Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  Mia was only a few inches away now. Close enough to see the blond scruff on his face, just a hint around the mouth. To note the silver starlight caught in his curls.

  He was gorgeous. Even after a harrowing week in the woods. Even after nearly dying. Mia’s body hummed with sensation. The perfection of Quin’s face pulped her internal organs.

  He looked at her looking, and he looked back.

  Mia’s fingers ached to touch him. His eyes shone greener than ever, maybe from the spring, maybe because they burned with feeling. Was she inventing fictions or deducing truth? His breathing was different, that was a fact. Frankly, so was hers.

  This was dangerous. She knew she should climb out of the hot spring immediately. What if her magic was exerting a subtle influence, stirring his blood and subverting his desire? Impossible. She hadn’t touched him. Of course, if Quin were looking at her because he truly wanted her . . . that was something else entirely.

  She stood, her gaze meeting his. The water dripped off her curves, her undergarments clinging to her warm, wet skin. Quin parted his lips ever so slightly. Her eyes swept over them, down the perfect curve of his jaw, the sharp ridges of his collarbone, and then snagged on a torn piece of red skin above his heart. She stared at the angry, jagged mark, inflamed and oozing black pus.

  The breath jammed in her throat.

  The arrow.

  Chapter 26

  A Magical Honeymoon

  QUIN DUNKED HIMSELF BENEATH the water. Only his face resurfaced, now drenched and dewed.

  “Don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing.”

  It was most definitely something. She’d seen the lesion, the sinister purple tendrils around the fishbone scar, and most damning: the sliver of red arrowhead protruding from the skin.

  “I didn’t get it all,” she said.

  Her own failure walloped her in the face. She’d been cocksure, absolutely certain she’d extracted all pieces of the arrowhead, but how closely had she looked? Not closely enough. She’d tossed the arrow aside in the tunnels and never given it a second thought.

  Mia knew enough about wound theory to recognize the warning signs. A fragment of the arrowhead had broken off in Quin’s chest, lodged in the tender tissue above his heart. The body, in an attempt to fight off microscopic animalcule, triggered an inflammatory response. But over the last week, infection had crept in. The wound had gone septic.

  Dread sank its hooks. Quin’s body would turn on itself, waging war on his organs, collapsing the pressure of his blood, and ultimately ravaging his brain.

  If the sepsis was not treated, he would die.

  “It’s fine,” he said brusquely. “I’m fine.”

  Sulfyr was a natural antiseptic. Quin’s soak in the hot spring might have been curative, but Mia feared it was too late: once the infection had spread into his bloodstream, any cursory cleaning of the wound site was futile, like tying a green blade of grass around a shattered bone.

  Gingerly she grazed the wound with her fingertips. He gasped in pain—and ducked out of reach.

  “We have to get it out, Quin.”

  “I know you’re trying to help, but you might kill me instead.”

  She opened her mouth to voice an objection, but none was forthcoming. He was right.

  “To be perfectly honest,” he went on, “I think you may have been enthralling me just now.”

  “All I’ve been thinking about was how not to enthrall you. I haven’t touched you once.”

  “Maybe we’ve been wrong about magic. Maybe it’s not bound to touch.” He combed his fingers through his wet curls. “Just now, the way you were looking at me . . . my body was behaving strangely.”

  “So was mine. We are divested of our garments in a hot spring, Quin. I think ‘strange’ is a matter of perspective.” She sighed. “I don’t ever want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But you can’t go blaming my magic every time you feel something.”

  And yet, hadn’t she been doing exactly that? Blaming her magic for every spike or drop in body temperature, every flash of cold or spark of desire?

  “It isn’t fair you have this power.”

  “What’s fair about any of this? I don’t want to control you. I want you to feel the way you’re feeling because you feel it. Because it’s real. And right now I want to get that arrow out, before—”

  “Mia.”

  “I do!”

  “Mia.”

  He’d gone stark white. She felt the blood thrumming down her backbone a moment too late, as a shadow unfurled behind her.

  “A supper of vermin and a dip in a bubbly tub.” The voice was rough, familiar. “What a magical honeymoon.”

