The Princess and the Warlock

Chapitre Trente-Huit

My eyes felt very wide as I stared, not believing what I was seeing.

Freesia was standing in the back of the room, her lips spread into a wicked smile. Her eyes, an endless and depthless blue, seemed to glint as she looked in my direction, filling with a mischievous light. She was wearing a sheer white dress, one that she seemed to always be wearing, with her black hair barely pinned back. "Sorry to interrupt," she said loudly, causing the priest to falter in his speech, and every head to whipped in her direction. "Am I allowed to object to this union? Is that a thing?"

"Who are you?" King Faber demanded, rising to his feet. He was taking in Freesia's strange appearance, with her smile that split from ear to ear and her gigantic eyes that were nothing but the shade of blue. If he didn't already know she was from the Wildwood, he had to be suspecting. "Guards, get her out of here!"

Freesia looked to me, and seemed to almost grow giddier. "Cover your ears, Princess."

Her words wouldn't have meant much to the others, at least not in the moment, but I knew. Quickly, I pulled my hands from Prince Grimond's—I had to jerk them from his slimy, too-tight grip—sliding my palms over my ears.

Freesia opened her mouth as the guards rushed toward her, and they reached their hands out before—stopping. As if they'd been thrown against a brick wall, they pulled up short from Freesia, freezing into a statue in the room. In fact, everyone seemed to freeze. With their heads turned toward Freesia, their expressions were muted, neutral, blank. King Faber's body was in the middle of the aisle, frozen with his back to me.

Normally, her words or song wouldn't have been totally muffled by my mere palms, but when the song met the barrier between my ears, it bounced away, looking for its next victim.

And then Freesia closed her mouth, grinning at the scene she'd created before her, every single person frozen and staring, unblinking. They all looked like wax figures, lifelike, but frozen. Her words were subdued to my ears. "Beautiful sight, isn't it?"

I removed my hands, staring at her in a quiet disbelief. It almost felt like I was dreaming her appearance, like an angel I didn't realize I'd been praying for. "Freesia, how—"

"Am I here?" she interrupted. "I got through the door, duh. The guards at the front will have a bit of a headache when they wake. Not that we care about that, right?"

I glanced at Prince Grimond, who did not move an inch. "I suppose not."

She sidestepped King Faber and continued further down the aisle. Her feet made no noise as she walked, as they were bare of shoes. "I'm here to rescue you, obviously."

I stepped off of the dais slowly. "How did you know? That I was getting married today?"

Freesia came up to me, and we stood facing each other. Up close, I could see that her hair was dripping water, onto the tops of her shoulders. "The Wildwood's borders have disappeared."

I blinked at her words, not truly understanding the severity of them, even though it was flashing in her eyes. I also noted that it was not an answer, merely an aversion. "The border?"

"Gone. As in, the thing keeping humans trapped there? No more." She blinked and her blue eyes, if possible to detect, grew more sorrowful. "I felt it ripple--everyone did. It was a legend, that if the last warlock passed, so too would the border."

It was a sharp sort of pain that echoed through my chest, as if someone had thrust a hot poker through my rib cage. It demanded that I give in, that I allow myself to burn in its heat. Not now, a voice in my head whispered, and I pushed that pain down, swallowed it whole, curling my fingers together. "That's how you knew?"