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Desperately Ever After
(Book 1)

 

The Marestam Mirror

DIAMOND ROPES AND VELVET CAKE
By Perrin Hildebrand, “King” of Gossip

Editor’s note: One year ago today, Perrin Hildebrand redefined the meaning of gossip with his inaugural “Diamond R­­opes and Velvet Cake” column, serving up an unprecedented buffet of secrets plucked from the crème de la crème of Marestam. Today, the wily and fiendishly gifted eavesdropper (even his employer isn’t privy to his true identity) renews his vow to leave no rumor untapped—friendship or kinship be damned. “It is my continued goal, as the Mirror’s prized gossip guru, to pass down every blip of blue-blooded hearsay that causes so much as a flick of my eyelash. As I’ve said before: Loyal readers of the realm, keep watch. Royal leaders … watch out!”

 

WHAT better way to start my anniversary column than with the man whose very existence promises I’ll never retire for lack of material?

History tells us that King Donner’s “beast” curse broke four years ago, when his then-prisoner Belle poured her heart out seconds before he bit the dust. You know the story: The skies opened. His fur molted. They kissed. He swiped her chains for a ring. They professed undying love and fidelity. Blah blah blah.

But guess what? The ladies who know better (and there are plenty) are laughing hysterically as they read this. Cursed or not, there’s still plenty of WOLF left in the Braddax leader—and it’s been devouring the menus at Marestam’s raciest nightclubs, greasing palms in exchange for silence, and slinking through back doors with harems as large and sparkly as the jewels in his wife’s tiara. (A tiara that, need I spell out, has remained in the clouds with its dewy-eyed owner this entire time.)

This week, yours truly witnessed the debauchery firsthand in the VIP room at Club Dahlia. Says the royal mouthpiece: “Despite battling a serious cold, His Majesty was keeping his promise to show a group of foreign ambassadors around the realm. Any allegations that King Donner was out of line come from blathering carousers unable to tell the difference between cough syrup grogginess and inebriation.”

Cough syrup? Ambassadors? Right. And that ear-splitting rendition of “Mustang Sally” was just practice for his next State of the Kingdom address.

 

MEANWHILE, just a few miles south in Carpale, King Aaron is working hard enough for Donner and all the other crown-wearing figureheads of our beloved United Kingdoms. Just yesterday, in fact, I overheard Prime Minister Angus Kane commanding him to take a vacation. “Every other monarch in Marestam fulfills their duties by cutting ribbons and throwing parties,” he said. “So, it baffles me why the illustrious King Charmé spends more time scrutinizing parliamentary law than the blokes who actually need votes to stay in power. Mark my words. If he doesn’t step away and bring Cinderella to a tropical island soon, I’ll take her and he can manage all five kingdoms from my seat.”

I don’t know which is more scandalous: Kane’s proposition or my suspicion that Cinderella might actually take him up on it.

We all know that the servant-girl-turned-queen didn’t intend to get knocked up at the very start of her honeymoon ten years ago. Nor did she expect her in-laws to retire the moment they heard, upending those year-long vacation plans and shackling her to the throne long before she was ready.

Yes, Cinderella has been a remarkable sport about it—piling her days with charity luncheons, popping out a kid every two years, and beaming as gracefully as the day she walked into Aaron’s find-me-a-wife ball. But inside sources tell me she’s having a surprisingly tough time dealing with her looming thirtieth birthday. Aaron would best remember that even fairytale marriages take work. And by my calculations, he still owes her eleven months of world-romping, jaw-dropping, child-and-chore-less honeymoon bliss.

 

I SEE no more appropriate way to conclude my anniversary column than with a lesson gleaned from Rapunzel Delmonico—publicist extraordinaire, feminist hero, and the diamond-crusted dagger no man can resist plunging into his heart.

The voice of the unfettered woman, Rapunzel has no royal title, no ring on that finger, and no designs on ever acquiring either. (Quote: “I’d rather leap headfirst from the Prince Williams Bridge than marry into a royal family—if I ever decide to marry at all.)

In her continued quest to make up for twenty years locked in a tower with no male companionship, Rapunzel was spotted this week canoodling with three acclaimed entertainers, Playdame’s Mr. November, the heir to the Carbury Diamonds fortune, and last season’s Carpale Canaries MVP. Total net worth of this week’s conquests: $87 billion. Not bad for a woman whose parents sold her to a witch so they could feed their addiction to rampion.

Keep it up, gorgeous. I’ll be here when you’re done playing around.

 

Chapter One
Belle

 

The girl with the puffy cheeks cupped her hands beneath the metal spout, pinched her eyes in concentration, and watched the stream of oats dump safely into her palms. Sealing her fingers tight, she spun around and flashed a jumpy grin toward her audience. From the bench, Belle curled her lips up and nodded. She’d read somewhere that smiling could trick the brain into believing everything was wonderful. From where she sat—alone by the petting zoo at Braddax Wildlife Park, blocking a bin of discarded headlines from her view—it seemed like a bunch of hooey.

Too pure to understand this or too young to care, the girl continued her performance. Hoisting up her sausage-link knees, she toddled toward the fence and scrunched her nose at the goats. They stared back and smacked their chops, but she wasn’t ready yet. Rather than open her fists, the little dervish laughed and twirled in wide, tangerine circles. The animals nudged forward. The king billy grunted but dared not look away. Clearly, she knew how to keep a guy interested. Belle could learn a thing or two.

Taking mental notes, she watched the child crouch toward the asphalt, take a sharp, determined breath, and then pop dramatically to her feet.

Two arms flew up. Her fists opened. The oats rocketed into the sky and plopped at the grateful animals’ hooves. Belle looked away for one second to watch the frenzy when—

A pained wail filled the air. “Mommy!”

Belle whipped back. A crumpled sundress hugged the ground, its owner bawling and red. Belle’s heart flew halfway up her throat. She jerked forward, needing to scoop her up, to dry her tears, to beg forgiveness and promise to never take a single eye off her again.

But her feet remained planted. The girl’s mother was already there, bringing with her a beachball belly and a scrawny man wearing fluorescent shorts and a fanny pack. They immediately set about kissing every scrape, linking fingers and foreheads, retying their daughter’s traitorous shoelaces, and locking her in a human cocoon.

Taking in the moment from afar, Belle felt both a warmth and a sting. She wanted to share in this forever, to imagine how it might feel to comfort her child like that. To be someone’s best friend from birth. To create life with a humble man who would enjoy family zoo day, sport a fanny pack in public, and wear shorts that might possibly be visible from space. But the moment was already tarnished. Donner could do that from miles away.

In her head, Belle could hear his disdain for the father’s outfit and the way he scampered behind his wife. She could sense him, with his black-on-black ensemble and petroleum hair, poking fun at the entire scene. Clothes aren’t supposed to be blinding, he’d say. He’s carrying his wife’s purse atop his manhood, for crying out loud, and that little girl clearly has them wrapped around her finger. The next kid better be a boy, for his sake. At least that might even the field a little. Oh, and family zoo day is so plebian.

Belle liked to blame her husband’s attitude on jealousy, on a defense mechanism that ridiculed what he wanted but couldn’t seem to get. She believed that’s how it started, anyway; but she also feared that years of failure had made it permanent. When it came to self-preservation, the brain was a phenomenal liar. And painfully gullible.

Belle looked away and brushed a layer of cherry blossoms off her book. She scanned the same paragraph nine times until the family moved on, bubbling over with plans to feed the giraffes next, then see the penguins, then share a grape snow cone by the elephant pen. She sat there for another hour, piggybacking off other people’s memories until the clouds made her sunglasses suspicious and her blonde wig began to overheat.

Belle didn’t need the disguise for personal safety. The biggest threat to a Marestam royal was the paparazzi, and they never seemed too interested in her. She didn’t need the chauffeur waiting in the parking lot either, but she hadn’t the heart for public transportation these days. In a constitutional polymonarchy, Belle believed a queen’s preeminent duty was to give the people hope. She hid because, lately, hope just wasn’t in the cards.

“Did you enjoy the animals, Your Majesty?” Belle heard as she slid into the limo and released her long, brown locks.

“Please, Murray. Don’t call me that unless Donner’s around.” Her voice was frail beneath the whoosh of the freeway and the jungle sounds being pumped through the parking lot speakers. “And yes, they were adorable.”

“Adorable?” Murray chuckled. “You must’ve skipped the Reptile House then. Took my niece there once and nearly lost my lunch. All those slithering lizards with their bulging eyes and flicking tongues. I swear one was the spitting image of the Prime Minister. Definitely not what I’d call adorable.”

Belle watched him circle the car and hop into the front seat. Murray didn’t need to know why she really came to the zoo, though she suspected he already did. She suspected the entire castle did.

“You know my niece’s favorite part?” he continued from behind the wheel. “Feeding the goats. You believe that? Here you’ve got the greatest collection of animals in the world, and she goes for goats.”

B elle gave a small smile and looked out the window. The girl with the puffy cheeks still weighed heavily on her mind. If that had been her daughter, would she have caught her before she fell? Anticipated her energetic leap, triple-checked her shoelaces, and prevented the stumble? Was maternal instinct something that kicked in as soon as the baby got kicked out, she wondered, or could a person be pre-programmed for negligence? Maybe that’s why her body was taking so long—the universe knew she wasn’t fit to start a family.

No. Belle shook the thought away. She was not her mother. If anything, she would be overly doting—suffocating, perhaps. But never callous. Never gone.

It had to happen soon. Queens always had babies. That’s just how it worked. Cinderella got pregnant mere weeks into her honeymoon. Dawn had barely woken from her sleeping curse before she was expecting twins. Snow was probably waiting for the stars to align in the shape of a heart or the cosmos to sit in perfect celestial harmony before she started; but then she’d surely pop out six kids in one sitting. Belle was just taking a bit longer.

Murray’s voice pulled her from her wallowing. “Homeward?” Judging from his tone and the way he’d twisted all the way around to look at her, he’d asked at least once already.

Belle leaned forward and palmed his headrest. She hated sitting in the back, like some sort of demigod, when it was just the two of them. But it was one of Donner’s rules. Social supremacy was all the monarchies had left, he’d said, evidently discounting the riches and forgetting that he had no interest in politics anyway.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You caught me daydreaming again. Have you heard from Donner?” Murray’s eyes shifted to the left, but he didn’t answer. Donner had no day job, no philanthropic interests, and no family in Marestam save for her. But making sense of his schedule—sometimes nipping at her heels all day, other times as elusive as the wind—was impossible. “I’m just wondering if he’s back yet.”

Murray shook his graying head. “Last I heard, His Majesty took the roadster over to Regian. Probably hitting the links. Want me to call the clubhouse? Maybe you can join him for a post-round cocktail.”

Belle shuddered at the thought. Five years ago, Donner would have relished such a surprise and praised her to all his colleagues as “the only woman in the world virtuous enough to make me human again.” Now, he would probably just berate her for keeping tabs on him—and doing it unfashionably, to boot.

“That’s all right.” She stretched her lips into a smile and held it for as long as she could. Besides, today was pee-on-a-stick day again, and she preferred fielding the bad news alone. “To the castle we go.”

 

* * *

 

The first thing Belle noticed when the timer went off was that the hem on her dress was beginning to fray. She’d just slipped out of her cozy cotton ensemble and wriggled into a floor-length gown with lace appliqué and dainty cap sleeves. It was her standard “house” outfit—a head-to-toe costume that assured the world (and her) that she wasn’t making this whole royalty thing up.

The next thing she noticed, while hovering over the veined marble sink in the master bathroom, caused both her knees to buckle: The window was blue.

Blue.

The tiny plastic window on the tiny plastic stick was blue.

Belle blinked a dozen times and leaned into the dark walnut paneling for support. She checked the box again to make sure, but there was no question. Pregnant. Blue meant pregnant. Yes, pregnant, blue. Trembling, she exhaled for the first time in half a decade and pulled the test to her chest. Then she realized she was hugging a stick sopped with urine. It fell into the sink with a clatter, flipped over a few times and swirled around the basin before finally coming to rest on the brushed brass drain, window side up. Belle peered at it with fading disbelief, as if leaning over a casket of someone she wasn’t aware had died. Then her lips catapulted into an ear-to-ear smile.

Pacing along the hand-knotted rug Donner had paid a fortune to import, Belle didn’t know what to do first. Should she call him now? Unveil it slowly the way she’d been planning since their wedding night? Verify it with the doctor first?

Right. She stopped. At-home tests could be wrong. She marched toward the door, then stopped again. Dr. Frolick would be leaving the hospital any minute, and midtown Carpale would be a traffic nightmare. But holding back her secret until an official medical exam? Impossible. Donner had waited years for this news and she’d been waiting ages to tell it. Finally, he would need her again … for much more than the one-and-done snapping of a curse. Finally, they would have their glue. But she had to be sure.

The solution was sitting in the back of her wardrobe—stashed behind the lingerie but not so far back as the baby clothes piled neatly in airtight bins. With one big heave, she dragged out a cardboard box filled to the brim with shiny pink and blue packets. The box was dated four years earlier, back when she was testing her hormones three times a day, tracking her temperature every morning, banishing alcohol entirely, and making sure Donner had every opportunity to put his little guys to work. After forty straight months of disappointment, she’d plucked out a handful and shoved the rest out of sight. Today, she needed them all.

Using her gown as a basket, Belle scooped out as many packets as she could and hauled them into the bathroom. Ten pints of water later, she sat on the cold marble floor, her dress puffed out like lemon meringue, in a daze. The space around her twinkled with scraps of pink foil and the edge of the Jacuzzi shone silver beneath two dozen sticks with little plastic windows. All of them were blue.

Was it weird that she wasn’t literally dancing on the air? That the skies hadn’t magically opened to tell all of Braddax that her struggle was finally over? No more herbs promising miracle cures. No more sketchy medical treatments. No more nights spent alone because Donner preferred the west tower study to the warmth of his wife. The moment was too monumental to truly take in, but Belle knew exactly how she wanted to let it out. The cook wasn’t going to like it.

