Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  Lauriel tells me I have saved far more than one. She writes to me of the Dujia from Glas Ddir who receive my warnings and flee to safe haven by the dozens. She tells me of the little lakeside refuge, flooded with women who without my work would be mutilated or lost or dead.

  I hope she is right. I have to believe that love is the stronger choice—that love will always triumph over hate.

  What cruel irony, to manufacture love out of hate, and hate out of love.

  In every marriage, passions cool. But my marriage is different. In my marriage, I use magic to stoke the fire, fan the flames of desire.

  My husband tells me he loves me. He kisses my eyelids and calls them two moons.

  How can any Dujia trust the way her lover looks at her? How can I trust anything anymore?

  All I trust is you, my daughter, growing in my womb. Waiting. Waiting.

  Another sister dead today, another Dujia body broken. My heart broken along with it. When will the hatred cease?

  Tonight your father heated pots of water over an orange flame and poured me a bath. He lit candles, crushed peony petals and sweet lullablus into the suds. For a moment I saw a life where I was a woman in love with her husband. I hate him most when he is kind, because these are the times it is hardest to hate him.

  We argued today, over your name. We both love Mia—we’ve always loved it—but your father wants to give you a strong Glasddiran middle name, and I want something lyrical and feminine. A name is a funny thing, isn’t it? You will bear it for the rest of your life, but you get no say in the matter, and there is no way to know whether that small word will be a burden or a gift.

  We settled on Morwynna. In the old language, Wynna means “wren.” So you see, a piece of me will be with you always.

  We wrens lay down our lives for the people we love.

  Here is what I do not understand: the long-term effects of an enthrall. I can feel my blood aligning with your father’s, my heart in harmony with his.

  The thing about going to bed with a monster night after night is that, in the cool light of morning, he no longer looks like a monster.

  Today you were born into the world.

  A tiny slip of a thing: purple lips, hair fojuen-red like mine, gray eyes like your father’s. I held you, and I wept. I did not know a human heart could be so full.

  Every ounce of love I feel is real. It is a relief, to feel love with no doubt, no shadow.

  You are mine and you are his and you are all your own.

  You are Mia Morwynna Rose, my daughter.

  I love you more than you will ever know.

  This was where the ink stopped. There were more pages, but they were pale as bone—if not blank forever, then at least blank for now. Not all the love pouring out of her was enough to fill them.

  Mia closed the book and laid it gently on the sand. She pressed the red stone wren to her chest. Her shoulders trembled, and the pillar of salt inside her crumbled. She felt her heart splitting open, without a blade, without magic.

  The moon pitched itself through the sky as Mia cried and cried.

  Chapter 44

  Beautiful Vessels

  THE NEXT MORNING, MIA paddled the boat herself.

  She waited until dawn, but only just. She had spent a sleepless night on the lakeshore, checking the journal every few minutes to see if more ink would appear. Her face was puffy, her eyes red from three years’ worth of tears.

  When she arrived at the Biqhotz, she stormed into the library.

  “Zaga!” she shouted. “I know you’re here.”

  For a moment, the room was quiet. Then the voice rasped.

  “You have returned angry.”

  “I know it was you. You’re the woman my mother loved. You killed her, didn’t you? You smuggled yourself into Glas Ddir. She let you into our house, let you touch her. She trusted you—and she died for it.”

  All Mia’s theories were clicking into place: Zaga loved her mother. Zaga hated her mother. She practiced dark magic—the sort of magic a Dujia could use against her own kind.

  “I haven’t touched your mother in many years.”

  “That’s right. Three years.” Mia’s fists were clenched so tightly her knuckles ached through the skin. “Why did you do it? I have to know.”

  “Still obsessed with the knowing. Still treating love as a text to be analyzed. You treat books as human and humans as books.”

  Mia forced herself to breathe, biding her time. She would only kill Zaga if she could confirm Zaga was guilty. Then she would act swiftly, without regret. Yes, Mia was Dujia, but she’d been a Huntress for longer.

  Heart for a heart, life for a life.

  “I need to know, Zaga. I need to hear you say it.”

  Silence. Then, “I did not kill your mother, Mia. Your mother tried to kill me.”

  “Lies.”

  But she couldn’t be sure. Despite the walls of fojuen fomenting her magic from all sides, trying to read Zaga’s emotions was like hitting a stone rampart. Mia couldn’t tell if she was lying.

  “You do not know what your mother was capable of.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. But I’m done with secrets and riddles and lies.”

  A shadow passed across the miniature waterfall. Mia whirled around.

  “Why do you hide in the dark? What are you so afraid of?”

  Zaga stepped into the light.

  Mia reached for the knife she’d hidden in her boot. She had purloined it from a drunk Dujia stumbling out of the Blue Phoenix in the wee hours of the morning. It was an inferior blade, but it would suffice. She had spent three years planning, dreaming, breathing, living for this very moment.

  But when she saw Zaga, she stopped cold.

  Zaga was emaciated. She had the look of someone who had been ill a long time. Her coloring was Fojuen or perhaps native Luumi, her skin tawny and olive-hued—or at least it had been. Now it was pale and moth-eaten, her once-lustrous black hair missing in clumps. She was tall but stooped, thin as a willow reed, with a severe face and harsh, dark eyes under deep lids. Her left arm hung limply at her side, fingers curled into her palms.

  “Your mother left her mark on all of us,” Zaga said.

  Mia’s hand tightened on her knife. But when Zaga took a step closer, letting the torchlight bathe the left side of her body, her stomach twisted. She saw Zaga’s withered arm, her fingernails yellow and decayed. The tributaries of veins snaking up her wrist were clotted black instead of blue.

