She’d tried everything to help them. After the siege of Montélimar, she decided to go to the academy in the Black Forest of Bavaria known as the Cottage where a girl could train in magic and, if she worked hard, possibly transform herself into a witch. She’d be powerful enough to turn Beau and Cricket and Luc and Hunter Black—assuming he was even still alive—human again. Even Prince Rennar would have no choice but to bow before her.
She’d studied maps of Bavaria. She’d learned a smattering of German. She’d squirreled away valuables to trade for money to buy passage. But her weeks of preparation meant nothing if she couldn’t get past the front steps.
She sank onto a wooden stool and buried her head in her hands. A cloud of dust rose around her. The kitchen, like everything else, was a disaster. Crumbs everywhere, pantry shelves bare, dirty dishes stacked in moldering piles, blue eye shadow streaked on the stove. (She hadn’t bothered to ask about that one.) She felt like the only adult in a houseful of children, never mind that she’d been human for only one year and the Goblins had lived centuries. It was no longer her job to clean, and yet she often found herself with a rag in her hand, brushing crumbs into the wastebasket. Frustrating as the Goblins could be, they had no other place to go. They’d been lucky to make it back to the townhouse at all. Not everyone had. The memory of Tenpenny transformed into stone, then exploded into dust, flashed darkly in her mind.
She heard a clicking on the tile, and then a wet snout pushed into her knee. She blinked at the big brown eyes studying her. The dog had tracked in mud and left dirty paw prints all over the kitchen floor. She sighed as she scratched him behind his ears. “You know, Little Beau, when you were a boy, you were much tidier. Well, not really, but let’s pretend.”
When Beau was human, his eyes had been blue. There was nothing of the dog to make her think of her friend, except perhaps the way he cocked his head as though he were trying to figure out her thoughts. What would he see now tumbling around in her brain?
The dog licked her nose.
She sighed and looked at Viggo. “We can’t go on like this, Viggo. Look at Beau! And Cricket and Luc and . . . and Hunter Black. They’re depending on me.” Viggo’s face paled at the mention of Hunter Black. Last they had seen of him, he’d been in wolf form, bleeding out and left for dead. Anouk looked toward the bare pantry. “Not to mention we’re going to starve if we stay here.”
Viggo gazed into the pantry wistfully. “I tried ordering a pizza. It never came. Rennar must have even gotten to the delivery boys.”
An odd-sounding thump suddenly came from the front door, startling Anouk. It was heavier than the usual crisp tap of the knocker. Little Beau growled and ran out of the kitchen, barking.
December, the closest thing the Goblins had to a leader since Tenpenny had died, called from the foyer, “Um, Anouk? You might want to see this.”
Viggo shifted his cane to his other hand. “Are we expecting visitors?”
“Of course not.” Anouk wiped at a smear of blood on the robe’s sash. “Everyone we know is either captured or dead.”
The dog barked louder. Viggo and Anouk exchanged a look, then Anouk pushed up from the stool and cautiously entered the foyer. A dozen Goblins were at the front window, faces pressed to the glass. The house seemed suddenly very quiet, and Anouk realized that whatever was happening outside was serious enough that the Goblins had shut off the music. And they never turned off The Clash.
December turned away from the window and bit her blue-tinted lips in worry. Anouk’s pulse raced. She swallowed her own trepidation and approached the door. The cane stopped thumping as Viggo reached the foyer and joined her.
Anouk pressed her eye to the peephole.
Behind her, Viggo said, “I’m guessing it isn’t the pizza.”
Chapter 2
Viggo was right. It wasn’t pizza.
It was exactly the person who, in the weeks since the siege of Montélimar, Anouk had most feared seeing. The crown prince of the Shadow Royals stood mere steps from the front door, a breath beyond the point where the protection spell prevented him from crossing. He was dressed in black trousers and a gray shirt and he had his hands shoved in his pockets against the November chill. His cheeks were chapped. His eyes shimmered. Even without his crown, he turned the head of every Pretty who passed on the street.
“It’s Rennar,” she said.
A sharp blade of anger started to slice through her but faltered when she squinted through the peephole again and, with a frown, peered closer at his clothes.
“He’s wearing only one shoe.”
Viggo made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a growl. “Well, his toes can freeze, for all I care. He can’t come past the front steps. We can wait him out.”
Anouk didn’t answer. She admired Viggo’s spirit, but could they wait any longer? Four walls and an ancient spell couldn’t protect them from starvation. Anouk looked at the wound on her arm, stitched together with magic and blue strands of a wig. Sooner or later, the crows would win.
“Anouk, open the door!” Rennar’s voice was hoarse. “We need to talk.”
Another thump rattled the door, and when Anouk squinted through the peephole, she saw Rennar was now completely shoeless.
“That’s one way to knock,” she muttered.
She scanned the nearby trees and rooftops for the familiar black shadow of his crows, but he appeared to be alone. She inspected him again, the peephole distorting his proportions. He wasn’t just hunched against the autumn wind; he was tensed, as though bracing for some unseen danger. His blue-gray eyes were unfocused; his gaze darted around nervously. What she’d thought at first was an arrogant expression she now recognized, incredibly, as fear.
What did he have to fear?
Despite a warning voice in her head, she reached for the doorknob, but Viggo shoved her hand aside, blocked the door with his body, and asked, “Have you lost your mind?”
“We can’t stay here forever, Viggo. Cricket. Hunter Black. Luc. Beau.” She counted the names off on her fingers. “They’re depending on me. I can’t help them if I’m trapped in here. Rennar commands the crows. He’s our only way out.”
Viggo held up four stiff fingers of his own. “Cricket, Hunter Black, Luc, and Beau currently have tails. In case you’ve forgotten, their primary concern at the moment is sniffing each other’s backsides.”
She caught the warning look on his face, but she nudged him aside with her elbow and, before her own nerves could get the better of her, threw open the door.
Prince Rennar’s face lit up when he heard the scrape of hinges. For a second, the fogginess in his expression dissipated and he turned his piercing eyes on her. He was wearing the same scarf he’d worn the first time they’d met, the gray-blue wool one that matched his eyes. He took a step forward on bare feet. He limped only slightly. He’d learned to hide the fact that at the siege of the château, his right leg had been turned to stone. His foot still looked like a foot, but one the milky-white color of marble. “Anouk—”
“This house is protected with old spells,” she warned, cutting him off. “Neither you nor your magic can enter without an invitation. I gave you my answer in Montélimar. You changed my friends to animals and caged them. If you want a princess, you’d best look elsewhere. And your mauvais crows can go straight to hell. Call them off, wherever they’re hiding.” She scanned the rooftops.