Violet heard the coughing and came running back. She sank down on the bench beside Rose, putting her arm around the older girl and holding a handkerchief to Rose's lips. "What happened?" she asked Galen, her tone just shy of being accusatory. "I am so sorry, Your Highness," Galen said, backing away. "I made her laugh, and–" "You made her laugh?" Violet's eyes widened. "She hasn't laughed in weeks!" She smiled at Galen and gave Rose's shoulders a little squeeze.

She [Pansy] pushed in next to Poppy so that she could see him around the guard's elbow. She was as tall as Poppy, with shining dark-brown hair and blue eyes. An utterly lovely girl, as all the princesses were, yet Oliver thought Petunia was far more beautiful.

Shaking herself, Petunia looked around. Several of her sisters had been talking to her, but she hadn't heard them. "And that answers our questions about why he gave himself up," Poppy was saying, a smile turning up one corner of her mouth as she looked at Petunia. "Now if everyone could please avoid saying his name [Oliver], so that Petunia doesn't drift off again...?

Be careful. Wait out your year. Come home.

Can you be sure?" "I haven't spent the last fifteen hundred years learning how to knit my own socks, boy!" The crone looked like she might box Heinrich's ears, if she could reach them.

It was a palace, made entirely of gold, sitting on an island of silver snow at the very top of the world. East of the sun, and west of the moon.

And then what did you do, Lord Oliver?" Karl's eight-year-old daughter gazed up at him in awe, as though this were the best story she had ever heard.