“Relieved?” Sheridan repeated, her eyes larger than the ladle bouncing off her palm. “What on earth do you mean I’m relieved? Your Highness, I—”

“Please,” Belle begged. “Of all the titles I keep asking you not to call me, ‘Your Highness’ has to be the worst.”

Sheridan exhaled with such force, pockets of flour launched into the air, creating a swirling mist between them. “Your Majesty,” she said, grinding the words with her teeth. “I plan each one of your meals eight days in advance. I’ve spent the last two hours stuffing tonight’s lamb chops, slicing tonight’s vegetables, and finishing the base for tonight’s soufflé. Are you trying to put me out of a job?” She eyed the Queen’s fidgeting feet and the hands Belle had no idea what to do with. “How about I pour you a nice glass of chardonnay, and you can relax in the library until dinner is ready. The kitchen is really no place for a queen.”

Belle took a calming breath, declined the alcohol as politely as she could, and suggested that Sheridan enjoy her own meal for once. “I can handle it,” she added. “Don’t forget, I used to cook for a family of fourteen.”

Sheridan’s brows rose slightly, catching the little white exaggeration. While it was true that Belle had eleven siblings, most of them had moved out by the time she became unofficial caretaker at age eight. That was after the bankruptcy. After the disgrace. After her father left his dignity behind and her mother just plain left.

Sheridan hooked both hands around her waist—not an easy task for a woman her size—and narrowed her eyes. “What’s the occasion?”

“Occasion?” Belle looked away. “There’s no occasion. I just want to make my husband a special dinner.”

The right side of Sheridan’s lip curled as she tapped her orthotics on the marble floor. “And you don’t think I can make a special dinner? I was feeding this family long before you came along. For heaven’s sake. I even kept you from starving when I was under that blasted curse, didn’t I?”

Belle’s fidgets had become squirms and her lashes were a moment away from fluttering off their lids. She didn’t want to be pushy—she barely knew how—but Donner deserved to hear her news first. “Sheridan,” she said, struggling to harden her voice. “The only way you might lose your job tonight is if you continue to ignore my wishes.” Her gut clenched to protest this rudeness, but she kept going. “I want to cook a nice meal for my husband and I want to do it alone. I’m more than capable. It’s really not that hard.”

The last line was overly harsh, and Belle regretted it instantly. “I’m sorry,” she blurted, reaching for Sheridan’s arm. “I just really need to do this.”

The cook’s eyes softened. Then they panned Belle from diamond tiara to shimmering patent leather heels, and flipped back in her head. With a slight snorting sound, she unlaced her apron and thrust it out in a ball. “It’d be a shame to ruin such a pretty dress.” She scooped up her keys and headed for the door. “Call me before the castle goes up in flames.”

Belle did a silent celebration and went over the menu in her head: baby carrots, stuffed salmon bites, shrimp, baby bok choy, miniature apple pies, and strawberry/blueberry truffles. She found a bottle of sparkling cider in the back of the wine cellar and then got lost peeling, slicing, mixing, creaming, kneading, rolling, and crimping. The smells that swirled through the air were so thick, so sweet, she could practically feel them inching up her back, tickling her nose. They took her back to another place—not a better place, exactly. She could never call her childhood a better place. But everything looked rosier in hindsight, especially over food.

Back when her family collapsed, food was the only thing that could stitch it back together—for a little while, anyway. When the bank repossessed the manor house and they moved to a secluded two-bedroom cottage, peach crisp brought the survivors together for a few moments of laughter. When her father stopped wanting to exist, almond cookies brought out a shadow of his old smile. When her sisters were feeling particularly nasty, chocolate truffles gave Belle a head start and sometimes even persuaded them to leave her alone for an afternoon. Back then, baking gave Belle the temporary illusion of control and seemed to be the only way she could please people without simultaneously pissing them off.

Living at Braddax Castle had made her a little rusty. She took longer than necessary with the salmon and had to research how to cook bok choy, but soon everything was on autopilot. By the time the pies hit the oven, Braddax Castle smelled as if it stood upon bricks of sugar. As she rested in front of the window, sucking on a spatula and watching the sun set over the gardens, she recalled the only decent lessons her mother ever taught her: That the cook always got to lick the spoon, and that no recipe was written in stone. (It wasn’t until later that Belle realized her mother felt the same way about promises.)

After rinsing off the spatula and laying it out to dry, Belle let out a satisfied sigh and placed both hands across her belly, which already felt a bit rounder. “Thanks for the help,” she whispered to her tiny tenant. “When you’re born, we’ll do this a lot. Just like I did with—”

She bristled and bit her tongue.

“I’ve got big plans for you,” she said instead. “For you, me, and your daddy. We’ve been waiting for you for a long time, you know.” Belle wondered for a moment whether babies were able to hear at four weeks, but then decided she didn’t care. She was going to have a real relationship with her child even if it started out one-sided. “You know, we were worried for a little while there. But all that matters now is that you’re coming. And we’re going to be a family—a real family, not just by blood. We’re going take you places, and play with you, and support you, and protect you, and give you lots and lots of siblings—nice siblings.” She cupped both hands across her belly as if willing it to grow in front of her. “I promise you’ll always have two parents who love you. Now, let’s go decorate for Daddy. He should be home any minute.”

 

* * *

 

The evening turned out beautifully. The deep red roses looked exquisite scattered along the delicate lace tablecloth. The ivory tapers gave the cavernous dining room just the right romantic glow. The carrots and bok choy were soft but not mushy. The salmon bites were flakey and sweet. The champagne flutes they’d received as wedding gifts disguised the nonalcoholic cider perfectly. The only thing Belle had yet to eat was her mini apple pie. It was only fair that she leave something to share with her husband—if he ever decided to show up.

Resting her head against the dining room window as the playlist looped for the fourth time, Belle felt like she’d already disappointed her baby. It wasn’t unusual for Donner to keep her waiting, and she hadn’t summoned him home … but tonight was important. Somehow, the universe should have let him know.

A quick call to the gatehouse went unanswered. That’s right. She’d sent the entire staff home. In hindsight, it would have been a good idea to keep their security detail.

A heavy feeling of déjà vu washed over her. She was suddenly eighteen again, terrified and alone again in a cold, dark place. She’d just traded her freedom to save her father. A spectacular spread of food had appeared out of nowhere. Her dining companion was somewhere in the shadows. And then, just like now, she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted him to appear.

Belle blinked the memory away. That time was over. Donner was human now, and she was his wife. His very angry wife at the moment, but his wife nonetheless.

She thought about calling him, but didn’t trust what she’d say. She debated strolling the gardens to clear her head, but it was thundering in the distance and she couldn’t risk getting caught in a storm—not now that someone else’s life was at stake.

The only thing Belle knew for sure was that she couldn’t listen to their wedding song one more time.

With a huff, she grabbed the remote and fumbled for the right series of commands. Power? No. Input, then Power? No. Current Activity, Input, Music, Power?

Instantly, all the sounds rushing through the dining room got sucked into oblivion—all except for a piercing, maniacal laugh. Belle froze. Every hair on her arms spiked. She listened again, but there was nothing. Was she hearing things? Going crazy? No. The noise had broken off suddenly—as if gagged by the night itself. But she’d heard it.

With her heart throbbing in her ears, she blew out the closest taper, clutched the candlestick to her chest, and tiptoed into the hallway. She crept up the stairs shoeless and two-by-two. If her childhood had taught her anything, it was that fewer footfalls meant fewer creaks—the kiss of death for a bullied little sister. But she didn’t have puffy dresses back then—puffy dresses that made horrid swiping sounds every time she moved.

The second floor was entirely dark save for the picture sconces lining the hallway, which gave it an eerie glow. Rarely did she feel comfortable in Braddax Castle—with its musty smell and long, windowless corridors—but right now she feared the gargoyles might physically wrench themselves from the walls at any moment and ambush her.

She checked the master bedroom first, flinging the door open and throwing herself at the chandelier switch. But the light fell only on overstuffed leather chairs and a dramatic four-poster bed. Next came the bathroom—with its cavernous walk-in shower; the his-and-hers carved wardrobes; and the airy turret alcove Donner hid behind aubergine velvet drapes. All empty. Room by room, Belle continued her inspection. She tried the library, the guest rooms, the powder rooms, Donner’s office (just a peek from the threshold), and the loggia, all to no avail.

The only place remaining was the one place she didn’t want to go—the study in the tower at the farthest end of the third floor hallway, which somewhere along the line had become Donner’s private hideaway.

As she slunk toward the staircase, the stoic portraits of the former kings of Braddax seemed to track her, each washed from below by a ghostly white uplight. This was without a doubt the gloomiest and most desolate section of the gloomiest and most desolate royal residence in all of Marestam.

Just ten miles away, Carpale Castle—with Parliament in its basement, Cinderella’s family on the top floor, and countless administrative offices in the middle—was busier than a shopping mall. Riverfell Palace, set amidst the idyllic brownstones of Prospect Slope, looked like a dollhouse stretched across five city blocks. Regian Castle’s glass and steel framework was a bit too modern for Belle’s tastes, but at least it had no shortage of sunlight. Even a weathered hillside cottage had its merits over this fortress of darkness.

Belle paused at the portrait of Donner’s father, who’d died decades earlier but whose scandalous antics lived on. The physical resemblance between father and son was uncanny—huge shoulders; strong, square jaw; deep, brooding eyes; beautifully bronzed skin that Belle couldn’t achieve if she spent three months in a tanning bed; and a shadowy aura that drew women in like quicksand. The more they struggled, the deeper they sank. The only difference between the generations, as far as Belle could tell, came in how they wore their hair: trim and simple for the father, designer chaos for the son.

At the end of the hallway, Belle stopped. The candlestick shook in her hands as she eyed the staircase and began to climb.

She wound her way up until her foot touched the landing and her fist bumped against a thick black curtain. She tilted her head to examine it. Velvet. Double layered and weighted to the floor. What had he done with the tasteful organza panels tied open with silk ribbons?

Bracing for a crazed intruder or a royal stalker, Belle slid the curtain aside and silently nudged her way in. Blue light streamed through a floor-to-ceiling window, skipped over a mound of dirty clothes, and landed on the chaise sofa. She crept farther in, feeling for a light switch and trying to ignore the smell. Had Donner spilled a bottle of his cologne? Or bleach?

She braced as the floor creaked beneath her. Then came movement, followed by a sharp thud.

“What are you doing?”

Belle’s heart shot into her throat. She twirled around, candlestick in hand. Something crashed to the floor. A bright light seared her eyes, then slowly softened. A massive figure stood in the doorway, hoisting the curtain in his fist. Donner.

“Belle. What are you doing here?” he repeated as Belle searched for her voice. He stepped inside and unbuttoned his sports coat. It had a powdery stain on the front and was in dire need of an iron.

“Donner?” Belle edged back and lowered the candlestick. “I thought—” She swallowed. “I mean I—I heard a noise when I was downstairs. A laugh. I came up to investigate but…” She trailed off while scanning the study. “I checked all the other rooms first.”

Donner’s jaw shifted as he looked her over. His eyes focused on the makeshift weapon in her hands. One side of his lips began to curl as Belle braced for a lecture. But instead, the tight, somber room erupted with laughter—deep, heavy laughter that reeked of whiskey and beer.

“Well, if we had an intruder, you must have scared them away.” He moved closer and hooked his arm around her waist. “I know I’d be terrified of a shoeless woman with a giant dress and a candlestick.”

“When did you get home?” she asked as he wrapped a piece of hair behind her ear with far too much concentration.

“Just now.” His finger brushed her neckline and she shivered. He pulled her closer.

“You were out for a long time,” she said. “Were you golfing? I’ve been waiting. I made dinner.” She felt herself wobble as he lifted her chin and began kissing the space behind her ear. Then down toward her neck.

Belle felt her body melt, then stiffen. She didn’t usually mind the smell of debauchery on him, but things were different now. They—well, he—would need to be more responsible. “Donner, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Mmmhmm,” he murmured, his fingers running up her back and sliding through her hair. “You cooked?”

“Donner,” she tried again, but her posture was drooping again. Her legs were getting weak. Something quivered in the pit of her stomach. He didn’t often want her like this, when her ovulation calendar didn’t demand it. Perhaps she would give him the good news later, when they were cuddling. After all, they’d never made love in this room. They’d only been together here a handful of times. It would make the big news all the more memorable.

“Get on the sofa,” he commanded, slinking his hand beneath her dress. His hot, sour breath rushed over her skin. Belle felt a surge of excitement. The fabric around her body loosened. She threw her arms up and watched the room whirl by as they fell together. Blurry snapshots of the gas fireplace, the oversize mirror, the scarves hanging from the ceiling, the red panties dangling from the top of the bookcase—

Belle was across the room before she even thought about it. Donner, slowed down by the alcohol, tumbled off the chaise and then stumbled to his feet.

“Oh. Playing hard to get, are we?” His voice was playful and his eyes greedy.

Belle ducked out of the way as soon as he lunged forward, sending him slamming into the wall. He laughed and flashed an emboldened smile.

“I have an idea,” he said, edging closer, shoulders down. “How about a little role play? You pretend to be my prisoner again, like when we first met. Only I’ll actually tie you up this time.” He flicked one of the dangling scarves. “You’ll love it.”

Belle grabbed the candlestick and lunged for the lingerie just as Donner dove for her. The metal thwacked hard against his eye, sending him howling backward. Then it hooked the panties. She gaped at them with her jaw wide.

Donner, cursing and clutching his eye, took a minute to notice.

“What the holy hell are these?” Her voice, ordinarily so soft and obliging, could have shattered glass.

Donner shook his head, made an incomprehensible noise, and shrugged. “Well they’re not mine. Obviously. They must be yours.”

Belle clamped down on the inside of her cheek and marched toward him, waving the offending object in his face. “Does this look like something I’d wear? Red lace with sequins and—these aren’t even underwear, for goodness sake. They’re floss!” She unclasped her fingers and let the candlestick crash to the floor, barely missing Donner’s foot. The next words flew out of her mouth before she could even think about them. “Whose are they? Is she still here? Where is she hiding?”

