The Rules of Ever After (10 page)

“Kitty?” Phillip asked.

“I’m sorry. You know her as Katerina. Kitty is the nickname I gave her.”

“
You
gave her? You mean, you are the friend who—”

“Yes. That crazy old woman had her walled away in a tower out in the middle of the forest and I stumbled across her after I was sent away. I was trying to come up with a way to rescue and marry her, but then I overheard Cauchemar’s plans to kill you and your father.”

“It’s a good thing you did!” James said, as he stepped over to the group of men. “Who knows what might have happened if you hadn’t.”

“It couldn’t be worse than this!” Phillip glanced back at his father’s frozen form.

“Majesty, please say I can go,” Peter implored. “Every minute I spend here is another minute she is getting farther away.”

“I don’t know, Peter,” Phillip mumbled, as he crossed to the roaring fire. “Cauchemar said the kingdoms can be a dangerous place.”

“Ever since your stepmother banished me from the castle, I’ve learned how to survive on my own out there. And why would you believe anything that woman said?”

“Phillip,” Daniel interrupted, “why don’t we all go together? You won’t be alone. You’ll have Peter’s survival skills, James’ sword and both our royal names. We can get all the help we need. All of us. Together.”

“But, Sir James,” Phillip turned to the knight, “you owe no allegiance to me.”

“I will follow Daniel into the mouth of a dragon,” James said as he knelt in front of the two princes. “It is my sworn duty. Also, what good is a knight without adventures to his name?”

“And what good are adventures,” Peter queried, “without a mas­ter storyteller to pass them along? Please, Prince Phillip.”

“But my father. My kingdom.”

“Your father is guarded,” Daniel assured him. “Your people love him. They will protect him and your land until you return.”

“If nothing else, sire,” Peter said, “we should warn the other kingdoms about what she has done.”

“Exactly,” Daniel said. He grabbed Phillip by the elbow. “Phillip, you owe it to your kingdom.”

“You owe it to Kitty,” Peter added.

“You owe it to Clarameer,” James said. He stood and pulled his sword from his belt. Turning the hilt away from himself, he handed it to Phillip.

Daniel watched as Phillip chewed his bottom lip while he stared at the golden handle of the sword. He glanced up at Peter and James before shifting his eyes to Daniel with a look that begged for encouragement. Daniel nodded and waved his hand toward the weapon.

Taking the sword and holding it in front of his face, Phillip closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I owe it to him,” Phillip said and glanced down at his father’s frozen body.

“Yes!” the other three men answered in unison.

“I owe it to me,” Phillip said, as he straightened his back and pushed his shoulders back. Daniel could see the roaring fire reflected in Phillip’s eyes as he turned to him. “Okay, let’s go. Let’s find that cursed witch and bring her down.”

E
arly the next morning, the four men set out into
the kingdoms in search of Cauchemar. Phillip had secured horses for himself and Peter from the stables and requested provisions be packed for each of the men. Even with packs full of food and clothing loaded on each horse, and his father’s glittering sword strapped to his waist, Phillip felt decidedly unequipped for the challenge ahead of him. Yet, Peter would be there with stories to distract him, and James would be there with his sword. Though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why, he felt especially relieved Daniel would be riding beside him as well.

After a day of riding north from his castle, they arrived at the dense forest that served as a natural border between Bellemer and the rest of Clarameer. The trees stretched from the center of the continent all the way across the kingdoms until they spread to become what the Sylvanians called the Western Woods, which covered most of Daniel’s home kingdom. Phillip had only seen the forest once as a child and had never cared for it. He found the thick, overgrown foliage suffocating when compared to the open expanses of the windy shores of his oceanfront castle. There, the most dangerous creatures dwelt in the waters of the Southern Sea and could not harm a man who stayed safely on shore. But he had heard tales of the bears, dragons and griffins that lurked within the shady recesses of the great woods. As they entered the first line of trees, Phillip slowed his horse to let Sir James and Peter pull to the front, where they could meet any creature first. Daniel slowed his horse as well, to trot along beside the other prince. Trying to keep his mind off the horror in his father’s face and the unknown horrors that might wait in the woods, Phillip listened to the two men ahead of him.

“So, Sir Scribbles,” James drawled, as he trotted up beside Peter, “you write stories?”

“Yes. I write stories, but my official title was kingdom scribe.”

“Scribe?”

“I wrote down all the business of the kingdom. Laws, procla­mations, letters to other kingdoms—pretty much anything that needed to be on paper, I wrote. See, my mother was the favorite lady-in-waiting to the former queen, Phillip’s mother. She died from the rain plague when I was young, so Queen Marie took me in as a sort of brother for Phillip. She made sure I was taught how to read and write and gave me a career.”

Phillip grinned as he listened to Peter talk of their childhood in the castle and remembered the affection his mother had showered on Peter and him. He could still see Peter hunched over a desk with a charcoal pencil and sheaves of parchment, squinting in dim candlelight, with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, as he practiced drawing letters. Phillip could almost hear his mother’s laughter as she sat on a chair between their beds and listened to Peter spin one of his bedtime tales.

