She murmured to him. The boy’s shaking increased for a moment as he tried to nod his head. He drank all of the liquid and then doubled over, screaming.

“Get him out,” Flagg said.

“Yes, get him out!” one of the parrot’s two heads cried.

“Get him out, no screaming allowed here!” the other head screamed.

She got him home, sure that Flagg had murdered him. But the next day the Shaking Disease had left her son completely, and he was well.

Years passed. When Sasha’s labor with Thomas began, Flagg called for her and whispered in her ear. They were alone in his deep rooms, but even so, it was better that such a dread command be whispered.

Anna Crookbrows’s face went deadly white, but she remembered Flagg’s words: If you refuse…

And would not the King have two children? She had only one. And if the King wanted to remarry and have even more, let him. In Delain, women were plentiful.

So she went to Sasha, and spoke encouragingly, and at a critical moment a little knife glittered in her hand. No one saw the one small cut she made. A moment later, Anna cried: “Push, my Queen! Push, for the baby comes!”

Sasha pushed. Thomas came from her as effortlessly as a boy zipping down a slide. But Sasha’s lifeblood gushed out upon the sheet. Ten minutes after Thomas came into the world, his mother was dead.

And so Flagg was not concerned about the piffling matter of the dollhouse. What mattered was that Roland was growing old, there was no meddling Queen to stand in his way, and now he had not one son to choose from but two. Peter was, of course, the elder, but that did not really matter. Peter could be gotten out of the way if time should prove him unsuitable for Flagg’s purposes. He was only a child, and could not defend himself.