Princess of Thorns (24 page)

Niklaas’s lip curls. “You’re really that selfish?”

“No, I’m
that
willing to give everything for someone I love.” I refuse to mind the guilt nudging at my heart, demanding my attention. I shouldn’t feel guilty, not so long as I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to keep the kingdoms safe should my plan fail.

“I’ll go to Jor and do my best to free him. And if I can’t, or if he’s already dead and I can’t escape, then I’ll …” I swallow, pushing away a fleeting memory of my mother’s filthy dress beneath my cheek, the warmth of her body when I put my arms around her for the last time. “Then … Jor and I have both been well trained. We’ve always known we might be forced to take our own lives before the queen could use them against our people. We know ways to manage it without a weapon. I won’t need a knife.”

Before I realize he’s moving, Niklaas has hold of my good arm with one hand and the back of my neck with the other. “Don’t you dare,” he says, anger simmering in his words as he leans his face down to mine. “Don’t throw yourself away for no reason!”

“It’s my brother’s life!” I fight the urge to break his hold. I know Niklaas won’t hurt me, no matter how dangerous his hand feels wrapped around my neck. “Unlike you, who is willing to give up his humanity to preserve his stupid
pride.
”

He clenches his jaw. “I won’t marry someone who pities me. I don’t want pity, especially from you.”

“Why
especially
me?” I stand on tiptoe, bringing my eyes nearly level with his. “What’s so terrible about me?”

“Everything,” he snaps, releasing me as he backs away. “You’re a liar. I don’t want to marry a stubborn, reckless liar. I don’t want to—”

“Well, what we
want
and what we
get
are rarely the same thing.” I will my eyes empty, refusing to show him how much his words hurt. “I’m offering you
life
.”

“What kind of life?” he asks, with a shake of his head. “A life spent pretending to be happy? A life spent trying not to get gobbled alive by regret? A life spent lying next to a girl who’s as disgusted by bedding me as I am by bedding her?”

Disgusted.
The word hits me like a fist in the ribs.

“You said it yourself,” he says in a softer tone. “You don’t want to kiss me any more than I want to kiss you.”

My breath rushes out as I roll my eyes. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or ball up my hand and hit Niklaas as hard as I can.

“I remember how determined you were
not
to have me as your husband,” he continues. “I can’t help thinking you’d come back to feeling that way. Sooner or later.”

He shrugs and stuffs a hand into the pocket of his new navy work britches, loose wool britches that do an excellent job of disguising the well-formed legs beneath. But I know they’re there, as I know the rest of his beautiful boy-ness is there beneath his clothes. I hate myself for thinking about it, for admiring any part of this prince who finds me as plain and uninspiring as I always knew he would. I have legitimate reasons for not wanting to kiss him, but for Niklaas it goes no deeper than a lack of attraction.

I don’t know why I let myself think the closeness between us might have changed things, that friendship and family feeling and jokes and mutual admiration might make a difference. Nothing makes a difference. Boys like Niklaas only care about whether or not a girl makes their blood rush.

Then make his blood rush, fool. This is no time to give up. Not on Jor, or Niklaas.

My lips part and the aching in my chest becomes slightly more manageable.

Maybe I
can
change Niklaas’s mind. The fairy boys always told me I was pretty. I used to know how to dance and tease and flirt and might have had my first kiss sooner if Thyne wasn’t so protective of me. That girlish part of me is still there, locked away in a cell I made for her when I realized how dangerous it was for me to attract a boy’s attention, let alone his affection or desire. She is still there, trapped in the darkness, but aching to be allowed back into the light …

“Maybe I would have regretted it,” I say, my head buzzing with dangerous possibilities. “But I suppose we’ll never know.”

Unless …

How can I even
consider
it? But how can I not, when lives are at stake and Niklaas has so little left to lose? If he’s determined to give up, what difference does it make which devil takes him, his devil … or mine?

“I’m sorry,” Niklaas says with a sigh. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, and I’m sorry about what I said. I know why you lied, and—”

“It’s all right.” I lay a hand on his arm, waiting until he meets my eyes before I add, “I’m sorry, too.”

