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“Brunel in Lutis. I assume we’re both thinking the same?” the King said after he’d scanned Thierry Auger’s message. “The Walrus of Albion isn’t quite as stupid as I thought. Have the troops along the Lotharainian border enforced, and make sure the crown prince doesn’t run out of elven dust.”
“That won’t be enough.” Hentzau rubbed his skin. The daylight coming through the high windows was granite gray, but it still hurt his eyes. “We need to sow unrest in their colonies so their troops can’t join forces. Anarchists in their cities. And we have to make sure the East is on our side. I suggest a present to the Tzar of Varangia. A present that will give him the military confidence to challenge Albion and Lotharaine.”
“And what present might have such a miraculous effect?”
...and be more enticing than what my lover could offer the Tzar? Neither of them would mention the Dark Fairy’s disappearance, though it was all the world could speak of.
“The present just dropped in our laps, Your Majesty.”
They both loved the game of reading their thoughts off each other’s faces. So many wars fought together. So much shared: defeats, triumphs, fear, rage, despair, relief...and the rush brought by the proximity of death.
“Interesting.” Kami’en looked out the window again. He pointed east. “How many men do you need?”
“Ten. More would be too conspicuous. I’d also like to take a few Man-Goyl.”
“Indeed? Didn’t you want me to shoot them all?”
“A good soldier adapts his strategy before the enemy expects him to.”
Kami’en smiled.
So much shared. The King’s Bloodhound would defend his King, let the pack tear him apart in the King’s stead. But first he’d put a bear by his side.
Once Upon A Time
Will was still awake when the phone rang. Two o’clock in the morning. Clara had put his mother’s old alarm clock on his desk. Clara had kept many of his mother’s things in the apartment, and she often asked Will about her, maybe because she’d never known her own mother.
He reached for his phone without wondering about the late hour. Clara had been working night shifts at the hospital for weeks, and Jacob was often out until dawn, and both of them knew Will rarely went to bed early. Even as a child, Will had feared his dreams, and since his time behind the mirror they’d turned into enemy territory.
“Will? Dr. Klinger. Clara works in my ward.”
“Yes?”
Dr. Klinger kept talking. The sound of the physician’s voice reminded Will of another call. The same mixture of soberness and empathy. “Your mother is deteriorating. You should come.” That call had not been unexpected, but this time the words were making no sense to him. She’d only just gone to work!
Dr. Klinger’s final words broke through his thoughts. “I’m sorry, that’s all I can say right now.”
Will left immediately. From the taxi, he desperately tried to reach Jacob.
Their mother hadn’t died in the hospital where Clara worked, but the elevator was the same, reminding Will of the weeks he’d spent visiting her. The elevator, the corridors, the smells...
The doctor was waiting for him. Will remembered having met him at a party Clara’s colleagues had organized for her when she published her first paper. “A sudden coma...Unconscious...One of the nurses found her.” Words that only conveyed the doctor’s helplessness. Will followed him into one of the rooms, and there she was. Sleeping.
Will had seen such a sleep before, but how could he ever explain to anyone in this world about the princess he’d found lying on a bed, covered in wilted roses? Clara’s coat was on a chair by the bed. Pinned to it was a brooch he’d never seen before. It was shaped like a moth, with black wings and silver tentacles.
The wrong world.
The doctor was uttering more helpless phrases. “Rare infection...An injury on her finger...Blood tests.” Will said nothing. What could he say? Had she been visited by a Fairy?
He asked Dr. Klinger to leave them alone. He approached her bed. No thorny brambles keeping him away, no tower. It’s so easy, Will. Kiss her. But she looked so alien, just as his mother had. He tried to forget where he was and to remember how he’d first met Clara, but all he got were other images: the gingerbread house, the cave, the disgust as she’d stroked his jade skin.
Just a kiss.
But all he did was stand there. Maybe his heart was still made of stone. How else could he have lost his love so easily? How could he betray her now? He just had to kiss her like he had then, remember that first time, in the hospital corridor, outside his mother’s room. Why were love and death such close neighbors?
He leaned down. Clara’s lips were so warm and familiar. But she didn’t wake up. And all Will could see was the dead girl in the rose tower, with her parchment skin and hair like bleached straw.
Wake up, Clara. I love you!
