Return to the Nine Kingdoms

41

                                                The Twins
    Word around the castle was that yet another set of changes in the realm was happening and all revolved around the Sixth Kingdom.
    "Queen Bea," Teeth told his sister. "She's been awakened."
    "Why should I care?"
    Fangs was half-way through a meal of twin turkey legs, a mound of roasted potatoes, and a spattering of heavily-seasoned root vegetables that the servants had prepared for them in the banqueting hall. Only a few tables had been dressed for Queen Eleanor's guests but a few visitors from the various provinces within the First Kingdom had been arriving all morning and used the banqueting hall to gather in both grief for Queen Cinderella and celebration of Queen Eleanor.
    "Because our Kingdom," Teeth continued, "had a very passive feud with the Sixth Kingdom over who Queen Bea chose for her King."
    Fangs had a mouthful of potatoes and mashed the bite over to one side. "I know this. He's a wolf. Pure-blood, isn't he?"
    "Something like that," Teeth admitted.
    Teeth had studied the history and King Gerard himself appeared on the very documents that the She-Wolf had acquired. While the connection felt so distant and King Gerard had been asleep for more than five times the number of years the Twins had, King Gerard was kin to them.
    "If the Sixth Kingdom really is broken from its Curse, then our Uncle can be our ally," Teeth told his sister.
    He'd devoured his own meal before his sister had even joined him in the banqueting hall. Although it had been the final night before the full moon, Fangs had used the freedom offered by their new setting and the distracted Queen Red III to run through the open pastures surrounding Honeymoon Castle as if the moon had been full. Her ravenous appetite surpassed her brother's and Teeth could even see that she was eyeing a second helping of turkey from the plate of another nearby guest.
    "Don't," Teeth warned her.
    "I wasn't!" she argued.
    Teeth surveyed, once more, the guests who had ingratiated themselves in the warmth that the banqueting hall provided. At least one traveling party from the southern provinces had been woefully underprepared for the icy weather and had their noses pinned close to one another as they huddled around the central fireplace. Each of the two ladies in the party wore summer dresses with short sleeves and the tall, feathered hats that sat atop hairstyles meant for warmer weather were drooping from caught snow as it melted.
    It was still morning and the chapel bells hadn't yet rung for midday, but the collection of strange people who were unaccustomed to being at Court made the day seem chaotic and almost timeless. If not for the procession of servants as they piled plates with food and cleared used dishes, Teeth and Fangs would have thought themselves caught in some kind of limbo as they waited for Queen Red III to make her next move.
    "It should be happening today," Teeth told Fangs.
    "That's what you said yesterday."
    A large man dressed in an old uniform of faded blue cloth seated himself at the table near them and waited, impatiently huffing as a few minutes passes, for a servant to begin filling his plate and provide him with a mug of hot cider. The man nodded toward each of the Twins but didn't appear to understand or care who they might be. Fangs' tail, full ahead of the moon, twitched playfully and drew the man's attention just as a servant dropped a turkey leg onto the plate in front of him. The man yelped with surprise and upset the mug she'd just poured him and he awkwardly tried to help clean the mess before moving himself further down the length of the table.
    Still, Teeth brought his voice into more of a whisper, "The Queen dying was always expected to be a hurdle in the plan, but by this time tomorrow, you and I will be the declared rulers of the Second Kingdom."
    "Don't you mean Queendom, brother?" Fangs hadn't brought her voice as low as his but there was no one close enough to hear the sly petulance in her tone.
    "A dual Kingdom, Fangs, that's what it will be. You can call it a Queendom, the rest of the realm can call it a Queendom. But it will not be under the thumb of another Queen Red come tomorrow, no matter what name its given."
    "When I'm Queen, we'll have hunts every night," Fangs mused. "And we won't need no moon to make it so."
    "Mind always on your stomach, eh, Sister?"
    A boom of thunder drowned out Fangs' retort and the ceiling of the banqueting hall shook with the reverberations. Drips of wax from the chandeliers fell but had cooled to hard beads by the time they found any surface below. A new surge of wind pelted the windows with sleet and several of the slate tiles above one of the arched centerpieces slipped loose and fell to the cobblestones outside.
    "Sheesh," Fangs said, shivering despite the warmth inside the hall. "The old Ice Queen is at it, isn't she?"
    The feeling inside the hall dropped to an icy panic as nearly every head in the room turned toward Fangs and Teeth, as if the very mention of the Ice Queen had conjured her and her wrath. Teeth nervously waved to the women by the fireplace and then to the man in blue who was sitting near them.
    "Keep your voice—"
    The banquet hall doors were open already, but the sudden appearance of King Wendell and Queen Red III in the doorway made it seem like the pair had crashed through the doors to make a grand entrance. The Queen looked sullen and the King looked distraught and empty—his features were sunken into his face and he clearly hadn't slept much at all by the dark circles under his eyes that were noticeable even from where Teeth and Fangs were seated.
    "This is it, you think?" Fangs asked Teeth.
    Teeth shook his head. The Queen wouldn't make any kind of announcement here, with Queen Eleanor's subjects ripping their way through turkey legs and roasted vegetables, and without any sign of the Princess. Even as Teeth opened his mouth to correct his sister on the timing of their rise to power, the tension and urgency in the King's face gave way to something new. It was fear.