Princess of Thorns Read online

  I go to my bed grudgingly, cursing myself and my failure.

  Some temptress I am. I was gaining ground this morning—I could tell Niklaas was softening toward me—but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and stop fighting with him long enough for softening to become anything more. Still, a twisted part of me relished every contrary word out of his mouth, knowing all too soon he might never disagree with me again.

  Or he might defy me until the minute he rides out of the valley tomorrow morning. I can’t decide which is worse—to learn he loves me and ruin him, or learn he doesn’t and watch him walk away.

  “Hold still, I’m nearly finished,” Gettel says, pinning another purple and white blossom in my hair.

  She’s been stabbing at my hair for the better part of an hour. My neck is stiff and my bottom numb from the hard seat of the chair, but I do my best to hold still. Gettel has done so much for me—from saving my life to taking in a lovely lavender gown of hers to fit me for the festival—the least I can do is indulge her passion for arranging hair.

  “My youngest daughter has hair even longer than yours,” she says, a fond note in her voice. “But dark brown and coarse as anything. It would take hours to get it braided or combed out and rolled onto curlers when she was little.”

  “Is that Kat’s mom?” I ask, silently thanking the stars Gettel decided my hair only needed curling in the front. An hour spent fussing with hair, I can suffer. Anything more would have been more than I could bear.

  “Yes. I stole her away from her birth parents when she was not quite a year old,” Gettel says with a wry smile. “Some of the stories about we witches are true, you know. We do steal children, but only those who need to be stolen. My daughter’s parents were thieves by trade and neglected her terribly. I took her away and gave her a kinder life.”

  “That was good of you.”

  “No, that was lucky for me,” she says. “She was a blessing.”

  “Is she … ?” I pause, not wanting to finish the question.

  “Dead? No, but she’s … lost to me. And Kat.” Gettel plucks more flowers from their stems, leaving the blossoms on the handheld mirror on the mantel. “Kat’s father supplies the kingdoms of Herth with Elixir of Elsbeth’s Rose. He supplied my daughter as well, until she nearly wasted to death. To save her, I was forced to lock her away.” She pins another flower in my hair. “There is a tower in the woods beyond the valley. You may see it on your ride out. My daughter has lived there since last spring but still craves the elixir above all else. She expresses no desire to see Kat or … myself.”

  “That’s terrible.” I can’t understand how anyone, no matter how poisoned, could cast their mother from their life, especially a mother like Gettel. “I’m so sorry.”

  Gettel pats my hand. “I still have hope. One day I will climb the tower and she will be the girl I raised again, I know it.” She sets her pins down and takes a long look at her creation. “You should send your mother a message,” she says, eyes still on my hair. “She deserves to know where you’re going.”

  “My mother is dead.”

  “No she isn’t, sugar.” Gettel smiles and pats my hair like a pet that’s performed a brilliant trick. “She’s on an island far away, but not so far I can’t feel her searching for you. She has great magic, but not enough to find you here.”

  “She’s Fey, my fairy mother,” I say, feeling terrible. I haven’t thought of Janin in days, haven’t even paused to imagine how concerned she must be.

  “She loves you, and she’s worried.” Gettel turns, fetching paper and a charcoal pencil from the mantel and pressing them into my hands. “Write her. I’ll have the message sent by falcon first thing tomorrow. Now I’m going to fetch something to give you a little color. Don’t look in the mirror until I get back.”

  I nod and bend over the paper in my lap, but when I put the charcoal to it I don’t know where to start. “I’m sorry” is inadequate, and “forgive me” will probably come too late. I know there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance I will die in Mercar. Janin will know it too.

  In the end, I simply tell her that my attempt to secure an army has failed and that I’m going to the capital to free Jor myself. And then I tell her “thank you” and “I love you” and ask her not to blame herself. Not that she would.

