All That Glitters Isn’t Yours

by Riel Rosehill

I stole the mantle from the dead king. A reckless act, but I’d lost my head long ago; the threat of a headsman’s axe could hold no candle to it. Holding the fine velvet under the waterfall, my only regret is not being a thief sooner.

The warm light of my lantern dances across the glistening stone behind the water-wall, illuminating runes painted with blood; the only way I know how. Soaking up blessed water, the mantle grows heavier than when I pulled it from under the king’s body. I can barely hold it with my hands numbed by the ice-cold water. But this is the fall the priestess used to cleanse the body—it might just cleanse this cloak too. I have to try, though I don’t think it could wash away my sins.

I spread the mantle across the floor, soft and teal-blue with gold stitching and the royal crest’s white ravens perched along the hem in rich embroidery.

Fit for a king; but it was never meant to be his.

⁂

I used to laugh at my sisters, playing princess and dreaming of marrying royalty. All sparkly-eyed and blushing, they talked endlessly about the Ravenbourne princes and the noble boys that caught their eyes in town. But they were the daughters of a widowed milkmaid with no title; a man of higher status wouldn’t be interested.

“Let us see.” My mother smiled, brushing Maelly’s long, wheat-gold hair, while my older sister, Sev, pricked her finger and painted the length of a candle with her own blood. “Sometimes all a girl needs is charm.”

I still don’t know if she meant beauty or magic, but Sev certainly practised both: she’d made dozens of scrolls with spells, bathing the ones with charms in sunlight, and the ones with curses in the darkness of the new moon. She burnt them daily, strip by strip, over the candlelight, while rubbing rose oil into her skin and making the whole house smell like a sweet promise. It was mainly the charms, but I’d seen her reaching for curses too, thinking she was the only one awake at the time.

I asked her about it once, when I was heading to the tailor’s, and she was feeding the chickens out the front. The magic we used was of an ancient kind, less refined than the clean, bloodless magic accepted by the high priestess. It was uncommon, even frowned upon in Stormness. Barbaric. Especially the curses. The priestesses cautioned against it: everything comes back to you stronger. I wanted to know what was worth such a risk.

“All a girl has is looks.” Sev shrugged. “I work on mine, but it shines brighter if I can dim the light of others. I need to marry a rich husband. With your apprentice wages…I can’t settle for less.”

⁂

A guard shouts. Whether they’re close enough to see the light behind the waterfall, I cannot guess through the burble of the water, but I need to get the job done while I can. Pulling the lantern close, I find where I need to cut the stitches, counting to the thirteenth raven along the hem. Those birds were nowhere when I first held this fabric, uncut and neatly folded, waiting its turn in a large pile of velvets I carried, following my master through the castle hall.

I wore my best clothes, the ones my mother had me sew for accompanying Master Tomaz to court, but it didn’t make me feel less out of place: a tailor’s apprentice in the rooms of Prince Ayden and Alexis Ravenbourne.

Standing in the corner, Sev’s warning still rang in my ears. Don’t embarrass us.

I kept my back straight, jumped to the master tailor’s every word and laid out the luxurious fabrics for the princes to feel and choose from. Stealing hungry glances, I admired the young men I’d heard of but never met. It was strange to see them in the flesh, to be close enough to smell the sweet scent of horses in the crown prince’s long hair, soft and falling in fuzzy waves like Maelly’s. I was almost too afraid to touch him, as I pinned his chosen textiles around him. The town folk said he was cursed, it was clear in his eyes, but he never looked up at me to show it.

“Black?” Alexis frowned. At the age of eighteen, he was only a few years older than me, but I couldn’t compare to him. Raised riding the best horses and wielding swords, not threading needles in a dark room, he was like the prince of our fairy tales—only less polite. “Is that really your choice? For your coronation?”

“Or funeral.” Ayden shrugged. “Isn’t that more likely?”

I nearly dropped my needles, stabbing my finger as I caught them. A king-to-be should not be talking like that.

“It should be Ravenbourne colours, either way,” Alexis said.

“I don’t care–Ouch!”

I pulled back the needle pricking the crown prince’s side.

“Apologies,” I muttered.

In truth, I wasn’t sorry—I didn’t much like his attitude.

Glancing towards Alexis, I caught a glimpse of a suppressed smile as he turned his face away. I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling.

