Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  Now she sat at the Blue Phoenix, brooding, her chair drawn a short distance from the toasty fire. She’d hardly touched her stew. For the first time in her life, she had performed poorly on a test. Her mind was tied in knots. For someone who claimed not to trust logic, Zaga had introduced one paradox after another, fraying ropes and securing new ones, then leaving Mia alone to unravel the snarl.

  Refúj: where all your troubles will unravel.

  Mia was not amused.

  It didn’t help that Domeniq, Pilar, and Quin sat in a cozy circle around the fire pit, drinking libations and roasting shmardas: sugary egg pillows rimed in pink salt. Mia couldn’t get over how at ease the prince seemed, even in a den of Dujia. But why not? He no longer had a target on his back. He was safe.

  But he wasn’t. Not really. Mia hadn’t chosen her faraway seat just to sulk; it afforded her the opportunity to listen in on the conversations unfolding around the tavern. In the corner closest, two women were speaking in low voices, casting furtive scowls at the prince.

  “I’ve said it for years: we’re too close to the border,” said the woman with a tuft of stark-white hair and bronze skin, a loose tunic tied around her waist with a brilliant purple sash. “It was only a matter of time before their hatred and bigotry crossed the Salted Sea.”

  Her companion, an older woman with a shaved head and rings of blue ink around her white arms and neck, nodded vehemently. “He shouldn’t be here. The river rats are snakes.”

  “As shifty and treacherous as the rivers beneath them,” the first woman agreed. “The royals worst of all.”

  Glasddirans weren’t exactly beloved, Mia was learning. She, too, was a river rat.

  “Truce?”

  Pilar stood before her, holding a glass of murky liquid freckled red.

  “A gift from my failed assassin,” Mia said dryly. “Trying to poison me now?”

  “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t need poison.”

  “You might, given your success rate with an arrow.” She sniffed. “I don’t drink demon’s dwayle.”

  It was true. The lady barkeep at the Blue Phoenix had looked at Mia strangely when she’d asked for a cup of tea, but she didn’t care. Her head was foggy enough without adding strange spirits to the mix. Not half an hour earlier, she’d watched Dom slam back a dram of muddy brown liquid with a sqorpion inside.

  “This isn’t dwayle,” Pilar said. “It’s rai rouj, a Fojuen specialty. We’re not in the river kingdom anymore, Rose, with your diluted excuse for spirits.”

  Mia accepted the glass, took a cautious nip, and nearly fell out of her chair.

  Pilar laughed. “There’s a reason they call it red rage. You shave off flakes of fojuen into the liquor and let it souse. Nothing like a good punch to the throat to wake your inner Dujia.”

  “I just drank glass?”

  “It’s ground to a fine powder. No need to call the cavalry.”

  Mia resolved to drink very slowly and keep her wits about her. She did not want to give this girl any leeway to punch her in the throat, literally or metaphorically.

  “You should see what they drink in Luumia,” Pilar said. “That’s where my father is from. It’s so cold they drop slabs of butter into their spirits to keep up their strength. The Luumi drink three glasses of vaalkä every night: butter and fire.”

  “Did your father come here with your mother?” Mia asked, genuinely curious.

  “My father isn’t in Refúj.” Pilar’s face hardened. “Mind your own, Rose.”

  She stomped back to the fire pit and settled into the chair beside Quin. She said something to him in a low voice, and—to Mia’s surprise—he laughed.

  Then Dom was scraping his chair toward Mia, blocking Quin and Pilar from view. “Mind if I sit down?”

  Before she could answer, he plunked the chair down next to her.

  “I didn’t say yes.”

  “I know. But you were about to.”

  Dom was as cocky as ever. She’d almost missed it.

  He brandished his clay tankard in her direction. “Care for a drink?”

  “I don’t drink with murderers,” she said, “or the people who aid and abet murderers. Now that I know you were perfectly content to let me take an arrow in the heart.”

  He rubbed his head. In the firelight, she saw his coarse black hair was shaved into intricate shapes at the back of his neck, a row of whorls and interconnected diamonds.

