Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

The trail zigzagged down the mountain, hugging the side of a dramatic white cliff. Beyond it, Mia saw a trembling gray body of water.

  They’d made it to the Salted Sea.

  Mia’s blood tilted forward in her veins. She didn’t need her mother’s map—something called to her, some unseen force tugging on the iron in her blood. Was this how the Natha snaked up the mountain? Was there a giant lodestone, calling it forth? It shattered every theory, every scientific principle she had ever learned, to think an invisible force could summon blood and water. But then her hard-won theories were being shattered left and right.

  A shower of pebbles clattered down from overhead. The dogs were kicking rocks from the path above. They were close.

  Quin’s pulse intertwined with hers, an echo of his heartbeat resonating in her own, as they skidded to the edge of the cliff. One minute the path was chugging along; the next, it vanished.

  She heard a monstrous, thundering roar.

  At their feet was a waterfall.

  Water poured off the cliff like a wedding veil, white and terrifying. She had never heard water hit with so much force. The mist made it impossible to see down into the chasm, obfuscating everything below. Surely they couldn’t survive the fall; at this height, the water would fracture their bones like glass.

  Again she saw the unnatural bend of Tristan’s fingers, the crushed phalanges, fractured from the metacarpal bones. A body was weak, an assemblage of breakable parts. What broke more easily? A person’s bones or a person’s heart?

  Mia’s brain was silent. But her heart was screaming.

  “We have to jump,” she said.

  “What?”

  In seconds they would feel the hot breath of the hounds against their necks, teeth tearing into skin.

  But it wasn’t just that. The little voice inside her that had beckoned ever since she’d left the castle, coaxing her forth, asking her to trust it; she could no longer ignore the call. She didn’t know what would happen the moment they hit the water—after that, her future was a blank page. But she knew she had to fill it.

  “We have to jump.”

  Mia had never put much stock in fate. But now she felt it, the siren song of destiny. She was exactly where she was supposed to be. She was doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing—for maybe the first time in her life.

  The dogs were a few short bounds away. Mia held out her hand. Quin took it.

  All the air whipped out of her throat.

  Stone and earth, then emptiness.

  Free fall.

  Ice air.

  Skin scourge.

  A froth of white and spun gold. The prince’s golden curls. He pitched through the air like a bolt of lightning.

  Mia closed her eyes.

  The water reached hungrily for their soft bodies, a monster draped in white, as death rose up to greet them.

  Part Three

  Breath

  Chapter 31

  Fire and Air

  QUIN’S BODY STRUCK FIRST. Hers a moment after.

  The surface was a thin plate of glass, and they punched through it, the water rupturing beneath them. The world went white, then black, then blue. Mia waited for a million shards to slice into her skin.

  But the water was warm.

  She felt herself being shoved down, her head held underwater by the falls. Despite the tremendous force, she kicked violently, propelling herself up. Her face broke the surface, and she gasped for air. She swam out of the roaring mist, paddling hard until she found herself beneath a lighter trickle, the water anointing her head and gluing her curls to her face. A lick of softness and warmth, not the cold bludgeon she’d expected.

  In the distance, she saw looming rock formations, a cinnamon brick red. A few feet away, Quin’s golden curls bobbed in the water. She couldn’t tell if he was coughing or laughing. Maybe both.

  Are you—?

  Did we just—?

  The falls were pounding too loud for them to hear each other, but they didn’t need words. They were alive. They had survived.

  In the east, the sun was rising, a thin pink wafer on the horizon. They craned their necks to stare up at the cliff. Two tiny spots squirmed on the ridge, their howls drowned out by the waterfall. The dogs were nothing more than specks of white pepper on the scarp.

  How had she and Quin survived that jump?

  The pool at the base of the waterfalls was a deep bluish green, but a little farther out, the water grew hazy. Mia cupped a handful of water and brought it to her mouth. The salt stung her lips.