Belle had heard the rumors about Donner’s dalliances in the gossip rags. She’d just refused to believe them. They were just an outsider’s misperception of their rough patch, or the media trying to sell papers. The father had been a philanderer, so it was easy to accuse the son. She’d chalked it up to celebrity fascination. Just part of the job. She’d been safe thinking that.

Now, she stomped away and swung around to glare at her husband in a whole new light. His wrinkled clothes and boozy breath and late golf outing meant something different now. They meant that while she was waiting by a table full of food, pumped full of butterflies about announcing her pregnancy, he was sneaking upstairs with some floozy.

“Well?” she demanded, her throat on fire from holding back the tears. He was leaning into the wall with one arm crossed and the other clutching his wound. The undamaged eye stared into the rug. This was not how tonight was supposed to go. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

Slowly, Donner raised his head. He swallowed and pressed his mouth into a tight line. “You should never have come here.”

Belle’s lips parted but no sound came out. She’d expected a lie. A series of lies. An elaborate but ridiculous tale that she could rail against but ultimately accept. Instead, a million fears and accusations and apologies flew through her mind, crisscrossing and colliding until she could contain them no longer. Her mother had abandoned her. Her family had sacrificed her. Her husband had betrayed her. Belle’s trepidation crystallized into fury.

“I shouldn’t have come here?” she repeated, rocking forward immediately as if to catch the words mid-flight, but it was too late. “That’s all you have to say? I catch you cheating in our home and all you have to say is I shouldn’t have come here? Well, where the hell should I be, Donner? Not out with you, God forbid. Not sharing a bed with my husband. Not dressed like a normal person because only my clothes meet your impossible standards. Not having dinner and talking about what an amazing, life-altering day we’ve had. No. So why don’t you tell me, Your Royal Highness. Where do you think the obedient little wife of a great king like yourself should be right now?”

The tirade ended in silence, save for Belle’s thumping chest and the blood rushing through her ears. She hadn’t let loose like that in years. Donner stood in the shadows and wiped his lip with the back of his hand. It was bleeding. The candlestick must have grazed that, too. Feeling a tinge of pity, Belle stepped forward to look at it, but he jerked away. His eyes were red and marbled like a slab of raw meat, but his gaze was black as coal.

“I mean,” he said, each word feeling inexplicably heavy, “you should never have come here.” His hands raised up as if to indicate the entire castle. “Maybe I should have waited for someone else to break the curse.”

The words swirled over her like a tornado, a monsoon, a tsunami, and a category five hurricane—all shoved inside a bulletproof snow globe with her in the center. What happened next was a blur, a contained explosion filled with too much debris to sort through. There was a frantic search. There were broken paintings. There were more stairs, the clatter of keys, the scream of an engine, a massive oak tree in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a slick, windy road.

Then, when Belle had no more tears or screams to purge, there was darkness. Lots and lots of darkness.

 

Chapter Two
Cinderella

 

Cinderella sucked in and squirmed through the crystal tunnel, grasping for the surface as if her life depended on it. Lacking the breath to form actual words, she forced a silent pep talk. Just a few more inches. The triumph will be worth the pain. Come on, Cindy. Burrow.

She pressed on, praying her head would burst from the darkness before her heart pinched out her throat. Don’t breathe in. Inflation is the enemy here. Her mind ran wild with visions of front-page jabs, of her husband’s once-adoring face bowed in disgust, of all her admirers and endorsements turning away for somebody younger … tighter … less mentally cluttered.

If she couldn’t fit into the ball gown that ten years ago elevated her from cinders to chiffon, she needed no further proof that her fairy tale was running on borrowed time. She’d probably turn into a sitcom travesty. “Fallen Royals: Where Are They Now?”

Suck it in, Cindy. Just a few more—   

The snap shot through her bones. She gasped. Her chest sprung out like a slashed canister of crescent rolls. The roar was unmistakable. But rather than whip up and lament the fact that her iconic ball gown had just torn open, Cinderella froze for so long and in such an awkward position that time itself must have admired her steadfast denial. Alas, the inlaid clock on her mantel clicked forward.

“Crackling snapdragons!” she shrieked, releasing her contorted spine and twirling around to make sure she was alone. Cursing didn’t befit a queen—even one with four kids and an eponymous social metaphor based on her life.

Just when she thought the coast was clear, a tap sounded on the door, followed by the voice of her newest attendant.

“Is everything all right in there, miss?” Delia’s words sailed clearly through the gilded doors separating the royal apartments from the rest of the castle.

She sighed. Perhaps life in a castle was luxurious in other kingdoms, but Carpale was the star of Marestam in every way—its central location, its bustling streets, its financial prowess, its grand train station, and its iconic castle (which was supposed to prove Parliament and local monarchies could cohabit as well as coexist). Life here was crowded and far too exposed. She couldn’t even sneeze without someone showing up with a cart full of tissues.

The door nudged open to reveal a twenty-something head of curly brown hair. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

Cindy stifled a laugh. Could she request her pre-motherhood waistline back? The last ten years of her life? Or perhaps the ability to complain once in while without feeling like a total ingrate? “I’m fine,” she said, taking a calming breath. “Actually, would you mind bringing some of that special tea Rapunzel sent over?”

“The metabolism tea? Of course,” Delia sang. “It’ll go great with some chocolate biscuits and—”

“Don’t you dare!” The words splattered over her lips like Rapunzel’s third martini on a Wednesday. She shuddered. “Sorry—I mean—just the tea, please.”

If Delia acknowledged the apology, Cindy didn’t hear it as she freed herself from five layers of chiffon, extricated her heel from the underlying web of tulle, and dove into a far more reasonable ensemble: a velour tracksuit with “Royalty” (a gift from her eldest daughter, Sophie, who had a matching set) spelled out in gemstones. Dropping into her favorite armchair with the grace of an out-of-practice acrobat, she sighed and gazed into the plaster sky overhead. She really needed to get a grip.

For as long as she could remember, Cindy had faced obstacles with the perfect combination of strength and grace. From losing both her parents by age twelve to becoming her stepmother’s maid, she neither caved in nor lashed out during tough times. Even back then, she didn’t see the point of throwing unsightly hissy fits or steamrolling over innocent bystanders simply because her life wasn’t going well. It seemed far more effective to conceal all but a pinhole of resentment, complete her assigned tasks with the expected degree of care, and escape to her crawlspace at the end of the day to quietly plot her escape. Cindy believed it was this attitude (much more defining, she hoped, than her marriage alone) that prompted the Marestam Mirror to name her Woman of the Year five times in the last decade.

Lately, however—ever since “The Big Three-O” had wriggled within striking range—her good nature had fallen a bit askew. It started when she noticed that the upper left crease of her smile stopped flattening when she let her lips fall back down. Her first wrinkle. Then, when Sophie was fiddling with her hair one afternoon, she plucked out a white “wire” that had somehow become entwined with the rest of her golden strands. When Cindy relayed these mortifying events to her husband, Aaron had simply laughed, kissed her forehead, and said he knew a great colorist on State Street.

Thus began a month of anti-wrinkle treatments, crash diets, every exercise class known to man, and a dangerous, slightly masochistic journey through the memory trunk she kept in the back of her closet. In it, she found old love notes from Aaron, four baby blankets, a letter of Regal condolence recognizing her mother’s humanitarian work, her father’s passports (last stamped on Cindy’s twelfth birthday, a week before he died), and an adolescent bucket list scrawled on the back of her stepmother’s list of daily chores.

Of all these bittersweet artifacts, it was the last item that brought her to tears. This wasn’t because she’d come to terms with her mother’s death, or because she no longer missed hearing about her father’s overseas adventures. Nor was it because she’d forgotten the stings of her stepmother’s curling iron. Rather, she fixated on the list because she knew how its teenage author would have felt about her future self. Queen Cinderella, she would have thought, was not only a few breaths away from a casket, but also a complete and total bore.

 

Item One: Travel. A LOT. Visit every realm and every kingdom.

This had been her life’s goal before she crashed Aaron’s marital ball (purely to spite her stepsisters) and fell idiotically in love with Carpale’s heir apparent. Aaron understood, bless his heart, and tried to ease the loss with two open tickets on a year-long honeymoon … but little Sophie slammed a wrench into that idea pretty fast. Instead of seeing the world, she’d lumbered home in the throes of first trimester nausea and was immediately ushered onto her mother-in-law’s throne. Since then, “the world” had come to mean a cluster of five crowded kingdoms surrounded by water and steeped in monotony.

 

Item Two: Do something dangerous. Something thrilling. Like kayaking down a waterfall or riding a dragon.

Cindy had to walk her younger self back a bit here. Kayaking over a waterfall was suicide, and while dragons did still exist, they were incredibly hard to find. But even softened, this goal had also gone unfulfilled. Sure, walking into that ball wearing Ruby’s magical costume had been pretty intimidating. And that shoeless sprint home through downtown Carpale was definitely painful if not moderately dangerous. But swarms of young women did it every weekend when the clubs let out. Her younger self had definitely envisioned something more monumental. Like skydiving, perhaps. Or spelunking.

 

Item Three: Create a universally admired masterpiece.

Ah yes. Her artistic phase. This obsession began when her father gave her an art book procured during his travels. For months, she fell asleep matching the masterpieces in each realm with the stamps in his passport. Soon, her bedroom was wallpapered three-layers deep with construction paper collages, paint-by-numbers, and drawings of every kind. Her shelves overflowed with chunks of clay that bore no resemblance to anything of this world. It was her first gallery and, as it turned out, her only. When her father died, Cindy’s elder stepsister commandeered the room as her personal walk-in closet and banished Cindy to the cellar.

 

The list went on, but the tune remained the same. Cindy didn’t know what bothered her more—the things she hadn’t done, or the things that had never made her list in the first place: Fall in love. Get married. Have four amazing children (albeit too early). Become the figurehead of all figureheads in a realm with a political identity crisis. She was blessed in ways so profound she couldn’t even have imagined them as a child. So why did this batch of unfulfilled adolescent daydreams make her feel so hollow?

“You truly are an inspiration,” a doe-eyed reporter had told her just a few days earlier, during an interview about Cinderella’s Rags-2-Riches Foundation. “Philanthropist extraordinaire. Mother to four adorable children. Champion of the people. Wife of the only man worth the stress of being Queen—at least according to my mother, who says all the others are bores, cheats, or egomaniacs. But never mind that. King Aaron is true, and everyone can see how much he loves you. It’s really amazing.”

Cindy had wanted to ask why Aaron loving her was so “amazing.” Because she’d been a nobody? Because he deserved better? Or had the reporter seen the woman beneath the crown and realized only someone that amazing—that unexpectedly sweet and loyal and honorable—could have convinced her to trade one form of servitude for another? Assuming the former, Cindy simply smiled and let the ambitious young writer keep her fairy-tale notions for a little while longer.

But in truth, “Prince Charming” and Cinderella’s love story had fizzled down to goodbye kisses and goodnight pecks. They’d gone from idealistic lovebirds to frazzled figureheads forced to compartmentalize their lives just to make it through the days—the last 3,300 of which all blended into one. She tried to imagine, as his lips pressed into her forehead each morning, that he still saw her as the beautiful, impulsive mystery woman who slipped into his life a decade ago. But the evidence told her otherwise. Why else would he pour himself into a symbolic job that no other monarch took seriously? Why hadn’t they taken a single vacation alone since their honeymoon? Why was making love something they either prearranged or rushed through because their abstinence limit was three weeks and they were already on day twenty? Had they met today, she saw no way her prince would scour the kingdom looking for her. She was a paranoid, frustrated, exhausted woman who couldn’t even fit into a dress that had been magically fashioned for her body.

“At least you still fit,” Cindy muttered to the glass heels peeking out from her sweatpants. She slipped them off and hooked her knees over the arm of the chair. Her toes dangled over the heap of broken ball gown, slumped onto the floor and begging for rescue. She scolded her children almost daily for sitting this way, but Cindy was an adult—an adult on a grapes-and-water diet who needed to find other means of indulgence.

The sound of a door and clinking porcelain indicated Delia had arrived with her miracle diet tea.

“Thanks,” Cindy said, still staring at the ceiling. “I’d offer you some, but I’ve been told it tastes like hay. And you don’t need to lose any weight.”

“Neither do you,” said a deep voice certainly not belonging to Delia.

Cindy practically flipped off the chair but somehow landed on her feet. Aaron stood there offering a silver tray and a childish grin. She glanced at the heap of fabric on the floor and scuttled away from the crime scene.

“I thought you were Delia,” she said, the words spilling out too fast. “What are you doing here?” Then, the maternal panic. “What’s wrong?”

Aaron laughed as he placed the tray down and came over. Sunlight bounced off his crystal blue eyes and lit the ends of his chopped sandy hair. Having four kids hadn’t taken away any of his looks. She could still see the prince in him. “Well it’s lovely to see you, too,” he said. “Why does something have to be wrong? Can’t a guy just swing home to see his beautiful wife?” He stopped suddenly, feigning concern. “Or should I have made an appointment?”

Cindy pulled him close and rolled her eyes—though there was plenty of truth to his wisecrack. Right now, she was supposed to be downtown overseeing a Rags-2-Riches fundraiser, but it had been postponed at the last minute. Delia must have told him.

“It’s just rare to see you between sunrise and sunset,” she said. “What’s going on? Did you finally achieve world peace or something?

“Ha. Not even close. There’s—”

Seeing a rare chance to play, she poked his sternum and flicked his tie up toward his nose. “Did the public run out of things to complain about?”

Aaron furrowed his brow and shook his head.

“Did Parliament decide to stop bickering for once and try out group meditation?”

His laugh bounced off the walls. “Yeah right. That’ll be the day. We narrowly avoided one fistfight already, and Angus is talking about extending his term limit again. I just came up to grab something and—”

“Ha,” she replied, not at all interested. Politicians did nothing but posture, spin webs, and make more work for her husband. Hate was a strong word, but it might suit her feelings for them.