  “I tried, Mia. I really did. I’m the one who first guessed you were a Dujia.” He touched the uzoolion charm at his neck. “I felt your magic tapping at my stone in the Grand Gallery the night of the final feast. I told Pilar they were wrong about you; that you were a Dujia. But by then the plan was already in motion.”

  “How do you even know Pilar? You grew up in Glas Ddir.”

  “I guess my mother knew her mother when they were younger. And I got to know Pil a bit when she was disguised as a scullery maid in the Kaer. She’s loyal to a fault—as long as you’re on her side.” He swigged from his tankard. “I never wanted any harm to come to you. But you know I’d do anything to protect my sisters.”

  Mia softened. When they were younger, she’d watched Dom defend his sisters, especially when the other children were cruel to Sach’a on account of her legs.

  “You’re a good brother,” she said. “I feel the same about Angelyne. I would do anything to protect her.”

  And yet, Mia thought, she’s back in the Kaer while I sit around watching a bunch of strangers roast shmardas.

  “What happened in the Chapel, Dom? After Pilar shot the arrow. You were there—you must have seen Angie.”

  “I didn’t see anyone. I left the Kaer faster than you. I had to make sure I got to you before Lyman and Tuk. I led you to the boat. I even looped back around to Tristan’s camp, but you were already gone. All I found were two dead men.”

  Mia sat up. “Two?”

  “Two guards, dead in their own sick. The prince did admirable work with that chokecherry brew. I do love a man who knows his poisons.”

  Mia’s mouth had gone as dry as bonemeal. “What about Tristan? Where was the duke?”

  “No sign of him. But there were tracks in the snow.”

  She staggered to her feet, her one swallow of rai rouj rushing to her head. How had it not occurred to her? Quin said the poison was temporary, that it would wear off in a few days. And if that were true . . .

  “I have to go back. If there’s even a chance Tristan has made it back to Kaer Killian . . . if he tells the king Quin is dead and that he should be prince, and then demands Angelyne as his princess . . .”

  “Relax, Mia. These things take time. Just yesterday Tristan was rolling in his own vomit in the Twisted Forest. It would take him at least five days to get back to the castle, and that’s if he were at peak health. It’s not like they’re going to schedule a royal wedding the following day. They’d have to mourn the prince.”

  She sank back into her chair, mollified, at least for the moment.

  “The best thing you can do for Angelyne,” Dom said, “is to learn how to harness your magic. If you want to keep her safe from the duke, stop fighting your magic and embrace it. Even the most powerful men can be felled by an enthrall.” He eyed Quin over his tankard. “Have you two been fully yoked?”

  “Like with an egg?”

  Dom looked amused. “Yoked, Mia. You’ve been in the woods for days, eating together . . . sleeping together . . .”

  “Not like that, we haven’t.”

  “That’s a pity.” His eyes slid over the prince’s slender form. “I would not miss an opportunity to exchange body heat with a boy that beautiful.”

  Mia stared at him. It had never occurred to her Dom might be interested in boys. She had, in her more arrogant moments, thought Dom might be interested in her. But when she saw the way he was watching Quin, with both shyness and longing, she realized he had probably always loved boys, and she’d just been too naive to notice.

  “You rea
lly didn’t know, did you? I wanted to tell you a hundred times. Now you know why you were never my type.”

  Mia felt sad. How much had her friend suffered in the river kingdom, longing for boys he knew he couldn’t have? And why did this kind of love threaten King Ronan so deeply? Queen Bronwynis had envisioned Glas Ddir as a place where all loves could flourish. How far they had fallen.

  “Four gods, Dom. All those years . . .”

  “It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. At least here I can be who I am.” He laughed. “Sort of. There are forty-six men in all of Refúj. At least half of them are grandfathers. To say pickings are slim would be like saying volqanoes are hot.”

  Mia barely heard him. She was distracted by Pilar, who was now inching closer to Quin, her body canting toward him. She’d given him his own glass of rai rouj, and his cheeks were flushed and ruddy as he grew jollier by the second.

  Pilar punched him playfully on the shoulder, and he burst into laughter.

  “Quin.” Mia stood. “You know you shouldn’t let her touch you. She could be enthralling you.”

