Chapter 129: The Operation

"I need to break up a royal engagement."

Marisol dropped her chalk.

We were in the café storeroom. I was elbow-deep in a tub of soapy water, scrubbing the last of the teacups. According to Marisol, this was my "consultation fee." She’d decided that a meeting of this importance required payment up front.

Marisol spun around slowly. Her eyes were shining.

"Darling..." She pressed one hand to her chest. "Is this it? Is this the next phase?"

"The next... what?"

"The operation!" She snatched up her chalk and slammed it against the chalkboard so hard that it snapped in half. "I knew it! First the Duel Festival! Then you turned the Founder’s Play into a triumph! Now, the crown prince’s engagement! You’ve been building to this the whole time, haven’t you!? A fox who decides who the prince marries! You’ll own this academy by spring!"

In other words, Marisol STILL thought I’d been climbing the social ladder this whole time. I had not been climbing anything. I’d been panicking for three months straight.

"...Yes," I said. "This has always been the plan."

"I KNEW IT!"

On the crate next to the tub, Lily sat with a notebook open on her knees and a pencil clutched in her fist. She’d written OPERATION at the top of the page in big, careful letters, then underlined it three times.

"Okay!" she said. "What’s the first step?"

Marisol turned back to her chalkboard and drew a circle. Inside it, she wrote ALDRIC. Then she drew a second circle and wrote SERENA. Then she drew a big X through the line between them.

"The engagement will be sealed at the Winter Ball," Marisol said. "The Queen has announced it publicly, so we can’t simply ask her to cancel it. She’d lose face in front of the whole court."

Lily’s hand shot up.

"What if we just asked Aldric nicely?"

"No."

"What if we wrote the Queen a really sincere letter? We could explain that Serena doesn’t want to get married, and..."

"Absolutely not."

"What if we baked them both a cake!?" Lily’s eyes lit up. "Then everyone would be in a good mood, and we could all sit down together and talk about our feelings!"

Marisol stared at her for a long moment.

"Lily, darling. You are the sweetest girl in this kingdom, and you are never allowed to plan anything ever again."

Lily wrote that down in her notebook too, pouting.

The storeroom door creaked open.

Fenna slouched in with her braid half undone. She didn’t say hello. She walked straight to the shelf where the leftover festival stock was stacked, grabbed a box of lemon cakes, and sat down on a sack of flour.

"Heard you’re stealing the prince’s fiancée," she said with her mouth full.

"We are not stealing anyone! We’re breaking up an engagement!"

"Same thing." Fenna licked the sugar off her thumb. "Just duel her."

"Huh?"

"Challenge the prince. Declare her as your terms. You win, she’s yours." She shrugged. "That’s what I’d do."

Marisol sighed and shook her head.

"That’s beastkin courtship, darling. A claim duel only binds when both people in it are beastkin. Aldric is human. So is Serena. If Kohaku challenged the crown prince over a human noblewoman, she’d simply be a fox attacking a member of the royal family."

My heart stopped.

Serena wasn’t human. Only three people in the world knew that, and two of them were in this room.

[If we keep talking about beastkin, somebody’s going to start asking questions!]

"Wow! Look at the time!" I yanked my hands out of the tub, splashing soapy water across the floor. "Duels are boring! Let’s move on! Next idea! Who has a next idea!?"

Lily kept her head down and wrote very, very quickly in her notebook.

"Well," Marisol said slowly. "If we can’t make the Queen cancel it, then the only person who can end it is Aldric himself."

"Right! Exactly! So how do we get Aldric to back out!?"

Then it hit me.

I thought about Serena. She glared at everyone. She threatened to kill people before breakfast. She refused to bow to Dame Brask for two weeks straight. Just yesterday, she had kicked a shoe at my knee.

"We make Serena look as unappealing as possible," I said. "We get Aldric to see what she’s really like. She’s hostile. She’s terrifying. She hates everyone. Honestly, he probably doesn’t even want to marry her in the first place! We just need to give him a push!"

Marisol stared at me. Then a slow, wicked smile spread across her face.

