Princess of Thorns (25 page)

“We should get inside.” I scramble off of her, heart thudding in my ears as I come to my feet and back away. “That’s enough for your second day out of your sickbed.”

“But I haven’t won yet.” She props herself up on her elbows, but makes no move to rise from where she is sprawled on the grass.

“I forfeit.” I look at the barn, at the willow trees in the distance, at the horizon full of marmalade, sunrise clouds—anywhere but at Aurora. I’m too ashamed of myself. I can’t believe I had
those
sorts of thoughts about her, even for a second. She’s like my sister, and the last thing I’d want for my sister is to see her taken in by a boy like me.

Maybe Aurora was right; maybe you
do
only know two ways to manage women. Too bad neither method quite applies to her.

“What’s wrong?” Aurora sits up, propping her elbows on her knees.

“Nothing.” I force a smile, pretending not to be bothered by the realization that it isn’t only Aurora’s time spent pretending to be a boy that makes it hard to know how to behave with her. It’s the fact that she doesn’t fit into the usual baskets. She’s not a family member, and she’s not a girl I’d have an easy tumble with. She’s a little of both, as well as a friend of the kind I thought I could only find in another man. I never dreamt I could have fun sparring with a girl, or making rude jokes, or traveling across country with nothing but two horses and a single bedroll. I’ve never known a girl who could travel with less than two saddlebags and a pack mule.

But then … most of the girls I’ve known were raised in Kanvasola, and Kanvasol people expect a girl to be an innocent in need of protection or a temptress in need of a bedding. There aren’t many other options, especially for girls too young to be mothers.

“You have an odd look on your face.” Aurora cocks her head as she studies me. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

“I was just … thinking.”

She hums beneath her breath. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

I narrow my eyes. “I’m not stupid, you know. I speak five languages, know the lineage of every royal family in Mataquin back ten generations, and have an above-average grasp of mathematics.”

“I’m sure you do,” she says in a patronizing tone clearly intended to provoke me.

I smile, determined not to be drawn in. “It’s not my lack of intelligence that kept me from knowing you were a girl. I was raised to think girls incapable of certain things. Obviously, I was raised poorly, but that shouldn’t be a surprise, considering I had no mother and, well, you know who my father is.”

Aurora’s grin slips away. “I’m sorry, Niklaas. I was only teasing, I didn’t—”

“I know you were.” I wave off her apology. “But I wanted you to know that I realize I was wrong, and that maybe I need to change … some things.”

“What kind of things?” she asks, her eyes searching mine.

“The way I think. The things I expect. Just … things.” I reach a hand down to help her up. She ignores it, vaulting to her feet with a shove of her arms and a jackknife motion of her body that is impressive. Unnecessary but impressive.

“Maybe you should think about changing a few things, too,” I continue.

“Like what?” The look of surprise on her face makes it clear she considers herself above reproach.

“Like accepting help a bit more graciously,” I say, waving the hand she ignored in her face. “You don’t have to take on the world all alone.”

“I know,” she says. “Why do you think I was looking for an army?”

“An army you could order to do your bidding.” I snort. “That’s not the same thing as figuring things out with another person. Working together?”

“I worked with you,” she says, her voice getting bristly.

“No, you manipulated me.” I cross my arms and stand my ground. “You refused to give me what I wanted until I did your bidding.”

She rolls her eyes. “What else was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t have taken me to the Feeding Hills otherwise.”

“Exactly.” I tug her braid and am rewarded with a glare. “And then we wouldn’t have had to leap off a cliff to escape from the exiles, and you wouldn’t have been shot by ogres or almost died. If you had trusted my judgment from the start—”

“I didn’t know you at the start!” She throws her hands up to either side of her head. “I thought you were trying to get out of a week long journey, I didn’t know that—”

“But you know now.” I take her hands. “So will you promise me you won’t go to Mercar. Please?”

“How about you trust
me
this time, and come with me?” she begs, her fingers squeezing mine. “Please, Niklaas. Just … come with me.”

I drop my eyes to the hay scattered beneath our feet. “I can’t, I—”

“There you are!” The outraged shout comes from behind me.

I drop Aurora’s hands and turn to see Kat, still in her nightgown, standing barefoot in the grass. “I thought you might be out here. Gram told me not to bother you, but I snuck out the back door. I didn’t want you to miss breakfast. Baba made scones!”

“Did she now?” Aurora asks in a light voice, slipping around me with a smile.

“She did. And they’re fresh out of the oven.” Kat skips across the grass to grab Aurora’s hand as Gettel comes around the corner of the barn.

“You sneak,” Gettel scolds. “I’m sorry, loves, hope she wasn’t bothering you.”

“Not at all. She saved Niklaas from losing his scone rights in battle,” Aurora says, glancing back at me as she’s dragged away. “Are you coming?”

“In a minute,” I say, catching Gettel’s eye. “You go on ahead.”

“All right, but you’d better hurry,” Aurora says. “I’ll keep my hands off your scone, but I can’t make any promises for this one.” She skips ahead of Kat, making the girl giggle as she has her turn to be pulled along.

I wait until they’re out of sight before I turn to Gettel. “I need to talk to you. About Aurora.”

Gettel nods. “You want me to keep her safe.”

“Yes, but it won’t be easy. You’ll need help. She’s strong and stubborn and—”

“I’m sorry, Niklaas,” she says, a sadness in her eyes I haven’t seen there before. Gettel always seems to be in a cheery mood, even when bathing fevered patients or cleaning up a mess Hund made. “She isn’t meant to stay here.”

“You said I could stay. Why not her?”