  “She can’t,” Dom said. He stood and kicked the loose dirt over the threshold of the tavern. For the first time Mia noticed the border of blue uzoolion. “That keeps the bar brawls from getting ugly. Magic and liquor: not a great mix.”

  Pilar stood with arms akimbo. “I didn’t enthrall your precious husband, Rose.”

  There was a sudden hush in the tavern chatter. The two women who had been discussing the river rats leaned forward. Mia got the impression the patrons of the Blue Phoenix wouldn’t mind if Pilar punched her in the face.

  “All I’m saying,” Mia said, taking a more measured tack, “is that you shouldn’t abuse your power.”

  “I shouldn’t abuse my power?” Pilar clenched and unclenched her fists. “Come with me, Rose. You’re getting your first real magic lesson whether you like it or not.”

  Chapter 41

  Wilder

  THEY CLUSTERED TOGETHER IN an empty market stall, Domeniq and Pilar on one side, Quin and Mia on the other. Pil had drawn a line in the sand—a literal line in the literal sand—separating the Dujia and Dujia-adjacent from the river rats.

  Pilar held out her hand. “Uzoolion,” she commanded, and Dom unlatched the blue stone around his neck and placed it in her palm.

  In one swift movement, Pilar jammed her thumb into the crook of his elbow, where the humerus met the radius and ulna. Mia watched his dark skin blanch, then turn a crude purple. His fingers twitched violently and went sickly white, and right as Mia was about to wrench him safely out of harm’s way, Pilar let go.

  “Faqtan!” Dom swore. He picked his arm up by the wrist and let it fall, his hand slapping lifelessly against his side, dead weight. Then he grinned. “You’re getting faster.”

  Pilar grinned back. “I know.”

  Mia was horrified. She might not know much about magic, but she knew human physiology.

  “You’re starving the muscles of oxygen. That’s neqrosis.”

  “Very good, Rose. High marks for effort. You’ve got the name wrong, though: it’s called unblooding.”

  “Wrong. It’s called neqrosis. Do you know what neqrosis means? Corpse. If you cut off the circulation for long enough, it isn’t just your muscles that go numb—your tissue will die and your bones will collapse. You’d never be able to use your hand again, Dom.”

  Pilar shook her head. Her face was painted with an emotion Mia couldn’t read. Anger? Sadness? Or was it, of all things, pity?

  “There’s so much you don’t know,” Pilar said. “And you’re trying so hard to know everything. Can you think of any other situations where it might be useful to unblood someone? An assailant, perhaps?”

  Mia said nothing.

  “Or what about the history of magic?” Pilar prodded. “Can you tell me how or why it evolved the way it did?”

  Every answer that landed on the tip of Mia’s tongue was wrong. She would only be reciting what she had learned in books—books her father had given all the Hunters. Books inked with lies.

  “Let me tell you a story,” Pilar said. “When she was young, my grandmother was coming home from a hat shop with a new pink hat. Four men appeared from the shadows. They crushed her hat, put their hands around her throat, and ripped off her skirt. A fifth man came out of a nearby shop. She begged for him to help her, to show mercy. ‘I’ll show you mercy,’ he said. He unbuttoned his trousers.”

  A thick, heavy silence fell over them. Pilar looked away.

  “You think we exist on the margins of society because of our magic. That we have been hunted and killed as punishment for being Dujia. But you’ve got it backward. We were hunted and killed for thousands of years, long before we had magic. We are magicians because of our suffering. A woman’s body can survive only so much abuse before our very blood and bones rise up in revolt.

  “Magic is born in the margins. It is nurtured among the vulnerable and broken. It is our bodies crying out for justice, seeking to right centuries of wrongs.”

  Pilar had transformed into a gifted orator, eloquent and fierce.

  Quin had noticed, too. Mia felt his body enliven.

  “And that’s what you don’t understand about magic,” Pil said. “It isn’t evil—it’s a way of combating evil. Magic is a way to topple the power structures that have held women captive for thousands of years. Why do you think we have the gift of enthrallment? Because sometimes the only way to escape a guard who has imprisoned you, or a husband who has forced himself upon you, or an executioner knotting the noose around your neck because you loved someone you weren’t supposed to love . . . was to entrance his heart with passion, and then make your escape.