“You were trying to help me,” he says. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

Oh, but I do. Or I will, if Gettel’s right and you, my friend, are wrong.

“Let’s go back,” I say. “Gettel said I’m allowed to eat at the table tonight.”

“Good. Kat will have someone else to pester with her questions.” Niklaas smiles, but it slips from his face almost instantly. “I’m glad you’re better. I didn’t want to leave until I knew you’d really be all right.”

“You’re leaving?” I ask, pulse speeding.

He nods. “As soon as I can put my things together and arrange for word to be sent to Haanah that things haven’t worked out as we’d hoped.”

“At least stay for the festival tomorrow night,” I say, ignoring the panicked voice in my head that urges me to steal a kiss right now, before it’s too late.

But I must make certain the kiss works. If it doesn’t, I am without a partner to help me free Jor, and Niklaas’s life is over. Too much depends upon the meeting of our lips to rush, not when even one more day might ensure success.

I know, if given the chance, I can bring Niklaas around. To steal his own words—all I need is for him to be a boy, and me a girl, without anything else getting in the way.

“A party is a nice place to say goodbye.” I loop my arm through his and set off toward the cottage, trying not to let on how much I want him to stay. I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes Niklaas tick, and I know he doesn’t find desperation attractive. “And you’d have a chance to prove you can hold your liquor. At this point, I think
I
could drink you under the table.”

“You couldn’t drink a field mouse under the table.” Niklaas laughs. “Well … I helped load all that beer into the cart, I guess I might as well help drink it.”

“Good,” I say. “We’ll have a night like we did in Goreman, a night to pretend all the terrible things don’t exist.”

“All right,” Niklaas says, slowing as we near the house. “But only if you’ll promise me you won’t go running off to Mercar the moment I’m gone. Nothing good will come of you going alone. Not for your brother, and certainly not for you.”

I look up into his eyes, with all the force of his will burning behind them, all the frustrating, passionate, loyal, silly, defiant, stubborn parts that make him Niklaas, and doubt I’ll be able to do it. How can I risk it? How can I banish everything I love about him?

I
do
love him. I do. No matter how frightening and misery-inducing the realization is, I can’t deny it any longer.

“I won’t go alone.” I wrap my arms around his waist, catching him in a swift, hard hug.

“Easy, killer,” he says with a laughing grunt as he wraps his arms around me. “Glad to see you’re getting your strength back.”

“Are you sure you won’t reconsider?” I know I don’t need to repeat my offer. And if he reconsiders, then I can, too. I can explain why he can never kiss me, and maybe we can find a way … Maybe …

“No, but thank you. Again.” He rests a hand on the hair coiled atop my head, quashing the last of my hope. “You’re a good one, runt. Don’t let fear make you do things you know aren’t right.”

“It’s so hard to know what’s right.” I pull away, staring at the ground. “The line between cowardice and courage can be so … thin.”

“But you can see it. If you look hard enough.” He pats my head like I’m a little girl, but I’m too miserable to be annoyed by it. “Speaking of thin, you’re feeling even scrawnier than usual. Let’s go fatten you up.”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” I say with a sad sniff.

“We’re having roast turkey left over from last night,” he says in a wheedling tone. “With cheeses and dried fruit and stewed tomatoes and bread with fresh sweet butter.”

My stomach growls.

“Sounds like your appetite tracked you down,” he whispers, tickling a finger into my ribs. I spin away, laughing against my will.

“Stop it!” I point a warning finger in his direction. “I hate being tickled.”

“Oh you do?” he says, a wicked gleam in his eye.

“Yes, I do!” I slap his hand as he reaches for me again and turn to race back to the house, with him close behind. We tumble into the kitchen like children, triggering a warning bark from Hund and an excited squeal from Kat, who is awake and standing on a stool by the food preparation table, up to her elbows in flour.

“Hello, Princess! I’m Kat and I’m making you a pie!” Kat shouts, flinging her hands into the air, sending flour flying.

