More Than Enough Read online

  Elizabeth Wambheim

  More Than

  Enough

  Copyright © 2017

  FOR YOU

  More Than Enough

  Prologue

  “You may excuse yourself after midnight, but not before.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve made it this long, you can make it until then.”

  “I know.”

  “No one here is trying to antagonize you.”

  “Eckhart, I know.”

  “Good. Take a deep breath.”

  Fier, for once, followed instructions without protest and drew in breath enough to expand his narrow chest. As he exhaled slowly through his nose, the tension loosened from his shoulders, and Eckhart could see, briefly, Fier as he had been seven years ago, when the weightiest of his responsibilities had been sitting-room recitals on the grand piano.

  The tumble of red-orange half-curls retained its waves, the flare of them more tameable in recent years, and the lines of his cheek and jaw had yet to settle into the sharp and fine-boned face he was destined to have in adulthood. He moved forward into the press of his guests with the same long-limbed grace he’d grown into so early and so easily. Mannerisms remained: the way he tilted his head to better hear the two violins of the quartet; the unconscious straightening of his spine as he addressed a guest, as if forgetful of the fact that he was already the taller of the two.

  But more had changed than remained the same. Somewhere between fourteen and twenty-one, the prince’s gait had lost the high steps of youth; his hands, once the cause of a thousand chastisements – “Don’t touch, eyes only, that’s fragile” – hung still and lifeless inside their black velvet gloves. And his eyes, without Eckhart ever seeing the change, had faded from the full green of spring to a sharp and steely jade.

  He bowed, stiff and formal, to his first partner: a young lady with an ice-melting smile. Please let this one go well, Eckhart pleaded, praying to any deity with the capacity to listen and attend. Please. Just once.

  “Eckhart, sir.” A hand on her shoulder drew her attention from the commencement of the dance. The attendant at her elbow, dressed in the requisite black and grey, spoke again: “We managed to salvage the letter from this morning.”

  “Is it legible?”

  “This is Her Majesty’s hand, sir; the script was largely impossible to begin with. But the ink did run less than we expected, and we were able to puzzle out most of the original text.”

  Eckhart closed her eyes, exhaled slowly. “Tell me she just wants to know how he’s doing.”

  “She says the expenses involved in this ongoing endeavor have exceeded what is reasonable; this is the last promenade she will allow.”

  As much as she’d expected an ultimatum, the official pronouncement of it still turned Eckhart’s blood cold. She returned her attention to Fier, who had been swept away from the dark-haired beauty and now stood just beyond the reach of a slender woman with auburn, clipped hair. This was their last chance.

  “He refuses to hold court, you know.” This was hardly the place or time to admit as much, but Sir Eckhart spoke at a volume low enough to discourage any eavesdroppers from attending. “He sits for it, but he won’t address even the simpler problems anymore.”

  Beside her, the attendant shifted his balance from one foot to the other. “With all due respect, sir, your prince is a brat.”

  “He will be a good king.” Eckhart knew the claim rang hollow, the words empty after too many fruitless repetitions, but the alternative was unthinkable. “He just needs to grow into it.”

  Though he laced his hands politely behind his back and kept his shoulders squared, the attendant still managed to shrug. His more nuanced disagreement, perhaps, would be more forthcoming in a less-public venue.

  Eckhart lifted her gaze from Fier, who still hesitated to take his partner’s proffered hand, and scanned the room at large. Since sunset, the scene had changed little, but even after several hours, the parade of young and beautiful courtiers remained as dazzling and beautiful as a garden in full bloom. Outside, the rain of early winter may have been lashing the windows all day, but here, safe indoors, was the flush of spring.

  Dresses and tailcoats in vivid colors, forever the territory of the rich, caught the light: green and blue enough to rival the summer sea, red and orange swirling through like windblown sparks, and yellow sun-bright in the gaps between. The charcoal grey of the servants’ formal uniforms were scattered around the border of the room, half of them invisible in the shadows of the corners.

  Above everything hung the chandelier, heavy with crystal and candles, the whole of it glowing with spokes of gilded fire, a great bloom of light radiating a halo of gold.

  A great expense. She could almost hear the words in Her Majesty’s voice. That smooth, presumptuous tone ruffled the knight still, even after three years of its absence; such was a voice not accustomed to any listener’s disregard. No one argued with the queen.

  A great expense, when the price was a handful of copper pennies compared to the wealth lavished upon Fier’s six older siblings. A great expense – when Her Majesty already pretended this backcountry manor was in any way equal to the cost of her other children’s palace holdings.

  This was their last chance. Eckhart set her jaw and closed her eyes for the space of a steadying breath. Of all she’d overcome on Fier’s behalf, they could not be blockaded here. Tonight would fall as it may; they could reassemble the pieces in the morning.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  The all-too-familiar words tore through the rustle of voice and fabric, and Eckhart’s attention snapped back to the dancefloor even as she stepped forward to intervene.

  “I said don’t!” Louder this time. Guests fell silent, turned to look. The string quartet stuttered to a halt. Eckhart ducked and twisted between the slowing dancers.

