Suddenly, Wendell was at my side with one of the king’s guards. “We must get Her Highness to safety,” he told the king. He might as well not have spoken, for the king took no heed of him whatsoever, nor of me. He stood before the queen, tapping her sword against the ground, drawing the moment out for the enjoyment of it.
“The show is over, Your Highness,” Wendell murmured, dragging me off the throne as he threw a cloak over my shoulders. “Time to put your notebook away.”
Aud, Aslaug, and Finn fell into step behind us as we ran. At one point, Wendell drew the king’s guard behind a wall, whereupon he brushed the guard’s face with his fingers as he’d done to my maid, and the guard collapsed almost comically, as if he were a puppet whose strings had been cut.
I stopped suddenly. We had just run through the first set of doors, beyond which was a hallway that should have led us to the outermost doors of the palace. But instead, we found ourselves in my horribly familiar chambers.
“I’m still caught in the king’s enchantments,” I told Wendell. “Take the others—you’ll be able to escape if I’m not with you.”
“Shut up,” Aud said, and she gave me a brief, painful hug. She looked at Wendell. “Is there anything you can do?”
“Possibly,” he said. “Yes, you’re still caught, and this would be a lot easier if he were dead.” He glared at me and Aud. “But he’s quite distracted right now, which means that his enchantments are wavering. I may be able to find us a way through.”
“Here.” I hardly recognized Aslaug’s voice. She pulled off my cloak, turned it inside out, and put it back on me again. “He’s a great lord, I know, but perhaps this will help a little.”
Wendell nodded approvingly. He paced back and forth in front of the door, examining it as if it were—well, something other than an empty stretch of air. I watched Aslaug.
“I suppose you’re wishing you hadn’t come along now,” I said.
She snorted. “I’ve been wishing it ever since I saw that horribly beautiful creature on his throne. How did you keep your hands off him?” She gave me a sly look that I never could have imagined on her face before. “Or did you?”
“Please,” Wendell said. “I ask to be excused from any descriptions of marital intimacy. This whole thing is unfair: I asked you to marry me first.”
“Oh, that’s rich!” I exclaimed, and was about to remind him of his many dalliances, which he’d never hesitated to make me aware of, but he seemed to sense the storm coming, and said, “Mustn’t tarry. Come, I think I’ve found a door.”
He dragged me from the room, the others following close behind. We came out in a vast cavern full of little hot spring pools where the courtiers liked to bathe. Wendell muttered to himself, and we ran on, until we left the cavern behind and came to a room I’d never seen before, filled with ice statuary.
“I thought you found the door!” I called, panting.
“I have,” he said over his shoulder. “But it’s a very narrow one, a gap between many layers of enchantment, and it requires some manoeuvring. Come on!”
We came next to a side door that led us back to the courtyard, where the ice now ran red with blood, then he made us all leap through a window that brought us to a winter garden, filled with flowers the colour of twilight punctuated with violent hedges, their leaves black and spiky and their berries bright with poison. Another door brought us to the banquet hall, which had a dozen more doors leading off it. Wendell hesitated only briefly, then made a run for the third door to our left. It looked to be a servants’ egress, but once we were through, I tripped over a snowdrift and would have tumbled all the way down the mountainside had not Wendell been holding on to me.
“There,” he said, smug and satisfied. “Now shall I explain your gift?”
I wanted to tell him to hang his gift, for we were standing on a narrow ledge with only the raging wind and the fall of the mountainside all around us, and I could see no way down, but my teeth were chattering too hard to force any words through them.
He smiled and lifted the hem of my skirt. The shoes he’d given me had transformed—now they were boots going all the way up to my knees, the fur so thick and warm they doubled the diameter of my calves, ending in sturdy wooden snowshoes.
He looked so smug now that I wanted to send him over the side of the mountain, but instead I said, “Thank you,” and kissed his lopsided mouth. It had the effect of stunning him into silence, which I enjoyed almost as much.
“This way,” he said, looking flustered for the first time since I have known him, and then he led us down into the valley.
4th February
I have read over my last entry, contemplating scratching it out and starting anew, out of some misguided desire to make it all sound more plausible. But Wendell and I will reach London tomorrow, and a day is insufficient time to accomplish that—a year would be insufficient, I suspect.
My memory of the journey back to Hrafnsvik is hazy. The snow, stirred up from the mountainside as we descended to form an icy fog, seemed somehow to mingle with the enchantments that bound me to the king. In one corner of my memory, the journey was one of hours; in another, we were trapped in those mountains for days, wandering haphazardly. I recall Wendell swearing in Irish and Faie as he tried to disentangle me; though we’d made it out of the palace, scraps of enchantment still clung to me like the broken filaments of a spiderweb. I don’t remember the others being there at all, and later Aslaug told me that Wendell would appear and disappear, leading them through the mortal realm as he gradually drew me out of the faerie one. I suppose they walked alongside me the whole time, a world away.
My first clear memory is awakening in the cottage—I was lying by the fire in a soft pool of blankets. I was confused by this at first, for my bed would have been more comfortable, until I realized that despite the blazing fire and the layers of furs, I was still shivering lightly. It was a chill that would not leave me for several days, and which I still feel at times when the sea wind picks its slippery way through the cracks in my cabin.
Shadow lay curled at my side and rolled upright with a delighted snort when he sensed I was awake. He shoved his huge muzzle into my face and licked me, while I half patted, half swatted him away. I’m afraid his breath is immune to glamour and smells exactly as you’d expect a Black Hound’s breath to smell—rather deathly.
“There you are,” Wendell said, his head appearing above my little blanket nest. He looked cheerful and supremely smug. “And how are we feeling?”
“Like I could sleep until spring.”
“No time for that, I’m afraid. We leave tomorrow morning—early—for Loab?r.”
“Tomorrow?”
“You wish to hang about for the aftermath of what happened at the palace yesterday?” Wendell shook his head. “No, much safer to make ourselves scarce. In Loab?r, we will seek passage on a merchant ship to London captained by Ulfar’s brother—not ordinarily a passenger vessel, I’m afraid, so accommodations will be spartan, but it is our only option, as we have missed the freighter. Ulfar will accompany us to Loab?r to arrange things.”