“I don’t do that anymore, not ever again!”

  “—ridding noble houses of their intolerable pestiferous infestations.” As deeply as he knew his mother, Robert still marveled in the back of his mind at her way with a sentence. “Oh, and King Antoine sent two separate messengers—everyone saw them galloping to our door—”

  “Dear gods, dear gods.” Robert sat down slowly, barely aware he was doing it. “Did they believe you?”

  Has she always done that thing of turning her head so that she seems to be peering at me around the corner? “Well, I can’t be altogether sure, not altogether. You know what Ostvald says about kings….”

  “Mother.” Robert made a particular point of keeping his voice low. It was not an easy task.

  “But one thing I am sure about”—and it wasn’t so much that Odelette did raise her own voice as that her eyes widened and darkened until they looked annoyingly like another pair of eyes—“what I do know is that I would be ashamed of you, ashamed of my son for the first time ever, if he dared to slip away from Bellemontagne without any proper farewell to Princess Cerise. I am sure I raised you better than that, Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus….”

  Robert had never seen his mother cry before. Not ever, not in eighteen years of confusions, tender bewilderment, and maddened acceptance. The whole notion of Odelette Thrax in tears made even less sense than the memory of the wizard Dahr with a Doppelhänder still jutting through his body. But he saw the tears glinting in the twilight, and her hand furiously swiping at them to make them just stop, and he knew beyond doubt or language that he was a doomed man.

  “Mother, tell me what Cerise and I could possibly have to say to each other? After everything we’ve been through together, we both know what we know. She can’t change what she is, and I’d never want her to.” He caught Odelette’s hands, making her look directly at him. “And poor Reginald… Reginald would give anything he owns to be anyone but the King of Corvinia, especially now that he understands he’s really the brave hero he just happens to look like. But sooner or later he and I will have to go to his home and free Krije from that golden throne Dahr stuck him into.” He chuckled slightly, in spite of himself. “It won’t do the old horror any harm, I shouldn’t think—and it’ll certainly do Prince Reginald a lot of good. How can you fear your father ever again, when you’ve seen him being a fancy footstool?”

  Odelette managed to sniffle and giggle simultaneously. Robert went on, “And Cerise…” He said the name lingeringly, tasting it very slowly, “Cerise has to become the only Princess of Bellemontagne who ever taught herself to read and write… and may every single stupid god please bless her always. But she has no more choice than Reginald of Corvinia.” He spread his hands out to his mother, almost pleadingly. “So you see, Mother? You do see?”

  “What do you expect me to see?” Odelette stood back from him indignantly. “Gaius Aurelius, I am a silly old countrywoman who only knows how to milk a goat and when to call the chickens in for the evening—”

  “Mother, don’t you dare start—”

  “But I will tell you, since you don’t ask, that wherever in the world you go, all dragons will know you. There is not one of them—whether great or tiny, King or wall-scuttler, who will not know your smell, your heart—”

  “It’s not that simple! It’s never that simple—”

  “And as for the Princess…”

  “Mother, I swear I’m warning you—”

  Odelette gripped his wrists and shook him harder than she had ever done in his life, even the time he put that snapping turtle in his father’s bed when Elpidus came home drunk and beat her. “And I am telling you that the Princess will follow you anywhere you go. Don’t you know that?” Gods, she’s strong. I’d forgotten! “Don’t you know? Even I know, and I’m only a foolish old woman! If you leave without telling her, she will be on your track while your horse’s shit is still steaming… don’t you know that?” Now her eyes were again wet, but she paid no heed at all to the falling tears. “Because that’s what I would do, and I’m no bloody princess. Because that’s just what stupid people do!”

  Doomed. Doomed. Completely doomed.

  “I’ll talk to her today. Before I go anywhere, I’ll find her and speak honestly to her. Today, I promise! Will that content you, you terrible woman?”

  His mother smiled suddenly and widely at him, waving away the quite clean handkerchief he offered her. “Oh, I’m easy, Gaius Heliogabalus. I’m the easy one.”

  He didn’t even notice Ostvald and Elfrieda when he finally stumbled out of the house, and they didn’t approach him directly. They simply walked beside him, as they had done on so many other occasions since their childhood. It even took him more time than it should have to become aware that they went hand in hand, and that when Ostvald dropped a coach spring he was awkwardly lugging along, Elfrieda stopped and waited for him to pick it up. Neither one spoke, but they smiled at each other.

  Robert halted finally and turned to them. “I’m sorry, I really wasn’t ignoring you.” Then he said, “Yes, I was. I’m sorry.”

  “We kept each other company,” Ostvald mumbled, a shade above inaudibly. Elfrieda blushed, but she didn’t contradict him, and she didn’t let go of his hand.

  Ostvald added hurriedly, “I mean, while we were waiting. For you to talk, I mean.”

  “You brought us home,” Robert said. When both of his oldest friends began shaking their heads vigorously, Robert continued, “You found us—Princess Cerise, Reginald, and me—lost and wandering as we were, and you brought us safe to our own doors, the two of you.” He put his hands very lightly on their shoulders. “I knew you were there, you were with me all the time, but I couldn’t hear you… not where I was. Do you understand me?”