  “I barely even--”

  “Just stop!” Fier’s voice lifted again in open, strident distress. “Why is it so hard to listen?”

  There. As if at the center of a small explosion, Fier and his partner, a freckled redhead blushing as dark as her hair, stood in the middle of a ring of their increasingly alarmed peers. Fier stood with a shoulder hiked, one hand against the nape of his neck and the other arm hooked around his ribs as if he’d been stabbed. The young lady had stepped back and kept her hands tucked against her chest, evidently more perplexed than upset.

  Eckhart wedged herself between the two and, as Fier recoiled as if struck, dropped a hand to the pommel of the sword at her hip. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” Fier shot a glance at his partner. “It was nothing.”

  Eckhart caught the prince’s wrist, pried his arm away from his midsection. No blood – no injury. “Look at me.”

  But the prince kept his gaze averted. He tried, in vain, to wrench his arm from Eckhart’s grasp. “Nothing happened. Let me go.”

  “He said it was nothing,” the prince’s partner put in. Her face was still flushed, and her hands were still curled inward as if they were weapons to be held in check. “It was a– a misunderstanding.”

  Nothing. Always nothing. Fier tried again to pull his arm free, and Eckhart let him go. “You need to--” Her voice was too clipped; she tried again: “Your Grace, please – none of this tonight. We need to--”

  Fier jerked away – breaking free from the conversation as forcefully as he’d broken his keeper’s grasp – and, without preamble, stalked through the parting crowd. Eckhart would have been content, in some capacity, to allow Fier to disappear into his room, even if the diplomatic consequences of the prince’s dramatic departure caused far more ill than good. But Fier made no move for the staircase that led to the upper floors: he pushed his way towa
rd the front door instead.

  The young lady whispered an apology, but Sir Eckhart ducked after her ward with a lack of diplomacy that stuck like a needle in her throat. She would not argue, not in front of so many strangers, but neither would she allow the prince to disappear into the middle of a rainstorm.

  She reached the foyer just as Fier’s hand touched the latch, and as the prince began to draw open the door, Eckhart slammed a hand against it, forcing it closed again with a crack that rattled the sconces.

  Despite the sound, despite the intervention, the prince did not flinch, did not release the handle of the door, did not seem at all to register Eckhart’s presence.

  “Fier. Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I need to go outside.”

  “Not in the rain. Not like this.”

  “I have to go.” His voice hitched higher; his breathing, already unsteady, turned fast and shallow. “Just let me go.”

  “Not in the rain. Your room is--”

  “No. Not my room. I need to go.”

  “Why--” Eckhart broke off the question, surprise fluttering to life in her chest: Fier’s hands were shaking, a condition mitigated only in part by his iron-tight grip on the door. “Fier, no one came here tonight to hurt you. No one means you any harm.”

  “I need to go.”

  Eckhart, silent, watched the prince’s shaking carry from his hands to suffuse the rest of his body. This was not, as the rumors would insist, a tantrum. This – whatever it was – was something far, far worse.

  But the storm was still raging outside; even if Fier would not go to his own room, he could not go out of doors.

  Eckhart exhaled a deep, settling breath. “Stay, Fier. You are safe here. We can find somewhere else for you to sleep.” She lifted her hand from the door. Fier, though he did not let go of the handle, made no move to flee. Hoping the worst had passed, Eckhart put a hand on Fier’s wrist to guide him away from the threshold and the storm beyond.

  The prince lashed out – faster than a snake – and Eckhart stumbled back in surprise, her cheek stinging.

  For a heartbeat of stunned disbelief, she could do nothing but stare while Fier stared back at her, wild-eyed and open-mouthed. Realization caught his breath in the same moment it caught in her chest: He had struck her.

  Tap tap tap.

  Another moment passed in heavy silence before Eckhart recognized the sound for what it was: someone outside, requesting entry. Though she could feel a bruise already forming on her cheek, she turned to face the door and pulled her stance back into that of a responsible attendant. The movement must have startled Fier out of his shock, as he replaced his hands on the handle and slowly, slowly drew open the door.

  A cold wind swept through the foyer. Hooded against the railings of the storm, framed by the pool of candlelight that flooded onto the doorstep, stood a hunched figure in a rain-soaked grey cloak. From what could be seen of the figure’s face, wrinkled and shadowed though it was, the stranger was a woman far, far older than most of their usual visitors.

  Before Eckhart could ask her business, she raised a clawed hand to proffer a small, once-perforated stone balanced on her palm.

  “A token, Your Grace.” Her voice was a clash of discordant sounds grating against Sir Eckhart’s ears, but the words were clear enough. “In exchange for something warm to eat.”

  In the doorway, Fier’s mouth tilted into a frown of obvious distrust. His breath fogged in the frigid air. He remained still and silent, his hair and clothes whipped by the tumult of the storm. Eckhart, suppressing an instinct to help, bit her tongue to keep from swaying the prince’s course.

  “I think,” Fier began at last, voice low and ice-cold, “that I don’t want anything you have to offer.”