“You’re making a mess is what you’re making, pumpkin.” Gettel laughs as she grabs Kat’s wrists, directing her hands back into the bowl. “Looks like you two had a nice walk.” She casts a knowing smile over Kat’s head, a smile that says it will only be a matter of time before Niklaas and I both realize we’re more than friends.

I hope a day will be long enough.

We stay up late—Gettel, Kat, Aurora, and I—talking and eating, watching Kat’s orange kittens torment Hund and eating, praising Kat’s rehearsal of the song she’ll sing at the festival and eating some more. We graze until I can’t stuff another bite in and Gettel forces Aurora to forego a second slice of pie lest she make herself sick after so many days with nothing but milk and bread.

It’s close to one in the morning when I say my goodnights and stumble to my makeshift bedroom above the barn. I am asleep almost as soon as my body hits my straw mattress, too exhausted to worry about what will happen when I leave Beschuttz or fret over if I’m doing the right thing lying to Aurora.

But I can’t tell her I’m going to Mercar or she will try to come with me. I can’t—
won’t
—allow that to happen.

I make a mental note to warn Gettel that Aurora may try to sneak away and to convince the healer to do whatever it takes to keep her safe, even if it means hiring a dozen farm boys to sit on the princess, and then I sleep. I sleep hard, so solid and deep and dreamless it seems barely an hour has passed between the moment I close my eyes on the dark interior of the barn and open them to sun streaming into the loft.

I grimace into the pale dawn light, still so weary my eyes feel full of cotton, wondering what woke me.

A moment later, the wonder is answered with a whisper from the ladder.

“Niklaas,” Aurora hisses. “Get up, I need your help.”

“With what?” I squint in her direction as she climbs onto the boards.

“I’ll show you. Get up,” she says, propping her hands on her hips. She’s wearing her boy’s pants with a lacy white shirt, and her hair hangs in a tidy braid over one shoulder. She isn’t as done up as she was last night in that pretty blue dress, but she’s certainly looking much more awake than I feel.

“What time is it?” I ask, rubbing at my face.

“I don’t know.” She lifts a shoulder and drops it. “Before six.”

I groan and roll over, burying my face in the pillow. “Go away.”

“I can’t. I need someone to spar with me before Gettel wakes up and tells me to take it easy.”

“You
should
take it easy.” I close my eyes and am halfway asleep again when Aurora takes a running leap onto the mattress. I grunt as she lands and hug my pillow tight. “Be gone, woman,” I mumble.

“But this is your last day, and my last chance to spar with someone who knows how to fight. Come on, you can nap later.” She pokes at my ribs with her bony fingers. “Wake up, Niklaas, wake up, wake up, wake up,” she says in a singsong voice, accompanying each “wake up” with another jab to my ribs. “Waaaaake up, waaaake—”

I roll over and tackle her, knocking her flat on the mattress and covering her face with my pillow, muffling her laughter. “I should smother you back to sleep,” I say. “Better for everyone. Keep you out of trouble.”

“You wouldn’t!” she protests with a giggle, her hands finding my bare chest and shoving at the ribs she was prodding a moment ago.

Her touch is cool against my blanket-warmed skin and surprisingly nice. Familiar but unfamiliar and … interesting in a way I wouldn’t have expected, making me aware of the fact that there is a girl in my bed, and that we are alone in the barn, and that there is no chaperone around to interfere.

“I can’t breathe!” she says, banishing the odd thought with a pinch.

“That’s the point.” I pull the pillow away, revealing a red-cheeked Aurora, wisps of hair standing out around her face. “You look like you’re up to something.”

“I am up to something: getting back into condition,” she says, wrinkling her nose in a way that I have to admit is cute, despite the fact that she’s awoken me from the best sleep I’ve had in weeks. “Come on, we can practice behind the barn.” She sits up, throwing the pillow at my chest before rolling off the bed. “Gettel won’t see us from the window, and I’ve put down straw on the grass to break our falls. First one knocked off their feet three times in hand-to-hand has to give up their scone.”

