Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  Another, more unsettling, thought occurred to her: Had her father been telling the truth?

  “Humor me on something,” Quin said. “My demonology is rusty, but isn’t a Gwyrach the child of a human and a god?”

  “My mother did not lie with a god, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Not at all,” he said evenly. “I don’t believe in gods. Even if I did, it seems highly unlikely they would gallivant around the world with human . . . parts.”

  Mia flushed. She had zero desire to discuss the mechanics of lovemaking with Prince Quin.

  She said, “You know the origin myths as well as I do. In olden times, when one of the four gods lay with a woman, she bore him a Gwyrach daughter, a demon with the wrath and power of a god mixed with the petty jealousies and wickedness of a human. The daughter had daughters, and those daughters had more daughters, and on it goes. Demons all the way down.”

  He was studying her. “What do you believe?”

  She opened her mouth to fire off an answer but came up short. If she subscribed to the popular belief, then, yes: Mia was the descendant of a long-ago coupling between a woman and a god. Truth be told, the origin myth had always struck her as a little far-fetched, but she’d also never felt a burning need to question it. Of course, that was when she was hunting Gwyrach, not being one.

  “If you believe the myths,” Quin said, “then your mother was a Gwyrach, too.”

  She didn’t want to accept it. Couldn’t accept it. She knew her mother: she was grace and generosity and love. In no way did she resemble the depraved demons Mia had been studying for years.

  “Let’s talk about something else,” she said.

  “Let’s.” Quin didn’t seem to need much persuading. “Did you know I have never been on a river? Not once.”

  “And you call yourself prince of the river kingdom.” It came out more snippily than she’d intended.

  “You know, in order for us to have a normal, civilized conversation, you might try acting normal or civilized.”

  I’m not normal, she wanted to scream. I’m a Gwyrach.

  “After all,” he said, “isn’t civilized discourse what husbands and wives do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had a husband. Or a wife,” she added. “And I don’t now.”

  He cocked his head. “Don’t you?”

  “Surely you don’t call that debacle”—she gestured back toward the Kaer—“a success.”

  “Even a debacle of a wedding can be efficacious.”

  “Do you always use such big words?”

  The river sucked greedily at the sides of the boat. Quin let out a long breath.

  “You grew up here, didn’t you? On the river?”

  “In Ilwysion, yes. We’re not quite at my part of the forest, but we’ll be passing through shortly. But I never cared much for the water.”

  “Because of your hair?”

  “What?”

  “I was under the impression that ladies did not appreciate the water mussing their hair.”

  “Who told you that?”

  He cleared his throat. “I suppose I read it in a book.”

  “Perhaps it’s time to reexamine your reading selection.”

  She didn’t like the water on account of how quickly it could change. Placid one minute, fatal the next: crystalline in some places and opaque in others. It unnerved her that, no matter where you were, whether camped by a fresh mountain stream or sailing the Opalen Sea, cup water in your hands and you could see right through it, a transparent shimmer slipping through your fingers.

  She didn’t like the idea that something invisible could kill you.

  “I’m starving,” Quin said. “We haven’t eaten in hours.”

  For someone who had been so taciturn in the castle, the prince was awfully chatty out in the wild. She watched him extract the pouch of food the village boy had given them. He shook out one purple snow plum and poked at a fuzzy white spot on the surface.

  He sighed. “He gave us moldy plums. Of course he did.”

  Mia looked at him, curious. “Did you know that boy?”

  “I’ve seen him in the village.” He looked away. “Once or twice. A friend.”

  She felt a curious sensation, her pulse quickening as the sound of sloshing filled her ears, viscous liquid coursing through a valve.

  “Would he poison you?”

  “Gods, no! He’s not that sort of friend.” Quin thwacked the bread against the side of the Sunbeam, where it cracked like wood on wood. “Though I suppose he’s not above giving us stale bread.” He chucked the loaf overboard.

  “There goes our only food.”

  “You weren’t going to eat it anyway. You’re more distrustful than I am.”

