Captured fair and square, the mermaid whispered the secret into Emilie’s ear, then turned around fast, slapped her in the face with her tail, and disappeared into the deep.
They all returned to the dragon ship.
“I thought you said they kissed you,” Emilie said, dripping water on the deck.
“Well, one kissed Rafe,” Jeremy said. “But who hasn’t around here?”
Rafe rolled his eyes.
“What secret did she tell you?” Skya demanded. “Come on. Dish on the fish, sis.”
But Emilie only smiled as she squeezed the water out of her hair.
“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret.”
On the ninth night, Emilie had a dream about her mother and woke up crying. A few minutes later, Skya knocked softly on the door and then let herself inside. Without a word, she crawled into bed with her sister and hugged her.
“How did you know I needed you?” Emilie asked.
“A little bird told me.”
Aurora perched on the end of Emilie’s bed like a sentinel, guarding her from more sad dreams.
“Want to tell me about your dream?”
“No,” Emilie said. She barely remembered it now anyway, only that in it, her mother was alive and with her in Shanandoah.
Skya stroked her hair and kissed her forehead.
“Want to tell me about your mother?” Skya asked. “The mother who raised you?”
“What do you want to know?” Emilie asked.
“Everything.”
“Well, for starters, her name was Theresa, and she would’ve loved you.”
—
On the tenth day, Rafe and Skya holed up in the Star Tower and they refused to tell Emilie or Jeremy what they were doing.
“Queen stuff,” Skya told Emilie when asked.
“Prince stuff,” Rafe told Jeremy when asked.
“Bedeviling,” Emilie said of the whole thing. Jeremy agreed with this assessment, so the two of them went off to do princess and knight stuff.
Of course, the queen and prince stuff they were doing wasn’t particularly scintillating. Rafe was painting a gift for Emilie and Skya was needed to give her input.
“More pink,” she said. “My sister loves pink.”
“It’s already so pink.”
She watched him a while longer. “You are so talented at this, my handsome prince,” Skya said, chin resting on his shoulder as he worked. “Why aren’t you an artist?”
“I am. If you do art, you’re an artist. You don’t have to get paid for it. You’re not paying me, right?”
“Only in love and adoration.” She kissed his cheek. She watched, mesmerized, while he worked magic, taking a blank rectangle and filling it with beauty.
“If you had died in Red Crow that day,” she said, “all the paintings you ever could have painted would have been lost. You kill an artist, you kill all their unmade art too. Why don’t people think about that before they hurt each other?”
He dipped his brush in white paint and began to make a unicorn appear before her eyes.
“Sometimes I think art is stronger than we are,” he said. “My favorite painter, Franz Marc, got his head blown off in World War One, but a music professor in Morgantown in 2006 had a print of his painting The Foxes in her house. I saw it and decided I wanted to do that. And I did. So that’s immortality, time travel, and miracle working. Not bad for some paint and wood and canvas.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Your entire kingdom exists because someone liked your story. If I were you, I’d take that as a sign you oughta write some more stories.”
“I haven’t written a word since I was thirteen. Where do I even start?”
“You can start where I started my painting. I paint people I love. You could write about people you love.”
She mulled that over as she watched him work.
“Write about people I love…” She hugged him from behind, and he stopped painting to rest his head against hers for a long, lovely moment. “That means I’ll be writing about you.”
He returned to his painting. “Just make me look good.”
“Maybe I’ll make you the hero.”
—
