by Unknown
“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—
“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. Jus
t … 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 understandin
g 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.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aurora
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.