Aaron’s gaze deepened as she ran her fingers over his shirt buttons. There was something rejuvenating about being alone with him right now, teasing each other without juvenile tantrums or nosy reporters. They were people at this moment, not shells or referees or entertainers. Having his attention was far better than any miracle tea.

“Cin,” he said, slipping his hand on top of hers. She felt butterflies in her stomach. “I wish I could stay for longer but—”

“Of course,” she said, edging back as the butterflies dove nose-first to the ground. “Goodness knows what’s going on downstairs without everyone’s moral compass to keep them in check. I have to meet with Sophie’s teachers at eleven anyway.”

Aaron frowned and reached for her hand again. “Please don’t do that,” he said, twirling her hair around his finger. “Don’t make me feel guilty. This is just how it is right now.” She could smell his skin as he nudged closer. Sweet, like sugar cookies. “We have four kids under ten and I’m very concerned about where Marestam is heading with Angus at the helm. This won’t be forev…”

Aaron trailed off as his eyes wandered down. In her haste to change out of her ball gown, she had forgotten to put a camisole on under her hoodie—and then she’d forgotten to zip it up. Right now, it was advertising a part of her he hadn’t seen in, umm, twelve days.

“My morning meeting got postponed,” Cindy explained, “so I—”

“So you decided to play dress-up?” he asked, spotting the discarded dress on the floor—or what was left of it.

She glared at it and leaned into him. She didn’t want to get into the details—how she wanted to reprise the dress for her thirtieth and what it would mean, mentally, if it didn’t fit. “I decided to do some reminiscing. But since you’re here, maybe we can reminisce together?” She slipped his top button open without him noticing. It gave her a little thrill. “You remember that dress, right?”

Aaron tipped his chin and gave her a look that made her melt into his arms. “Of course I remember,” he said. “No man in the kingdom could forget how you looked walking into the ball wearing that dress. A bullet to the heart couldn’t have made me fall any faster.”

She traced the second button on his shirt and tried to ignore the word “looked,” past tense. She pulled back with a sly smile. “Do you know how long it’s been since we’ve been alone together in the daylight? What do you say we play hooky and take a jaunt across the river? It’s early. We can do something adventurous. Make some new memories.” Like skydiving, she added silently.

Aaron’s face flushed as he took her hands in his, brought them up to his lips, and then lowered them. He sighed. “Babe, I love you so much. You have no idea how much I’d love to do that with you right now. But they’re waiting for me downstairs.”

Everything slipped a few inches—not in a gooey, melty sort of way. Cindy zipped up her shirt.

“Hey, don’t be mad. I’ll have more time this weekend. I promise.”

She slumped back. This weekend was jammed with the kids’ recitals and swim meets and the dedication of some statue in midtown. When they finally found any time alone, they’d be exhausted. “What is it you came up here to get?”

His eyes shifted to the right. “Just some papers. I’ll grab them and leave you to reminisce.”

He pecked her forehead and ducked into the bedroom. Cindy shimmied to the window. Outside, the trees had finally started blooming in Capitol Park, adding some much-needed color to Carpale’s cement and asphalt landscape.

“Got it,” Aaron announced, emerging with a manila envelope shoved beneath his arm. He stopped by for one more kiss, this time on the lips. Cinderella pressed her palm against his chest. When he let go, the room looked a little fuzzy.

“Will we see you at dinner?” she asked as he pulled the door open. “You’ve missed the last four and the kids are starting to worry.” The rest of her question lingered behind her eyes.

Aaron looked at the carpet before answering. “I don’t think so. We’re supposed to pass the budget in a few weeks and two kingdoms haven’t even submitted proposals yet.”

“Which two?”

“Regian, but Hunter’s council says it’s coming. And Braddax, as usual.” He shrugged. “Maybe you can remind Belle it’s that time of year again. You know, the only time of year Donner has to do anything?”

“All right,” she said. “Now you better get going before my other husband arrives. The one who enjoys spending time with me.”

Aaron scrunched his mouth up and flashed a smile his eyes didn’t back up. “I’m sorry, babe. I love you. I promise things will calm down soon.” He disappeared behind the door without waiting for her reply.

Alone again, Cindy clutched her teacup with both hands. Things were busy, she thought while raising the batch of diet tea to her lips, but they were plenty calm. That was the problem.

“Ugck!” she spat the moment the liquid hit her tongue. She’d encountered less vile brews cleaning toilets for her stepmother’s bulimic friends. “Screw this. I was probably too skinny back then anyway.”

“That’s what I said, you diva,” a voice called back as Cindy jumped and fumbled with the cup. “It’s not like you can’t afford a new dress.”

She whipped around and stared at the media screen over the fireplace. Rather than seeing the news, or her own reflection (heaven forbid), she saw a heart-shaped face with a choppy chestnut bob and a crafty smile.

“Rapunzel! What the heck!”

The woman on the screen shrugged. “What? You gave me the bypass code.”

“For emergencies! Geez. Use the regular number first or call my cell phone. What if I was naked?”

Rapunzel’s head shook, revealing a layer of bright pink hair beneath the brown. “First, I tried your cell; it’s off. Second, I can’t predict you getting naked in your living room.”

Cindy’s hands flew to her hips. “It’s not like I—” She stopped and remembered what had almost happened with Aaron. She’d have to change that bypass code pronto. “The kids are at school.”

“Whatever. It’s not like you have anything I’ve never seen before. We’ve got the same equipment.”

Cindy snorted and ground her foot into the carpet. “Yeah right. My equipment’s not even in the same league as yours.”

“What are you, fifteen years old?” Rapunzel rolled her eyes and then shook the irritation away. “Remind me to finish yelling at you for that later. Right now we’ve got bigger problems. Like an em-er-gen-cy.”

 “An emergency?” Cindy repeated, happy to abandon her own troubles for a moment. “Are you okay?”

Rapunzel fingered a line of beads that looked like turquoise boulders weighing down her neck. Even under duress, she looked confident, spunky, strong … everything Cindy wanted to be if she could just stop over-analyzing for a second. Whereas she could take hours to decide between a white or ivory belt, Rapunzel changed her whole look— brunette girl-next-door, redheaded glam goddess, hipster with a black and purple shag—at least once a week. She was a starlet chameleon, and proud of it.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Rapunzel answered with a sigh. “Just wish I could say the same for my ears. All this crying is—”

“What?” Cindy’s interest was fully piqued. “Who’s crying?”

“Belle,” Rapunzel huffed, as if the question was just as jarring. “It turns out the Mirror wasn’t embellishing Donner’s escapades.”

“What do you mean?”

Rapunzel frowned. “Belle found lace panties and a whole bunch of fetish stuff—at least what she considers fetish stuff—in his special secret room.”

Special secret room? Cindy always worried that Donner was too wild for monogamy, but Belle insisted he was tame behind closed doors.

“She thinks he was with another woman,” Rapunzel added, putting far too much emphasis on the word “thinks.”

A crushing feeling settled over Cinderella. “What’s she going to do?”

“She’s staying with me for now. He kicked her out.”

Tea splashed into the air and landed in an orange puddle at Cindy’s feet. “Kicked her out? He cheated and kicked her out? But she’s a queen! You can’t just toss out a queen unless—” Cindy’s jaw clamped shut. It had been nearly a century since one of Marestam’s sitting monarchs stooped to divorce. Frigid apathy and murder, perhaps, but not divorce. If that happened, Belle would lose everything. Donner was the one with the royal blood.

“Cin, I don’t know what he’s planning. Just get over here now. The media hasn’t broken anything yet, but I know they’re on it and she’ll be mortified when they do. I’ll call Penny and you handle Dawn. We’re gonna need the whole gang for this.”

 

Chapter Three
Rapunzel

 

 

“I wish I could say I’m surprised,” Rapunzel said, tilting the umbrella for optimal sun—and then tilting it back when her friends recoiled from the glare. She sighed and pressed a melon-sized pair of sunglasses over her eyes. People who came to her penthouse, perched high over the upper west bank of Carpale, usually came to make headlines and live it up. This cheer-up-Belle pity party was cramping her style. “The guy’s a wolf, just like Perrin Hildebrand said. Tried to whip it out for me dozens of times. Fortunately, I have a policy of not sleeping with men who were once animals.”

“Oh, is that where you draw the line?” Cindy asked while flipping through her planner. “Good to know it’s not something trivial, like being married to one of your closest friends.” Rapunzel made a face that was half sneer, half smirk. “Did you warn Belle about this?”

Rapunzel rolled her head back. “Oh, I alluded to it. But you girls are a lot closer to her than I am. I know she only came here last night because I’m the shortest drive and don’t have a husband.”

Cindy let out a pop of laughter. “What does that matter? You’re more likely to be occupied with a man at that hour than any of us boring married folk. How many did you have to kick out when Belle knocked on your door last night? Six? Seven?”

“Two,” Rapunzel said. “Give me some credit.” She crossed her arms and plopped into a deck chair. “The others only needed me to ask nicely.”

Cindy let out an I-knew-it grunt while Penny—officially Princess Penelopea of Riverfell—rocked forward to snatch a shrimp.

“He should get herpes,” Penny said, as naturally as if she was observing the weather. “And for the record, Logan and I are doing just fine in the bedroom. But if he ever hit on you, I’d expect a phone call. Outright.”

Rapunzel gulped her wine. “Trust me, Pen. The only way Logan would ever cheat is if his mother commanded him to. But even she’d choose a foreign daughter-in-law over a philandering son.”

Penny, famous for feeling three magical peas under twenty mattresses, hummed an unintelligible response through a mouthful of shrimp. She was the newest edition to the group and came from another world entirely—a world where freedom was a myth and women were treated like property. She couldn’t understand things like “modesty” or “propriety” or “political correctness” when there were so many options in Marestam. Rapunzel loved that about her, and found it hard to associate the woman renowned for being so incredibly delicate with the tough-as-nails lady she knew. Every day, Penny’s beautiful olive complexion seemed to radiate with hope and freedom—except around her mother-in-law, that is, when it turned ashen.

Cindy looked up from her planner and tossed it aside. Her eyes flicked past the hors d’oeuvres. “All I know is that when Belle comes out here, we need to be supportive. Not so glum as to start her crying again, but not too harsh on Donner either.” She zeroed in on Rapunzel. “After all, things could still work out, and we wouldn’t want her thinking we hate her husband.”

Rapunzel laughed and snapped a cracker beneath a mound of Havarti. “Honey, that ship’s sailed on my end. So how about you girls tell me all the nasty things you want to say about Donner and I’ll take the blame. If she goes back to him, I won’t want to be her friend anymore anyway.”

Cindy gasped. “Punsy! Take that back!”

Rapunzel smirked. “We could still hang out in a group, I suppose, but I’d never respect her again. And quit it with the ‘Punsy.’ It makes me sound like a sport.”

Penny and Cindy shot each other mirrored smirks but said nothing. Rapunzel stared over the railing, between the neighboring towers, and into the West River forty stories below. Across the water sat dozens of realms and kingdoms that disappeared in Marestam’s shadow. Of all the places Grethel could have banished her, she had to be grateful it was here. What if she’d landed in a place where teased hair and snakeskin spandex was de rigueur? She shivered at the thought.

“Need I remind you,” Rapunzel continued, “that Donner was cursed by a pureblood fairy?”

“As opposed to what?” Penny asked while wafting a fly from the crab dip. “Purebloods the only kind that can curse. Aren’t they?”

Rapunzel shook her head but patted Penny’s hand. For someone with a law degree, she didn’t seem all that quick. “Yes, dear. My point is that he was cursed. And when fairies cast a curse, they lose all their powers until it’s finished or broken.”

“Yeah, and they go to jail.” Penny shrugged. “So?”

“So, think about it. Why would some happy little fairy, going about her life, give up all her powers just to make some spoiled king ugly? You have to be a special kind of creep to piss someone off that badly. Maybe it scared him straight long enough to fool Belle. But you know people can’t really change. Not permanently.”

Before her guests could argue, Rapunzel saw a head of bright red hair drifting onto the terrace. “Dawn,” she called, hopping to her feet to embrace the Queen of Regian. “So glad you could make our little gathering.”

“How could I miss it?” Dawn said as she sailed around the table, bestowing hugs and expressing her shock. “I felt a ghost stretch out on my grave when I got your message. I would have come sooner, but Hunter and I … we had an obligation.”

“Couples counseling, huh?” Cindy translated, shoving her chair back for a kiss. “No worries. You look nice.”

Dawn smiled and gave a childish twirl in her eyelet sundress. “Isn’t it a lovely frock? It’s a Thumbelina. See how tiny the stitches are? Cost a bit of a fortune, but I have come to believe she’s the only one who makes clothes like they used to.”

Rapunzel nodded, even though she thought the neckline was far too high. According to the others, Dawn’s dress was “refined and dainty,” just like her. But in Rapunzel’s opinion, the “sleeping beauty” queen needed to move on already and stop viewing ancient times through rose-tinted glasses. Sure, she’d grown up three hundred years ago, but she’d been here for nearly a decade. At least Penny, who looked ridiculous in a plunge-neck catsuit and a skirt that mimicked a dented lampshade, didn’t cling to the past.

Rapunzel leaned back and let the royal flattery session run its course. It didn’t interest her in the least. Despite being revered as an international trendsetter, Rapunzel never spent more than a few seconds thinking about her “look.” In life and fashion, she did what she wanted, when she wanted, until she wanted something else—be that blue hair, a pantsuit, or a henna tattoo on her face. True, not everyone had been gifted magical hair as a child. But she never understood why so many people wasted their time following trends—or went out of their way to avoid following trends, for that matter. The fact that she always seemed to start them was an amusing irony—and what made her the most successful publicist in Marestam.

“When Belle comes out,” she said as the fashion chatter started dying down, “it might be wise to avoid talking about the privileges of royal bank accounts. She thinks she’s gonna wind up in some ramshackle cottage in the boonies again.”

“Oh, of course!” cried Dawn as Cindy reclasped the knit bolero she was about to show off. “Do tell us, how is she? Has Donner contacted her? How long will she stay here? Please say this will pass.”

