Once upon a dreadful time

Awareness

“Oh,” exclaimed Celeste, looking over her shoulder, a frisson running up her spine.

“What is it, cherie?”

The princess turned toward Roel. “As before, I felt as if someone or something dreadful were in the room.” Roel stepped to his racked armor and took up Coeur d’Acier, the sword gleaming silver in the lamplight.

“It’s gone, Roel,” said Celeste. “Vanished as quick as it came.”

“Nevertheless. .” said the black-haired knight, and, with blade in hand, he moved to the door and jerked it open and looked up and down the empty hallway beyond. Then he strode back across the room to a window and threw wide the drapes and peered out into the glittering starlight to see nought but the lawn of Springwood Manor and the trees of the forest in the distance beyond, the green gone dark in the nighttime. He turned from the window and, as would a tiger unleashed, he prowled about the chamber, opening the curtains shrouding the bed and then the doors to the tall armoire, and then to the garderobe beyond.

He flung wide the door and disappeared within, and then stalked back out and entered the bathing room and privy adjacent.

“Nothing,” he said upon returning once more to the bed chamber.

“Perhaps this time it was just a whim,” said Celeste.

Roel reracked his sword and then stepped to the princess and took her in his arms. “Non, Celeste, I do not believe so.

These feelings of yours have sporadically occurred throughout what, two or three summers? Love, you are sensing someone or something with malice in its heart.”

She looked up into his eyes of dark grey. “As have Liaze and Camille. . and Michelle, too, but only when she is with Borel.”

“A deadly intent aimed at him, do you think?” Celeste shrugged but said nought.

Roel stroked her pale yellow hair. “When all the family gathers at your sire and dam’s palace, we will call a conference and discuss this enmity.”

“Oh, Roel, I would not press gloom upon such a gala.”

“Cherie, ’tis something that must be dealt with.”

“How can one deal with such?”

“That I do not know, Celeste, but to ignore it is to perhaps court disaster.” Roel smiled down at her. “We must not hide our heads under our wings, my little towheaded chickadee, else the snake will strike, the cat will pounce, and we will be nought but a flurry of bloody feathers.”

Celeste burst into laughter, her green eyes sparkling. “Chickadee? Chickadee?”

“Oui, my love, now give me a peck.”

. .

In a bedchamber in Autumnwood Manor, Luc turned to Liaze.

“Another one?”

The princess took a deep breath and let it out. “Oui, cheri. It lingered a moment, then was gone. Yesternight Camille sensed maleficence, too.” Liaze replaced the long gown back in the garderobe and stepped to an escritoire. She opened a drawer and fished among tissue-thin tiny rolls of paper. “Here,” she said, handing the message to Luc. “This came by Summerwood falcon in the mark of noon.”

Moving to the lamp the better to see the tiny writing, the dark-haired prince read the raptor-borne missive: My dear Liaze, it happened again, that feeling as if someone or something wicked were in my chamber. But then it vanished, just as before. We must speak of this at the gathering. Duran is well. Alain sends his regards.-Camille

Luc looked up from the message. “She is right. We must hold council at the gathering. Yet were I to hazard a guess, I would say that the fourth acolyte is somehow involved.”

“Fourth? Ah, oui. Hradian. But she is the only acolyte now.”

Luc nodded and handed the missive back to Liaze, then turned and closed the portmanteau.

. .

“I believe that is all,” said Camille, hanging the last of the gowns in the tall, hinged trunk.

Duran looked up from amid a scatter of toys. “Non, Maman.” He took up a white horse from among his playthings, the tiny bells on the caparisoned steed jingling. “Asphodel will go, too.”

“Ah, the swift Fairy horse,” said Camille. “You are right.

We must not leave him behind. After all, his namesake helped Oncle Borel save Tante Chelle.”

“Fast,” said Duran, clip-clopping the toy across the floor to Camille and then into the portmanteau.

“Oui, fleet,” replied Camille. Then she scooped three-summers-old Duran up in her arms. “Oh, my big boy, you are halfway to four, and every day you grow to look more like your father. You have his grey eyes, though your fair hair is more like mine.”

“Will I be a Bear, too?”

“ ’Tis unlikely.”

Disappointment shone in Duran’s face. “I would like to be a Bear, Maman.”

“Perhaps one day,” said Camille, clasping the child close.

“And speaking of your father, where could he be, I wonder?”

. .

Duran’s father, slender and tall and raven-haired, and not at all looking like a Bear, stood in the Summerwood armory with Armsmaster Bertran. “Is the warband ready?”

“Oui, my lord. Does Lady Camille yet sense something or someone of ill intent?”

Alain glanced at the scarred veteran, the mark on his cheek taken in the battle in the realm of the Changelings. He nodded.

“On occasion.”

“My lord, we shall be armed to the teeth. She and Prince Duran will be well protected. It is a short journey to the palace.”

“Two days apace,” replied Alain. “The baggage train: who is assigned as its escort?”

“Gerard and his men are with those already on the journey.

Others will trail us. Those I have assigned to Phillipe and his crew; they will arrive a day or two after.”

“Good men, all, Gerard and Phillipe and their bands.” Alain fell silent, and after a moment Bertran said, “My lord, are you certain you will not go armed-a sword or even a dirk?”

“Non, Armsmaster. The Bear will suffice, if needed.”

“As you will, my prince.”

. .

Borel looked up from the missive and sighed. “Did you sense aught this time, Chelle?”

“Non, Borel,” said Michelle, concern in her sapphire-blue eyes. “But you know it seems only to happen when I am with you. It’s as if something evil glances in upon us. . or rather glances in upon you.”

Borel ran a hand through his long silver-white hair. “Why is it, I wonder, that neither I nor Alain nor Luc nor Roel discern such?”

“Mayhap it is because you are male?”

Frowning in thought, Borel handed the message back to Michelle and said, “Now and again Slate seems to sense something amiss, and he is male.” As she put away the tissue-thin strip, “Slate is a Wolf,” replied Michelle, as if that explained all.

Borel barked a laugh. “Are you saying that women are closer to Wolves than are men?”

Michelle laughed and pushed Borel backwards and onto the bed, where she flounced up her skirts and straddled him. She bent forward, her long golden hair falling down about his face as well as hers as she looked into his ice-blue eyes and said,

“Wolves, are we?” She kissed him, long and passionately, then gently took his lower lip in her teeth and growled.

Some time later, as they lay side by side, Borel leaned up on one elbow and looked down at her and said, “Camille is right: we must hold a council at the gathering.”