  After a small moment, Elfrieda ventured, “Reginald… he told us you were with him, with the King—”

  “I was never once joined with the King,” Robert interrupted fiercely. “I never became part of him—that was Dahr’s dream, Dahr’s poor vanity, not mine. Never mine. Not for a single moment. Do you understand me?”

  He never knew truly whether they did or not, but both of them reached up to squeeze his hands. They walked on in silence, halting occasionally for Ostvald to readjust the coach spring on or off his shoulder. Only when Bellemontagne Castle came in sight did Robert veer aside, nodding apologetically. He said, “I have something to do. I’ll find you later.”

  “She isn’t there,” Elfrieda said. Robert turned to stare at her. His eyes frightened her, though she could not have said why. She said, “You know where she goes.”

  Robert turned without answering her. Ostvald cleared his throat. “Except… except only she isn’t always there. Not always…”

  For someone who had never once been where he was bound, Robert knew exactly how to get there. Across the Royal Lawns… then straight past the Royal Croquet Grounds, left at the Royal Folly… up a couple of miles, until you get to the Royal Grotto… after that, it’s all the Royal Woods, and in a while there’s the clearing with the tree….

  Her clearing. Her tree. Cerise’s tree.

  But only Prince Reginald was there. Reginald, sitting with his back slumped against the tree and his undeniably powerful chin cupped wearily in his long fingers. To Robert he looked like nothing so much as a lonely knight at arms, abandoned by a strange love and palely loitering in eternal despair. I could go into a lifetime’s training, study some special monkish discipline that enables me to walk up walls, and I could never, never look like that. Not a chance, Cerise.

  Prince Reginald scrambled to his feet when Robert walked into the clearing, even backing slightly away, as though he had been caught trespassing. “Forgive me, my friend,” he muttered awkwardly. “I was just… I mean, I was thinking. Thinking…”

  “Yes,” Robert said. It was really a very small, ragged sort of clearing; hardly more than a thicket, not actually. “But she isn’t here.”

  Reginald shook his head. “I waited most of yesterday. I thought… maybe, just for a while…” He kneaded the back of his neck helplessly, pointlessly, beautifully. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll wait a bit longer.”

  Robert nodded. He sat down in the grass, folding his legs under him, and after a hesitant moment so did Prince Reginald. They smiled briefly at each other, and then sat silently, both gradually leaning against the tree.

  After a very long stillness, Reginald finally looked directly at Robert. “I meant what I said, the other day. That other day. About your wedding.”

  “Oh,” Robert said. That other day, when Cerise curtsied so elegantly to the King dragon, and I knocked her down. “Yes. Well. That will have to wait for a bit, won’t it? You and I will have to journey back to Corvinia, you know, to deal with poor old Krije.” He found that he really liked saying that. “Poor old King Krije.”

  “Ah,” Reginald said. “Poor old Father.” He plainly liked the sound of it himself. “Actually, I was thinking, I might perhaps do a little more adventuring before then? Before quite then, you know? Just a touch of adventuring… and perhaps a bit of drinking, as long as I’m at it?” He grinned suddenly at Robert, and it made him look shy and joyous, and very young. “Perhaps a lot of drinking.”

  Robert grinned back at the Prince. “And Mortmain?”

  Joyous or not, Reginald looked around the clearing hurriedly and cleared his throat. “Mortmain. Do you know… do you know, I was thinking about not telling him? Just… ah… being rather gone. I mean, I’d leave a note, of course. Certainly, I would.”

  Half closing his eyes against the morning sun, Robert remembered rather fondly his last encounter with Prince Reginald’s spelling. “Um… I don’t know whether you could get away with it for long. Mortmain’s quick.”

  Quick enough to realize well before I did that I had no least interest in becoming a great lord’s valet. All the same, the look of pained chagrin on Reginald’s impossibly handsome face touched a thoughtful place in Robert’s mind that it had crossed once before. He suggested diffidently, “Thinking about it, though… that is, really thinking about it, good old Mortmain might make a fairly good King of Corvinia himself. Just a thought, I mean—maybe just for the time being, until you returned….”

  He never really noticed the sudden brightening in Prince Reginald’s blue eyes, because at that point his dearest friend in all the world stepped into the clearing, and he couldn’t move, and he couldn’t think, and nothing that mattered, mattered. One of the two people in the world said, “Well, it took you long enough,” and the other said at the same time, “Oh, do be still, my darling,” and neither of them ever remembered anything much beyond that.

  Robert did manage to warn Prince Reginald, “When you go back to Corvinia, you will not go alone, my lord,” and Cerise kissed Reginald quite chastely on the cheek. Then she threw her whole weight into it, kissed him fully on the lips, and held Robert’s arm tightly as the Prince bowed royally and wandered off to get a jump on Mortmain. “I always wondered what that could ever possibly be like,” she explained unashamedly to Robert. “How could you not, after all, really?”