James interrupted Phillip’s thoughts with, “And they paid you to do that?”

“I was a member of the court, so I didn’t really need money. I was fed and clothed and given a room. What more could you need? Phillip and I spent our free time together. He always liked hearing the stories I would make up. ”

“But you got booted?”

“Banished.”

“Whatever.” James waved his free hand. “They kicked you out. Did you write something
that
bad?”

“No, I wrote the truth. And some people don’t like the truth.”

“The truth about what?”

“I was in the room when Prince Phillip’s mother died. I wrote down her dying words.”

“Okay. And?”

“Well, she had some definite, um,
opinions
on what should hap­pen after she died. I could tell she did
not
want King Henry to have anything to do with that evil witch you met back in the testing chamber. Everyone else thought she was telling King Henry to marry Cauchemar, but I knew she was warning him.”

“Why would anyone want to marry that woman?”

Phillip kicked his heels lightly into his horse’s flank to speed her up a bit, in order to stay close to Peter. While he had been present for the events at his mother’s death, he had never really understood what had happened. He was curious to hear what Peter would say.

“King Henry thought it was what his wife wanted. Her last words
were
a bit vague, at least to everyone else. Also, he knew Phillip would need a mother. King Henry and Prince Phillip were so lost in grief they couldn’t see what was happening, but I could. Cauchemar had something to do with the queen dying. She just had to. Before she showed up, Queen Marie was perfectly healthy, and everyone in the kingdom was happy. But in just a few short months, the queen was withering away and dying. Everyone knew that Cauchemar was in Cantera when it fell to the troll king. It just seemed strange to me that every kingdom she showed up in lost its royal family. Then, when she became queen, she started having me write down all these laws that were making the entire kingdom miserable. Work all the time. Music and art were outlawed. It was insane.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?”

“I tried. But who is going to listen to a peasant boy? Phillip and his father were so lost in grief, I didn’t want to add to their troubles. Also, I had no proof. If I accused the new queen of murder, I could’ve been hanged. So I wrote a story.”

“A story?”

“About a rooster that lived in a coop with two hens, one white and one red,” Peter said, as he leaned to the left to avoid a low-hanging branch. “The red hen can’t lay any eggs so she convinces the white hen to help her. She tells her that the best way to lay lots of eggs is to eat the fur off a fox.”

“Oh, I know this one! Lillianne back in our castle read it to me! So the white hen goes looking for a fox to help the red hen. She leaves a trail of her feathers so she can find her way home. She goes up to the fox to ask for fur and gets eaten! Then the red hen sits on the white hen’s eggs and claims they’re hers.”

“But the red hen and the rooster don’t realize that the fox follows the trail of white feathers back to the coop.”

“And then he eats them both and all the eggs!” James crowed as he slapped his thigh. “Oh, yeah, that’s a good one. You wrote that?”

“Yes,” Peter said with a smile of pride. “I sent it to the
Kingdom Inquisitor,
hoping someone would figure out it was about King Henry, but the only one who understood it was Cauchemar. She made up some nonsense about me watching her change clothes and had me banished.”

“Like anyone would want to see that old bag of bones naked,” James said, with a sneer of disgust.

“Precisely. But King Henry was already blind to her lies by then, and I was sent out into the world. That’s where I found Katerina in a tower and started telling her my stories. I had no idea Cauchemar was the woman she called auntie until the night before they came to Bellemer. After I heard Cauchemar’s plans, I rushed back here, hoping someone would believe me this time. Guess I was a little too late.”

“At least you tried.”

Phillip pulled his horse’s reins. While he had never been pleased with his father’s marriage to Cauchemar, he had not known she had a hand in his mother’s death. His stomach knotted as he remem­bered his mother’s withering body in the chamber where she died and her final words to his father. Guilt chewed at his mind—she had been trying to warn them of Cauchemar’s evil ways, and only Peter had understood. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

“Are you all right?” Daniel asked, as he pulled up beside him. Phillip could see the concern in Daniel’s eyes. “Should I make them change the subject?”

“I’m fine,” Phillip said, shifting uncomfortably in his saddle. “We should keep moving.”

The four men rode on in silence until James finally spoke. “So you wrote
The Rooster with Two Hens
?”

“That was me,” Peter said, as he blew on his fingernails and buffed them against his chest.

“I’m just a little surprised, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“It’s just the way you talk,” James said, as he pulled his sword out and chopped off a low hanging branch. “I wouldn’t think you could write a story that good.”

“What do you mean ‘the way I talk’?”

“Back in the king’s chamber, when you were talking about Kat­erina, you said ‘I don’t need magic, I have love.’”

“Yeah? So?”

“Aw, Sir Scribbles, that is awful.” James pulled the horse’s reins and stopped to shoot Peter a look of disgust. “If your stories sounded like that, no one would want to read them. If you are going to tell the story of my deeds, it has to be a good story. All that love stuff? That’s the talk of a silly fool.”