“Aurora is meant to face the queen.” Gettel pulls her shawl around her shoulders, as if chilled by the thought. “The time is nearly at hand.”

“But she’s too weak. She almost died, how can she—”

“If she chooses wisely, she won’t need strength to defeat the queen,” Gettel says. “And if she chooses unwisely, all the strength in the world won’t matter.”

“What does that mean?” I ask, feeling stupid all over again.

“I don’t know.” She holds out her hands, palms up, and looks to the pale morning sky, as if waiting for wisdom to fall from the clouds. “It’s what the magic tells me, and I feel it’s true.” She glances back at me. “But I can’t say for sure what it means. We must trust Aurora will know when the time comes.”

“She has to go, then?”

“She does, dear boy.” Gettel lays a warm hand on my arm. “I’m sorry.”

I want to argue with her, to insist that Aurora facing the queen is the last thing she or Mataquin needs, but … I trust Gettel, and her magic. This valley is the happiest place I’ve ever been, and all the people here love Gettel and trust her with their lives. If she could protect Aurora, I believe she would. But if she can’t …

“It’s all right.” I can’t deny that I was dreading going alone. Aurora may be impulsive and stubborn, but she’s a hell of a fighter and a quick head in a crisis. If she’ll allow me to temper her “rush in” with a little strategy, we might have a chance. “I’ll go with her. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

Gettel smiles. “She’s lucky to have you.”

I shrug and drop my eyes to the ground, not sure what to say.

“She is,” Gettel says. “And she knows it. She’ll be happy you’re going together.”

“She’ll be happy to have her way,” I say with a wry laugh. “I’ll go tell her, and maybe we can make it through the rest of the day without a fight.”

“Why don’t you tell her tomorrow?” Gettel crosses the damp grass, heading back toward the house. “Fairy-gifted or not, she could use another day to heal. I’m afraid she’ll drag you onto the road after breakfast if you tell her now.”

I chuckle as I fall in beside her. “You know her well, considering she spent her first three days here asleep.”

“I know heroes,” Gettel says a little sadly. “Heroes are all the same.”

For a moment, it’s odd to think of Aurora as a hero, but then, just as suddenly, it isn’t. Of course she’s a hero, a person willing to face extraordinary odds, to rise to any challenge, and to put the welfare of others before her own.

I believed her last night when she said she’d kill herself before she’d put the four kingdoms in danger. I believed her, and it scared me. I’ve always known my life was going to be cut short, but the thought of Aurora dying before she turns eighteen, before she has a chance to hug her brother again or realize that one failed love doesn’t mean her heart is doomed for life, is … unbearably sad.

“Will she live?” I ask beneath my breath. We’re close to the house now, and I don’t want Aurora or Kat to hear.

“I don’t know that, either,” Gettel says, patting my hand. “So be sure to make the most of every moment you have left.”

She disappears into the house, but I pause on the stoop, needing to think, to understand the racing of my heart and the tightness in my throat. I feel panicked, but I’m not sure why. It isn’t the possibility of death—that’s always been there, from the moment Aurora and I escaped from the mercenary camp—it’s what Gettel said.

Make the most of every moment.
How do I make the most of my time with Aurora when I’m not even sure who she is, or who
I
am when I’m with her?

“I saved this for you, but just barely.” Aurora appears in the doorway with a scone in her hand. “You were this close to doing without.” She pinches her fingers together to illustrate the nearness of my escape as she drops the scone into my palm.

“You really are a hero,” I say, but the joke falls flat.

“What?” she asks, forehead wrinkling.

I clear my throat. “Nothing.”

Aurora tugs at her ear. “Can we start this morning over? With no arguments?” she asks, wandering a step closer, wiping her hands on an apron she’s tied on over her pants.

“Sleep well?” I ask, smiling as understanding lights her eyes.

“Very well.” She lifts her arms over her head and comes onto her toes, stretching like a cat. “I’ve been cutting apples for another pie to take to the festival. Would you like to help spice them? I know you have firm opinions on pie.”

“I have firm opinions on most things,” I say, taking a bite of my scone.

“Just one of the things I love about you,” she says in a breezy voice, but for some reason the words steal our smiles away. For some reason they make us stand staring for a long, strained moment, until I remember to swallow and Aurora clears her throat and motions me in with a nervous wave.

“Come on,” she says. “I’ll shave the cinnamon.”

I follow her inside, watching her tiptoe across the floor to the cook table in her bare feet, as graceful as a dancer, marveling that this scrap of a girl with the pretty hands is capable of inflicting so much damage on my person.

That unexpected longing rises inside of me again, but this time it isn’t simply a longing to touch her, or at least not the way I’ve known it before. It’s a warmer feeling, desire wrapped up in furs to keep it safe from the cold, lust softened like a wine aged for years in gentle darkness. It’s not something I’ve felt before—the need to possess and to treasure so tangled together. It’s uncomfortable, foreign, but also …

Right. And maybe I don’t have to fight it. Maybe I should let it be, and see if … Maybe …

“Will you get the sugar?” Aurora asks, busy with the cinnamon and the shaver.

I fetch the sugar from the far end of the table and place it by her elbow, hope rising inside me like a ghost from the grave.

Maybe if she knew, maybe if I tell her, and if she feels the same …

If she does, everything could be different. Absolutely everything.

Immediately after breakfast, Niklaas is spirited away by a wagon full of men on their way to the festival grounds to set up the stages, dancing boards, benches, and fenced yard for the littlest children to play in while their mothers and fathers enjoy the celebration. He doesn’t return until late afternoon, right as Gettel is forcing us all to take a nap in preparation for staying up well after midnight for a second night in a row.

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, comforting 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.

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.