Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow - Jessica Day George [83]
“Ah, very clever. As an isbjørn I couldn’t see details like this very clearly.”
“Why didn’t you look at it in the night?”
“The enchantment. There was very little that I could do as a man, at night. Sleep would come over me quickly. It was all I could do to hide the candles before I slept.” He smiled at her, and her stomach flipped.
“I wish I was strong enough to defeat the trolls and see you safely away.” She remembered and snapped her fingers. “Do you have your parka? Tova can alter it.”
But he was already shaking his head. “It was taken from me as soon as I arrived.”
“There has to be a way,” she insisted. “The winds that brought me here, the old mosters who gave me gifts so that I could get inside, they all hope that I can defeat her. And my brother and Tova. They deserve to be happy.”
“And what of yourself? Don’t you deserve to be happy? Maybe it would be better for you to leave while you still can, so that you, at least, will be free.”
“I couldn’t live with myself, knowing that I had given up,” she said.
He nodded. “And that’s why I love you.”
Her breath caught. “You do?”
“After all those days talking to you about your family, and all those nights lying beside you, listening to you breathe . . . how could I not?”
They kissed again.
A knock and a cough from the open door to the sitting room separated them. Tova stood there, smiling with a wistful light in her blue eyes. “Hello?”
“Hello!” Embarrassed, the lass jumped to her feet.
“Tova?” The prince got to his feet with much more grace, but the lass was glad to see that he was blushing. “As you can see, I took your advice about the wine.”
“Excellent, Your Highness. I just hope that Indæll didn’t notice that you didn’t drink.”
“She didn’t.” He shook his head. “I kept emptying my goblet into a large vase at the back of the dais. Or I spilled it, pretending that it was already taking effect.”
“Bravo!” Tova clapped. She took a needle and thread out of the pocket of her apron and held them high. “I’ll see what I can do to help.”
But the lass and the prince shook their heads in unison. “The only thing I have from my time as an isbjørn is this,” he said. He went to a chest and opened it. With a flourish, he drew out the soft linen nightshirt. On one shoulder was a yellow tallow stain. “Is there anything we can do with this?”
Tova’s mouth turned down. “I don’t know how to cast an enchantment, only alter one that already works.”
The lass couldn’t take her eyes off that stain. It loomed in her gaze, reminding her of that night: the smell of the herbs in the candle, the warmth of the bedchamber, the golden glow falling over the prince’s face. She thought of the palace of ice and the carvings there that she had pored over, looking for an answer.
“Oh. Oh, oh, oh!” She snapped her fingers to interrupt the prince and Tova, who were talking now about the possibility of the lass escaping alone.
“What is it?” The prince turned. “What’s wrong?”
“Troll weddings!” That was all the lass could think to say for a moment. In her mind she ran over everything she remembered from a certain pillar in the great hall of the ice palace. “Trolls can’t create with their hands!”
“That’s right,” the prince said, puzzled.
“Can they make things clean?” The lass looked to Tova for the answer. “There were washboards in the ice palace. And I thought I saw a copper washtub here.”
“You’re right,” Tova agreed. “But I don’t understand what this has to do with weddings. . . .”
“I deciphered a description of a wedding on a pillar at the ice palace,” the lass explained. “As part of the ceremony, the bride and groom ask each other to prove their suitability. The bride asked the groom to “provide for her,” so he slaughtered a bull. And he asked her to always be beautiful, or something like that, and she did a spell that made her beautiful, or more beautiful. I think it was the troll queen, and her consort.”
The prince had caught her line of thought. “What should I ask her for? Should I ask her to release me?”
“She won’t do that,” Tova interjected. “I’m sure every