“Yeah, we’re here for details.” Penny scooped up her goblet the way a hawk would snatch an unlucky rabbit. “And camaraderie, of course.” She downed the remaining inch of merlot and refilled her glass.

Cindy’s bracelet clunked against the table as she clasped her hands. “Just start at the beginning.”

The terrace fell silent as all eyes settled on Rapunzel. Ordinarily, she would have started with something snarky—a joke to break the tension or a dig at the institution of marriage. But then she looked around the table at three of her closest friends and saw more than just pity for Belle. She saw fear. She saw Penny racing toward her two-drink limit. She saw Dawn kneading her elbows into the table. She saw Cindy feasting on her lower lip like it was a brick of chocolate. She saw her friends terrified that if Belle’s fairy tale could end this quickly, theirs could too.

She relayed the story as Belle had choked it out to her just hours earlier. She told them about Donner’s study, the red panties, and the fact that he hadn’t tried to deny a thing. She told them that Belle was a soaking mess when she knocked on her door at two a.m., after having driven around for an hour and cried somewhere in the woods for even longer. She told them that Belle’s slick red sports car—the one none of them had ever actually seen her drive—looked like it had been used as a battering ram. (Which it had—against a tree, unfortunately, not Donner.)

“She finally stopped crying around sunrise,” she said. “I think that was more a sign of dry tear ducts than anything else. And she’s been sleeping ever since. I did damage control all morning, but even I can’t keep the media off this story; it’s too juicy.” Rapunzel looked around. The ordinarily boisterous rooftop emitted nothing but silence. Soul-numbing, ungodly silence. “Someone please say something, because this is almost worse than the crying.”

Another minute passed. The clock atop Carpale Castle—five blocks away and half a mile over—clanged three deep, rumbling dongs. Finally, when the last echo disappeared, Cindy managed a few words.

“So, she doesn’t know who it was?” Her voice was so soft it could have been the wind. Rapunzel shook her head.

“The poor thing,” Dawn sighed as each woman sank deeper into her individual nightmare.

Rapunzel, as an unmarried quasi-celebrity with no responsibilities but to herself, could hardly imagine what they were thinking. But she knew it wasn’t good. “You know what?” she blurted, hoping to avoid a group suicide. “Everything’s going to be fine. You know why? Because as much as you all hate Perrin Hildebrand and all his tabloid buddies, everyone knows what Donner’s been up to because of them. The public will have every reason to take Belle’s side. She’ll get a great divorce settlement and live the rest of her life in luxury without that jerk giving her grief all the time. She’ll be a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”

“You really believe that?” Dawn asked, quashing the momentary rise in spirit. Rapunzel made a fist under the table. “I mean, Belle will have their sympathies, of course. But the people of Braddax rely on their King. There would be consequences if they refused to side with him.”

“Well they better,” answered Rapunzel, her tone sharp. “Belle’s their Queen as much as Donner’s their King, and these aren’t the Dark Ages. Men don’t automatically win anymore. You seem to keep forgetting that. Want me to write it down for you?”

Dawn shifted in her seat. “I’m aware that Belle’s their Queen, Rapunzel. And we all love her. But it isn’t her gender that’s the issue. It’s the fact that … well, her blood is not royal.”

Rapunzel’s neck snapped backward. “Oh.” Her words plopped like bricks into a teacup. “Oh. Well. Excuse me. I didn’t realize those of us with peasant blood were so expendable. I’m probably polluting your air just being here.”

“No,” said Dawn, panning the table for help. “It would be the same for Cindy. I only meant—”

“You know, I actually envy her,” Cindy interrupted, triggering an uproar. The previous skirmish disappeared.

“How can you say—”

“You can’t possibly mean—”

Rapunzel slapped a fistful of crackers in front of Cindy’s drink. “Of course she doesn’t mean that. She’s starving herself for some arbitrary milestone and isn’t thinking straight.”

At this, Cindy’s ordinarily glowing face went flat and starchy. All her dazzling features caved in toward her nose. “I am not starv—”

“Not. Thinking. Straight,” Rapunzel repeated.

Cindy huffed. “Look. I’m just saying that Belle’s free now. She can have adventures, travel, eat cookies at midnight, and find out what she really wants in a man—or if she even wants one at all. She can do anything she wants, anytime she wants to, without having to worry about how it affects anyone.”

“That’s a lot of anys,” said Penny, bringing Cindy’s tribulation into perspective. “But I’m pretty sure you can do that now.”

“Don’t you ever feel trapped? Making a million decisions but never doing what you really want?” She sighed. “Like traveling. Do you know my father went through four passports before he died? Four! I’ve only used mine twice—and once was for coming back! Between the kids and the media and the charities and the constant pressure to be perfect. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know I’m lucky. But between us … can’t we admit that having it all is an illusion?”

Cindy waited for Dawn, who was trapped in the wrong century, or Penny—stuck beneath her mother-in-law’s roof—to back her up. Instead, Dawn just shivered and Penny thrust out her glass. “I need a refill,” she said, eyeing the depleted magnum.

“Yes, honey.” Rapunzel slid her own goblet in front of her friend and accepted the empty. “I think that’s what we all need. I’ll grab another bottle.”

 

* * *

 

Belle was still missing when Rapunzel swaggered through the slider, her head feeling too heavy for her body. Flicking open the cupboard, she selected a table wine with a tan label, grabbed a corkscrew, and straddled the bottle. She was leaning forward like a firefighter on hose detail, yanking the cork free, when Belle drifted in from the hallway.

“Watch out!” Rapunzel yelled as the corkscrew flew out of her hand, ricocheted off the oven hood and dropped between Belle’s bare feet. “Sorry. Some bigwig swiped my good opener the other night, even though he’s—”

Rapunzel bit her tongue, recalling her own advice on the patio, and reached for a fifth goblet. “But I’m glad to see the guest of honor’s finally decided to join us.”

Belle blinked no less than a dozen times and then swiped her eyes. A crown of brown frizz surrounded her head. Her tiny body looked more than a little off-balance, and the ridiculous petticoat in which she’d arrived was almost as battered as her spirit. Wobbling before the window, the displaced Queen of Braddax looked ethereal. She’d tried to reapply her makeup, Rapunzel noticed, but her eyes still glowed red, the skin below her lashes was still puffy, and a field of splotches traveled from her cheeks to the notch in the center of her neck.

“I like the bow that way,” Rapunzel said, pointing to Belle’s waist, around which wound a fraying silk sash. “Very devil-may-care. But how about we brush out your hair a little?”

Belle gave no response when Rapunzel floated behind her and began unpinning her unusually flat waves. She ran her finger purposefully down the back of Belle’s neck to make sure she was actually alive. Not even a shiver.

“I still don’t believe it,” Belle whispered to the air. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Rapunzel could actually feel herself melting a little. She didn’t like it. “Everything’s going to be fine. You don’t need him. You never—”

“I know. I never needed him,” Belle said. “You’ve been saying that for years. That we let men pick us out like show ponies and parade us around when it’s convenient.”

Rapunzel thought for a moment. That did sound like her. “Sure, but I didn’t—”

“I just never believed it. I still don’t believe it. I saved him. We got married. That’s supposed to be the end of it.” Rapunzel dropped the nest of hair. The rising squeakiness of Belle’s voice told her she’d need both arms soon. “I meant my vows when I took them.”

Rapunzel skirted around her friend and pulled her close, just in time for the waterworks. She was getting pretty good at this.

“You were right. My parents were right,” Belle wailed into Rapunzel’s neck, her eyelashes flitting like panicked butterflies. “Happily ever after is a big inside joke. True love and fidelity and ‘till death do us part’ are all—” She paused to take a shaky gulp of air. “One person distracts the other with pretty words and flowers and music … but all they really want is a paper giving them control until they get bored. One person always winds up left behind.”

“Shhhhh,” Rapunzel repeated, trying to make sense of her friend’s ramblings. For once in her life, she didn’t know what to say. She’d never heard Belle talk about love with anything but angel eyes and absolute devotion. She always seemed to be in love with love. And while it was true that Rapunzel thought the phrase “happily ever after” needed to be struck from the history books, and that the fabric of society needed to be torn up and restitched in multiple places, she didn’t want Belle to lose faith completely. She knew love gave her hope, and comfort, and provided some invisible meaning to life. She knew it did that for some people.

“Now you’re giving me too much credit. Since when do I know what I’m talking about?” Rapunzel unwrapped her arms as laughter drifted in from outside. “This is just a temporary setback on the road to something better, okay? If you believe what I say so much, believe that. Now let’s get some fresh air.”

After a weak nod and the slowest walk Belle had taken since her wedding march, the circle of friends was complete. Cindy immediately abdicated her soapbox and steered the conversation to old memories she knew would make Belle laugh. For hours, the women screeched over Penny’s mad-as-a-March-hare bachelorette party, clucked about the time two men proposed to Rapunzel via skywriting on the same day, and relived the horrible-yet-glorious day Hunter’s mother died in the obrapit of cobras she’d been planning to use on Dawn.

“And I thought my mother-in-law was a nightmare.” Penny sighed, drawing a shawl around her shoulders. The evening wind had picked up, and the sky pulsed in brilliant shades of tangerine and gold. “That reminds me. Letitia’s making me plan her anniversary party for some godforsaken reason.”

Half the table immediately shot protective glances toward Belle, while the other half stared bullets at Penny. The word “anniversary” was not to be tossed around in front of someone about to lose her marriage—even if in this case it referred to Letitia’s anniversary with the throne rather than with her late husband. But after three hours of drinking and laughing, the transgression was quickly forgiven.

Rapunzel, queen of the Marestam buzz party, straightened up and put on her business face. “Well, now I can help you out with that.” She shielded the side of her mouth in a mock-whisper. “Two words. Open bar.”

“Oh, that’s a given,” Penny said. “I’m gonna need as much liquid courage as I can get my hands on. It’s only a couple weeks away, but Letitia already fired every planner in the realm, so now I get the reins. Lucky me.”

Words of support swirled around the table.

“Have you considered a memory room?” Dawn’s ordinarily soothing voice now slid like melting butter—the signal that she was about to reminisce about her life before the Great Sleep, before a curse put her former kingdom into suspended animation for three hundred years. “My parents did that once. Well, in truth theirs was a memory wing because Selladóre had so much more history than Marestam does.”

Rapunzel turned her face to the sky. Good grief.

“But that’s beside the point. All you have to do is assemble some artifacts—family jewels and old journal entries and drawings of the palace throughout the years. Call it a tribute to her, and Letitia won’t be able to contain herself.”

“That sounds neat,” agreed Cindy. “You could get your peas from the Hall of Curiosities and put them front and center. I’m actually borrowing my glass slippers now. The curators will try and talk you out of it, but they have to give them to you.”

Penny nodded and murmured something into her goblet. Then she noticed the guest of honor’s glass was still full. “Don’t like the wine, Belle?”

Belle righted her head and blinked a few times. “Hmm?” She looked at the glass. “Oh, it’s fine. I just don’t like drinking when I’m depressed.”

The ensuing silence spoke for itself. Wasn’t that the perfect time to drink?

“It’ll just make me wallow,” she added, not helping matters. Finally, she leaned forward and grabbed a chunk of the ten-minute fudge she’d whipped up when everyone thought she was in the bathroom. “But these are perfect.”

“Long as you’re not pregnant or anything,” said Rapunzel. “We don’t need another year of sober parties. But I absolve you for tonight, under the circumstances.”

Belle toasted the air with her fudge and gave a drowsy smile.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Penny asked, reaching for the plate and passing it around.

“She’s gonna stay here,” Rapunzel said, yanking the guest of honor to attention. “I’ve got tons of space and no one to share it with.” Belle started to protest but Rapunzel held up her hand. “You can repay me in fudge—or rum cupcakes or peach strudel or those fake poisoned apples you made for Snow’s birthday. People talked about those for months.” She paused to catch a flickering idea. Her clients could use that sort of domestic flare at their launch parties. But if living with Belle didn’t kill their friendship, working and living with her certainly would. “They were delicious.”

A chorus of agreement struck up. Belle straightened in her chair. The puffiness had moved from her eyes to her cheeks, and the only splotch left was the scar behind her uncombed bangs.

“I know it’s not ideal,” Rapunzel added, softly, “but you can’t be alone right now. And us bootstrap gals need to stick together.”

Belle pinched her wedding ring—a fat chunk of metal choking a red diamond—and spun it around her finger. “It won’t be for long, but thank you. All of you.” She took a deep breath and tried to shake on some happiness. “You know, I have five sisters by blood. But you’re the only women in my life who feel like family.” Hands reached for tissues all around the table. “Still, I know what Donner and I have is stronger than some floozy who swooped in while we were going through a tough time. We said some things in the heat of the moment that we didn’t mean, and we just need a day to cool off. He’s probably on his way over here right now to beg me to come back.”

Rapunzel clenched her teeth so tightly she felt her cheeks throb. The rest of her friends were nodding at Belle and smiling as if she’d just been swaddled and left on their doorstep, but Rapunzel didn’t buy it. Belle couldn’t honestly believe that this was Donner’s first and only mistake, or that he’d race back to her with open arms. But she wanted to. And in Rapunzel’s mind, that was just as dangerous.

 

Chapter Four
Belle

 

 

The displaced Queen of Braddax went to bed with wrung-out eyes and a head pounding from worry and white chocolate. Maybe she should have just pretended not to see the bright red underwear—the lace landmine—dangling from the top of his bookcase. After all, as Dawn so delicately pointed out earlier, Donner was the one with the royal blood. The castle belonged to him. The beautiful dresses and shoes that were now languishing in her empty (she hoped) dressing room had been gifts from him. Her entire rise from a disgraced merchant’s daughter to a beloved celebrity queen hinged on her marriage vows. Wasn’t that worth a little sexual misconduct? Or is that exactly what she’d been telling herself for years?

