The Flower Crown Princess

Part 7

I don't realize I've fainted until a long while later.

I wake in my own bed, in a nightgown, dizzy and confused, with Mortweni and a pale, golden- haired girl who can't be any older than thirteen years old hovering over me. Quickly, everything comes rushing back to me. Sickening images of wounds that my people carry because of my father, and quite possibly me. Maridi telling me of a rebel group. Gasping, I sit up as fast as my stiff, aching muscles will allow me.

I've made up my mind.

"Maridi," I gasp. "I need to speak to Maridi."

"You can't, milady," Mortweni informs me.

"What time is it?" I demand. "Isn't it only the afternoon?"

The golden- haired girl shakes her head. "No, milady," she says, in a quiet yet somehow bold voice. "The sun went down three hours ago."

I sink slowly back onto my pillows. "What happened while I was... fainted?"

"The show went on," says Mortweni. "The wedding ceremonies were completed and the peace treaty between the hills and the rivers signed and so therefore cemented for another fifty years. We brought you up here right after you had fainted and I left Taii here to watch you until the evening meal." So that's this girl's name. I test the word in my mouth. Taii.

"Speaking of the meal, are you hungry?" says Taii. She holds up a silver plate of food, and my mouth waters. It was a fasting day until the sun went down. Everyone but me ate several hours ago. Of course I'm hungry! I near about snatch the plate from her and both of them watch me as I scarf down the food, quickly, but ladylike enough that Mortweni won't call a doctor to see if I slammed my head on the ground when I fainted. I feel different, though. Maybe I had hit my head in falling.

When I've finished every last morsel on the plate, finishing by dabbing my mouth with the napkin in the most proper way possible, Taii takes the platter back from me, her blue eyes wide with wonder- at what, I have no idea. I settle back onto my pillows.

"Sleep now," whispers Mortweni softly.

* * *

A breeze tickles my cheek and fat bluebirds flit past my face. My hair is down, falling in ringlets as dark and glistening as a raven's wing to my waist. A tinkling laugh fills warm, flower- scented air as I run down sunlit hills, my long, sky- blue skirts rustling the tall, waving, fragrant grass. I feel free for some reason, happy. I collapse into the grass, laughing as the blades brush my body. The green hills seem to roll in the wind, and there's not another person or a building in sight.

I'm free. Free to do anything.

Suddenly a scream from nowhere pierces the happy scene like a knife. Wake up, a voice taunts me, and I realize that this is a dream.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

Suddenly the azure sky turns black and stormy, the happy little birds turned to skinny crows.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.

I do wake up, clutching my blankets to my chest and gasping in my dark bedroom. The room is illuminated only by a thin sliver of silvery moonlight, streaming in through a crack in the thick curtains.

Slipping out of bed, the only sound is my feet as they pat across the floor to the window, the cold of the stone walls picking my skin. There's a window seat, built in, and from my second- story perch there, on soft cushions, I can see the whole outside yard and even a tiny bit outside the wall, silvery and shining in the moon's soft glow. As I climb on and wrap my arms around my legs, setting my chin on top of my knees and glancing out, something dark moves outside.

Curious, I raise my head and squint, following the shape as it goes through the open gate, dashing across the courtyard in the dead of night, illuminated only by the full moon. As it grows closer, the shadow takes a form.

It is a person. A tall, thick person wearing a flowing black cloak.

I watch, holding my breath, as this phantom slinks around the yard, slipping into shadows and swimming in patches of moonlight.

Finally, it slips into the castle through an open window. Within five minutes I hear the softest of a whisper as the phantom man's black cloak brushes the stone hallway's stone floor. As the  door squeaks open, I freeze, but it isn't mine that opened. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. The phantom is truly a master at sneaking around- if I was even the lightest of sleepers, if I was not listening for his presence, I would have never, ever heard it.

A minute later, the cloak whispers against the corridor again. I freeze again, wondering if my door will ease open, if I will see the black- cloaked phantom, but it slips past, appearing a moment later, out my window, sliding out the same window it did not so very long ago.

He- I think it's a man- stops in the middle of the yard, seeming as though he's having afterthoughts of whatever he's done inside the palace walls on this moonlit night, and for a second, his hood- covered face turns towards my window.

My heart stops. I stay perfectly still, thinking of rocks, of mountains, of things that do not move. Castles. My brother's opinions. Huts that now have dark windows in the city. The hills.

Finally his face turns back, and he speeds through the night through the opened gates. I relax, then stiffen again at something that caught my eye.

Opened gates.

Opened window.

I turn my head quickly towards the great oak doors that lead to the halls and corridors of the palace, and see exactly as I feared.

No guards there, no green- clad men pacing the yard for intruders as I have seen. No steel swords that glint in the moonlight. No movement there at all. None.

Before I know what I'm doing, my white nightdress is fluttering at my ankles as I run down the corridor to the door that should also have an armed guard. I'm about to enter the room through the door that is still open, but stop. What if no one is harmed? What if it's just one of my father's many mistresses?

I shake off the idea. A mistress wouldn't have been in and out of the bedroom in thirty seconds, nor would she have to climb in through a window. I go in, and my foot touches something warm and wet.

In the torchlight of the hall, I see the dead body of a guard, his padded green outfit stained with crimson blood, his face blank and carrying an odd expression I can't place. That's when I scream. It's not real. It can't be real. It won't be real. I will not let it.

I run towards the bed and grab at the sheets, uncovering King Morrick's dead, bloodied body.

Wake up, Nivh, I whisper. Wake up.

But I can't, not this time.