  Fairies don’t feel guilt the way humans do. They live for thousands of years, long enough for the weight of their past mistakes to crush them to dust if they allowed them to. Janin will not regret taking me in and loving me like a daughter and working so desperately to protect me, only to have me deliver myself into danger.

  That will be my burden to bear, for however many days are left to me.

  “I can get that out now if I hurry,” Gettel says, bustling back into the room. “If we’re lucky, the master of birds won’t have left for the festival just yet.”

  Gettel tucks the paper into her apron before leaning down to dab something sticky from a pot in her hands onto my cheeks, lips, and a touch above my eyes.

  “I make this to aid in healing, but it’s the prettiest pink. It might make your lips tingle, but that will pass.” She stands back, and claps her hands. “Perfect! Take a look while I give this to Bernard. If Kat comes in, tell her not to eat anything or she’ll ruin her supper.”

  I wait until Gettel is out the door before standing and fetching the mirror. It’s a lovely, heavy thing with a silver frame and only gently clouded glass.

  It may also be enchanted.

  It must be, I decide, as I stare, slack-jawed, at my reflection. That can’t be me. That girl with the riot of golden curls forming a flower-dusted frame around her face, with dewy pink cheeks and sparkling eyes that look more lavender than gray. I tip the mirror down, taking in the whisper-thin violet gown that bares most of my shoulders and clings tight to my chest before falling in gossamer waves to my ankles. It is as beautiful as my good gown back home, but fits me even better, emphasizing my curves, making me look plush and healthy instead of scrawny and small.

  For the first time in my life, I look like a woman. I feel like a woman. Tonight I am not plain or boyish, I am as lovely as a girl in a fairy story, nearly as lovely as my mother, the woman whose name for me will always be synonymous with beauty and kindness. She may have cursed me, but she didn’t mean to. She only wanted to keep me safe, to prevent me from marrying a man who would betray me the way my father betrayed her. She didn’t know what her wish would do to me … or to the boys foolish enough to love me.

  I close my eyes, remembering the press of Thyne’s lips on mine, the ocean and star fruit taste of him on my tongue. I remember pulling away to watch the spark fade from his eyes, sucked away like smoke up a chimney after the fire is put out, leaving nothing but an empty hearth, waiting for me to fill it.

  My breath rushes out with a sob. I can’t do it. I can’t, no matter how—

  “Aurora?”

  I open my eyes to find Niklaas standing by the fire, wearing a crisp white shirt with a traditional Frysk vest the same dark brown as his riding pants and freshly shined black boots. His patchy whiskers from this morning have been shaved away and his hair cut and combed through with something that makes it shine like spun gold.

  He is even more beautiful than usual, so stunning that looking at him would be enough to break my heart … if it weren’t breaking already.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  I shake my head, my eyes filling.

  “Don’t cry.” He takes the mirror from my shaking hand. “You look beautiful.”

  My face crumples.

  “Well, that’s not so beautiful,” he teases as he pulls me into his arms. “Come on now, stop it. You’ll make your face all red.”

  “I was just … thinking of my mother.” It’s partly true.

  “Evensew is for celebrating the dead, not mourning them,” Niklaas says, rubbing my back in slow, com
forting circles. “Let’s go to the festival. We’ll sing your mother a song and dance a dance in her honor and enjoy ourselves the way she would have wanted. I want to … make the most of tonight, of the time we have left.”

  He’s right. There will be time for tears and regrets and hating myself when Niklaas is spared from his curse and Jor is free.

  I pull away with a sniff, wiping my eyes with my fingers, careful not to rub the pink from my cheeks. “You’re right.”

  “There’s something I don’t hear very often.” He winks as he takes my hand, twining his fingers through mine, making me aware of every bit of skin between my fingers, of the way our calloused palms press together in their own timid kiss.

  My nerves hum with longing and my heart aches with misery, sending such conflicting feelings coursing through my body that for a moment it feels I’ll be torn apart. But just when I’m sure I can’t keep holding Niklaas’s hand without bursting into tears again, my head steps in and shuts the misery away, shoving it into the dark corner of my mind where the things I can’t bear to think about fight and claw and fester.