  Cousin Tristan, flanked by two giant white hounds and three of the king’s guards, stepped out of the Twisted Forest.

  Chapter 27

  Because a King Can

  “FANCY SEEING YOU HERE, Cousin.”

  Quin had reverted to his cold, formal tone, the one he used in Kaer Killian. Mia hadn’t realized how much his voice had changed in the woods; he had abandoned his haughty cadence for a warm, lower register.

  Tristan’s hounds chomped their massive jaws.

  “You can drop the pleasantries.” The duke motioned to his men. “Seize them.”

  The wiriest of the three guards came toward Mia. With his lean frame, blazing white skin, and bright shock of ginger hair, he reminded her of a maple tree in autumn, the kind that might snap in a ferocious storm.

  But he was stronger and meaner than any maple, and wearing coarse bullock gloves. He grabbed Mia under her arms and dragged her across the ground. She felt painfully vulnerable as she was wrenched from the water, her soaked undergarments like an oozing second skin. The boiling headache, which had granted her clemency over the last week, was back with a vengeance, roasting the tender bones of her skull.

  The other two guards wrestled Quin to the ground. He was wearing undergarments after all. He was also furious.

  “Unhand her,” he spat. “I command you let us go.”

  Tristan crouched, pinching Mia’s dirty smock between his fingers with obvious disgust. He flung it aside. He had grown a week’s worth of scruff, but it was patchy and uneven, dark-brown stubble carving jagged lines across his pasty skin. His blue irises had vanished completely, and his pupils were dilated to an unnatural degree, painting his eyes an eerie, solid black.

  “Here’s the thing, Cousin. You’re dead. Or so the rest of the river kingdom believes. And a dead man can’t very well give commands, can he?” He turned to the guards. “Tie them to the swyn.”

  Mia reached for her trousers, but one of Tristan’s hounds snapped at her hand.

  “Can I please get dressed?”

  “Why?” The duke was droll. “Must you be dressed to die?”

  “This is absurd.” Quin’s voice was cool with disdain. “I’m not dead. Good news all around. I’m sure my father will be happy to see me alive and well, along with my wife.”

  Wife. The word jarred. Mia knew what Quin was doing, though she wasn’t sure how effective it would be. Safe to say the duke didn’t have much invested in their nuptials.

  The guards bound Mia to a tree, lashing Quin to a trunk a few feet away. She was intimately aware of his body, the breath in his lungs, the blood in his limbs. The cold blew off him barbed and brittle, giving credence to her theory: hate was cold.

  She felt Tristan’s eyes scratch over her bare skin. “I’ve never seen you in the flesh before. A pity to execute a thing so pretty.”

  “She’s not a thing,” Quin growled.

  “A demon, then.”

  They both froze. Tristan looked pleased.

  “Did you take me for a fool? There’s enough blood in the tunnels for a virgin sacrifice. But virgin isn’t exactly the right word, is it?” He kicked the tree the prince was bound to. Mia felt Quin flinch. “It seems you have unsavory tastes, Cousin. Your wife is a Gwyrach.”

  The duke scraped a knife from his scabbard and crouc
hed in front of the prince. “You do know what happens to men who marry demons, don’t you?”

  Quin roared. The sensation ricocheted through Mia’s body; Tristan had pierced the infected arrow wound with his blade. Cutting down the line of the scar, snapping the thin threads of cartilage. Quin gasped, and though she couldn’t see him, she could feel his jaw clench, his teeth grit against the pain. Whatever bond her magic had woven between them, she felt his body as her own.

  But Tristan didn’t plunge the blade deep. Mia heard the knife slide back into the scabbard.

  “So close to the heart,” said the duke. “I do believe your little demon saved your life.”

  He stood. “I’ve been tracking you for days. My hounds had no trouble finding your scent.” He tossed two large beef bones to his dogs and smiled as they tore into them with bloodthirsty ferocity, red chunks of flesh flecking their white fur.

  “We left you a hare. Did you enjoy it? Some nice crisp firewood, too. It seemed the least we could do; a last supper fit for a king.” He laughed. “It was disappointingly easy. Like luring two starving animals into a cage.”