When we were done and were folding up the textiles, Alexis noticed the one in the pile. “Wait.” He grabbed hold of the Ravenbourne-blue velvet, complementing the colours of his choosing. “Use this for his mantle,” he ordered, stepping over to me and putting it into my arms.

I glanced toward Prince Ayden, but he didn’t even care to look my way.

“Hey.” Alexis pressed down onto the bundle of velvet in my arms. Looking up, I met his eyes, regal pale blue like the white raven’s on their standard and just as magical. Enchanting. “Just do as I say,” he said, with the confidence of a king. For a moment, I felt my knees turn to jam, like despite him not being the heir to the throne, he was the one I wanted to bend them for. He found my hand under the softness of the fabric and gave me a coin, pressing the warm round into my palm.

Curling my fingers around my precious gift, I managed a small bow.

“Good boy, Needle.” He winked.

Even now, sitting on the wet stone and reaching into my sewing-box for the stitch ripper, I feel my skin warm under the cool vapour from the waterfall as the light slips on the needles and I remember my nickname.

⁂

I stopped mocking my sisters for their wishful thinking, and a new bitterness settled in my belly: when it came to winning a prince’s affection, unlike them, I could not even dream of it. I shouldn’t have dreamt of it. But every time I visited the castle, every time I felt his warmth and felt the touch of his skin, pinning clothes in place, my heart beat a little faster, a little too loud. I found comfort in knowing that closeness was only mine.

Until it wasn’t.

“I met him!” Sev burst into the house one evening, squealing. “Prince Alexis!”

I tried my best to seem disinterested. “Technically, he isn’t a prince,” I said.

Sev didn’t care. “I ran into him at the market. I thought I was in trouble when he approached me, having watched him bathe in the river the other day–”

“You what?!”

“Oh come on, everybody does it! I’m sure he knows. It’s so easy to hide under the weeping willows.” She shook her head, blushing. “It wasn’t that, anyways.”

“What did he want?”

Sev gave me a secretive smile. “Who knows? But maybe I won’t need to go down to the river anymore to see him.”

I stop undoing the stitches along the hem, look towards the water behind the waterfall. It was a stone’s throw away, the place I sat under a willow the night after Sev told me about this spot. I told myself I only meant to hide from the scrutiny of the girls who might come, and make sure it’s clear, in case I fancied a swim. I told myself that’s why I kept glancing at the water beyond the hanging branches, waiting for someone to appear. I told myself that was my only reason—and why I stayed for hours, until falling asleep on the riverbank.

To this day, I cannot tell for sure if seeing Prince Alexis climbing out onto a rock by the waterfall in a wet, silvery glow under the full moon was just a dream.

⁂

Stepping out the front door, my soul almost left my body when I bumped into Alexis.

“Needle?” He grinned. “So this is your house?”

He must have seen me the previous night. “I can explain–” I started, my mouth running dry as I searched for excuses.

“Is Sev in?”

“Sev?” I stared at him, saying my sister’s name like I’ve never heard it before. He wanted to see—Sev?

“Coming!” she shouted from inside, and shoved me out of the way, stepping between me and the prince I thought was a little more mine than hers.

“I started to think I got the house wrong,” Alexis said, leaning into her hair and inhaling her rosy scent as she took his arm.

Sev laughed, though he said nothing funny. “Come, I’ll show you those flowers I talked about!”

Forgetting where I headed, I watched them walk, arm in arm, following the riverbend.

Maelly’s voice startled me. “Are you jealous or what?” She leaned against the doorframe.

“Are you?” I snapped, crossing my arms in front of my chest, as if that could hide the strange ache inside.

“No, I don’t like the smell of men.” Maelly frowned. “It’s vile.”

“That’s…a bit harsh.” I didn’t tell her I liked the smell of the prince, that I wished I could smell it on my pillow.

“Your stench is harsh. When did you last wash?”

I sucked air through my teeth. I’d not been in the river since Sev talked about her and her friends watching the men for fun. Now, getting stalked sounded less awful than running into Alexis, smelling bad. I wanted to sink below the ground.

⁂

While the princes bickered, Master Tomaz was giving me puzzled looks, sniffing the air around me as I put the clothes on the chair, but I refused to acknowledge. I might have used a little too much of Sev’s rose oil.

“What do you want me to do?” Alexis snapped at the crown prince as I took his tunic over.