“You take that back. I was worried about Katerina.”

“It’s terrible.”

“I was trying to inspire Prince Phillip!

“Just rotten.”

“What’re you two going on about up here?” Daniel asked, as he and Phillip rode up alongside the two bickering men. “You’re squawking so loud you’re scaring off the local wildlife!”

“I was just telling Sir Scribbles here that his flowery language is ridiculous. Love is stronger than magic? Oh, please.”

“Stop calling me Sir Scribbles!”

“Peter,” Daniel said with a chuckle, “you’ll have to ignore James. I’m afraid romance is a foreign word to him. He’s too busy trying to flirt with every creature with curves to waste time on love.”

“Love?” James asked in a huff. “Who needs love when you have battles and glory? Why settle for just one woman when you can woo four?”

“Some of us don’t even want one,” Phillip sniffed, as he pulled ahead of the group. As he rode off he could hear the other men continuing to argue.

“But love is the food of life!” Peter yelled.

“Ugh. That’s just awful,” James groaned.

With a roll of his eyes, Phillip clicked his tongue at his horse and trotted farther ahead. Looking around at the massive trees, he began to feel smothered by the thick foliage over­head that blocked out most of the sun. His heart raced as he urged his horse for­ward toward a small clearing in the path where a bit of sun­light streamed through the branches. Hearing the sound of another horse approaching, he turned to see Daniel ride up to his side.

“Those two will never see eye to eye,” Daniel said. “But they are funny to listen to. Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little queasy.”

“This is the forest where my wedding day hunt would’ve taken place. This is where I’m supposed to kill a stag for my bride. This is where Cauchemar intended to kill my father and me. And I am just figuring out that she probably killed my mother. I don’t have time for stupid arguments about love,” Phillip said, as he stared off into the distance. “We need to get out of these woods and find her.”

“I know. I’m here to help you with that, remember?”

Phillip stopped his horse in the sunlight and stared up to the small patch of blue sky overhead. Letting the sunlight warm his face, he took a deep breath and then turned back to Daniel. “Why
are
you helping me? Surely your kingdom needs you more than I do.”

“Not really,” Daniel said with a shrug. “Phillip, I am the
second
son of a king. You know what second sons do, right?”

“Wait for the first son to die? Fight wars? Find a princess from another kingdom to marry?”

“Exactly. But not me.”

“I don’t follow,” Phillip said.

“Phillip, you aren’t the only one with no interest in marrying a woman.”

“What makes you think that I don’t want to—”

“Phillip!” Daniel said with a belly laugh. “You told your parents you were going to marry me! You had to know that I was—”

“Oh yeah,” Phillip said with a blush. Urging his horse forward on the path, he mumbled, “Sorry about that. I was just trying to—“

“No. It’s fine. I just told you I have no interest in marrying a woman either.”

Phillip pulled sharply on the horse’s reins and turned back to Daniel. He stared at Daniel, his brows knitting. His face relaxed and then his eyebrows shot up toward his hairline as a thought occurred to him. “Wait? Are you saying what I think you’re saying? Are you—”

“Light in the saddle?” Daniel said with a laugh. “Yes. Like you, I prefer the company of men. I thought for sure you realized that after our conversation the first time we met.”

Phillip looked at Daniel before turning his face back to the path and riding for a few paces. His eyes widened and he turned back to Daniel. “Oh! Now I get it! You’re out in the kingdoms hiding so no one knows your secret! Don’t worry, I won’t tell. Oh! Does James know?”

“What? No! Of course he knows. I’m not hiding. My whole family knows.”

“By Gingerfair’s girdle! Did they throw you out? Is that why you’re wandering the kingdoms? You’ve been banished! Are you and James—”

“Phillip, no, no, no. I think it’s perfectly clear James likes his ladies.” Daniel laughed again at the thought. “No, I wasn’t banished. My mother understands my desires. Well, as much as a person not like us can. She knows I’ll never marry a princess, so she sent me out to find my own purpose in life. Maybe I’ll find love. I don’t know. Mainly I just want to find a cure for my curse.”

“So you’re saying people know and don’t care?”

“Believe it or not, some people are happy just to see you be happy.”

Phillip let Daniel’s words sink in as his horse ambled forward. For the first time since leaving his castle, he felt a sense of relief creep into the corners of his mind. “My mother would’ve thought that way, I bet,” Phillip said. He glanced over to see Daniel nodding in agreement. Phillip sat up higher in his saddle and let the relief spread to his limbs. “Maybe others could, too? Do you think people could ever accept a king with no queen? The rules say I have to marry but maybe I can just… no. A king needs an heir and an heir requires…” Phillip’s words trailed off as he looked down at the reins in his hand and frowned. “There I go being stupid again. Now I understand why you said you had a curse. I guess we both do.”

“Phillip,
that’s
not my curse!” Daniel’s chin dropped. “We don’t have a curse! I was talking about my birthday fairy curse.”

“Your fairy curse? Oh!” Phillip’s eyes grew wide with curiosity. “What is yours?”