  Mia cursed herself. All her instincts—the splash of gold in the river, the hound baying at the moon, even her hunch about the hare—had been spot-on. Why hadn’t she listened? Perhaps because never in her life had she done anything “on a hunch.” She was not a hunch kind of girl.

  If she made it out of this alive, she resolved to be better at listening to her intuition. Though it seemed unlikely she would make it out of this alive.

  The prince was inhaling and exhaling in short, sharp bursts, trying to regulate his breathing. The colors of his suffering painted themselves across Mia’s mind in too-bright strokes.

  If they had any chance of getting out of this alive, she needed to keep Tristan talking. She lifted her chin.

  “So this was always your plan? Kill your cousin and commandeer the throne?”

  Tristan stared at her for a long, hard beat. Why were his eyes so black? There was violence in them. She remembered the way he’d swung the pewter candlestick in the Sacristy, how he so clearly derived pleasure from breaking anything breakable. She felt him fighting the urge to wrap his hands around her neck.

  “Pretty demon,” he said, “but stupid. I had nothing to do with the assassination. Though thanks to a spectacular twist of fate, I will now get everything I want.”

  When he crouched in front of her, she saw it. Through the cleft in his shirt, a silver chain hung around his neck, a pendant swinging at his heart. The stone was pearly white, delicate and orbed. A moonstone.

  Panic blanked out Mia’s mind.

  “Where is she? What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ve hurt her. She would never give you that stone. Not willingly. Not unless . . .”

  “Your sister is a special girl.” His lips curled. “You needn’t worry; she’ll be well cared for. I, unlike you, will keep Angelyne safe. I want only the best for my bride.”

  Mia’s chest seized. She saw everything with sickening clarity: the duke, always with an eye for personal advancement, had seen his opportunity and pounced. He didn’t merely lust for the river throne: he lusted for her sister. And now he would get everything he wanted.

  His crown, his queen.

  She feared Angelyne was too weak to resist him. Hadn’t she said she wanted to live in a castle and marry a prince? But even if Angie were frivolous enough at fifteen to believe a royal marriage was what she wanted, Mia knew her better. The misery would creep into her heart like a cold, wet fog.

  Angie was moonlight and music and swannish grace. She didn’t deserve death in a gilded cage.

  A spike of ice skewered Mia’s skull. Hate, hate, hate—Tristan’s or hers, she didn’t know. With her body so closely attuned to everyone else’s, how could she tell which feelings were her own and which had taken her hostage?

  He leaned closer. “Don’t you have anything to say?” He raised his knife and she winced, waiting for the sting of metal. Instead he traced the blade over her clavicle and flicked it lightly over her breasts. Porcelain bosom, Mia thought, and the memory nearly broke her heart.

  She felt Tristan grow aroused, trailing the knife down her stomach, and her heart withered in her chest. So this was it, then. This was the end. He would kill her, or worse, rape and kill her. She would die at the hand of the duke, violated and diminished, unable to ever protect her sister again.

  Her heart punched a hole through her chest.

  She had magic.

  Mia didn’t need a blade to kill a man. She could stop his heart. She didn’t know exactly how to stop his heart, but if she summoned love, rage, and terror, she might be able to channel her magic, and at the moment, all three were alive and well. If not kill, then she could at least enthrall him—and buy herself a chance of escape.

  Magic was wrong, wicked, evil. She knew all those things. But this was life or death.

  She had to convince Tristan to touch her. “Your Grace,” she murmured in what she hoped was a breathy, sultry voice. She knew the duke was a regular at the brothels in Killian Village, a place where pretty girls pet his ego and pretended to enjoy his company. “I’ve wanted you to touch me for as long as I can remember.”

  “Do you think me a fool?”

  Mia sensed his hesitation—his suspicion mingled with his lust. He drew the back of his knife blade slowly up her thigh, then her stomach, then her neck. Though she tasted acrid bile in her mouth, she let out a low moan.

  “Yes,” she said. “Like that. Now let me feel you, flesh to flesh.”

