Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George

taking his arm so that she and Marianne flanked him. "Mother was Rupert's cousin, but imagine if Father were to turn on Breton! Oh, the scandal!"
    "Would your father turn on them?" Christian was only idly curious. With a girl on each arm he was getting a number of envious looks and rather enjoying them.
    "Oh, heavens no!" Poppy lowered her voice. "Let's face it, King Rupert can be horrible, but Father still likes to keep on good terms with him." She sighed. "Which is why I'm here."
    "Your father sent you, especially?" Christian couldn't help but think that bold Poppy was an odd choice for ambassador.
    "Oh no. I drew Breton out of a hat. Hyacinth, who's very religious, is the only one who didn't draw: Father sent her to Analousia to impress them with our piety."
    Christian was fascinated. "You drew lots to see who would go where?"
    "No one cared which one they got," she said with a shrug. "And Lilac and Orchid both wanted to go to Spania. Some
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    famous actor is doing a play there this season. So Father used the hat to make things equal." "So the twelve of you--"
    "Nine," she corrected him. "Hyacinth was sent to Analousia, and Lily and Rose are married. Nobody wants a married princess," she laughed wryly.
    "True." He paused. "Doesn't it bother you?"
    Poppy shook her head.
    "It shouldn't," Marianne put in. "Any girl with a dowry is told from the day she's born that she has to marry just the right person for just the right reasons at just the right time." She grimaced. "All you can hope for is that he's got teeth. And hair."
    "Oh, don't be so put upon," Poppy said. "Your parents would never force you to marry anyone you didn't like."
    They left the gallery and went out onto the grounds. The Royal Gallery was housed in a grand mansion with extensive gardens behind, which were a work of art in and of themselves. The trees had been sculpted into perfectly smooth cones, and the hedges were shaped like sea serpents and other fantastical creatures.
    "Not bad," Poppy said with a critical eye. "But that yew is on its last legs."
    "A gardening expert, are we?" Christian liked Poppy, but he thought she was a rather strange girl. She hated dancing but was very good at it, and meekly went riding every day despite being a terrible rider. She gambled, and could swear
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    quite colorfully (as he had discovered one day when the more spirited horse she was trying threw her in the park). And while she claimed to be fond of the ladylike art of knitting, the "socks" he had seen her working on were bizarrely large.
    And now it seemed that she was a trained gardener.
    "I don't actually care about growing anything myself," she explained. "But Father's gardens are considered the finest in Ionia. He had them created for my mother, who was terribly homesick, and at first it was only to remind her of this." She made a wide gesture with one hand to indicate the sweeping green lawns before them. "But in the end he became so involved that he's even developed a number of new roses."
    "How do you develop a new rose?" Christian could barely tell the difference between a rose and a daisy.
    "I really don't know." She shrugged. "But they're all named after my mother: Queen Maude, Maude's Beauty, Beloved Maude. One of my sisters asked once why Father didn't name a rose after any of us, and he pointed out what the rest of us were thinking: who names a flower 'Poppy's Rose'?"
    "Daisy's Rose," Marianne put in.
    Christian started to laugh, but a strange feeling came over him. It was happening with greater frequency now: the glimpses of green in the corners of his eyes, the faint sparkle in the air. It mostly happened when he was near large windows, but walking through the Mirror Gallery at the palace also made him uneasy.
    He looked around and saw a small greenhouse half-hidden
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    behind a hedge. The glass did have a faint greenish tint, but nothing like what he thought he'd seen.
    "What is it? Do they have exotic flowers?" Marianne peered toward the little house.