  “I’m careful,” she said. “You could stand to be more careful yourself.”

  As if to spite her, he bit into one of the plums. She could see him squirm as the mold furred his tongue.

  “Please do not spew boat on the bile,” she said.

  He grinned. Mia was so tired she wasn’t speaking clearly. She thought of asking Quin to take over so she could doze for a bit, but she didn’t want to ask him for anything. She was steering the ship now—quite literally—and she liked it.

  Besides, if he’d never been on a river, he’d never even held an oar.

  Quin was asleep, his head lolling, when Mia heard a splash.

  She saw them from a distance: two girls facing off beside a swampy inlet, their long skirts tucked up into their undergarments, corsets discarded on the riverbank. They were young, no older than twelve or thirteen, the moonlight painting both their heads a sapphire silver. They wore no gloves. Their bare hands gripped two birch-wood sticks whittled into makeshift blades, laced with kindling and lit on fire. In the darkness, they looked like blue demons wielding stars.

  Mia felt a clutch of fear. Were they Gwyrach? Or merely girls?

  She didn’t know the answer, but she was drawn to them anyway.

  Their faces were painted like warriors, though as the Sunbeam grew closer, Mia saw the war paint was mud and crushed blackthorn petals. The girls were fighting, rapturous as they roared and charged toward one another, brandishing their white torches in the air.

  The taller girl took a bad step and fell sideways, landing in the sludge. When the other girl offered an arm to help her up, she took it—and wrenched her friend down with her. The bog gobbled them up greedily, and they sloshed around, giggling and filthy and glorious. In that moment, they were more than girls: they were creatures, wild and free.

  The second they saw Mia, they went completely silent.

  They watched each other as the boat slunk by, two mud-caked girls on the riverbank, one blood-caked girl in a boat. Mia softened. She had been like them once, out climbing trees and exploring Ilwysion under the cover of night. She and Angie had never sparred like this, though she would have liked to. Even before their mother died, Angelyne was always the fragile one, while Mia pushed the limits of herself and everyone around her.

  She felt a twinge of shame. Of course she’d pushed the limits. She’d always had magic, and magic relied on a cruel, unruly heart.

  As she passed the two girls on the riverbank, she feared for their safety. If the king’s spies caught them tussling in the forest, gloveless and behaving like boys, they would be whisked off to the castle, where all manner of horrors awaited.

  But as the Sunbeam glided silently past, Mia saw they didn’t need her fear, and they didn’t want her pity. Their faces were flushed and furious, their eyes full of something she had forgotten how to feel. It was only Mia who felt frightened and ashamed.

  How sick a place Glas Ddir was to shame girls for being wild. King Ronan patted himself on the back for keeping them “safe,” but it was all twisted lies. The ones he brought to the Kaer weren’t safe. As for the other girls in the river kingdom: what good was safety at the expense of freedom? Glasddiran women were still trapped in cages, whether that cage was a pair of gloves or
a wedding gown.

  “Mia.”

  Quin’s voice startled her. She turned and saw him in silhouette, the moonlight laying jagged yellow patches on the river behind him.

  “I can row now. You should get some rest.”

  Had he seen the girls? She blinked and saw only blackness. The river had swallowed them whole.

  “If you give me the oar,” he said, “I’ll man the boat.”

  She frowned. “You said you’d never manned a boat before.”

  “I said I’d never been on a river. In my royal bathtub hewn of gold, I steered small ships made of walnuts.” She didn’t laugh. He sighed. “I don’t know where we’re going, but as long as the river’s current takes us in the opposite direction of my attempted murderer, you won’t find me complaining. I’m no boatswain, but I know not to let us run aground.”

  She was too tired to argue. She handed him the oar and crawled forward, tucking herself into the Sunbeam’s bow.

  The warrior girls stayed with her: their ferocious triumph and their unabashed defiance. Angelyne had looked at Mia with the same defiance when they fought in her bridal chambers. Was that really only yesterday? She had packed whole lifetimes into a single night. Where was Angie now? Was she safe?