  Robert arched his right eyebrow—a trick he had finally acquired from his sister Rosamonde after endless practice—and the Princess laughed and promptly kissed it. “Now,” she said. “Wouldn’t you think it’s time we went to see Mother?”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Robert answered. His grip on the Princess’s arm became slightly firmer. “Cerise. You’re your parents’ only child—even if they’d let you marry somebody just this side of a beggar—”

  “Oh, don’t you start that with me, Aurelius-smelly-us! You know you’re part of a higher ancestry than my people ever bloody imagined—”

  “Even if that were true—which it certainly isn’t, believe me—would they ever, ever let you toss your crown over the windmill to run off chasing dragons on a moment’s notice with someone who’ll likely never know exactly who or what he is?” He covered her mouth before she could answer him. “Would I ever let you?”

  She bit his hand.

  Robert pulled his hand away and gaped at her, then at the blood. She had bitten him far harder than Adelise ever had, or even the new ice-white one, Marie-Galante. But her eyes were remarkably tranquil, as a dragon’s eyes could never have been. Her voice was a voice he had never heard before, as she said, “Robert, my one companion, love of my life forever, ‘let’ is not a word you will use to me again.”

  Then she tore a strip off her silken petticoat and bandaged his hand while he stared. After which she smiled up at him warmly, delightfully yielding. “My father is the only one who knows this, but my mother is very romantic.”

  At least, he did say it aloud this time. “I am so doomed….”

  On the way down to Bellemontagne Castle, past the Royal Grotto, the Royal Folly, and the Royal Croquet Grounds, they met Mortmain walking alone. He greeted them pleasantly, asking if by any chance they had encountered Prince Reginald. They told him they hadn’t, alas, and went on their way together. But Robert did not have to turn his head to feel Mortmain looking after them: puzzled and wary and doomed, like himself and everyone else. The morning sun, as golden as the King dragon’s scales, warmed the backs of their necks.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As time passes, I’m increasingly grateful for those people who are dear and important to me, like Joe Monti, who cared for this book all its long way through, to Howard Morhaim, who fought for the manuscript with the single-minded ferocity of a ferret. And I shared my office with a ferret for some years, so for once I actually know what I’m talking about.

  Deborah Grabien is the nearest thing I’ve ever had to a sister. I always wanted one of those, since I was little. She never changes a line or alters a character—she just nags me until I do it myself, the right way. A seriously aggravating woman, bless her forever.

  Lauren Sands is my dear friend and tireless pusher. Every artist of any sort needs a few people he or she can truly trust. I’ve been luckier than most, luckier than I ever expected to be.

  And then there are all those people I’ve worked with, even when I never got to meet them in person, because that’s the incredibly cluttery way books actually get published. I have been extremely lucky to have Jéla Lewter and Caroline Tew on my side, contributing their painstaking devotion to detail to make the text as good as it could possibly be, as well as Christine Calella and Savannah Breckenridge, who helped to make sure that audiences knew that this book even existed. In addition to the gorgeous artwork by Annie Stegg Gerard and Justin Gerard, I’m grateful for the beautiful design work of Esther Paradelo and Lewelin Polanco, as well as for the amazing efforts of Amanda Mulholland, Lauren Gomez, Zoe Kaplan, Christine Masters, and Chloe Gray.

  I thank you all more than you can ever possibly know.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © KATHLEEN HUNT

  PETER S. BEAGLE, noted author and screenwriter, is a recipient of the prestigious Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Mythopoeic Awards, and is a World Fantasy and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America 2018 Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, among other literary achievements. He has given generations of readers the magic of unicorns, haunted cemeteries, lascivious trees, and disgruntled gods. His best-known work is The Last Unicorn.

  SagaPress.com

  SimonandSchuster.com

  www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Peter-S-Beagle

  @SagaPressBooks

  ALSO BY PETER S. BEAGLE

  NOVELS

  A Fine and Private Place

  The Last Unicorn

  Lila the Werewolf

  The Folk of the Air

  The Innkeeper’s Song

  The Unicorn Sonata

  Tamsin

  A Dance for Emilia

  Return

  Summerlong

  In Calabria

  The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey

  NONFICTION

  I See by My Outfit

  The California Feeling

  (with Michael Bry)

  American Denim

  The Lady and Her Tiger

  (with Pat Derby)

  The Garden of Earthly Delights

  In the Presence of Elephants

  COLLECTIONS

  The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle

  Giant Bones

  The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and other Odd Acquaintances

  The Line Between

  Your Friendly Neighborhood Magician

  We Never Talk About My Brother

  Strange Roads

  (with Lisa Snellings-Clark)

  Four Years, Five Seasons (Audiobook Only)

  Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

  Sleight of Hand

  The Overneath

  The Karkadann Triangle

  (with Patricia A. McKillip)

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn

  Edited by Peter S. Beagle, Janet Berliner, and Martin Greenberg

  The Secret History of Fantasy

  Edited by Peter S. Beagle

  The Urban Fantasy Anthology

  Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe Lansdale

  The New Voices of Fantasy

  Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman

  The Unicorn Anthology

  Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

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