Princess Awakening: Tower of Sand

Is the Devil a Woman?

Aurelie woke to the touch of a cold hand brushing across her face. The fingers fumbled, hesitating, as if the hand itself loathed the touch. Then soft flesh pressed down over her nose and mouth.

Aurelie repressed a scream.

She wanted to jerk away and beat back the limp, invasive thing, but she did not. She had recognized that touch, the hesitancy and the fragility of it. And she sensed the rank smell of stress and sweat under too many layers, too many oils. Her second impulse, the trained one, was to hold still and protect this unwanted visitor by doing nothing at all and receiving whatever came next—good or ill.

"Maman?" she whispered in the dark.

In answer, the fingers slid down across her lips once, then pulled away. Thin streams of moonlight bled through the stained-glass window, dimly lighting the pale blue dress of shimmering silk, the white wimple, the frozen silhouette of the queen. Behind her, the tower door gaped open.

Aurelie's breath caught in her throat.

"Get up, quietly," Queen Yolande said, her girlish whisper sounding like a hiss.

A cold draft from the open door blew across Aurelie's face, and she hesitated. She could hear the gentle snores of Sera, wrapped tightly in the yellow woolen blanket and sleeping, as always, with her frayed wimple still knotted around her face. Aurelie longed to roll into her old friend and stay huddled in the warmth, under the blanket. But everyone in the castle had a role to play, and it was Aurelie's duty to obey. She rose out of the low pallet that was her bed and stood, waiting for the queen to state her will.

"Go," Queen Yolande whispered, and she pointed to the blackness beyond the open door.

A tremor passed through Aurelie. She reached for her clothes, folded neatly on the floor, and she placed each garment on the bed, hoping the queen could not see the trembling of her brown hands in the darkness. The queen, her mother, lived by a code of rules. One was never to come fully inside the tower room. The other was never to let Aurelie out. So, in this moment, Aurelie guessed, the queen was breaking the rules for a very important reason. And that was probably to save Aurelie's life—or to end it.

Aurelie smoothed out the undershirt she already wore, a little too short for her tall frame, too tight across her curves, but still soft and familiar. White linen. Three hundred and thirty-six stitches. Aurelie had counted every one of them, though she had never seen a needle in her life, let alone touched one. She picked up her next layer, the embroidered chemise, also linen, cream colored. One thousand, two-hundred and twelve stitches. She eased the fitted garment over her head and straightened it over her hips. She would love to imagine that her mother was just taking her out of the tower for the first time ever on the judgment day of her legendary curse simply for the purpose of wishing Aurelie well and helping her to prepare for her introduction to the kingdom and the party ahead. In that imaginary scene, this mother would loop arms lovingly with that daughter and confide how she herself had once-upon-a-time come of age and fallen in love with King Hugh of the Free Country and how she had decided to leave the elegant courts of her home in Aquitaine to rule with him over the wild, free mountains and people of the Jura.

But that vision was of another mother.

Or another daughter.

Ones the Devil had not yet marked.

Aurelie reached for her overtunic, her favorite garment, a sleeveless, loose-fitted dress of beet-pink wool that belled gracefully from the waist. Seven-hundred and eighty-one stitches. Aurelie had a choice to make, and she knew that simple obedience was not her only option. It was her own life at stake, after all—her destiny. And she did not like the idea of playing the pawn in other people's games. As Sera would say, the chessboard nearly always held at least one more move. For one thing, Aurelie could feign a coughing fit right now and wake Sera. That way, at least, someone would bear witness to whatever was coming next—whatever that might be. But then the queen would be angry, and Sera would fret. Aurelie would probably leave alone with the queen anyway. And Sera would remain here awake, grieved and worried.