  But as Fier began to close the door, the old woman, with speed not her due, lurched forward and closed her claw-like hand over the prince’s gloved one. At once, Fier’s shoulder hitched again, his whole body rigid. With instinctive immediacy, Eckhart stepped into his path, and even as the prince twisted free and raised his hand to strike the stranger, Eckhart seized his wrist—

  The woman’s hand closed over the stone—

  A blinding flash of lighting tore through the clouds, on its heels a crack of thunder that slammed into Eckhart’s ears like a physical blow, and as she blinked back bruised afterimages, the woman’s form billowed outward in a miasma of dark smoke.

  Fier cried out in pain or alarm or both, his arm vanishing from Eckhart’s grasp—

  The candles in the sconces sputtered out—

  And Eckhart could hear nothing but the rain.

  Petra

  Once upon a time, they said, as if they had not yet been born when the happenings transpired.

  Once upon a time, they said, as if to turn the already-inexplicable truth into something even more mysterious.

  Once upon a time, they said, there lived the Queen and the King and their seven children.

  The first pair, girl and boy, were brave and tall in valor. The middle pair, girl and boy, were diplomatic and tall in eloquence. The last pair, girl and boy, were just and tall in wisdom. The Queen and the King knew that, when it came time to abdicate, any of their six eldest children would suit the throne.

  But the seventh child, though the youngest and most beautiful, was known throughout the sovereignty as a monster. He spoke in rudeness. He disdained company. He refused to heed his tutors. The older he grew, the more monstrous he became, until to keep his company was to threaten a thunderstorm.

  The Queen and the King, in their wisdom, saw fit to give each of their children the chance to prove themselves worthy of the throne. Each of the seven was given the governance of a town, and at the end of three years, whichever had governed with the gentlest hand, and the most perceptive eye, and the fairest rule would be the chosen heir.

  “And we got the seventh prince.”

  “But he was bad!”

  “And whenever someone went to him for help, he gave them terrible advice.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, when two farmers were arguing about who owned a foal, the prince told them to cut it into two pieces, right down the middle.”

  Giggles cut through the peaceful spring afternoon, accompanied by the splash of bare feet in the fountain basin. Petra set down his handful of moss and listened with one ear to make sure neither child had fallen in. But as the splashing subsided and the conversation rekindled, he relaxed and resumed his work.

  “What else did he do?”

  “One of the farmers wanted to know what to do about the weeds destroying her crops, and the prince told her to ask for help from someone else.”

  And so it went, and so Petra pretended not to listen. He folded thick, viridian moss into the basket in his lap, careful of the sharp edges of the basket’s wire frame. Gloves would, of course, have protected his hands, but they made him clumsy, too, and so Petra worked bare-handed, the moss soft as fleece against his fingertips.

  First the moss, then the soil: pockets of earth added together with the flowering seedlings carefully pressed through the moss and artistic tangle of wire. Most were marigolds, their first golden petals tinted scarlet, but Petra liked the alyssum best: handfuls of tiny white and pale blue flowers that smelled like honey.

  “But one night, during one of his parties, a poor beggar knocked on his door and asked to be let in. The prince called her old and ugly and turned her away – but she was a witch. So she cursed him forever and ever and ever to be as beastly on the outside as he is on the inside.”

  Ageratum, too, would have been a natural choice, given how profuse they were with their downy lilac flowers, but most of the town asked for red and gold and white – the royal colors. The youngest prince may have failed them, but still they kept their trust in the rest of the family.

  “And the next thing anyone knew, all the guests and all the household were outside. Anyone who tried to go back into the manor to get out of the rain couldn’t take mor
e than three steps over the threshold.

  “But when Sir Eckhart couldn’t find the prince anywhere, she ran back in – all the way in – and she was gone for hours. The guests had all been helped home before she came back out, shaky as a new foal, and she wouldn’t say anything about what she’d seen. No one has been able to get in since, but sometimes you can see the shadow of the beast at sunset as he walks past the windows.”

  “He goes inside, though.” The younger child’s voice had dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, but Petra heard all the same, kept his head bent low over the last of his planting. “He’s never scared.”

  “Yes, well, he doesn’t really count.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a witch.” As if, at last, concerned about being overheard, the older sibling had softened her voice, but not nearly enough. “Witches aren’t scared of anything.”

  Blossoms and leaves filled the basket to the point of overflowing, and the weight of them staggered Petra as he struggled to his feet. A borrowed chair creaked under his weight as he hefted the basket up and up and onto the hook in the alcove adjacent to the front door. Its mirror, the product of the morning’s work, hung in the opposite alcove; bees already swirled around the new flowers, curious in their clumsy, rambling way.

  Petra had long since given up trying to scratch the dirt out from beneath his fingernails, but he dusted his hands on his apron and brushed the worst of the scattered soil from his trousers. He also made a great deal of extra noise in stomping the dirt from his boots, but even so, as he rounded the corner of the house to step into the high-walled garden behind, the sisters looked up, startled, from where they sat on the lip of the fountain. The eldest curled her bare toes in the water, and Petra thought she looked paler than usual beneath her riot of freckles.

  “Asa?”

  She flinched, and a blush flooded her face from ear to ear.

  “Would you tell your mother when she comes home that I’ve finished planting her flowers?”