"Darling, that’s brilliant."

"I know!"

She turned to her chalkboard and wrote it in huge letters across the top: MAKE SERENA UNMARRIABLE.

Lily copied it into her notebook.

I slapped my wet hands together.

"The plan is a go!"

---

The formal garden tea was held two days later, in the palace rose garden.

It was a perfect opportunity. Aldric and Serena were required to sit together for one hour, under Dame Brask’s supervision, so they could "grow accustomed to each other’s company." As Serena’s attendant, I was in charge of the tea service.

In other words, the operation controlled every cup, every spoon, and every cake on that table.

Lily had volunteered as a second attendant. She stood beside me at the serving cart in a borrowed apron, holding the teapot very carefully with both hands.

"I let it cool for exactly four minutes," she whispered. "It’s lukewarm. Just a little bit. Is that too mean?"

"It’s perfect, Lily."

"I feel terrible."

Across the table, Aldric sat with his back straight and his golden hair catching the sunlight. Serena sat across from him in a pale blue dress, with her hands folded neatly in her lap.

Lily poured the tea.

Serena lifted her cup, took a sip, and set it down without a sound.

"Lovely," she said.

[That’s fine. Phase one was only a warm-up.]

I moved on to phase two. I’d filled the sugar bowl with salt that morning. I set it down in front of Serena with a big smile, then I spooned two heaping spoonfuls into her cup myself.

Serena drank it. She didn’t even blink.

"Thank you, Kohaku. Just the way I like it."

[She drank salt tea!? She drank salt tea, and she smiled!?]

This was the composure again. In other words, the angrier Serena got, the more perfect she would act. If I wanted the real Serena to come out, I had to push much harder.

So I pushed.

When Serena stood to adjust her chair, I stepped on her hem. She caught her balance with one hand on the table and sat back down gracefully. When I served the lemon cakes, I gave Aldric the best one and gave Serena the smallest, most crushed one on the tray. She thanked me for it. When I refilled her cup, I filled it all the way to the brim, so it spilled over into the saucer.

"Oh no! I’m so sorry, my lady!" I grabbed a napkin and started dabbing at her sleeve. "Oops! Clumsy me! Let me just..."

I knocked the saucer straight into her lap.

The garden went silent.

Serena looked down at the tea soaking into her skirt. Her fingers twitched.

Then she kicked the table.

The whole thing jumped. Cups rattled. The salt bowl flipped over. Before I could take a step back, Serena had me by the collar, hauling me down until our faces were an inch apart.

"Are you trying to humiliate me, mutt!?" she snarled. "Do it one more time! I dare you! Do it one more time, and I will throw you in the fountain myself!"

Her teeth were bared. Her whole body was shaking.

[YES!]

By any reasonable standard, the plan had worked. The crown prince had just watched his future wife attack her own servant over a cup of tea.

"Lady Frostfall!" Dame Brask shrieked. She stormed into the gazebo, white with fury. "Release that girl this instant! You will apologize to His Highness, and you will bow!"

Aldric raised one hand.

"That won’t be necessary, Dame Brask."

Everyone froze. Serena still had a fistful of my collar.

Aldric rose from his chair. He looked at Serena with nothing but respect.

"A future queen must never bow," he said. "Not for defending her dignity, and certainly not in her own garden. Lady Frostfall has more strength in her than half my court." He bowed his head slightly toward her. "I’m honored by it."

Serena let go of me. She stared at him.

I stared at him too.

"I gave my word to the Queen that I would marry Lady Frostfall," Aldric went on, in a clear, ringing voice. "A prince’s word is iron. Once it is given, it does not bend. It does not rust. It does not break, not for storms, not for kingdoms, and not for any power in this world."

My heart sank.

I knew those words. I’d written them at fifteen years old, at my desk, at one in the morning. It was the line Aldric said to Lily in Volume Two, right before he swore to protect her. I’d been so proud of it that I’d underlined it in my notebook.

I’d written Aldric as the perfect prince. A perfect prince never broke his word.

In other words, nothing Serena did would ever make him back out.