The more Belle thought about it, the more she realized she’d known Donner’s secret for some time. She’d just never admitted it, for the same reason she was playing dumb with her friends now. Had she known for sure, she’d have been forced to stand up for herself and lose—lose her home, her lifestyle, her title, her very identity when it came down to it. Even now, as the walls around her crashed to the ground, she was still trying to play oblivious housewife—pretending the shards just needed some glue and a good dusting. She’d done the exact same thing when her father’s bad investments tore her family apart. While her sisters became bloated with anger and self-pity, Belle had taken care of the house, diluted her father’s whiskey, and held a microscope over every blessing she could.

Perhaps that had been naïve. But then again, if she’d been cruel, her father never would have gone out of his way to pick that enchanted rose for her—the rose that riled a beast and incurred a debt only one of his daughters could pay; she never would have volunteered her own freedom to save him; and King Donner of Braddax (whom the public believed was on sabbatical at the time), would never have returned to human form.

That’s why she needed to keep her chin up now. She’d always wanted a family above all else—a real family with two parents and six o’clock dinners and kids who played games together (nice, voluntary games) on rainy afternoons. The wheels for this were finally in motion, in some secret place inside of her, and she refused to give that up. Donner would come back for the baby, of that much she was sure. But wouldn’t it be nice if she could convince him to come back for her first?

Before pulling back the sheets of her temporary bed, Belle selected the least vulgar of Rapunzel’s nightgowns to borrow and drank three cups of hot cocoa down to the powder. Her brain was exhausted, but not calm enough to shut down. When she finally slipped through the cloudy edges of slumber, she found herself standing in ankle-deep fog in the middle of a sprawling garden.

As far as she could see, majestic weeping willow branches swept over her head. Purple wisteria hung like garland on pockets of air. A pack of cardinals fluttered over chiseled statues, dove through an obelisk fountain, and whistled for each other to keep up. She was in the gardens at Braddax Castle—but not as she’d seen them for years. These were the grounds she used to dream about back when she was Donner’s prisoner, before she knew her dreams were being hijacked by magic and the handsome prince she kept imagining was actually Donner, nudging her toward breaking his spell.

But it had been years since he last tapped into her dreams. Was he setting up to apologize or to fling salt in her wounds? She covered her belly protectively and edged forward, slowing near bushes behind which sinister things could hide. Then, as she pressed past the last line of trees and through the spiral hedges that opened up to the castle, the breeze began to hum their wedding song.

Belle felt her chest lift and relief pour over her like a warm rain. Her mind lit up with thoughts of a tearful confession and an airtight embrace. She pictured a renewal of vows, a romantic dinner, and Donner tossing around the children they were finally going to have. She saw holidays and snowball fights and autumn hikes through an orange hillside. For one shining moment, she saw the marriage she’d always wanted but never really had.

Then her arm hairs spiked and everything before her turned to ash. The ground froze instantly, stinging her bare feet and catching her toe. Pain shot up her leg. She tripped forward and cursed—instantly clapping her palm over her mouth. With the click of a switch, spring had wilted. In its place stood gnarled thorn bushes, stripped branches, and a chunky mash of mud and snow. The music was gone. Where the castle stood just moments before, Belle saw nothing but a black cloud and a fat metal door. Instead of a typical knob, it had a deep red diamond, just like her ring … which, yep, she’d forgotten to take off before bed.

Belle rubbed her arms and hobbled up to the door. She knew walking through it would end the dream—and possibly start a nightmare. But choosing to wake up instead would accomplish nothing. At least if she could talk to Donner in person, maybe—

She wrapped her fingers around the blood-red knob and turned. It didn’t move. She wiped the dampness off her palms and tried again. Nothing. A laugh rang out from somewhere in the atmosphere, and her optimism liquefied into hot fury.

The last time she was locked outside in the snow, she was nine years old and her sister Julianne had yanked her out of bed, screaming that their father was having a heart attack on the front lawn. Before she knew it, she was barefoot in freezing temperatures, begging for her sisters to let her back inside while her father slept off his whiskey dinner on the kitchen floor. Their fun ended when Belle, panicked, slipped on a patch of black ice and cracked her head open on the front steps. The scar ran an inch above her eye and could pass as an early worry line these days, but she hated having the reminder. Each time she looked in the mirror, she hated seeing that helplessness—for her—was elemental.

“Donner,” she called into the sky, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but if you want me to go through this door, you better unlock it.” She yanked the tiny nightgown farther down her goose pimpled legs and waited. Nothing. She felt something snap and screamed so loud her throat went raw. “Right freaking now or I’m leaving and this was a tremendously stupid waste of your time!”

As Belle’s heart beat triple-time, a gust of wind swirled around her. The snow picked up but was no longer cold. Then she heard a click and a slow creak. “Always so damn dramatic,” she muttered and shuffled over the threshold. “Like a phone call wouldn’t have worked just fine.”

Moments later, Belle was fully awake but standing in her dressing room. On all sides stood row upon row of clothing racks and shelves of floor-to-ceiling color. Her trembling hands began to steady. She looked around. Everything seemed in order and her mirrors were still in one piece. At the foot of the rolling ladder sat one of Donner’s enchanted trunks, capable of holding an infinite number of items without ever getting heavy. What was he up to?

“Are you happy, Beauty?” The voice thundered through the room like a cannon blast. Belle jumped back, sending one of her earring trees clattering to the floor. Donner had asked her that same question every night when she first came to the castle. It usually preceded the mortifying, “Will you marry me, Beauty?” Perhaps she should have read more into his motivations at the time.

“Are you happy, Beauty?” the voice repeated.

Belle let out a pop of breath that sent her bangs rocketing into the air. “Yes, I’m thrilled,” she hissed, embracing her fury again. Donner was becoming quite good at bringing it out. “I have no home, my husband’s a lousy cheat, the paparazzi is scouring the realm for me, and the only dress I took with me feels like a straitjacket. Yes, I’m absolutely wonderful. Now why am I here?”

No sooner did the final syllable escape her lips than a half-dozen sandals rocketed off their shelves like popping corn without a lid. They landed in a heap beside her, followed by a ticker tape sprinkling of scarves and shawls. Belle bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. Then she knelt down and felt the cold marble beneath her favorite pashmina.

“Is this seriously why you brought me here? To watch you throw a tantrum? She pulled the fabric to her chest and shielded her face as the storm continued—swirling with skirts and dresses and sequin handbags. “What are you, two years old?” She shrieked as a stiletto heel brushed her shoulder, etching a dotted trail of blood.

Belle screamed for him to stop. Another rogue projectile and their baby could pay for Donner’s tantrum. The pain would be unbearable. He’d disintegrate with guilt—his temper the cause of his own undoing. It was a horrid thought. Seething, she bent down and grabbed an armful of designer treasures. A diamond brooch whipped past her ear the moment she stood back up. Then she heard a crack.

Instantly, everything that had been shooting through the air halted. Dresses and shoes and jewelry hung in suspended animation all around her. Then came a new voice.

“What in all the kingdoms—”

Belle looked up. In the doorway tottered a chesty blonde with a wide beach hat and jeweled sarong. A frosted hurricane glass with a tissue paper parrot wavered by her lips.

“Upon my word! I swear, the two of you are going to send me to an early grave,” Donner’s mother scolded, bringing her free hand to her hip and jutting out her elbow. “Donnie! Wherever you are. You get your arrogant ass down here this instant!”

The air cracked again, as if something had slashed it open. Belle’s brooding husband appeared. His designer chaos hair was now just chaos, and she could barely see his eyes through the mess—not that she was looking. Rather than his usual dark and glossy ensemble, he wore an old blue sweater that time had stretched past his fingertips. Years ago, Belle used to slip it on during cold nights and laugh about how close it came to her ankles. She remembered it felt like wearing a bedspread.

She turned away and ignored the kick in her gut.

“I certainly didn’t retire so my son could sample all the women in the kingdom and his wife could throw a fit,” Hazel Wickenham chastised. “Now what in the world is so wrong with Belle that you had to go on a comparison shopping spree?”

Belle felt locked in an imaginary spotlight. Donner rubbed his toes into the floor but didn’t dare mutter an answer.

“Ugh,” Hazel groaned, marching toward her daughter-in-law with her glass extended. “Take this,” she instructed, shoving the looped straw toward her mouth. “You need it more than I do.”

Belle lowered the glass and struggled to keep her eyes off Donner. Every second since she walked out, she’d pictured him racing around the castle with a harem of half-naked tramps, proclaiming his long-awaited freedom and eating his dinner off a red lace bra. But this man did not look like he’d been doing any partying. He looked sullen and lost. He looked like the shadow of someone she knew years ago, someone who saw salvation in her for one brief, exquisite moment.

“Now what do you have to say for yourself?” Hazel pressed, despite Belle’s hope that she’d leave.

Donner raised his chin and glanced from his mother to his estranged wife. Hazel cleared her throat. Her bright blue eyes seared into him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to his shoes. Belle edged to the side just as Hazel’s arm plopped over her shoulders.

“What was that, dear?” Hazel pressed. “What are you sorry for?”

Donner’s gaze stayed low. “I’m sorry … for being unfaithful.”

“Unfaithful to who? The floor?”

“You know who,” he grunted. Hazel cleared her throat and tapped her sandal. “Belle. I’m sorry for being unfaithful to Belle.”

Finally, Hazel released a high-pitched chirp of satisfaction and clasped her palms together. “Thank you,” she sang. “Was that so hard? Now help your wife put all these beautiful things back.”

Both Belle and Donner spoke up at once. What did she mean put her things back? Was that supposed to be an apology? Belle wanted reconciliation, but that’s not what just happened. That was an overgrown toddler regurgitating words he didn’t mean.

“Ugh, fine.” Hazel stomped over to the chest and peered inside. “Donner, pack up whatever else your wife needs while you work this out. We can’t have her looking like a pauper in the interim, now can we? Struggles fade, but unflattering photos stay forever.”

Donner made a grunting sound and edged toward the woman he’d hoped to torture just moments earlier. Belle inched back as he squatted down to scoop up the cashmere shawl he’d given her on their first anniversary, the tattered dress she’d worn when she first set foot in the castle, and the tiara she’d flung at him the other night. As he rose to his feet, Belle smelled scotch and elm grass cologne.

“Here.” He handed her the shawl and scanned her negligee. “You’re obviously cold.” Belle peeled her arms apart and reached forward to take it. Their fingers touched and she thought of the parents at the zoo. She wanted him to know about the third little person between them, but she couldn’t find the words. She saw a line of dried blood along his cheek—the mark of her candlestick—but his hair still covered his eyes. He pulled away to empty the remaining shelves. Hazel beamed with pride as he stuffed their contents—silk dresses and metallic pumps and purses galore—into the bottomless trunk.

“Now. As delightful as this has been,” Hazel hummed, yanking a glittery magic wand from her cleavage and using it to conjure another daiquiri, “I must be going. Happy hour just started at the Salt Bar.” Turning toward her daughter-in-law, Hazel placed a frail wrist on Belle’s shoulder and tugged at her chin until their eyes met.

“Sweet, sweet Belle,” she sighed. “This may surprise you, but I too have felt the pinch of a husband’s wandering hands.”

Belle glanced to the side. Was she joking? Everyone with a pulse knew Hazel had ignored her husband’s infidelity for years. Before Rapunzel arrived and captured the interest of both sexes, the Mirror devoted a page every Sunday to all the women he’d been seen with during the week.

“Believe it or not, I know exactly what you’re going through,” she continued. “And you know when it got better?” Belle shook her head. “When I learned to accept who we both were.”

When she what now?

“I realized that in some ways it was my fault, and in some ways it was his. But blame will get you nowhere.” Belle’s chin fell away from Hazel’s grasp. “Now you and Donner will work this out. Make a pro-con list. Luxury, fame, power, versus a bit of sharing. I know if you both look deep down, you’ll realize this was just a teensy bump in a long, illustrious road. Then you can get back to what’s really important—like giving me a grandson.”

Belle felt like she’d been flogged, twice, and then given a bowl of ice cream. How could Hazel possibly imply that she shared blame for Donner’s betrayal? She’d been nothing but doting—boring, perhaps, and maybe a little predictable, but still.

“Good girl.” Hazel patted her on the back and then lurched toward her son. “Now as for you, Donnie. I don’t want to see another word about this in the media. Some women naturally allow this kind of behavior for the head of the house, and some aren’t comfortable with it. Your wife is obviously of the latter category and you need to work with that. You picked her.” Belle hugged the shawl over her chin, wishing it could hide her completely. Hazel straightened her hat and reknotted her sarong. “I will not be the woman who spawned Braddax’s first royal divorcé in history, so behave yourself while Belle takes the time to forgive you. I’ll be watching.”

“Donner,” Belle said as soon as the air cracked, “I need to tell—”

But Hazel wasn’t the only one leaving. The words barely breached her lips before Donner disappeared, Braddax Castle melted, and Belle found herself back in Rapunzel’s guestroom—bangs glued to her forehead and her heart thumping through the ceiling.

 

* * *

 

“How come you never told me Donner has access to magic?” Rapunzel asked while twirling a fork overflowing with scraps of strawberry crepe.

Belle gazed silently into an orchid centerpiece from one of Rapunzel’s many ill-fated admirers. It had arrived, ahead of three others, while she was whisking away her frustration in the kitchen.

“Earth to Belle. Donner. Magic. What gives?”

“Huh?” Belle shook herself back into focus and blurted out the first words that came into her head. “I didn’t say he can do magic.”

Rapunzel widened her eyes and clinked her fork against her plate. She leaned into the table. “Neither did I. I said I didn’t know he had access to magic. Which—considering how your entire wardrobe somehow materialized in my living room overnight—you can’t deny.”

“Oh.” Belle stumbled over her words. “Yes, well—”

“But judging from what you just said and your nervous twitching blinking thing, you’re making me think there’s a lot more to it. Of course Donner can’t do magic himself. Can he?”

Belle stabbed a crepe and stuffed it into her mouth. Rapunzel continued to stare, watching her eyes flicker like Morse code. Blinking was her body’s way of blacking out uncomfortable situations—even if only for fractions of a second. She really needed to get a less visual tick.