“Nothing. I want you to do nothing, especially with her!”

“Why don’t you ask how she feels about that rule?”

“Why don’t we ask how she feels about the fact you have a mistress on every corner!”

“Needle.” I froze as I was about to put a tunic over Alexis’ head. “You tell me, is it bad to see girls, without the intention to marry?”

“Like you only see them,” Ayden grumbled.

I didn’t know if he asked only to taunt me, or because he thought I would take his side. I wondered if he also knew it’d be for selfish reasons.

“If it’s Prince Alexis,” I started, holding onto his tunic and forcing myself to meet his eyes, if only for a moment. “Anyone would be grateful.”

Lifting his chin, he gave a triumphant smile to his cousin. “See? Everybody loves me. Clearly, I should get the crown.”

“You shall. Over my dead body.”

“You know I don’t mean it like that,” Alexis said, quieter.

Imagining that future, the future when Master Tomaz would be too old to come, and I’d be the tailor, not just an apprentice, I pictured how it could be only the two of us—me and King Alexis.

That’s what I was hoping for, when I sank one of Sev’s scrolls deep inside my pocket.

⁂

Unfolding the hem, I pick at the strip of cursed scroll, blackened with ink and years-old blood, soaked into the wet fabric.

I didn’t know how well it would work, the day I pricked my finger with the needle, and watched a red pearl grow on my fingertip. Pulling a thread through it, I coated it in my blood, before sewing up the mantle’s hem, hiding a strip of the cursed scroll.

He’d not even worn it much—I only caught a glimpse of it when Alexis helped it off his shoulders before the coronation trials. I didn’t expect him to disappear before the dawn of his coronation.

And I didn’t think of how the curse would come to haunt me.

Alexis didn’t visit our house again. As the new Prince of Stormness, he must have been busy, preparing for a coronation himself. Preparing for his wedding—not visiting his mistress.

Wiping her eyes, Sev scrunched up the paper announcing the royal wedding and tossed it onto the kitchen floor.

“I told you so.” It felt too good to say it. With Sev abandoned and me still employed at court, maybe one day, or on a drunken night, I too, could get what I wanted. Our future king had proven unfaithful after all—a quality I could find some hope in.

But he didn’t call for me; there were no further fittings before the coronation.

It was naive of me to be so calm, to think I’d succeeded, craning my neck at the coronation, eager to see my king. He was perfect: tall, strong and stunning as he walked to the high priestess, but my blood turned to cold water when I saw him, kneeling before the altar in that beautiful, blue velvet.

⁂

I could barely drag myself to the altar to see his body. It had been two years. Two years of calm, two years he reigned before the curse turned on us. Just long enough for me to grow hopeful, wishing this day’d never come, but not long enough for any dreams to come true. Even if they did, I’d unwish them all, if it could turn back time.

He almost looked at peace, stuck in a dreamless sleep in a bed of silks and flowers; only his breath was stolen by the night’s kiss. The goodbye-brush of his cold lips sent shivers down my spine, pinned needles in my stomach. Avoiding the lifeless touch of his wax-doll skin, I placed my shaking hand onto his shoulder.

I never had the chance–no. I never had the courage to come clean; I never even dared to whisper the things I’ve done, and all the things I felt.

“I messed up,” I muttered, holding onto his mantle, a soft, velvety textile. A feel too familiar. I felt a rope tightening around my heart. It’d be around my neck soon enough if I got caught—but I couldn’t leave it behind. I couldn’t let him take my curse with him to the grave.

I rinse the mantle again. Reaching for a thread, I find a piece of gold in my box—the coin he gave me when we first met, the one I hadn’t spent for years and never would. Taking it out, I press it against my lips before folding it into the seam where the curse had been. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. I close the seam, but when it’s done it brings no relief. I cannot unstitch his death, cannot tie back a thread of life that’s been cut.

Taking a deep breath, I pull the mantle over my shoulders, enwrapping myself in the scent of ceremonies and battles passed, and that sweet-hay smell I always noticed on him. It should’ve been enough. I pull my legs up and bury my face in the blue velvet. I need to return it—I will return it. But maybe I could have it, just for one last night, before we part for good.

And I won’t return it in secret.

If there’s more I owe for the first curse cast, I won’t hesitate paying my debt in full.

Not even if the price is a noose around my neck.