Was he born that way? Or is he also cursed?

“Petra. There you are.”

Petra stumbled to a stop, the basket bumping against his knees. He’d made it only a matter of steps from the low sandstone wall surrounding the siblings’ home, and even though he knew he was still the topic of conversation in the garden behind, Petra set his jaw and turned to face the approaching Sir Eckhart with a polite and expectant frown.

“Marta told me you might still be here.” Eckhart slowed to a stop on the brick lane, her hands folded behind her back and her spine a straight, straight line. “You have a visitor.”

Ah. Petra hitched his basket up over his arm again. “Which kind?”

“One of the party-goers.”

In their way, returning guests were far easier to deal with than the dismissed servants, especially with Eckhart’s help. Petra nodded and Eckhart, having waited for such a signal, turned on her heel and strode back the way she’d come. With the ease of much practice, Petra fell in behind.

The prince dead had aged Eckhart more rapidly than the prince alive ever had. The last three years had threaded her once-glossy black hair with grey, and the shadows under her eyes seemed darker with each passing day. But her sleek and military bearing persisted unchanged, and Petra almost had to jog to keep up with her long-legged steps.

And so the seventh prince was lost, to death or worse. His manor stands empty at the heart of his tiny province, a grand and silent warning, great shadows passing behind the dark windows.

Some would add, with needless cruelty, that the prince went unmourned, but those who claimed so had never, Petra knew, met Sir Eckhart.

No matter how often he entered the knight’s cottage, the only change Petra could ever find was the fluctuating pile of letters on the heavy oak desk. Golden flowers on the windowsills bloomed year-round (with, of course, Petra’s influence); the dark, almost black, wood of the walls and floor gleamed in the absence of dust or wear; a tattered royal banner hung behind the desk, the only formal decoration in a home otherwise austere.

As Petra stepped inside, the visitor, initially perched in one of the parlor’s two overstuffed chairs, rose at once and dropped into an elegant sweep of a curtsy.  Sunlight filtering in through the uncurtained window turned her braided hair and traveling cloak a soft, soft yellow.

“Master Gardener,” she began, even before Petra could set down his basket, “I was told you—”