“You’re going to have to swallow that eventually.”

“Mmkay fooine.” Belle grabbed her water and washed her crepe down. “But you can’t tell anyone.”

Rapunzel scooted toward the edge of her seat, her blouse narrowly missing the fresh blueberry syrup. Belle glanced around to make sure they were alone. “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Donner is descended from a pureblood fairy.”

Belle braced for an explosion, but Rapunzel just tilted her head and leaned even closer. Purple juice seeped across her chest. “How far descended? Are we talking ancient ancestor here? Great aunt? Grandma?”

Belle shook her head. “Mother.”

“What?” Rapunzel’s jaw plummeted as her eyebrows soared. “Braddax’s Queen Mother is a pureblood?” She gasped. “Holy crap, Belle. I’ve never heard that, and I hear everything. Who’d they pay to strike that off the registry?”

Belle didn’t answer.

“Well, thank goodness fairy blood dilutes. I don’t anticipate Hazel doing any major damage, but if Donner was more than half magical—”

“He is. But not by much.”

“Belle!”

“His father had a quarter from somewhere.” She trailed off and let her vision blur. The orchids looked nicer this way. “So Donner’s like, sixty-two percent.”

Rapunzel shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m defending Parliament right now, but there’s a registry for a reason. One bad day and a strong enough fairy could blow up the kingdom. Or turn us all into frogs.”

Belle opened her mouth and immediately clapped it shut. After everything Donner had done, why did she still feel protective of his secret? Well, she knew exactly why, but that news was yet to be announced. She wound a spiral of syrup over her crepe and dropped a glob of whipped cream in the middle.

“That’s a massive exaggeration,” she said through a full mouth. “Only purebloods have that kind of power. The registry is just a way for Parliament to keep tabs on the world. And frankly, I don’t want our kids having to deal with that.”

Rapunzel chewed on the silence for a bit. “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never heard you say anything so … subversive.”

“Yeah. I guess you’re rubbing off on me already.”

Rapunzel wiped an imaginary tear from her eye, then refocused. “Okay, so what happened last night then? Hazel popped into your room with a trunk full of clothes and … what? Apologized for her asshole son?”

“Ha. More like told me I’m half to blame. I mean, she made him apologize too, but—”

“Wait.”

Belle paused mid-chew. Man, was she really on a roll this morning.

“Hold on just one minute.” Rapunzel was shaking her head between both hands. “Donner was in my apartment?”

“No.” Belle sighed and pulled off her wedding ring. She placed it in the center of the table and explained that no one had been in Rapunzel’s apartment last night, and none of it was Hazel’s doing. No, Donner did not have the power to transport her or anyone else to a different place, but that hunk of metal with the red diamond did. It was a charm. Yes, an illegal charm. It allowed her to fall asleep in one place and wake up in another. It worked whether the wearer had fairy blood or not. She’d had it for years.

“Do you remember when I broke Donner’s curse?”

Rapunzel crossed her arms and gave a loaded nod. Of course she remembered.

“Well, that happened because of the ring. Donner—cursed Donner, I mean—allowed me to go home and see my family for a week.”

“How noble of him.”

“Listen,” she said. “The ring is how I got there, and how I wound up coming back. All I had to do was put it on and turn the stone in before going to bed.”

“Beats paying cab fare, I guess.”

Belle chomped into a sausage with such force that her teeth clanged into the metal fork. “If it wasn’t for that ring, I’d never have gotten back in time to break the curse. See, my sisters tricked me into staying longer than I promised, and one night I dreamed that he was dying.” Belle’s throat pinched tight. “Our dreams connected a lot back then.”

“Kinky.”

Belle stared woefully into her plate. She’d subconsciously mixed all her breakfast toppings into a lumpy soup surrounding an island of flour and cream. “I felt so guilty, and so terrified. I didn’t want him to die. The ring got me back just in time.”

Rapunzel slid her plate away and leaned back. “Let me get this straight. The King of Braddax is more than half fairy, the Queen Mother is a pureblood, and you have an illegal charm—which are known for being unpredictable and dangerous—wrapped around one of your appendages. Anything else?”

Belle felt like she was standing in the center of a ten-foot hole with nothing but a shovel. She rubbed her stomach under the table and asked, “Isn’t that enough?”

Rapunzel made a “huh” sound and started stirring the air with her fingers. “So, he gave you a ring that let you pop into his room from all the way across the kingdom. That makes me wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“Any chance there are more?”

Belle stared back in confusion.

“I’m just thinking. You said you didn’t know how red panties lady slipped out without you seeing her. Right?”

Belle scrunched her forehead. “Yeah. But I didn’t see Donner come in either. And she could have easily gotten by while I was looking in another room.”

“Sure, maybe. Or maybe she put on her handy dandy little ring, closed her eyes, and woke up at home.”

A wave of nausea hurled itself from Belle’s gut right up her throat. She couldn’t even contemplate that. But it was true. For all she knew, Donner had a drawer full of lace underwear—in every color, shape, and size, with a ring to match. Furiously, she began loading her plate with muffins, eggs, bacon, another crepe, and two scoops of raspberry jam. Separation was not going to be good for her waistline. Then again, neither was pregnancy.

“This could actually be great news,” Rapunzel said before taming her tone. “I mean, it’s evil and sick, of course, but if you could track down the other rings—er, ring—you could find the homewrecker. Splash her all over the news and get the whole story out there so you can take Donner for all he’s worth.”

Take him for all he’s worth? Belle felt the nausea again and dropped her fork. Divorce. Vengeance. That wasn’t what she wanted.

“Just imagine,” Rapunzel continued, painting imaginary headlines with her hands. “King Donner and his magical booty call rings. What a story! What an exposé! You’d come out on top for sure!”

Belle raised a palm in the air. This was too much. The wound was too new. There were still a million steps to go through before even thinking about divorce. Even Hazel said they’d be back together in no time. “Look,” she said. “I want Donner to pay for what he did, but he’s still my husband, and I still love him. I’m not ready to think about divorce yet, and I don’t want our marriage slathered as a horrible sham in the tabloids.”

“Not the tabloids, but how about—”

Belle stared intently across the table. “Please.”

Rapunzel gazed straight ahead, not moving a muscle and not saying a word. She was calling in the silent treatment now? Really?

Belle sighed and leaned forward. “Look Pun. My world is falling apart right now and I just don’t know how to handle it. I need to hold on to whatever hope I can muster. Maybe you can do a story later—a happy one, about how we made it through the dark patch and wound up having a wonderful family.”

Rapunzel finally opened her lips and nodded toward the living room. “I hate to dash your dreams Belle, but … turn around.”

Slowly, Belle shimmied upright and twisted in her chair. She panned through the living room, with its white leather couches, glass fireplace, minibar, and sixty-inch media screen hanging on the far wall. Then she gasped.

Plastered across the screen were five words in thick, triple-outlined letters: Braddax Monarchs Call it Quits?

Beneath it, Donner stood before a sea of microphones. His left eye looked like the center of a rotten avocado—surrounded by purple, black, and strokes of sickly green—and his cheek was still dotted with dried blood.

Catchy, unsubstantiated details scrolled along the bottom. Violence at Braddax Castle … King Claims Betrayal … Queen’s Mental State Questioned … Belle’s Whereabouts Unknown …

This time, as she fell off her chair, Belle’s vision went dark for much longer than a fraction of a second.

 

The Marestam Mirror

DIAMOND ROPES AND VELVET CAKE
By Perrin Hildebrand, “King” of Gossip

 

AS FAR as shockers go, the recent rift between Donner and Belle truly takes the seven-layer cake. According to his “teary” (does it count if you use eye drops?) news conference, Donner’s domestic bunny rabbit and sugarcoated wife is really a devil in disguise, lashing out on impulse and abusing his heart like it’s a voodoo pincushion.

If this is the real Belle, I ask, how did we miss the signs? Certainly, one of her eleven siblings would be able to shed some light on the conundrum. Perhaps young Belle had a penchant for torturing animals in the woods, or seasoning her family’s meals with rat poison. Perhaps it wasn’t her father who lost all that stockholder money, but a wily toddler bored with her counting game. Perhaps her mother never actually left after the collapse, but is buried under the old manor house. Perhaps.

Alas, of Belle’s six brothers, three defended her honor, two could not be found, and one seems to think he’s a horse. Of her sisters, two hung up the phone, one broke down in tears, one rambled on about how Belle was “a saint for not killing us in our sleep,” and one bent my ear till I promised to print her statement in full.

“My sister is as sweet as she is righteous,” says Julianne Boswell, a two-time divorcée from Carpale. “Or self-righteous, at least. Growing up, she wouldn’t hurt a fly unless it chomped down on her eyeball, and even then, she’d mourn the thing for a week. I don’t know what finally provoked her, but it’s about time she let out a real emotion. I’m so sick of Marestam’s history books turning ordinary people into guiltless saviors. Belle is just another human, and we’re all better off knowing that.”

Yikes. Scrape away the sibling bitterness, and I hear this: Belle wouldn’t hurt a fly without justification. She is not a strumpet, a bully, or a nut (her porcelain doll wardrobe notwithstanding). If you believe Donner word for word, you need therapy.

Oh, wait. This is Marestam. If you believe him, you need more therapy.

 

AH, the privilege of having rich friends. Those 1,500 people lucky (or loaded) enough to hold invites to Queen Letitia of Riverfell’s anniversary extravaganza just got another reason to attend. I have it on good authority that Cascade Magalie, the renowned jeweler who creates gemstones simply by speaking, will be assembling the royal goody bags. If there’s one thing we can count on Letitia for, it’s opulence. That, and the longest reign in Marestam history.

Speaking of people anxious for Letitia to hurry up and pass down the throne already, word reaches me that Princess Penelopea has been tasked with organizing her mother-in-law’s celebration. Penelopea, one of several dozen daughters born to one of several dozen wives of the Sultan of faraway Vashia, came to Marestam on a scholarship to Braddax University … and ended up marrying the son of the biggest control freak in the kingdom. From the frying pan into the fire, as they say.

It’ll be a miracle if they both make it to the party alive.

 

Chapter Five

PENELOPEA

 

Penny dove between the narrowing doors of the subway train, cursing and pulling a tweed fedora over her eyes. Few things in the world flustered her more than mass transportation, with its suffocating crowds, tiny aisles, miniscule windows and wardrobe requirements (Letitia always requested that she dress “inconspicuously” while taking it). The whole ordeal reminded her too much of her past.

Her body temperature already spiking, Penny dried her palms on her boring gray trousers, and made a beeline for a trio of empty seats. But by the time the swarm of comers and goers cleared, only one spot remained—smack between a bristly man twirling a pack of cigarettes in the air above his lap, and an elven woman encased in a cloud of perfume.

Panicked, Penny glanced from the sandwiched seat to the metal bar running along the ceiling. She wasn’t sure which was worse, squeezing between these strangers or wrapping her fingers around a rod groped by thousands of filthy hands every—

The driver’s lead foot flung her into the orange plastic slab pre-molded to fit the average Marestam derrière. Well, that settled that.

As the melding aromas of tobacco and pizza and White Rabbit No. 5 tugged at the contents of her stomach, Penny pulled her elbows against her ribs and panned for a distraction. She settled on a glossy advertisement for “Dr. Donovan Darling, Couples Counselor to the Stars,” and let her eyes lose focus.

She’d become quite good at this—feigning interest in nothing in particular so as to avoid engaging any strangers. It seemed to be one of Marestam’s unwritten social customs, but she still thought it was odd. Where she came from, the United Kingdoms of Marestam was the forbidden land of freedom and opportunity. It was where people of all origins—those with fairy blood, elf lineage, even the occasional giant—lived and worked without killing each other. It was where women could study law, marry (or not) whomsoever they chose, and wear whatever color and style struck their fancy. Back home in Vashia, her wardrobe had rotated between black ankle-length dress, navy ankle-length dress, and a charcoal blouse with matching ankle-length skirt. Back in Vashia, she wasn’t even supposed to know how to spell “autonomy.”

Initially, she couldn’t understand why Marestamers didn’t jump for joy every day over their amazing luck at being born here. She still didn’t exactly understand it. But like everyone else, she’d just stopped wondering.

A deep voice rumbled over a crackling speaker. “This is your Q train with express service to Riverfell, Carpale, and Braddax. If you’re looking for Regian, hop off now and head for the L.” Penny gazed into the swirls of grime on the windows and listened as the voice rumbled off the list of upcoming stops. Thornbush and Seventh. Barclays Square. Union Center. Hall of Curiosities. Four stops to go. Four stops until she came face-to-face with the cursed apple that nearly killed Snow, the spinning wheel that took Dawn three hundred years out of her element, the glass slipper that gave Cindy the best life of them all, and the so-called magical peas that rerouted Penny’s whole life.

She’d never wanted to set foot in the hypocritical tourist trap. She’d always thought it absurd that a government so heavy-fisted against magic didn’t mind raking in a few million dollars a year at its expense. But she’d just have to suck it up. After all, what was an “ode to Letitia” tent without her devilish, life-altering peas?

Thankfully, she was meeting Cindy for lunch first and had time to dull her jitters. The Golden Goose made an exceptional spiked cider.

The train squealed bloody murder as it pulled into her station and flung itself open. Shuffling past people hawking roses and jewelry, Penny bounced up the stairs and sucked the air in as if it was infused with chocolate. It still got her—coming up from below ground, seeing Carpale’s jewel-toned towers rising into the sky, feeling the whoosh of cabs and commuters rushing by on their own personal adrenaline. Had she not fallen in love with Logan, a prince tethered to Riverfell, this is where Penny would have lived. This was the Marestam outsiders dreamed about. Riverfell, with its quaint brownstones and the stroller-pushers of Prospect Slope, was just a stone’s throw away from bustling Carpale—but it was a whole other world.

She was three steps from the Golden Bird when someone in a paint-splattered T-shirt grabbed her elbow and jerked her back into the rushing river of pedestrians. Penny’s heart instantly skipped three beats. Without the slightest pause, she planted her feet, thrust her hand into her purse and raised her pepper spray.

