Enver decides to push even harder. “Well, if you decide to spend more time in Astera, perhaps you’ll come up with a way around that challenge. Long-distance relationships aren’t for everyone.”
Eugene can’t tell if that’s a condolence or a threat.
A bell rings to mark the hour, and Enver starts. “Oh, bother, I’ve lost track of time. They’re going to start the invitations any minute now. We’d best be off.”
“Of course.” Eugene bows and heads for the door, passing the desk on the way.
He can’t make out much beneath the array of papers, but it looks like there’s a…map? A red ink line arcs across the pale blue of a sea, its arrowhead terminating on a familiar coastline labeledKourenne.
Does Enver mean to follow them back home?
Eugene keeps the confusion off his face until he’s exited the office and bowed to the king, who rattles off orders to Hughes before striding away.
Hughes hangs back a moment. “Everything in order, Fitzherbert?”
Eugene makes sure, once again, that no one’s watching. Then he swiftly passes Hughes a heavy iron key.
Enver’s key to the entrance of the Starlight Spring.
After all, Eugene didn’t need an apology, not really. He just needed an opening to pick the king’s pocket.
“All in order,” he says smugly—then sobers. “But there’s a map on his desk, under his papers. I think it shows a sea route back to our kingdom. And when I came in, he tried to hide it.”
Hughes’s face tightens. “Perhaps he means to send Princess Verette back with you.”
“Or actually pass on the throne and return with us himself,” Eugene suggests. “Or maybe he wants to do a kingdom swap? Is that a thing people do?”
That only seems to trouble the chamberlain more. He stows the iron key in a pocket. “We need to get this to Councilor Teophine right away,” Hughes breathes through his teeth. “No matter what the king is up to, I’m certain we’re going to need it.”
Hughes leads them back to the audience hall and vanishes into the crowd; Eugene does the same, though he’s weaving his way over to Rapunzel. She beams when she sees him, andexcuses herself from a knot of hoity-toity bureaucrats. When he reaches her, she whispers, “We have a problem.”
That wasn’t what Eugene expected to hear. “What?”
Her hands have been linked behind her back. She furtively whips one around. Pascal is huddled on her wrist, blending seamlessly into her lilac sleeve.
“Somebodydecided to stow away on my dress again,” Rapunzel grits through a sunny smile. “And I won’t have a chance to take him back to my room.”
“Maybe he can fend for himself,” Eugene suggests. Rapunzel scowls, and he throws up his hands. “Pascaldidtrip Gothel so she fell off the tower. I’m just saying, when the chips are down, that frog has the instincts of a stone-cold killer.”
Pascal blinks at him, somehow imbuing the movement with a myriad of implications, all of them sinister.
Eugene relents. “I’ll drop him off when we head out.”
“Thankyou.” Rapunzel tucks Pascal into the crook of her elbow. “How did it go with the king?”
“Weird,” Eugene says, muffling the words in a canapé he snagged on his way across the hall. “Successful but weird. He was hinting that I should stay in Astera.”
Rapunzel’s face drops. “What?Why?”
“No clue,” Eugene says. “He also has a sea route charted out to follow us home, I think.”
Rapunzel’s nose wrinkles as she thinks. “The tree takes years to grow each apple, so even if he’s eating them, he could have traveled in between…so if he wanted to leave, whywait untilnow?” Then her head tilts. She looks up at Eugene. “Wait…do youwantto stay here?”
The prospect of honesty has only grown more daunting after all these weeks—but didn’t Cressien warn him it would never get easier? Eugene takes a deep breath. “The funny thing is…I’ve been expecting your parents to ask me to leave. I mean, they’d be nice about it, but at the end of the day, I know I’m not who most people, let alone royalty, want courting their daughter.”
“Did they say something to you?” Rapunzel demands.
“Also funny, Cressien asked almost exactly that. And then he told me how wrong I was. And he might have gotten me a new job.” Eugene doesn’t realize he’s nervously wadding up the half-eaten canapé in a napkin until it’s too late. “Point is, I was afraid there wasn’t a place for me in the palace in the long run. And now…I feel like it’s exactly where I could belong.”