  It will escape to tear at me later, but for now, I refuse to think of it, refuse to think of anything but putting one foot in front of another until this night is over.

  I’ve made my decision. Now I will see it through.

  “Ready?” Niklaas asks.

  “Ready.” I force a smile as he pulls me out the door.

  Outside, a wagon half full of villagers—including Kat and Gettel, who share the seat beside the big-armed driver—is waiting. As we emerge, the chatter stops and a cheer goes up. The men and women smile as Niklaas helps me into the back of the wagon, wishing us a Merry Evensew, lifting their candles high in the air.

  I take a seat on a hay bale and Niklaas settles down beside me. We are handed candles in honor of those we have lost and light them from the flames of the candles of two little girls sitting across from us, symbolizing that we are all connected in the dance of life and death, and then we are off, trundling down the road to the festival of the dead, where Niklaas’s free will will die so that the rest of him may live.

  Niklaas

  She is beautiful, so flaming breathtaking I can’t believe I ever thought her merely pretty.

  It’s more than her hair or her dress or the shine in her eyes, it’s the way she smiles, the way our eyes meet across the feast table and words pass between us without anything being said, the careful way she takes my hand as I lead her onto the boards to dance, as if she senses the way things are shifting between us and she’s as frightened as I am that somehow we’ll drop this precious thing and it will shatter to pieces.

  She’s … magical. Like a dream you try to forget upon waking, something so perfect you have to push it from your head to keep from weeping into your pillow wishing it were real. But she is real, real and warm and in my arms, her breath rushing out as I lift her into the air and set her back down to the beat of the drum.

  My hands tighten at her waist and her palms come to rest on my chest, setting my heart to pounding even harder. All around us, men laugh and women squeal as the wild country dance ends with a frenzied fiddle solo that sends couples spinning arm in arm, but Aurora and I don’t spin. We stand, staring, lips parted, breath coming fast. The sun has set, but the light is still rosy, emphasizing the color in her cheeks and the copper in her hair, making her so damned lovely it’s painful, like someone’s slipped a knife of wanting between my ribs.

  “Walk with me.” I take her hand, leading her off the dancing boards and into the grass, heading for a grove of white-barked ghost gums at the edge of the field where evening is gathering, creating purple shadows beneath the trees.

  I expect her to ask me where we’re going, to say we shouldn’t roam away until the torches are lit, but she doesn’t. She follows me, her hand easy in mine. We walk in silence except for the music drifting across the field and the chirp and hum of summer insects that should have died long ago rising from the grass. I take their calls as a sign, an assurance that miracles can happen.

  We reach the trees and I turn to Aurora, bowing over her hand. “May I have this dance, my lady?”

  “My lady.” She laughs. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

  “I haven’t forgotten a thing,” I say, pulling her into my arms.

  She stiffens and a wrinkle forms between her eyes. “Niklaas, I—”

  “Just dance with me, runt,” I say, refusing to let her pull away. “Whatever you’re fretting about can wait.”

  She sighs but doesn’t protest as I spin her under the limbs where silver leaves whisper in the breeze, singing along to the blissful lament of “The Last Waltz.” The waltz is a traditional Evensew song I’ve heard dozens of times, but I’ve never appreciated it the way I do now, when I am on the verge of a moment that will change my life.

  Every yearning note wrung from the fiddle’s strings vibrates inside me, making my blood rush and my breath ache in my lungs. I have seduced more girls than I can count on my hands and feet, and I’ve even imagined myself in love once before, but I’ve never cared whether a girl said yes or no as much as I do tonight. Knowing my life depends on Aurora’s answer is part of it, but not even close to all. She is already my dear friend, but by the end of the night she might also be the girl I’ll spend my life with, the girl I’ll make a family with. A family where people love and trust each other, where children are treasured, not cursed and thrown away, and no one has to pretend to be something they’re not.