“Wait!” Cindy yelled, blocking her face with her hands. She was clasping a cup of the Golden Bird’s famous cider and a gift-wrapped peach turnover. She held out the treats in surrender.

Penny’s heartbeat screeched to a halt and then returned to normal. “Crap, Cin. I almost blinded you!”

“I know.” Her tone was accusatory; it said no one needs a weapon in culturally enlightened Marestam. But she and Cindy came from completely different worlds—and old habits die hard. “Why do you even have that? It’s broad daylight.”

Penny shrugged and put the steely canister away. “Never mind,” she said, eying the bag. “What’s with the takeout? I thought we were going to eat there.”

“How about a snack for now and celebratory treat later? I have a fantastic idea.”

Penny scanned her friend’s outfit. It was highly unlike the illustrious Cinderella to have frizzy hair in public, or to be wearing a baggy T-shirt. A filthy T-shirt at that, streaked with paint, mud and—Was that blood? “Is that blood?”

Cindy followed her eyes and then knocked her head back in a “Where is my brain?” sort of way. She pulled the shirt over her head to reveal a tasteful lilac camisole, then fixed herself in the reflection of a bank window. “Sorry. I got so excited about the website, I completely forgot to change! And yes, that’s blood but not mine. I’m fine.”

Penny leaned back to accommodate the weight of all her questions. Why in the world did she have someone else’s blood on her? What website? What could possibly have gotten her distracted enough to look un-perfect outside her bedroom?

“Come on,” Cindy said, striking out behind two men in designer suits. “Let’s walk and talk. We’re wasting time.”

As they shuffled along, Cindy explained that the blood was from a boy who ran into a gym wall at the Murray School, the dye was from a paintball workshop she’d been taking, and the mud was from a PETTA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Talking Animals) rally she’d spoken at in Capitol Park.

“You did all that this morning?” Penny was shocked. When did she find the time to sleep? Or eat? Or spend any quality time with her family?

“Yup. Only got a handful of days left in my twenties, so I better use the energy before it’s gone.”

“So, what are we doing now?”

Cindy smirked and powered off again. As they turned onto Sixth Avenue, the sidewalk opened up before the massive Hall of Curiosities. A giant cube spun at the foot of the steps, media screens shouting messages on all six sides. Two-for-One Mondays! Live Your Happily Ever After! Special Exhibition: King Midas’s Bedroom!

Penny stopped as everyone else curved around her. She felt her insides clench. She was supposed to come here after lunch. Alone. “What are we doing here?” she called, but Cindy was already at the door.

“Hurry up!” she yelled, waving her arms. “The sooner you get your peas, the sooner I can jump!”

“Jump?”

Penny’s head spun in a million directions as she clopped through the marble hall listening to Cindy ramble on about her upcoming birthday, about some bucket list she wrote as a child, about how little she’d accomplished in her life, and about how throwing herself off the Prince Williams Bridge with nothing but a bungee cord was going to make all of that better. It didn’t matter that it was dangerous. It didn’t matter that she had four kids, a husband, and an entire kingdom depending on her. And it didn’t matter that Penny had never heard of a company licensed to throw people off the bridge connecting her kingdom to Cindy’s.

“It’s not a company,” Cindy explained as they sped past case after case of gaudy artifacts loosely tied to past monarchs. “It’s a guy. But he’s done it a hundred times all over the world and accidents almost never happen. The website has all the facts. It’s perfectly safe.” She stumbled over a thought. “Safe,” she repeated. “But still dangerous and daring and scary, right?”

An uncomfortable thickness loomed between them as Penny tried to suppress her urge to explode. If only she had the power to freeze everyone around her and scream at the top of her lungs. Instead, she said the only thing she could without launching into a lecture about what a wonderful life her friend had but didn’t seem to see. “Is it really worth the risk?”

“I’m turning thirty,” Cindy whispered as they followed a group of kids into a room painted entirely blue. “I can’t fit into my ball gown. And I’ve done nothing adventurous in my entire life. I need this.”

Penny felt the weight of her head fall back in surrender. “Fine. I’ll get the peas and then go watch you gamble with suicide if you insist. But if you survive, you have to promise to take a long, serious look at your life and realize how many blessings you have.”

Cindy scanned the room before answering. The ceiling pulsated with teal lights and mounds of spongy plastic stretched along the walls to look like coral. For all the money Parliament poured into this tourist trap, it looked like a grammar school art project and smelled like a five-hundred-year-old time capsule.

“Deal,” she finally said. “Now let’s look around because I never want to come here again.”

Penny browsed for a whole five minutes before deciding she’d rather watch her best friend leap off a bridge than remain at the Hall of Curiosities any longer. She found Cindy staring at a display case containing a crudely forged dagger on a red velvet cushion, a page girl dress, and a dozen golden seashells. On the back wall hovered the words “Princess Merill of the vast Aquatic Realm: This little mermaid sacrificed herself for her human love, forging the eternal bond between man and his fish-tailed brothers.” Penny recalled the stories she’d heard about a mermaid who traded her tongue for human legs in the hopes that it would win her true love. But when her prince married someone else instead, she killed herself rather than murder him—which would have set her free.

“The little mermaid?” she asked, sidling up to Cindy, who nodded and uttered an affirmative squeak. Her lips were pressed into a tight line. Penny looked at the case again and placed her hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“So sad,” said Cindy, her fingers hooking her elbow. “This is really all they have for her? A pillow he made her sleep on, like a dog, and the knife she used to martyr herself? She should have driven it right through his heart and never looked back.”

Penny’s fingers flinched. Wow. Thirty really was doing something to her friend—something twisted. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you knew her.”

“Knew her!” Cindy pulled away. Penny’s hand fell like an anchor. “Please don’t tell me I look that old already. She died decades ago! Come on. The brochure says the peas are two rooms over. And these lights are giving me a headache.”

Penny shook her head and followed Cindy through a glowing alcove dedicated to the faraway realms, including Vashia. She gave the space one disgusted glance, dug her nails into her palms as they passed Aladdin’s “magical” lamp, and picked up her pace.

“This looks like the place,” Penny exhaled as they crossed into a hall so jammed with color it looked like the inside of a comic book.

“What makes you so sure?”

Penny turned toward a giant rock holding a pulsating sword, a portrait of thirty people stuck to a flapping goose, and a tarnished mirror under a sign asking: Are You the Fairest?

“Because this room is beyond absurd.”

Cindy let out a loud laugh, then stabbed the air with her finger. “There!”

Penny felt the world stop. In the corner, she saw five small mattresses stacked into a wobbly pile. Above them, neon letters worthy of a strip club or an all-night pharmacy begged the question: Can you feel them? Her chest thrummed. She wanted to run, cry, and laugh all at once. “It looks like a kiddie porno ride,” she said.

“Try it out,” Cindy demanded, ushering her forward. “Don’t roll your eyes at me. I tried on my whole ball outfit the other night.” Penny bit her lip. Like that was the same thing. “I’ve always wondered how you could feel three peas through all that stuffing and not squish them.”

Keep wondering, Penny thought.

“I’ve got to see it for myself.”

Defeated, Penny boosted herself up and fell like a sack across the bed. With feet dangling over one end and the rib of the mattress border digging into her head, she stared into the fluorescent lights. The last time she felt this exposed, her heels were in stirrups.

“There’s no way I could fall asleep here,” she said, not exactly lying. Cindy’s hands rushed together and, for a moment, Penny feared she was going to applaud. This was mortifying. She hopped off and motioned for her friend to climb. “Your turn,” she said.

Cindy jumped up as if the bed was going to whisk her off to paradise. She then laced her fingers over her stomach in quintessential waiting-damsel pose. After a minute with her eyes shut, she let out an exaggerated yawn. “Do you think the museum would let me borrow a blanket? I think I might fall asleep right now.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Oh, get off. I need to find the curator and ask if we can borrow the peas for the party. And then I never want to come back here again.”

Cindy sat up and paused to look at the informational placard no one ever reads. “Hey Pen, did you see this?”

Penny’s sneaker squeaked against the floor as she turned back around. “I don’t need to read about it. I lived it.”

Cindy squinted. “No. I really think you should see this.”

With a grunt, she followed Cindy’s finger to the paragraph titled “Princess Penelopea Proves Her Worth.” Blah blah blah. Magical peas. Fifty mattresses. By feeling them, Penelopea of Vashia proved she was a real princess worthy of becoming Prince Logan’s wife.

Suddenly, her chin jerked back. An asterisk led her to a small line of text at the base of the placard.

Please note, it read, the peas used for this exhibit are reproductions. The actual peas described in this historical account remain in the private collection of Queen Letitia of Riverfell.

Penny felt her heart crunch. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

 

* * *

 

Penny’s first reaction was to call Logan and demand he find out where his control freak of a mother was keeping the peas.

“But don’t tell her what it’s for,” she commanded. “I know she only put me in charge of this party to see me fail, and I don’t want to give her a head start.”

Logan put her on hold for a whole twenty seconds, and then returned with the news that his mother didn’t have the peas. “She says she donated them to the Hall of Curiosities the week before our wedding.”

Penny’s fist tightened. He couldn’t have asked that quickly and still been discreet. “Sweetheart, just out of curiosity … what reason did you give her for asking?” Logan’s stumbling, nonsensical response told her exactly what she didn’t want to hear. Her husband had a heart of gold. Truly. But there never existed a man more terrifyingly devoted to his mom.

“Cheer up,” Cindy said two hours later, cradling her skim vanilla latte. They’d wasted the afternoon arguing with the Hall of Curiosities’ curator, manager, and three different custodians, and were now back at the Golden Bird. “The peas will turn up. And as far as Logan is concerned, it’s not so bad. They say a man will eventually treat his wife the way he treats his mother.”

“So, I’ll have him walking on eggshells forever and our children will live with us till we’re dead?”

Cindy laughed and stared too intently at the apple tart in the center of the table. She’d only allowed herself one miniscule bite, then pushed her fork aside.

Penny stabbed the tart, imagining it was Letitia. The problem wasn’t just that the peas wouldn’t make an appearance at her mother-in-law’s gala, or that a set of historical artifacts was missing, or that this afternoon had been a complete waste of time. The problem was something she couldn’t even tell Cindy, or any other living soul. The problem was that if Letitia still had the peas that had built Penny up in Marestam, she could use them at any moment to tear her back down—to expose what really happened that night.

“Any chance that bungee cord can hold two?”

Cindy shook her head. “It’s too late now. He stops at sundown.”

“I’m sorry.”

Cindy shrugged. “That’s okay. We can schedule a tandem jump next week, or maybe even skydive instead. There’s a place across the river that looks pretty good.” Penny sucked on the inside of her mouth but said nothing. “I’m free for the rest of the day though. Grace is watching the kids and Aaron—”

“Does Aaron know you were planning on jumping off a bridge?”

Cindy shook her head vehemently and explained that Aaron thought she was trying a new exercise class. “Why don’t you come over for dinner and a movie? I could use some idealist romanticized fluff.”

Penny felt as if she’d just been offered a spa vacation. The thought of sharing torturous chitchat with Letitia, Logan and—on the off chance he actually showed up—his big brother Carter was more than she could take right now.

Half-finished coffees in hand, they immediately hailed a lime-green taxi and began brainstorming what delicacy the castle chef should cook for them.

“Aaron isn’t expecting us,” Cindy said, “but he won’t mind. He’s been a complete ghost lately anyway. Always rushing around trying to keep his brats in line.”

Penny gasped. “Brats? Cin, your kids are angels!”

“I was actually talking about Parliament. But I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call my kids angels,” Cindy said with a laugh. “Not all the time, anyway.”

Penny replied with a knowing smirk. As they rolled through Capitol Park—a renowned gathering spot for sunbathers, artists, kite-flyers, inline skaters, you-name-it—she felt her mood brightening. Cindy’s castle, the most awe-inspiring architectural creation she’d ever seen, sat plunk in the center of this urban oasis. Nestled between two lakes, it had magnificent stone turrets stretching into the clouds and was always covered with ivy, flowers, winter berries, or holiday lights. To her compatriots in Vashia, it was the ultimate symbol of hope.

As the cab rolled through the gates, Cindy decided on grilled salmon with lemon butter, asparagus salad, and mushroom risotto. Despite hating mushrooms, Penny nodded and stared into the night—taking in every tower, every archway, every gleaming window, every beautiful woman with her face inches from Cindy’s husband. Penny went rigid. The cab slowed outside the front entry and halted before a line of royal guards.

“Out we go,” Cindy chirped. “I can already taste that risotto.”

Penny didn’t budge. Nearly all of the castle windows were lit, but for some reason her eyes had come to rest on one. On the second floor, where the King’s private office sat between the meeting hall and Angus Kane’s secretary, she saw Aaron leaning over a tiny woman who couldn’t have been more than twenty, maybe twenty-five years old. She was holding a goblet in one hand and covering her heart with the other, as if he was reciting a love poem. Penny’s heart pounded as she watched the girl lift up her sleek dark locks and slink in front of Aaron like she was on a ledge and he was the wall. Rather than move away, he slid behind her and touched the tattoo on the back of her neck. She shivered.

“Pen, come on,” Cindy urged as Aaron drew a thick strand of jewels around the woman’s neck. “You’ll forget about the peas after food.”

What was she supposed to say? After Belle, she couldn’t take another broken marriage—especially not this one. Penny felt a brief temptation to tack on a fake smile, hop through the door, and enjoy her girls’ night in peace. But Cindy deserved better, so she stayed.

The woman and Aaron were face-to-face now, their foreheads practically touching as they gazed into the space between them—first thoughtfully and then bursting with smiles. Penny felt a tickle beside her shoulder and smelled Cindy’s blackberry perfume. Nearly a full minute later, she heard a sharp exhale and realized her friend had been holding her breath.

“On second thought,” Penny murmured. “Maybe I should just go home now.”

Cindy continued staring but gave a tiny nod.

“That’s probably a good idea. I’m not really hungry anymore.”

 

© 2014 Laura Kenyon. All rights reserved.

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