The Puppet Queen: A Tale of the Sleeping Beauty Read online

  ***

  I dove into the wedding preparations to distract myself from my continuously disintegrating relationship with Auralia. After that night, I could not look at her without feeling a tumult of confusing emotions, which added to the already unpleasant cocktail of culpability. Despite his initial role in the breakdown of mine and Auralia’s relations, after my betrothal, Ferdas rarely crossed my mind.

  Gieneve and I, under our mother’s guidance, pored over menus and dress designs. We sketched both lavish and ludicrous gowns and there were brief moments during which it felt as though everything in our lives had righted itself once more. I watched Gieneve flit about lightly with a strange, guilty nostalgia. I could see how my family had repressed the secret of the curse for all these years. If it was inevitable and we were powerless in its face, it was senseless to let it dictate our lives.

  Occasionally, Gwydion would join in our shenanigans and my heart would jolt uncomfortably in his presence. Sometimes, Auralia would furtively hover at the threshold, while Gen and I howled at the absurdity of our drawings, particularly one which called for a wide skirt, ringed by stiff silver hoops, on which Gieneve insisted would perch tiny animals. “For fertility! For fertility!” she cackled, brushing her black hair away from her face. We collapsed with laughter at the thought of me walking through the temple with a menagerie swinging from my hips. But for all her peeking, Auralia never said a word and I never invited her to join us. If we ever made unsteady eye contact, she would dart away.

  A few nights after the engagement, I ventured to the plains, near the huge stump of the Tree. Once, it had been a favorite game of young children visiting the Mehal to sneak outside and wait for the Pari to arrive. Gwydion had once attested that a little pari girl had kissed him, a claim we had all dismissed as empty bragging. Nonetheless, whenever I had lurked by the remnants of Astero, waiting for the Pari, I would fall under the spell of peaceful sleep, visited by glittering and joyful dreams. The Pari may particularly revere the tree, but its power is for all those who walk the earth.

  That night, with guilt overwhelming and sleep eluding me, I fell back into the old pattern. Slipping past the careful watch of the guards, I arrived before the stump, which stood wider than a dozen oxen. Despite being shorn, it still towered heads and heads above me. Waiting for peace to come, I shivered in my thin silk gown, which afforded little protection against the insistent breeze. I wished that I had had the foresight to bring a cloak.

  On the edge of sleep, in that realm where dream bleeds fluidly into reality, I was approached by a girl of bewitching beauty. She stepped towards me through the mist, her goldenrod wings, striped with black, flapping ponderously behind her. I blinked. Seasons! Her face reminded me of Beya’s description of Lilianna, although certainly she was too young to be the Pari Queen herself. Perhaps a daughter, I thought absently.

  “So you, Selene, are the one to marry my Gwydion,” she said, her voice lilting musically. The iridescent fabric of her gown fluttered in the breeze. I wondered how she could keep from shivering.

  Her Gwydion? I eyed her warily. The impossibly tense recent history between my family and the Pari felt heavy between us. “If I am, what is it to you?” I flinched. The words sounded more pugnacious than I had meant them to.

  She chuckled unkindly. The sound thundered to my core. “I would advise you to let his father’s suit die, for indeed, it is his father pressing this. Why would he seek you when I have wholly given myself to him?”

  Uncertainly, I replied, “Alright?” I had never in my life found my mind so leaden and witless.

  With a final disdainful look, she walked away, and, to my tired eyes at least, faded into the fog.

  Thoughts of sleeping beneath the remnants of Astero were driven from my suddenly enlivened mind as it slowly worked to make sense of the encounter. Already, it was fading away from reality and into dream. The Pari were real, certainly, but why would she seek me out—not to claim retribution for the First Tree, but to frighten me from Gwydion? Shaken, I stumbled back to the castle. Mine and Auralia’s rooms had been separated, for it is only proper for a woman betrothed to have her own chambers. It was a provision I was thankful for.

  Lighting a candle, I fell edgily into the still-unfamiliar bed. Could it be true? Could Gwydion have a pari lover? It sounded absurd. If it were true, a part of me could not help but congratulate him on his conquest. Quite a coup. Nonetheless, if this were true, I was annoyed. He thought to marry me, Marquise of Carez, daughter of the Emira of Aquia, a descendant of kings and djinnat, and then be disloyal? He would not dare. Who was he to think he could get away with that? Ass. Some of my guilt dissipated in self-righteous anger. I felt more myself than I had in weeks.

  And then there was the portion of me, always so stupid, that was hurt, that had enjoyed Gwydion’s flirtations more than I would care to admit. However repellant I found him, there was a quality which drew me to him like a moth to candlelight. Overblown and dramatized as my relationship with Auralia had recently become, I was eager to start afresh—But if Gwydion is playing me for a fool, then Seasons damn him.

  But wouldn’t it be fair, I thought, if the girl whose birth had caused such strife with the Pari were to have her home and married life destroyed by one of them? A much neater justice than any of Lilianna’s curses.