  “You aren’t wearing gloves. You aren’t wearing much of anything.” He pressed the tip of the knife into her bottom lip, his touch light, but even so she felt a tiny bead of blood bubble up to the surface.

  “Such a pity,” he said, “that I can’t even give you a good-bye kiss.”

  He wasn’t going to touch her.

  Her mind spun in desperate circles. What was it Quin had said in the hot spring? That perhaps magic didn’t always require touch?

  It was her only hope, and she hurled herself toward it. She let her feelings course through her unchecked, fury flowing upward from her belly to her brain. She loosened her logic, held her reason under the roiling surface of her thoughts until it sputtered and drowned. She stacked everything into a bundle—terror, rage, love—and lit it on fire.

  Nothing happened.

  “Tristan. Cousin.” Quin’s voice was a dry croak in his throat.

  The duke’s arm tensed, the knife poised at Mia’s neck.

  “I owe you an apology.” Quin wheezed. “I owe you many apologies.”

  “I’m not interested in your apologies.”

  “I know you’re not. You do what you must. We’re as good as dead anyway. I only mean to say . . .” He trailed off. When he spoke again, his voice was choked with emotion. “I’ve underestimated you. My whole life I’ve underestimated you. And for that I am sorry. I see now what a mistake that was. I can’t ask anything of you . . . I deserve nothing of you . . . but if you would hear me out, I have but one final request.”

  They all waited. Tristan’s hounds pricked their ears, and even the three guards leaned forward. Mia couldn’t believe these were the same men who had sworn to protect her only a week before. Now they would stand idly by while she bled out on the snow.

  “One last toast,” Quin said. “One last drink together. That’s all I ask.”

  Tristan’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I grant you this?”

  “Because you are the man who will be king. You’re more of a man than I ever was. You understand power and influence—you won my father’s favor in a way I never could.” His voice wavered again. “I was never fit to be king. I knew it, you knew it, and my father knew it most of all. In a way you do me a great service, releasing me from this burden. I am a dead man. I’ve always been a dead man. But you, Cousin; someday, you will be king.”

  He cleared his throat and swal
lowed. “A king grants a dead man his last request, because a king can.”

  The duke hesitated. Mia could see him turning the proposal over in his mind. A dark smile stretched from his shadowed cheeks to his cold black eyes.

  “Very well.” Tristan sheathed the knife in its scabbard. “Because a king can.”

  Chapter 28

  Broken

  THE DEMON’S DWAYLE WENT down like a tube of pig’s grease, thick and rancid.

  Mia hadn’t wanted to drink it, but Quin insisted.

  They were gathered in Tristan’s camp around a crackling fire made by one of the guards. Mia had watched the man tie his long black beard into a knot at his chin and take a knife to a stick of softwood, using sharp, short strokes to shave a fuzzy mop of curls. He sparked a rock and lit the shavings, and soon the campfire was christening his satiny taupe skin with soft flecks of ash. When he’d seen her watching, he’d said, “It’s all in the wrist,” and given her an almost paternal wink.

  It was a strange thing, envying a man’s fire-making abilities minutes before your execution.

  “It’s good to drink together,” Quin said, clinking his flask to Tristan’s. He waved the guards over. “Them too. Them too.”

  He had convinced the duke he deserved to toast his successes (“because you got what you came for, did you not?”), that the drink should be hot (“there can be no demon in demon’s dwayle without a red flame!”), and that they should all raise a glass (“the man who drinks alone is cold as stone”). He’d even managed to cajole his way out of his shackles, though they’d kept Mia’s ropes tied. The men had prodded her forward with sticks, careful to avoid touching her skin.

  Quin had talked a blue streak and gotten Tristan to agree to all sorts of things. Unfortunately, none of them included sparing their lives.

  The prince raised his flask.

  “To Tristan, Son of Clan Killian, uncontested Prince of Glas Ddir. Here’s to you, Cousin, for letting a man warm his bones before the cold final slumber.”

  Surely this was some kind of ruse. If it were genuinely a last hurrah, the whole production struck Mia as downright bizarre, drinking chummily with the men about to take your life. That was just like a man, she thought, to embrace a senseless archaic ritual.