  Mia was struck by a sudden epiphany. A royal wedding required a royal groom. At the moment, that groom was sailing down the Natha at her side, farther from Kaer Killian by the minute. Angelyne was at no risk of being married to the prince—as long as the prince was with Mia, and alive.

  A blissful contentment enveloped her. She hadn’t abandoned her sister after all. She’d protected her.

  The river vanished behind them like a line of disappearing ink. Mia felt, for a moment, happy. She reached for her wedding gown to ball it up into a pillow—and felt her mother’s journal. So much had happened, she hadn’t peeked at it in hours. She drew out the book, tracing the neat, straight grooves of the W.M. scars. For all her mother’s luscious curves, her initials were strikingly angular.

  On instinct, Mia fit the ruby wren into the lock. She pivoted away from Quin and quietly opened the journal. The first page was dappled with starlight, but the right side was no longer blank.

  The map had revealed more.

  Chapter 18

  Bait

  MIA WOKE TO THE noonday sun. She covered her eyes, blinded by the harsh light. Where was she? The memory of the prior night came rushing back to her, reds and blacks and a pale-yellow boat. She sat up with a jolt.

  Gwyrach. She was a Gwyrach.

  The word was like an infection crawling through her body. She had read plenty about infection: microscopic animalcules that attacked blood and bone and tissue, killing a person from the inside out. Didn’t magic do the same? There were Gwyrach who killed their victims in showy ways, of course—her father had told her about boils and blisters, rotted flesh, asphyxiated limbs—but they seemed to prefer the invisible kinds of murder, frozen breath and clotted, bloodless hearts.

  A ray of hope glimmered in Mia’s mind. She’d always had a hunch that Fojo Karação played a key role in her mother’s secret past. Now the map had filled in with more ink, nudging her east. The path will reveal itself to she who seeks it. All you seek will be revealed.

  She would find her mother’s murderer in Fojo.

  Mia wasn’t running away from something, not anymore. She was running toward it.

  “Good morning!” said the prince, startling her. She had forgotten he was there.

  Quin sat tall in the stern, looking hale and rested, his shirt gaping at the chest. When they’d swum out to the boat, the water had rinsed him off nicely; there was no longer any dried blood spoiling his smooth, golden skin. His curls were wind-raked, ruffled by the breeze and really quite charming.

  She rubbed her eyes. “How long was I sleeping?”

  “A good while now. You sleep like the dead.”

  She squinted into the forest, keen to get her bearings. The chalky birch and silver plum trees stood in prim, sensible lines, a forest of neatly scrubbed bones. Behind them were the lofty spruce and elms, their luscious needle-gowns growing sparser as the peaks climbed and the air thinned. On the mountaintops, the trees stripped off their garments completely, standing brown and bare in the alpine wind.

  They were in Ilwysion, the woods she grew up in. Mia couldn’t help but smile. As a child she had greedily climbed every tree, dug up every rock. It was the perfect place for a girl who wanted to be an explorer, full of natural wonders and opportunities for adventure.

  Mia sipped the air. She loved how fresh and clean it was, so different from the cold, stale air inside the Kaer or the foul odors of Killian Village. Ilwysion was a cornucopia of green: rain-worn stones slung with moss and lichen, young saplings sprouting from tree trunks, and ground shrubs laced into a thick, soft carpet, more comfortable than any shoe Mia had ever worn. Woodland creatures scampered into holes—her first friends—and giant white rocks were stacked on top of one another, some in tilting towers, others arranged in mysterious rings. Whimsical seven-year-old Mia liked to imagine the ancient gods playing a parlor game where the forest was the parlor and the boulders were the dice.

  Practical seventeen-year-old Mia felt a stab of dread, thinking about the gods. Was she really the demon descendant of a deity? It struck her as increasingly ridiculous, even laughable. But then, if her father had told her a few days ago that she was a Gwyrach, she would have laughed at that, too. The knowledge of who she was—what she was—kept seizing her anew, shock and horror spilling over her like a vat of scalding oil.