  The thought is thrilling and … terrifying. Together we could be magical … or a disaster … or maybe a magical disaster, I’m not sure which. I only know I want the chance to find out if this is real love, the kind that lasts after the first rush is gone, the kind that makes a home a place to find refuge instead of a prison to escape.

  “What is this, Niklaas?” Aurora’s whisper is so soft I can barely hear her over the rustling of the trees.

  “It’s called dancing,” I say, so anxious that the palm I’ve placed at her waist begins to sweat. “I think we’re pretty good at it.” I draw her closer, gaining confidence when she doesn’t pull away.

  “Niklaas …” Her hand squeezes mine. “I have to tell you something.”

  “What?” My stomach pitches. What if I’m wrong? What if she doesn’t feel what I’m feeling? What if I’ve tricked myself into believing she cares in order to soothe my pride, to make it all right to accept her offer of marriage and save my own skin?

  “I …” She looks up, the torment in her eyes making me forget where to step.

  We stop dancing at the same moment, but neither one of us pulls away.

  “What’s wrong? Just tell me.” I firm up my expression, making sure she can’t see how deep it will cut if she says something to hurt me.

  I’ve been covering hurt with a smile my entire life. I can do it for another eight days. After that, it won’t matter. I’m sure a swan knows nothing about what it’s like to long for a proud father, or a mother who’d lived, or a future without any dark certainties in it and a life without the ending written in stone.

  “What?” Impatience colors my tone. “Why do you look so miserable? Please tell me, because I don’t understand it, especially when I’m breaking my back to be charming.”

  She frowns. “I didn’t realize it was so torturous for you to be charming.”

  “Only with you, Princess.”

  Anger flickers in her eyes, but that’s just fine. I’ll take anger. Any emotion is preferable to her pity.

  “Why? Because I’m like a sister to you?” she asks, dropping my hand.

  “No!” I throw up my arms in frustration. “I’ve been trying to—”

  “Trying to forget how nauseating it is to put your hands on me?” Her eyes glitter as she reaches out, slowly fisting her hand in my shirt. “Is that it?”

  “I didn
’t say that.” I glance down, eyeing her clenched fist. My head tells me to prepare to be taken to the ground, but my gut tells me something else. It tells me Aurora wants me as much as I want her, and the only reason we fight is because the energy simmering between us needs a place to go. It tells me to take a risk, to quit being a coward and show her how wrong she is.

  “You didn’t say it,” she says. “But I’m not a—”

  Her words end in a sharp intake of breath as I wrap my arm around her waist. A moment later, my fingers are in her hair, sending pins flying as I fist my hand, making sure she can’t pull away and flip me onto my back.

  “Stop telling me what I’m feeling,” I say, leaning in to whisper the words into the hollow beneath her ear.

  This close, she smells like lilac soap and the flowers in her hair, with an undercurrent of something sweeter, like melted sugar, and she feels … She feels like a piece of the Land Beyond, like she was made to fit against me, to fill every empty place, to match my strength with her own, tempered by a softness that makes my head spin. I flex the arm around her waist until every inch of her is pressed tight to every inch of me, until I can feel her stomach trembling against mine and her breath in my lungs and there can be no doubt that I’m far from repulsed by her.

  She shivers and her arms wrap around my neck.“Niklaas,” she whispers. “I …”

  “Don’t talk.” I press a kiss to her throat, feeling her pulse racing beneath my lips, its rhythm confirming that her blood is rushing as fast as mine.

  “Niklaas wait, I—”

  I slip my hand from her hair, trapping her jaw between my fingers as I fit my mouth to hers, cutting her off with a kiss. She moans, a panicked sound that surprises me as it vibrates across my skin, but when I part my mouth, she parts hers, too, her lips gliding over mine with a ragged sigh. She doesn’t pull away, and after a moment I regain the courage to angle my head, brushing soft against softer, breath held, then rushing out, warming the whisper of space between her mouth and mine.