Page 115 of Charmless
Horatio strode toward Mal and snatched the orb from his hand. Mal flushed red with anger. Despite hardly being able to stand, he appeared ready to launch himself at Horatio. I rushed forward, getting between the two men. As I stumbled into Horatio, I nearly knocked the orb out of his hand. Then an odd thing happened.
The glass orb began to pulse, emitting a soft glow. We all stared at it in stunned silence. Mal was the first to find his voice.
Gazing at Horatio with a mingling of awe and disbelief, Mal cried, “Frapping fairies. It’syou.You are our long-lost prince.”
Twenty-Four
“Don’t be an idiot,” Horatio snapped at Mal. He turned to me, as though I could provide him with a more reasonable explanation for the orb’s behavior, one that Horatio’s rational mind could accept. “What’s wrong with this thing, Ella? Why is it doing that?”
I felt as shocked as Horatio. According to the ancient parchment I had found in Papa’s library, the orb was not supposed to be activated until the time was right. Yet the glow from the small glass ball was getting stronger by the moment.
“The orb was designed by the fairies to reveal Arcady’s true heir,” I said. I gazed up at Horatio, expelling an awed breath. “You.”
“No,” he said hoarsely.
“Oh, for frap’s sake.” Mal was beside himself with excitement. He forgot and put his weight down on his injured foot. Swearing with pain, he would have fallen if Delphine had not rushed to brace him.
“I performed every test and incantation I could think of on that orb,” Mal said through gritted teeth. “Nothing ever happened, not until you touched it, Crushington.” Mal hesitated.Leaning on Delphine for support, he managed a stiff bow. The witch bobbed her head in a form of curtsy.
“Your Royal Highness,” they murmured in unison.
“Stop that! Both of you!” Despite his fierce words, Horatio paled, looking as though he wanted to fling the glowing orb across the room. “Ella, surely you cannot believe this foolishness.”
Another man would have rejoiced to discover that he might be of royal blood with a great destiny before him. But Horatio looked completely unnerved by the prospect.
“It may not be foolish,” I said gently. “Withypole told me that the legend of the missing heir is real. He told me that our true prince would be revealed when the time was right.”
“The time could not be any righter than it is now,” Delphine piped up. “Not with that monster Florian about to ascend the throne.”
“But I am no one,” Horatio insisted. “A mere foundling.”
“Exactly.” Mal grimaced as he eased back down on the edge of the bed. “Afoundling, a man with no idea who his ancestors were. But now the orb is showing you, Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that!” Horatio growled. “I have no wish to be king.”
I had never seen my stalwart commander look so shaken. I longed to assure him that everything would be all right, although I had no idea how. Discovering that Horatio was the lost prince was wonderful, but there were many obstacles to placing him on the throne, not the least of which was Horatio himself. He had expressed more than once his unwillingness to see Arcady plunged into civil war over what he believed to be a foolish legend.
“Take this cursed thing away from me,” he said. Horatio tried to give me the orb, but the glass ball slipped from his grasp.
Delphine shrieked and Mal gasped. Miraculously, the orb didn’t shatter when it struck the hardwood floor. But it stopped glowing as it bounced and rolled, stopping inches from Delphine’s foot.
As she bent to retrieve it, I heard a creak coming from the stairs leading up to Mal’s room. Someone called out, “Commander Crushington?”
My heart thudded as I recognized the familiar voice of the man I had once thought of as the majordomo.
Sidney Greenleaf! He sounded so close, his arrival imminent and the door to the bedchamber was ajar from when Horatio had entered. We all exchanged looks of sheer panic. Delphine reacted the quickest, transforming into Ebony far more swiftly than I had ever seen her move before.
Scrambling out from beneath her discarded clothes, the cat propelled the orb forward. She disappeared with it beneath the bed just as Greenleaf appeared in the door opening. As he pushed the door open wider, my pulse thundered in my ears.
How much had the wizard overheard as he was creeping up the stairs? Could he have seen the orb’s glow through the crack in the door? Greenleaf’s bland expression gave away nothing. The little man was already attired in the purple and black garb our kingdom decried suitable for mourning. He wore the traditional square shaped cap with black scarves trailing from it.
His gaze shifted about the room, thoughtfully studying each of us in turn. I feared that I must appear the very picture of guilt. As for Horatio, he stood frozen, having received his second shock, watching a woman turn into a cat before his very eyes.
Even Mal, who had a talent for looking innocent in the most appalling circumstances, was rattled. But he tried to brazen it out. Hefting himself onto the end of the bed, he dangled his feet over the side and leaned back on his elbows, doing his best to look nonchalant.
“Oh, do come right on in,” he said. “Don’t bother to knock, Mr. Green?—”
Mal choked. He would have been far too smooth to ever make such a slip under ordinary circumstances. He bit down hard on his lip, but it was too late. He’d already betrayed the fact that Horatio had told us Greenleaf’s secret.
