Once Upon a Dream (26 page)

“Show some respect,” Fish Phillip growled. “He’s still your—my—
father
.”

“What did he look like?
Really
look like? His face,” she pressed.

“Old,” Ground Phillip quipped.

Fish Phillip raised his sword. “
Enough
, I said!”

“Please,
use
this as an excuse to attack me,” Ground Phillip spat. “Because you can’t describe him at all, you
fake
!” He readied his own sword.

Fish Phillip sprang forward, beating the other Phillip’s weapon aside with a clang that rang out disturbingly among the ancient trees. Clouds of tiny birds, high up, exploded from the leaves and flew away.

Both Phillips were fast—
very
fast. They were extremely skilled swordsmen, clearly trained by a master. They were perfectly matched—obviously. Neither could gain the upper hand, and each trick and tactic one came up with, the other had already thought about. Parry, spin, lunge, leap, surprise attack at the
legs
…It was actually quite beautiful. If it hadn’t been such a dangerous situation, she would have enjoyed watching them.

But she found herself drawing her own sword. She would not be unprepared, no matter who won.

After a few minutes the twins separated, breathing heavily. Neither had drawn blood.

“You’re well trained, demon,” said one Phillip.

“As are you, demon,” said the other, giving the first a little salute.

She didn’t even know which one was Fish Phillip and which one was Ground Phillip anymore.

They clashed again, more furiously this time. One drew blood on the other’s side; the other delivered a painful-seeming blow with the flat of his sword to the other’s head.

Aurora Rose winced with each one.

Finally, panting, they separated again.

“Here’s the thing,” said Phillip on the left, facing her. “There’s no way you can trust
either
of us. Maleficent’s magic is too strong and perfect.”

“And here’s the
other
thing,” the second Phillip said with an arch look at his twin. “Why
would
you trust either one of us? You’ve already seen that the real Phillip, whoever it is—
me
, by the way—”

“It’s
me
, you lying hell spawn!”

“Whatever. You’ve already seen that the
real
Phillip can’t be trusted anyway. I lied to you. Just like you said.
Despite
falling in love with you. I could just as easily lie to you again. For good reasons,” he added quickly, seeing the look on her face. “It could be for your own safety, or because it’s too dangerous for us to be together…or whatever. How well do you really know me? Would you
ever
be able to trust me again? Now that you know I lied to you?”

She put a hand to her head. The other Phillip looked sick, seeing the logic behind his twin’s words and where it would go. But he didn’t protest.

“For your own safety, for the safety of this quest—for the good of all the people who are depending on you—it would really be best if you went on. Alone.”

Aurora Rose felt a pain as great as the wound of a sword at these words—an invisible sword, in her heart. It was the truth.

And hadn’t she always known that? She was always alone. She would always
be
alone. She was the only one she could trust. In
both
her memories. Whether she was hiding in the giant maze of the Thorn Castle or looking for something to do among the wild animals of the forest or lying on her princess bed, hoping Lianna would stay away, everything had always come down to just her.

The other Phillip also looked pained at the words.

“But…I love you…” he said desperately. “I want to be with you and protect you and help you.”

“No,
I
do,” the first Phillip said bleakly. “All those things. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s what’s best.”

She knew she couldn’t delay. If she did, she would be stuck there forever, trying to decide—another Maleficent trap. She turned to go, hoping she wouldn’t hear the two boys begin their inevitable fighting again, clanging away in the forest of her mind forever.

Or until she woke up.

“I stole my mother’s pearl earring,”
a Phillip suddenly called out.

She closed her eyes and kept going.

“I
stole
it because it was
pretty.
That’s all. Later when she was
dead
and they
found
it everyone asked if I stole it because I wanted a memory of her and I said
yes
even though I just wanted it because it was pretty and it was when she was still alive. But this way everyone was nice to me and I was forgiven and everyone felt bad for me!”

She couldn’t stop herself from turning around.

What a weird thing for Phillip to say.

The other Phillip thought so, too; he looked at the first one with disgust.

“Why would you tell her
that
about us?”

But the first Phillip wasn’t done yet.

“When I was ten, when I was waaaaay too old not to know better, I told my sister Marya that she was prettier than Brigitte.
In front of Brigitte
.”

The Phillip who spoke looked sick and racked with guilt.

The princess gripped her sword tighter but moved closer.

“Once I caught a mouse and put it in a room with my cat and watched the cat play with it until it was dead. It was horrible and I wept for days after and I went to confession about it,
but I did it
. I did it. Because I wanted to see what would happen.”

“Sure, all right,” the other Phillip said nervously. “Are we saying all this stuff now? Because I can do it, too. I don’t know
why
you’d want to tell her all this….”

“I wet my bed until I was thirteen!”

Aurora Rose and the other Phillip both looked at him in shock.

