Chef Louis himself came out to present the first course, small golden cups of perfectly clear consommé.
“It should be good for your throat, eh, Princess?” he said before bowing out.
Eric was feeling annoyed and reckless. He gazed at the woman opposite him daintily sipping from a tiny mother-of-pearl spoon.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sick,” he observed. “Not the entire time we’ve been married.”
“Oh, it’s this ghastly summer weather. Cold one moment, hot the next. Plays havoc with the…nerves…oh, I don’t know, whatever it is the silly little things say about the weather,” Vanessa finished, too bored to bother completing the thought.
She pulled the fur from her neck and let it drop to the floor. Eric flinched when its taxidermied nose made a soft clack against the tiles. There was no reason to disrespect an animal you killed. It wasn’t a thing; once it had been a living being.
“You haven’t been…yourself lately, either,” she said, somewhere between a purr and a growl, letting the whispering part of her act die off as well. “It seems like you’ve been acting different since…well, almost exactly since the time I lost my voice.”
“Perhaps so. I do feel pretty good these days, actually,” Eric responded airily.
They finished their soup in silence, looking into each other’s eyes—but not like lovers.
Not at all.
Eventually a serving boy came in and cleared the bowls; they clattered against each other loudly in the vast room.
The next course was a magnificent chilled seafood salad on three tiers of silver dishes mounded with ice. Glittering diamonds of aspic decorated the rims.
Eric picked up a tiny three-pronged golden seafood fork, thinking about the trident in Ariel’s hair. She hadn’t worn it years ago, when they had first met. Maybe it was a sign of royalty.
“Don’t suppose your feeling good has anything to do with a pretty little mermaid, does it?” Vanessa asked casually.
Eric froze.
Vanessa smiled coyly down at her plate.
“Why, yes, as a matter of fact, it does,” he said as he speared a tiny pickled minnow and delicately eased it into his mouth.
It was extremely gratifying to see Vanessa’s eyes grow huge in childlike surprise.
“Yes, I definitely started feeling good when I managed to get Sarai to hit the high F over C in her final aria, ‘The Goodbye.’ Like this.”
And then the Mad Prince sang in a terrible falsetto.
Vanessa just sat and watched, unblinking. Through all seven minutes. No doubt people in the kitchens were listening in fascinated horror as well.
When he finished, Eric took a few pickled bladderwracks in his fingers and popped their air bladders thoughtfully. “It was a real triumph. Now I just need to get her to do it onstage.”
Vanessa narrowed her eyes.
He tried not to grin as he ate the seaweed. The princess slowly pulled out a piece of fish and cut it, thoroughly and assiduously.
A different serving boy came out with a basket of steaming hot bread and, in the Gaulic fashion, little tubs of sweet butter. Eric preferred olive oil, but along with all the other terrible things going on in the castle, Vanessa had embraced Gaulic culture with the tacky enthusiasm of a true nouveau riche.
“I do so love baguettes, my dear, sweet, Mad Prince. Don’t you?” she said with a sigh, picking up a piece and buttering it carefully. “You know, we don’t have them where I come from.”
“Really? Where you come from? What country on Earth doesn’t have some form of bread? Tell me. Please, I’d like to know.”
“Well, we don’t have a grand tradition of baking, in general,” she said, opening her mouth wider and wider. Then, all the while looking directly at Eric, she carefully pushed the entire slice in. She chewed, forcefully, largely, and expressively. He could see whole lumps of bread being pushed around her mouth and up against her cheeks.
The prince threw his own baguette back down on the plate in disgust.
She grinned, mouth still working.
“Your appetite is healthy, despite your cold,” he growled. “Healthy for a longshoreman. Where do you put it all? You never—seem—to—gain—a—pound.”
“Running the castle keeps one trim,” she answered modestly. “Military planning, offensive strategies, tactics, giving orders, keeping our little kingdom safe, you know. We could be attacked any time. From the land…from the sea…”
“Actually, Tirulia’s biggest problems are with those who leave the sea and come here to live…Hey, maybe I should write an opera about that.”