  She paddled away from the falls, water lapping over her skin. She squinted at the strange red rocks. She wanted to swim out to them, but she hesitated. Could the prince swim? When would he have learned, cloistered in a castle?

  But he was swimming beautifully, his strokes long and smooth. He clasped his hands behind his head and floated serenely on his back, as if he were born for the ocean.

  They swam out to the red rocks. More sunlight spilled across the ocean, casting long tendrils of rust and peach. The pink wafer on the horizon was now a gold crown rising from the sea.

  Mia was tired when she reached the rocks, in a good way, her muscles soft as paste. She followed the cliff’s natural curve, running her hands along the porous surface as the water slurped at her shoulders. The rock wall led her to a shallow cove, where she crawled out on her knees, feeling the crumble of red sand beneath her hands, the muddled sunshine warm against her back.

  Quin climbed out and stood facing her, shaking the salt water out of his curls. His hair was a more muted gold when wet, the color of fire-roasted wheat. He was trembling.

  Mia felt not a modicum of cold. In her body, the seasons had changed from winter to summer. The salt water trickled off her hair, pooling in the nooks of her clavicle. Her skin was soft and glowing, dewy to the touch, and she felt soft inside, too. Luscious.

  Quin reached out to touch her. He pressed a fingertip to the scoop of her collarbone, then brought his finger to his mouth.

  There were a million things she wanted to say, and none of them sayable. He’d trusted her, and they’d survived. She’d trusted herself, and they’d survived. It flew in the face of everything she knew in her head, but confirmed the quiet whisper of her heart. For once, she had listened.

  “Thank you, Mia,” he said softly. “For saving my life.”

  His voice echoed off the red walls. He traced her jawbone with the tip of his thumb, leaving a trail of heat so smoky it reduced her chin to cinder.

  He took a step toward her, and her stomach clenched.

  Behind him was a hot air balloon.

  The balloon was gigantic, winged and painted red.

  They approached cautiously, unsure if they’d discovered a treasure or a trap. The balloon was tethered to a rock; it bumped gently in the breeze as they ran their hands over the bronze bucket, scalloped and grooved, a narrow wooden bench snugged inside.

  Overhead a giant tube was welded to the metal with a simple crank on one end and wads of dry kindling stuffed inside the other. A strip of coarse rock was nailed beneath it, and swinging from a rope was the biggest sulfyr stick Mia had ever seen.

  The sun, now a sphere balanced happily on the horizon, warmed the balloon like a red coal.

  “Have you seen one of these before?” Quin asked.

  “Only in books.”

  She knew the basic mechanics: capture hot air in an envelope and the balloon would float higher than the cold air around it. This was the law of buoyancy. The rider need only fire up the burner to reheat the air and float higher; to descend, lay off the burner and let the air cool to make the balloon sink back to Earth.

  Mia climbed into the bronze bucket, testing the primitive metal rudder—the only way to steer the balloon once it was airborne—and saw the words engraved on the red wing:

  If you have found your way thus far,

  You don’t have far to travel.

  Ride fire and air to Refúj, where

  All your tr
oubles will unravel.

  Unravel in a good way or a bad way? It was one of those words she didn’t trust; a word that meant one thing but could also mean the opposite.

  Her mind was busy turning over Refúj. The word meant “sanctuary” in Fojuen. Safe haven.

  The path to safe haven will reveal itself to she who seeks it.

  So her mother’s cryptic message had not been cryptic after all. She was leading her daughter to Safe Haven, an actual geographical place. Refúj. Refuge with a capital R.

  Mia felt a flush of triumph. Even without her mother’s book, she had found her way. Perhaps she had always known the way—she simply had to listen.

  Quin stood poised with one hand on the bucket of the balloon. She could feel the conflicting currents rolling off him, cold and piping hot.

  “I can’t promise you’ll be safe,” she said. The sliver of the fojuen arrowhead burned hot in the pocket of her trousers.

  “I’m not safe anywhere,” he said, and clambered into the bucket by her side.

