruciatinglynot fine.
Rapunzel wishes Eugene were here. He does a sort of social alchemy, transmuting awkwardness and blunders into laughter and newly minted inside jokes, and Rapunzel’s still trying to pick apart the formulas behind that.
But he’s not here, and silence makes an unwieldy third passenger in the carriage for the rest of the ride, the charm still clenched tight in Verette’s hand.
Six
Eugene
Eugene doesn’t exactly have a large polling sample to draw from, but if he had to rate the Asteran palace, at present, he’d give it a generous seven out of ten.
Is ittechnicallybigger than Rapunzel’s palace? Sure. Is the view from every single balcony majestic? Unarguably. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Well, there are some interesting architectural motifs, like leaf-shaped archways and columns carved in spirals, and somehow all the stone has what can only be described as an ineffable glow, so, academically speaking, yes.
But they’ve been here since late yesterday afternoon, andstillhaven’t had a formal tour of the palace yet. (Deduction: half a point.)
Minister Cressien’s room in the guest quarters is wedged squarely between Eugene’s and Rapunzel’s. (Deduction: half a point.)
