Page 85 of Slippers and Thorns
“And what is that?” he demanded.
“Your wife.”
That drew him up short. Ella? What did she have to do with his responsibilities? “I haven’t—”
“Before your trip, when was the last time you gave her thirty minutes of your undivided attention?”
“I—”
The protest died on his lips. He spent so much of his time in meetings, training, observing patrols, and the like, that he often had little time left for himself. Ella had decided to learn archery just so she could spend time with him, because she barely saw him otherwise.
But he had duties!
He had duties, and they always came first. If he ran out of time and something had to give, it was always his time with Ella that was squeezed out. There would be time later, he had reasoned, when everything else was taken care of. But there was always something new that demanded his attention.
Washe guilty of neglecting his wife?
“Exactly.” Edna didn’t expound further on that thread. “The only thing strong enough to break the curse was love by choice. I could have used the bond between friends, but there was no guarantee that she would have a close enough friend to break the magic, so I used romantic love. Romantic love is strong enough that the potential could work. Magic of that kind doesn’t bind properly, though, until a person is eighteen. Since Fabian’s curse would drive everyone away from her resting place, and since there would be at least a two-year gap between when the curse took her and when the magic would take effect, I created a suggestion spell to encourage eligible men to come find her. Over time, it also helped to break down the magic that drove people away.”
Edna crossed her arms and stared them down. “The requirement to break the curse was that a man who could come to love Helena enough to marry her would kiss her. Not a man who already loved her, not a man who had to marry her. Just one with thepotential. And the suggestion magic only called men not fully devoted to another woman. Any others would simply be incredibly uneasy as the magic warred with their love, testing their hearts.” She gave him a pointed look. “If you had been as fully focused on your wife as you should have been, the magic would never have called to you.”
“Maybe…maybe I didn’t pay as much attention to Ella as I should have before we left,” Michael admitted with a wince. “But for almost a month at Reineggburg before I woke Helena, I had no duties to distract me. I spent almost the whole time with Ella! How can you say I wasn’t fully focused on her?”
Edna’s eyes were piercing. “Then why did the magic call you?”
Helena crossed her arms, and as he looked over at her, Michael realized that Edna might—might—have a point. He had been physically present, yes, but he had often been frustrated with Ella’s emotional distance…and fantasized about having Helena in her place. It had seemed harmless at the time, seeing as how Helena was dead, and all.
Until she turned out to not be as dead as he thought. And apparently, the reason that that was his doing, rather than that of any other man at the castle, was because he had allowed the thoughts at all, regardless of whether the object of his desire was attainable or not.
“Oh, like this is all his fault.” Helena looked down her nose at Edna. “Arabella has been making eyes at one of her guards for months. She’s no more committed than you’re trying to claim Michael is.”
Edna turned her canny expression on Michael. “Tell me, Your Highness, did Ella ever touch you while you felt the magic’s call?”
“Yes,” he replied warily.
“What happened when she did?”
“I was never aware when it was calling me. But whenever I didn’t know why I was where I was, she was touching me. She claimed that was how she always brought me back to an awareness of my surroundings.”
Edna nodded. “And did she ever touch this guard?”
“Once,” Michael said slowly. “She said nothing happened with him. She had to scream to break him out of it.”
“And there you have it,” the woman said in a satisfied manner, as if that explained everything instead of nothing at all.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Oh, did I forget that part?” Edna asked, surprised. “Suggestion spells are just short of being compulsion spells, which are unethical and forbidden, you know. To keep it from crossing the line, I had to add in all kinds of ways to limit its influence on the men it reached for. It only came in waves, and the current wave could be broken by a loud noise. But also, the touch of a woman who loves him would remove its influence from a man. Considering the type of man that I needed to have find you, Princess, it seemed like a reasonable limiter.”
“Therefore, the fact it worked on me and not on Charles means she loves me and doesn’t love him,” Michael clarified slowly.
“Precisely,” Edna verified, looking pleased.
Could he believe her? Or was it a convenient explanation drawn up on the spot? For that matter, how did he even know that Edna was who she said she was, and not simply a friend of Ella’s trying to make him feel guilty?
He’d always heard rumors of magic, of course. But he’d never believed any of them until he woke his childhood friend from an enchanted sleep. Rules or limits of magic, laws of kingdoms or among the magic users themselves regarding the use of magic, how one might be able to tell if a person was a magic user – he had no knowledge on any of these subjects. And he certainly had no memory of his two-year-old attendance at Helena’s christening when all of the magic-casting took place. Therefore, he had no way to confirm or deny Edna’s claims unless he could find someone who did remember.
“Well,” he began before Helena could spit out the thought he could see glowing in her eyes. “Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are expected soon, so we will have to take our leave.”