“What kind of scones?” I throw off the covers, wondering if Aurora will be flustered by the fact that I’m not wearing anything but tight long underwear pants Gettel pulled from her son’s old things.

But of course she’s seen me in much less.

The thought makes my cheeks heat. I’ve never been shy around a girl, but I’ve never been nearly naked in front of a girl who wasn’t nearly naked herself.

“I’m not sure.” Aurora grabs my shirt and throws it onto the mattress without a glance at the nakeder parts of me. “They were still cooking when I snuck through the kitchen, but I think I smelled blackberries.”

Blackberry.
I shove my arms into my sleeves. “Hand to hand, no swords or staffs?”

“I figured that was the only fair way for us to fight.” She crosses to the ladder and steps onto the top rung. “Seeing as I possess superior skill in armed combat.”

I snort and reach for my pants, suddenly more inspired about this sparring match. “In your dreams, runt.”

“In your nightmares,” she says with a wink as she disappears down the ladder.

I dress, shove my feet into shoes, and hurry down the ladder to find Aurora already outside the barn, standing on a patch of hay-covered grass. Her hair looks lighter in the dawn light, a shining white-blond that trails nearly to the ground.

“You should have put your hair up.” I stalk toward her, stretching my arms across my chest as I go. “I fight dirty when scones are involved.”

“That’s all right, I’m fairy-blessed.” She tosses her braid over her shoulder and steps back, making room as I take my place across from her. “But no blows to the face. We don’t want you ugly for the festival tonight.”

“What are you fairy-blessed with?” I bend my knees and roll my shoulders, waking up my body. “I mean, obviously strength and skill in battle, but is that all?”

A strange looks flits across her face, but it vanishes before I can read it and she is smiling again when she shrugs. “Not much else. Just bravery and mercy.” She bends her neck side to side and circles her wrists. “I couldn’t hurt a defenseless man even if I wanted to. So don’t worry, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

I smile, a baring of my teeth that feels wonderfully vicious. But before I show the runt what I learned in twelve years of hand-to-hand combat training with the meanest men in Kanvasola, I have to know—

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” I ask. “You were looking pretty fragile while you were sleeping yesterday.”

“Aw, Niklaas, were you watching me sleep?” She bats her lashes in an excellent imitation of myself when I’m teasing her. “That’s sweet. A little odd but sweet.”

I scowl. “I was worried.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry anymore. I’m nearly back to normal, which should give you just the
barest
chance to—”

Before she can finish her taunt, I rush her, aiming for her midsection, already visualizing the way I’ll sweep my arm back, buckling her knees and knocking her off her feet with one hand as I pin her chest to the ground with my shoulder. I move as fast as a person recently wrenched from their bed can be expected to move, but Aurora is faster. She sees me coming and jumps, shoving her hands into my shoulders and launching herself into the air. There is enough time for my jaw to drop as I realize she’s going to jump over me and then her boot is on my shoulder and she’s gone.

I spin to face her, but she has already landed and slipped her leg between both of mine. When I turn, I trip, and when I trip Aurora is right there to pounce on my chest and take me to the ground like a feral squirrel defending its winter stash.

I hit the grass with a grunt as the air rushes from my lungs and pull in my next breath with Aurora’s arm across my throat.

“One for me,” she says with a gleeful grin. “Do you want me to try the next round with my good arm pinned to my side?”

“Laugh while you can, feral squirrel. I’m ready for you now.”

“Is that my new nickname?” She laughs as she pulls her arm from my neck and sits back on her heels, tossing her braid back over her shoulder in a way that draws my attention to the fact that the first two buttons on her shirt have come undone, revealing an intriguing triangle of skin. “I like it. Much better than ‘runt.’ ”

“How about ‘feral runt’?” I jump to my feet, mentally vowing not to give her the satisfaction of taking me down again. At least, not so easily.

“That I don’t like,” she says with mock seriousness. “If you call me that again, I’ll have to exact vengeance.”

I grin. “Exact away. Feral runt.”

