Page 82 of The Abandoned Princess

“To do what?” I asked.

“It was one of the first godmother objects he found,” she explained, seeming to warm to the topic now that she had started her reminiscences. “He froze me under a sleeping spell so that I slept for four hundred years. He promised he would wake me once he’d wrested the kingdom back from our younger brother, but I woke cold and alone to a strange world I no longer recognized.”

For a brief moment, I felt a pang of sympathy for the young Eulalie, and then I remembered what she was currently trying to do. At least I now knew why she had such an unstable mental state, and why it had only been deteriorating as the years passed. It couldn’t possibly have been healthy to be under an enchantment for centuries with her life unnaturally prolonged. Was that the real reason for her strange skin?

“So now it is up to me to reclaim Northhelm from our younger brother’s descendants.” She shook Danielle. “That makes me a very great aunt of yours. You should show more respect.”

“Don’t touch my daughter,” William said in a dangerous voice.

“It’s time I dealt with you.” Eulalie raised her knife and stalked toward William, dragging Danielle with her.

I prepared to throw myself between them, but Danielle planted her feet, pulling back on Eulalie so hard that she stopped just short of the men and stared back at the girl. Danielle gave her a chilling stare.

“If you harm my father or grandfather, you will never have a moment’s peace. I will hound you every second until I break free and prove your fraud.”

Eulalie scoffed. “Do you think I need these two to act in the role of hostages? Hardly. I’m going to be queen, remember? I’ll have control over every person you care about and will be able to keep you as compliant as I need.”

Danielle didn’t flinch. “My mother is a princess of Lanover, so if you want to keep Northhelm intact, you can’t touch her. She’s also more intelligent than anyone you’ve ever met and has an army of agents more loyal to her than any crown. I trust her to keep everyone I love safe—even if you’re queen. At least, everyone she can see. These two are mine to save.”

Her impassioned words were somehow more impactful because of her young age, and I could see Eulalie falter. Her gaze shifted sideways and landed on me and Xander.

“You two, at least, aren’t needed,” she said, latching onto a different outlet for her anger.

But Xander drew his sword and stepped in front of me—or at least where he thought I was. He was wrong about my position, but it was a sweet gesture. Eulalie glared at the sword, tightening her hold on Danielle until the girl winced.

Apparently she didn’t think our bond with the Northhelmian was strong enough to use her as leverage, though, because she put down the dagger and withdrew a small mirror from her pocket in its place.

“Whatever that is, don’t waste your time,” I said in as scathing a tone as I could manage. “You bound us to you again, and I can see your true, four-hundred-year-old face despite those baubles you’ve got on your ears. Whatever that object is won’t work against us either. The only thing that will work is the ring, but I’m guessing you’ve drained that dry now that you have five of us bound in your enchantment.”

“What?” She held the mirror toward us, shaking it when nothing happened. “That can’t be right!”

“You’ve tied us to you and to your other victims,” I taunted. “We can see your true self as well as them, and we can talk to anyone we want. Soon all of Northhelm will know the truth about you.”

Danielle chimed in, shaking her head. “How foolish to have them in the same enchantment as us. I can see you didn’t think that through.”

She was fighting for us to be freed, even though it wouldn’t help her or her family.

“Be quiet!” Eulalie panted, clearly driven close to the edge by the disruption of all her plans. “I can fix this,” she muttered. “I can still fix this.”

I was looking at Danielle as Eulalie stretched her ring toward me, and I was hit with a memory—one even Eulalie didn’t know about. When she had extended my enchantment to cover my tower, Lori had been touching it and had been sucked into the enchantment along with the building. And when Xander managed to connect with my lips, he had been sucked in too.

What if it worked the same way in the other direction as well?

As Eulalie began to murmur under her breath, I threw myself forward, stretching my arms as far as they would reach. I fell heavily on the ground, outstretched, but as Eulalie said the final word, I had one foot hooked around Danielle’s ankle, and one hand resting on both the king and the prince.

I scrunched my eyes shut as the same sucking sensation hit my insides, followed by the tearing feeling and the ripple that ran from my fingers to my toes. For two breaths I kept my eyes closed, not ready to see if my desperate ploy had worked. Then I opened them.

Eulalie had become a beautiful, queenly figure, but the expression on her face was one of horror as she gazed at the five people around her. People I could still see. Contact with me had been enough. When she lifted the enchantment off me and Xander, she had lifted it off them as well.

I turned my head to look at Xander and found him staring straight at me, wonder in his eyes. He didn’t even seem to have noticed the others.

Eulalie recovered from her shock quickly, however, and once again thrust out her hand.

“The ring!” Danielle cried, transforming suddenly into a hissing, spitting, clawing wildcat.

Caught totally off guard, Eulalie’s words faltered and her hand dropped as she attempted to control the girl she was holding.

The king cheered his granddaughter on, while Prince William repeated her words, his eyes on me. “The ring! The ring!”

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