  “And if a man was about to hurt you, to violate you, he needed less blood in certain areas. Say a king was about to make you his new favorite doll. You could funnel the blood away from his hands when he touched you, or his arms when he pinned you down. You could coax the blood out of the parts of his body he found most pleasurable. Drain him of his power to harm you. Slow the assault and buy yourself time. That’s how unblooding was born.”

  Mia knew every word Pilar said was true; she heard no telltale whoosh, no agitation in her blood. Which meant Mia was the ignorant one. She hadn’t known how much she hadn’t known.

  Pilar turned to Quin. “Your father has perpetuated the lie that we are wicked and depraved. That we are monsters, not people.” She turned to Mia. “Your father has only made it worse. These men are threatened by our power. But that’s nothing new. Our sisterhood has always been under threat. For the entirety of human history, weak men have been afraid of powerful women.”

  The moonlight anointed Pilar’s black hair with a blazing blue halo. She reminded Mia of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Had the Dujia her mother loved also stood like this in the merqad, brave and beautiful, hair shimmering beneath the moon?

  And then she saw this same woman reaching forward to touch Wynna on the last day of her life, death cloaked in a loving caress.

  “If this is all true,” Mia said, “if magic is a way for women to protect themselves against the men who would seek to hurt them . . . then why is my mother dead? Why would a Dujia turn on one of her own?”

  The fire in Pilar’s face flickered and went dark. “I don’t know.”

  Mia closed her eyes and listened, straining—hoping—to hear the slosh of lies. But Pilar’s blood was quiet.

  When she opened her eyes, Pilar was watching her with something akin to pity.

  “Sorry, Rose. I’m telling the truth.”

  Mia sat on the lakeshore, her knees tucked into her chest. Her feet were bare. She dug her heels into the earth, scooping up soft red sand in her hands and sifting it through her fingers. At night, the lake was stained a deep indigo, a swatch of smooth silk in the crater of a volqano.

  She was thinking about her parents. The way they were physically drawn toward one another; how easily her mother’s cheek found the smooth plane of her father’s
shoulder, or how his hand rested perfectly on the curve of her back. One of Zaga’s questions had filled Mia with doubt: Was your parents’ marriage a farce?

  She ached for her mother’s journal. Surely it held the answers. But it was buried under a heap of snow in the Twisted Forest, surrendering its secrets to humus and decay?

  Mia should have gone back for it. She cursed herself for leaving behind her most precious possession. It was the last surviving link to her mother. In a way, losing the journal meant losing her mother all over again.

  Mia heard footsteps and looked up to see Quin standing quietly on the sandy path.

  “Can I join you?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  They sat staring out at the lake. The water pitched the cornflower moon back up to the sky, perfect and whole.

  Quin raked his hands through the coarse red sand. “Do you think everything they’ve told us is true?”

  “I can hear when someone is lying.”

  “You really are a marvel.”

  She didn’t feel like a marvel. She felt like a fraud. No longer a Huntress, but not quite a Dujia, either.

  “But you can’t hear them if they lie in the cottage, right?” Quin said. “Or in the tavern? For a place where people purport to trust each other, there sure is a lot of uzoolion around.”

  She hadn’t thought about it, but he made a decent point.

  “Is that an active volqano?” Quin pointed to a molten cone of orange in the distance. It glowed incandescent, sending coils of gray smoke into the sky.

  “I don’t know.”

  He nudged her arm. “I thought you knew everything about an insufferable number of things.”

  “I don’t know anything anymore.”

  Quin took her hand and a spark ignited in her belly. That was one thing she knew: the cold she’d once felt slinking off the prince had been replaced by the warm melt of desire. She tried to focus on the stars overhead, but they were hazy, trapped under a net of ash and smoke. Heat was pouring off her, or pouring off Quin, or maybe there wasn’t any difference.

  With his free hand, he reached out and delicately lifted one of her curls. “Your hair is wilder here than in the castle.”