“I wet my bed until I was thirteen,” Phillip continued, a little hysterically. “Not
all
the time. But on many nights. My father was angry and the chambermaid was sworn to secrecy and they
whipped
me and told me I was terrible, bringing shame to our name and lineage. Royal princes don’t act that way. Royal princes do
not
wet their beds. But I
did
.

“Nobody else knows any of this. No one. I’m telling you because I love you and I trust you with all of my secrets—good and bad. I want you to know that you can trust me, too. I know I lied to you but I swear I will tell you
everything
about me from now on. All the bad stuff and all the good stuff, too.”

He paused, looking bleak and weary. “Leave now, for the good of your kingdom and for your own safety. Just know that—if you succeed, if we ever meet again—I will never, ever lie to you about anything. Ever again. And I will spend the rest of my life doing whatever I can to make you forgive me.”

The other Phillip opened his mouth to say something.

Which was the opportunity she took to drive her sword through his stomach.

The look on his face was human and terrible: surprise, hurt, horror. His hands came around the shaft as blood began to flow down it, as if he could pull it out and make everything better. Strange noises came out of his mouth.

She staggered back, horrified by the mistake she had made.

And then the blood turned black. And the noises turned to hissing. His body shivered and became something dark and not really there, snakelike and transparent. He vibrated and trembled and shivered.

Finally, he fell to the ground like all the others.

The remaining Phillip watched silently, his cheeks white.

It must be a horrible thing to watch yourself die,
Aurora Rose thought.

But he recovered himself and strode forward, giving the thing a coup de grace, a quick death the demon certainly didn’t deserve.

Then he dropped his sword, turned to the princess, wrapped her in his arms, and hugged her so tightly it almost hurt.

She didn’t say anything. There were too many things to talk about: how she had figured out it was really him, how she still didn’t forgive him for lying before, how he wasn’t always the perfect prince he seemed to be.

How she would in private, for the rest of their lives, no matter what happened, remind him of the things he had said that day. Just because.

How she somehow just assumed she would know him for the rest of their lives. Forever.

But she had also just killed something that looked a whole lot like a real person when she stabbed him through the innards. That image replayed itself again and again in her mind.

What if she had been wrong?

So she stayed silent and let herself be held.

A PILE OF BODIES
was growing next to Maleficent’s throne. It was a little shocking—maybe even distasteful. Never in her life had the fairy been messy or allowed herself to be surrounded by filth.

The horde around her mostly didn’t care, however; they looked at the corpses with hunger. Lianna rolled her eyes.

“You’re going through them too quickly. There’s not going to be anyone left for you to rule.”

With a hiss and a movement that was far more redolent of a snaky dragon than a human queen, Maleficent cleared the space between her and the pig-footed handmaiden in the wink of an eye. She loomed over her, all arches and blackness.

Lianna didn’t flinch.

“
I have less than an hour.
Excuse me, let me rephrase:
we
have less than an hour. If I don’t get the princess back here by then, I could consume
everyone
in the castle and it wouldn’t matter.

“And what help have
you
been, my dear?” she added with a venomous drawl. “I have attacked her through all her weaknesses…and sent my best servants after her.
All of which have failed.
What aren’t you telling me? What dark secret of Aurora’s heart can lead me to her defeat?”

“I have told you everything about the princess,” Lianna said steadily. “
Excuse me, let me rephrase:
you already know everything I know.”

The evil fairy and the strange handmaiden stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment. Neither looked away.

The rest of Maleficent’s creations grew nervous. They shifted from hoof to hoof or claw to claw and made uneasy whistling and
whoomph
ing sounds.

Maleficent pulled her lips back in a sneer and spun around, concentrating on the image of the battered princess and prince. Her cape flew and settled behind her. Still Lianna didn’t move. If anything, she seemed a little bored.

Suddenly Maleficent looked thoughtful.

“But I don’t
have
to know the darkest secrets of her heart,” she said slowly. “All I have to do is…
encourage
them….”

She raised her staff and looked into the depths of the orb, her yellow eyes further illuminated by whatever it was she saw there.

And she began to chant.

THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS
traveled down the path in silence. Phillip put his arm out for her to hold and Aurora Rose tried to ignore it but finally accepted it, giving in to her present state and tendency to stagger.

She kept replaying the last few seconds, in which she had killed the demon.

It was harder to drive the sword into the thing’s body than she had imagined it would be. But was it still, perhaps, easier than it would have been with a real human? Would there have been more resistance? Would she have been more hesitant? Would the fact that it was an actual person have stayed her hand some?

Or had the past few days changed her more than all her years in
either
reality?

Phillip was complicated now. She didn’t want to think about him. His feelings for her were unbearably strong. His treatment of her in the Forest Cottage had been abominable.

Or had it?

Wasn’t it just the way he would inevitably wind up, considering his life experiences up to that point? Did he have any reason to trust a random girl in the forest with the truth?

But didn’t he
love
her?

She didn’t want to think about that. It seemed like wherever she was, whoever she was, Aurora/Briar Rose was some sort of maelstrom of deceit, causing all who came near her to lie.