This time, she makes the first move, feinting to my right before stepping in tight to the left and hooking her leg around my ankle. She shifts her weight forward as her elbow comes to the center of my back, ready to leverage me to the ground.

Instead of fighting her, I let her propel me forward, tucking my head and diving into a roll across the grass before springing back to my feet. Sensing her close behind, I kick backward, hoping to knock her away long enough to turn around. Instead she grabs my leg and holds it locked against her as she runs forward, bringing the limb up and over my body, flipping me onto my back.

I land with an
oof
of surprise. A second later she is straddling my chest, her arm once again at my throat.

She leans in, bringing her face close to mine before she whispers, “Those scones probably aren’t any good anyway.”

“Don’t count your scones before they’re on your plate.” I ignore the rushing feeling in my chest as her breath feathers over my lips. “I could still reach three before you do.”

She lifts one pale brow, making it clear what she thinks of that possibility.

“How’d you get that scar?” I ask, running my fingertip over the puckered skin near her brow, giving myself a moment to catch my breath.

“I don’t remember.” She hops back to her feet. “It was the day the queen ordered my mother, my brother, and me imprisoned. I was bleeding when the soldiers threw me into the dungeon, but I don’t know how I was wounded.”

“You were … seven?” I ask, sitting up.

She nods. “I remember almost everything about that time, but not how I was hurt. My mother said she thought she saw the solider carrying me strike me but …” She shrugs and a determined smile thins her lips. “Ready to go again?”

“I’ve never killed a man.” I take the hand she reaches down and let her pull me to my feet. “But if I could find that solider … What kind of monster hits a little girl?”

“The same kind who totes her to the dungeon knowing there’s a good chance she’ll die there.” Aurora’s forehead wrinkles. “Now I know Ekeeta was telling the truth about wanting Jor and me kept alive until the long summer of the prophecy, but then …”

“She’s not going to get her hands on you again.” I take her chin in my hand, making sure she doesn’t look away. “You promised not to go to Mercar. Remember?”

“I promised not to go alone,” she says, gaze sliding to the left.

I sigh, suddenly tired. She’s going to put herself in danger.
Of course
she is. I shouldn’t have expected anything else. “Then I’d better spend the day making sure no one in this village will leave with you.” I turn, but Aurora stops me with a hand on my arm.

“Wait.” Her fingers fist in my shirt. “Let’s not fight today. We can fight tomorrow morning before you leave if you want, but let’s … let’s have a good day.”

“Is it possible for us to go a day without fighting?”

“We had good days on the road, didn’t we? We just won’t talk about Ekeeta or my brother or your curse or … anything that makes us quarrel.”

“What’s left?” I ask with a wry smile.

“Battle techniques?” She blinks with an innocence I don’t buy for a second. “I mean, you clearly need advice on how to best someone half your size, so I think—”

With a roar, I fling myself forward, tackling Aurora in a combination leap/bear hug that no self-respecting combat instructor would view as anything but laughable. But the ridiculous succeeds where my other efforts failed, and less than two seconds later I have a giggling Aurora pinned beneath me, my hand at her throat.

“One for me,” I say, joining in her laughter as I pull my arm away. “But I can’t keep my hand on you. It looks too dastardly.”

“Dastardly?” she repeats.

“Yes, dastardly.” I tickle her the way I did last night and am rewarded with a peal of throaty laughter. “I will fight a girl, but I will not be a dastard.”

“Of course not.” She bites her lip, regaining control with obvious effort. “I’m proud of you, really. A lesser man would have let me win every round.”

“Is that a compliment?” I brace my hands on either side of her face.

“Maybe.” She shifts beneath me, making me aware of the places where we touch, where her legs tangle with mine, where her stomach brushes against my ribs as she pulls in breath. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

I look down at her, at her softly parted lips and her eyes the gray of the ocean before a storm, and something shifts inside of me. My pulse escapes its usual haunts, beginning to beat in deep, secret places as I imagine what it would be like to have Aurora beneath me for reasons that have nothing to do with sparring, to feel her skin against mine and her breath hot on my neck as—