  Mia scraped the giant sulfyr stick against the rock, and it spat and sparkled. When she kissed the kindling with the fiery end, the torches roared to life. Instead of the greenish light of the sulfyr stick, they burned a bright golden red, the color of molten lava.

  Mia’s hands were steady as she reached for the rudder.

  “Do you think . . . ,” Quin began.

  She knew what he was going to say. Did she think someone had left this balloon here for them? That they were expected in Refúj?

  She did.

  Because they were.

  Chapter 32

  Five Small Craters

  AS THE HOT AIR balloon lifted them into the sky, Mia saw her mother.

  She saw the tumble of her hair in the red slopes and hills; the curve of her hips as the Salted Sea curled into the sunrise. This place held the very shape of Wynna, and Mia saw her mother’s spirit in the vibrant bath of colors—the sanguine rock, the cerulean ocean.

  She hoisted them higher, the hiss and gurgle of fire puffing hot air into the balloon. She felt the same tilt in her blood. A gentle tug—or was it a nudge?—and an almost magnetic force pushing her gently toward something, or pulling her in.

  It was a jerky ride, not for the weak of stomach. But Mia wasn’t queasy; she crooked her fingers over the metal rudder and breathed it all in. She felt warm and sad and alive. She thought of her mother coming to Fojo Karação as a girl, her heart rising to meet the beauty of this place, the fire kingdom that had called so deeply to her soul. It even smelled like her, a little sweet and a little wild, like fresh-cut flowers and wood smoke. Mia had to remind herself her mother wasn’t waiting for her in Refúj. Her mother wasn’t waiting for her anywhere.

  She cranked the torch and the balloon sipped a mouthful of air. The sun had turned a simmering orange as it hung suspended above the ocean, and Mia felt birdlike, a winged creature suspended between worlds.

  “We’re always crossing a boundary, aren’t we?” said Quin. “The laghdú, the boat, the balloon. We’re always in some liminal state, moving toward something or away from something else.”

  She supposed he was right. The balloon rose above a ridge, and they both gasped.

  There was a perfect blue jewel of a lake scooped out of the rock. The reflection was stunningly clear, a flawless replica of the sky. The water glistened in the morning sun, and in its center: a tiny red island set in the bezel of blue. Red ringed with blue ringed with red.

  “I’ve never seen water that blue.” Quin coughed. “The air smells like smoke.” He ran his hand along the edge of the bronze bucket. His fingertips came back smudged gray. “Is that ash?”

  Mia stared hard at the crater of the lake. When she took a closer look at the dazzling red peaks around them, she saw they weren’t peaks at all; the tops were dipped like spoons. In the distance, black smoke coiled from one such ladle.

  “It is ash,” she said. “And the reason you’ve never seen a lake that blue is that you’ve never seen one that deep. It’s called a qaldera in Fojuen. ‘Boiling pot.’”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “We’re in the crater of a volqano.”

  Mia had only read about volqanoes, never seen them in real life. Excitement whiffled through her. She was exploring the four kingdoms at last, fulfilling her childhood dreams. She was free.

  She felt a sharp stab of guilt. She wasn’t here to explore; she was here to find the Gwyrach who had killed her mother.

  “When I was little,” Quin began, “there was a scholar who came to the Kaer.”

  He rolled the ash between his fingers into a small kernel. “He taught us about the four ancient gods—four brothers—who warred with one another. How they each sulked off to their own corner of the world, hence the four kingdoms. But the Glasddiran god loved his brothers most, so he wept the hardest. That’s why the river kingdom has so many rivers.”

  “Every child knows this story. It’s our creation myth.”

  “My father made a big show of believing the myths—‘restoring the kingdom to its former glory,’ all that—but he never liked the part about the god of the river kingdom. He said a real god wouldn’t weep.”

  Quin roughed up his curls. “The thing is, Glas Ddir never seemed like some epic place where gods wept and warred. It was a cold, wet kingdom, and Glasddirans weren’t descended from greatness—they were sad, hungry people my father abused. But this . . .” He gestured at the striking scenery around them. “This place looks like it was made by the gods. ‘The river god wept water, but the fire god breathed fire.’”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in gods.”