  Mia plucked at the crusty, sun-dried fabric of her smock, forcing her thoughts down a brighter path. She leaned over the edge of the Sunbeam and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the river. It was even worse than she’d expected. Her auburn curls were frizzed and matted like the nest of a wild bird; the skin greases Angie had so carefully applied were now smudged ruins beneath her eyes. She had slept too long—she was grumpy and disoriented. She splashed water on her face.

  “You look lovely,” Quin said. “Really. Stained smock is your color.”

  She rolled her eyes. His smile was downright roguish.

  “Are you hungry? I caught us some fish.”

  “You did what?”

  He gestured toward the neat white cubes of meat lined up on one of the Sunbeam’s laths.

  “Skalt,” he said. “In case you were wondering.”

  She was astonished. “You caught, cleaned, and cut skalt while I was asleep?”

  He shrugged. “I have many gifts.”

  She was suddenly famished. She reached for a piece of fish, then paused, her hand poised in midair.

  “Shouldn’t we boil it first?”

  “Absolutely. Skalt is best when broiled, salted, and brushed with melted butter. Since you’re a Gwyrach, I presume you can make air spontaneously combust?”

  The prince was certainly in high spirits.

  “Microscopic animalcule can be more lethal than poison,” she said. “And there’s a good chance you contaminated the meat when you cut it.”

  “I checked for skin lesions. And I cleaned the fish quite well. It may surprise you, but I’ve had some practice.” He patted his stomach, which was lean and surprisingly toned; she caught a peek through the gap in his shirt. “I’ve eaten at least six skalt, and I feel superb.”

  He did look quite well: his cheeks were rosy, his green eyes reflecting motes of blue from the river. The brisk mountain air had rejuvenated him. His long body had uncoiled itself, and she thought he looked taller than he had in the castle, sitting comfortably on the transom, his face and hair as gold as the sun.

  She ate a chunk of fish, then another. It was salty and wet, slimy raw hunks sliding down her throat, but after several bites, she felt her body gaining vigor.

  “Have another,” he said, pleased.

  She wondered for a moment if she’d awoken in an alternate world, where Quin was not a pampered prince but a seasoned survivalist.

&nb
sp; “Who taught you to fish?”

  “I spent hours in the kitchens at Kaer Killian. It was the one place I knew my father would never go.” He cleared his throat. “You slept through all the river towns. At least, I think that was all of them. I don’t really know how many river towns there are.”

  “If I had a map, I could show you.” The river towns of Ilwysion were the small villages clustered along the banks of the Natha. Mia knew them well. “There used to be at least twenty, depending on what you consider to be a town. There are far fewer now that the markets have all but disappeared.”

  “The river markets,” Quin said wistfully. “I heard the castle cooks speak of them many times. They were apparently quite popular when my aunt was queen.”

  She nodded. “They were part market, part social gathering. The sort of thing people looked forward to every week. Or so I’ve heard.”

  Her mother had told her all about the markets, lively with traders, musicians playing lutes and psalteries, and mirthful dancers drinking and making merry. Merchants and apothecaries hawked their wares on the shores of the river: fur pelts; earthenware jugs and tankards; sumptuous indigo silks; dolls, combs, and dice carved from bone; glass curios; and all manner of ointments, elixirs, and essences with purported magical properties.

  As Mia’s mother explained it, before the steady stream of traders and visitors from the other three kingdoms dried up, they had brought with them many different opinions on magic. Glasddirans were a suspicious lot, but they were also curious. What if magic, in small doses, could smooth the lines out of their skin or add a touch of spice to their bedchambers? Mia herself had been curious about magic before her mother died: that was when her feelings on the subject abruptly changed course.

  Mia forced herself back to the present. “My mother said it was her favorite part of the week. The air was rich with bouquets from all four kingdoms—melted cheese burbling and sizzling in terra-cotta pots, chopped cabbage pickled in brine, lime-mango chicken dipped in spicy ginger sauce and served on long silver spears.”