Guided
Looking at Oliver sidelong as they trudged through the woods, Petunia wondered if he was staring at her more than usual today. Was it because of her nightmares? Had he heard her? He was definitely watching her, but was that only so she wouldn’t run away? They had been walking for an hour now, and Petunia could not have been more lost. The sun, which had been shining bravely through the trees as they set off, was now hiding behind gray clouds that threatened snow. Petunia pulled her cloak closer around her, but it caught on the basket and nearly made her stumble.
“All right, there?” Oliver tried to take hold of her arm, but she shook him off. “I’m just trying to help.” He held up his hands in a placating gesture.
“I’m fine,” Petunia said, not caring that she didn’t sound fine, or very gracious, either.
“At least if it snows, no one can lose you,” Oliver said, in what Petunia assumed was an attempt at humor. He indicated her red cloak.
She didn’t bother to reply.
Petunia could not wait for her humiliation to end. If Poppy ever found out about this, she would never let Petunia live it down. First she had been kidnapped while relieving herself—or nearly so—despite having her pistol at hand, and then she had embarrassed herself further by raving in her sleep all night. She was sure that everyone in that crumbling old hall had heard her—how could they not? The walls were riddled with holes!
In the first few years after they had defeated the King Under Stone, Petunia had suffered only the occasional nightmare. And most of the time, these nightmares were about perfectly mundane things, like tripping and chipping her front teeth or finding a spider in her shoes. So when the dreams about the Kingdom Under Stone had started to come more regularly, she thought that it was just memories combining with other fears. But by last year they had become a nightly event and not just for Petunia, but for all twelve sisters.
Jonquil suffered the most. She had to take a potion that their oldest brother-in-law, Galen, prepared for her every night, otherwise she was too frightened to even close her eyes. Although the potion was supposed to bring dreamless sleep, she still woke more often than not, screaming and drenched in sweat. Always willowy, Jonquil was becoming gaunt, picking at her food and not paying half as much attention to her appearance as she once had, which worried them all.
Petunia heartlessly wished that Jonquil had been the one who had been kidnapped. She wouldn’t have slept at all. Petunia had awakened herself shouting abuse at Kestilan, the youngest son of the King Under Stone, who came to her every night and told her that she belonged to him, and only him, forever. She was fairly certain that some of the words she used were of the sort that princesses weren’t even supposed to know, let alone shout in their sleep. At least Oliver wouldn’t be speaking to anyone who knew her, like the grand duchess, and couldn’t carry tales about her behavior.
“If you would just tell me how to get to the grand duchess’s estate,” Petunia said after a long period in which their feet crunching the cold, dead leaves was the only sound, “I can get there by myself.”
“I wish I believed that,” Oliver began.
“Excuse me?” Petunia bristled. “I think I am perfectly capable of finding a large estate that is only a stone’s throw from the main road, thank you!”
She hated being condescended to. Her older sisters still treated her like a child because she was the youngest, and her father was little better. In his eyes, she was perpetually six and needed to be led by the hand all the time. Yet he trusted her to work in his hothouses. Perhaps he didn’t think flowers required much maturity, just intuition. Reiner Orm, the gardener, certainly didn’t think that she belonged there, now or ever. But then, Herr Orm would never forgive her for once using a rosebush as kindling for a campfire nearly eight years before.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said, surprised at her reaction. “I didn’t mean anything like that. I just meant that it’s easy to get lost in the forest. We’re cutting straight across the thickest part, using the deer paths. We won’t reach the road until we’re nearly there, and then you can go it alone if you like. But there’s wolves in the forest—”
“I’m well aware of that,” Petunia said. He had his gray leather wolf mask dangling from the hood of the cloak he wore over his more practical coat, in case he needed to disguise himself, she supposed.
“I meant real wolves,” he said, his cheeks red. He brandished the rifle he was carrying.
Petunia didn’t answer that, either. He was right, though. When her father had first heard the reports about the wolves in the woods a few years ago, he had sent out hunters to find them, assuming that the first garbled report of a coach being attacked had meant that four-legged wolves were growing bolder with the coming winter. The clarification that it was men in wolf masks attacking the coaches had meant only that a different kind of hunter was sent out. Their lack of success, Petunia realized, was probably in part due to Oliver and his men making their home in what was now Analousia.
She supposed she should be grateful that he was willing to guard her all the way to the grand duchess’s. He could have simply turned her loose in the forest to make her own way. But she was too tired to be grateful, or gracious, and merely trudged alongside him.
She didn’t remember being tired all the time as a child, though her sisters spoke with horror of the long days and even longer nights that they had endured at the Midnight Balls. Petunia did remember being sick toward the end, so sick that it hurt to move, but having to dance with Kestilan all the same. Jonquil, in particular, grew hysterical at any mention of the balls, and she, Hyacinth, and Iris still refused to dance no matter the occasion.
Petunia, however, had been delighted when Poppy had come home from Breton three years before with a renewed fondness for dancing. Petunia had missed dancing, and she had been hopeful that her time at the Russakan court would allow her plenty of opportunities to do so. But the letter of introduction that her father had sent with her to the Emperor of Russaka had excused her from dancing, saying that she was incapable of such strenuous activity.
She knew that her father had meant well, had been trying to save her from something that he assumed she held in disgust, but it had made Petunia’s stay in Russaka dreadfully awkward. Not only was she forced to spend every ball sitting with the chaperones, but the letter gave the impression that she was an invalid. The Russakan people were very vigorous, enjoying all sorts of outdoor events as well as dances and parlor games that involved running through the sprawling Imperial palace, hiding in wardrobes and under beds.
Petunia, just twelve at the time and only allowed to put her hair up and wear ball gowns because she was on a “state visit,” had been anxious to join in, but it was not to be. Instead she sat beside great ladies like the Grand Duchess Volenskaya and judged the games, trying to smile bravely as she handed out boxes of sweets or bottles of scent to other girls who had ridden their ponies over elaborate steeplechase courses or hidden longer than any other guest or danced particularly well.
Her hero had been the grand duchess’s grandson, Prince Grigori. Though older than she, he had gone out of his way to make Petunia feel welcome, sitting beside her through many of the games and dances so that she wasn’t lonely, with all the chaperones’ talk of “grandchildren and poor health” as he had put it. He also spoke impeccable Westfalian, thanks to his Westfalian grandfather, and was able to teach her a great deal of Russakan during her year at the court.
Which led to her being here, in the middle of the forest with a cold nose and dead leaves catching at the hem of her beautiful new cloak. When the grand duchess had invited Petunia to keep her company at her Westfalian estate, she had mentioned specifically that her favorite grandson would be there.