Chapter 4: The Prince at the Wedding Breakfast

The prince walked into the wedding breakfast with mud on his boots and his hat still in his hand.

He was taller than I remembered from the mill, and his fair hair was cut short now.

The scar on his shoulder was under that coat, sewn with my green thread.

I could not move.

He was alive, he was whole, and he had not yet been told a single lie.

The guests dropped into bows.

Prince Casimir ignored them all and looked down the long table, and his eyes went past the bride in her veil without stopping.

They stopped on Rosalind.

She had come to stand beside her mother, small and pale again, with one hand pressed to her chest.

"It's you," he said.

Rosalind sank into a curtsy.

"Your Highness," she said, in a low, trembling voice. "You came."

"I told you I would." He crossed the room and took her hands. "Three years. Do you know how many doors I've knocked on?"

"I never doubted you would come," Rosalind said.

I stood by the cake with my gloves in my hand and heard her tell it.

She told the mill and the ford and the bandits.

She told the green thread and the lullaby he had hummed.

She said all of it in the order I had written it down for my old nurse, and she said it well.

Hester's hand was resting on her daughter's shoulder, and Hester's eyes were wet.

I put my gloves on the table.

"She wasn't there, Your Highness," I said.

The room turned to look at me.

"I was."

The prince's eyes moved over me slowly, and I watched him see the same face as the girl at his side.

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