  He shrugged. “The myths seemed unreasonable, but I secretly hoped they were true. Don’t we all want to believe in something bigger than ourselves?”

  Mia wasn’t sure. Her magic was bigger than herself, and she didn’t like it. If something grew too big you could no longer control it.

  But wasn’t magic the reason Quin was alive? Wasn’t it why they had both survived?

  No, she concluded. They survived because she’d listened to her instinct and intuition, not her magic.

  What if they were one and the same?

  Quin smiled. “According to legend, you’re descended from a god. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about how much untapped power you have inside of you.”

  “Power is useless unless you know how to control it.”

  “You do know how.” He cupped his hand over hers.

  She stared at his bare skin against her bare skin. In seventeen years, she had never held a boy’s hand. In Glas Ddir such a thing was treason. Her body thrilled to his touch. Was it because her skin had always been sheathed in gloves? Or was there something special about Quin’s flesh against hers, some alchemy of chemistry and desire?

  His fingertips were warm.

  “You don’t hate me anymore,” she said.

  “I’ve never hated you. Not even for a second.”

  A sulfyr stick winked to life in her brain. She’d guessed—correctly—that her body was intimately attuned to the bodies of others. The prince’s chilly fingers, his frozen gales.

  Quin’s words to his parents the night before the wedding came back to her: She is dangerous. You won’t deny it.

  She had correlated the temperature to the wrong emotion. The constant frostbite she’d felt in Quin’s presence wasn’t hatred.

  It was fear.

  “You’ve been afraid of me,” she said slowly.

  “Yes. But not anymore.”

  He brought her hand to his lips. His mouth was both soft and scorching as he kissed each fingertip. She wondered if, when he removed his hand, he would leave five small craters.

  “I’ve wanted to do this forever,” he murmured. “Ever since you came to the Kaer. I dreamed about peeling off your gloves. I was dying to know what your hands looked like. They’re even more beautiful than I imagined.”

  Mia went cold with fear. Was she enth
ralling him?

  She pulled back. “How do you know I’m not . . .”

  Before she could finish her thought, her eyes caught movement beneath them.

  A village spilled onto the uneven red rocks, shapes and colors bustling on the shores of the blue lake.

  They had made it to Refúj.

  Chapter 33

  A Little Head Magic

  THE FIRST THING MIA noticed when the balloon touched down was that the earth was softer than she’d imagined. A good thing, too, since her landing skills left much to be desired.

  The balloon smashed into the ground, the bucket tipping, and Quin slammed into her, the two of them nearly pitching over the side as they clutched whatever they could get their hands on, which happened to be each other.

  Mia realized they were not alone.

  A group of girls stood in a circle, watching them.

  Their hair was coiled into intricate puffs and twists, their skin fawn and mahogany and black as onyx, their arms gloveless. Some wore long, loose-fitting linens dyed white and tan; others wore smart trousers cropped at the shin.

  “Tie her up,” said an older woman with glossy black hair wrapped in a brilliant purple scarf. Mia flinched as a curvy girl with jewels in her nose stepped forward. But the girl reached for the balloon, not Mia. She grabbed the rope and tethered it to a metal hoop in the ground. The balloon listed once more, then stilled.

  The girls did not offer to help as Quin and Mia disembarked. They hefted themselves out of the bucket and onto the ground, their feet sinking pleasingly into the earth. The igneous rock of the volqano had been crushed and pulverized, a million years of chaos resulting in a bank of soft red sand.

  “Bhenvenj Refúj.” The woman’s voice was richly accented as she waved them forward. “Come, come. Please make yourself a home.”

  Mia had never been greeted in such a way. Please make yourself a home.

  The woman in purple didn’t seem particularly interested in them. She was already instructing the girls to repack the torches with kindling.

  “I’m sorry,” Mia said. “We’re not quite sure where to . . .”