  “You would kill me before you knew the truth. Before you saw your mother’s handiwork.”

  Mia recognized the symptoms of neqrosis. The tissue had been starved of blood for too long, causing the muscles to atrophy, the bones to collapse.

  “My mother would never do that.”

  “I assure you, she did.”

  “She didn’t hurt people. She healed them.”

  “Are they so different? Both require a manipulation of another person’s body. Whether you hurt or heal them, you assume control over their flesh.”

  “They are not the same.”

  “Your mother was tempestuous. Unpredictable. She made mistakes.”

  “Is that why you sold her off to my father? Forced her into a miserable, empty marriage so she could ‘atone’ for what she’d done?”

  “Do you know the most effective way for a Dujia to kill another Dujia, Mia? It is not to touch her heart. This is what the Hunters think: that we clasp our hands over a man’s chest to still his heart forever. We have this power, yes. But a Dujia is most vulnerable at the wrist, not the sternum.”

  Zaga drew her right fingers up her left wrist, tracing the black veins, then up over the bony olecranon on the tip of the elbow, all the way to her chest. “If you want to kill a Dujia, touch her wrist when you are angry. The veins in our wrist are delicate but direct, and they make beautiful vessels for rage. If you touch the soft skin of her wrist, you will shunt your rage directly into her heart.”

  Mia felt uneasy. She knew
these veins well; she had studied them in her books and anatomy plates. She had traced them up her own arms, a map of cephalic and basilic and cubital veins, blue irrigation systems. But now the map chilled, the tributaries slowing. A premonition.

  “Your mother tried to stop my heart,” Zaga said.

  Mia saw now why she couldn’t read Zaga’s emotions: she was wearing not just one piece of uzoolion, but an entire breastplate. Her chest was encircled in a corset of blue stone. You only wore that much protection, Mia thought, when someone had hurt you.

  An awful thing, her mother had written in her journal. An unforgivable thing. Mia couldn’t reconcile this with what she knew of her mother, her gentleness. Was it possible Wynna’s big messy heart had led her to be passionate and reckless, even cruel?

  Zaga limped back into the shadows, and Mia cursed herself. Three years she had been preparing for this moment: when she came face-to-face with her mother’s murderer. And she had failed to enact justice.

  But what if Zaga was telling the truth?

  Mia heard a telltale catch in Zaga’s breathing, then a deep cough. She had read about neqrosis of the pulmonary tissue, where abscesses filled with fluid and neqrotic debris led to gangrene of the lungs. A victim might die quickly, but they might also live a long, painful life.

  “Anger is a weapon,” Zaga said. “But like all weapons, it is useless unless you know how to wield it. Learn to harness it, and rage can prove a clean and silent blade. If you do not learn how to control it, it can destroy you.”

  “Mother?”

  The voice made Mia jump. Pilar was standing just inside the library doors, her face in shadow, fists bundled at her sides. She was fully clothed and dripping wet, lake water pooling on the red rock at her feet, her shiny black hair glued to the sides of her head like a silken helmet.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Zaga said sharply to Pilar. “Go back to the tavern with your little friends, drink yourself into oblivion.”

  “It’s morning. And they’re not little. They’re just my friends.” Mia heard the pain in Pilar’s voice. “And this is my home, too.”

  Of course Pilar was Zaga’s daughter. Now that they stood side by side, Mia could see the resemblance: same sharp chins and thin, dark eyes. That explained her natural air of authority, the easy confidence that came from being the daughter of someone with power. Mia knew it well, having been such a daughter herself.

  “Is my mother asking you a million questions, Rose? Without answering any of yours?” Pilar let out the kind of exasperated sigh only a daughter could make. “She’s very good at that.”

  Mia was struggling to stay afloat. She had fled the river kingdom, followed a map that promised answers, trekked through a frozen forest, and escaped death, all so she could find her mother’s killer and avenge her. Every step had brought her here: to the place where her mother fell in love . . . the place where she made enemies. After all that, had Mia really stumbled into a dead end?

  “If you didn’t kill her, then who did?”

  Silence.

  “Are you sure you don’t already know who killed your mother?” Pilar said. “Your father leads the Circle of the Hunt. Surely you’ve considered what he would have done if he’d discovered his wife was a Dujia.”

  “Of course I’ve considered it,” Mia snapped. “But I saw her. I saw her body. There were no wounds, no broken bones. My mother was killed by magic.”

  “All right then. It was worth a try.” Pilar gestured toward her soaking wet clothes. “After you stole the boat, I was forced to swim the lake to deliver a message. The prince is in dire need of your assistance.”

  The breath locked in Mia’s throat. “Why? Is he all right?”

  “He’s perfectly fine. Though for some reason, he seems to be in love with you.” She shrugged. “He’s making breakfast and humbly asks that you attend.”

  Chapter 45

  Choking

  AS PILAR PADDLED THE boat across the lake, Mia traced the words into her arm. Love.

  What was love? She’d once postulated that a rippling bunch of misfired nerves were the symptom of a malfunctioning heart. Now she simplified her definition: love was a lie. Her parents, who had appeared to be very much in love, were liars. Their marriage was founded on enthrallment, not love.

  If Mia was born of this union, did that make her a liar, too?

  Her entire life had been built on lies, an infinite bundle of them, the pyre stacked high. She imagined it would take a lifetime to burn them down to truth.

  Mia stopped tracing meaningless words onto her flesh. Love had no meaning, not in a land of lies.

  Pilar left her on the stoop outside the du Zols’ cottage. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I’m going to get Dom.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who knows? Probably off with some boy. But he’ll come back for breakfast. He’s got quite an appetite.”

  Mia stood on the front stoop watching Pilar go. She heard the clang and clatter of pots inside the cottage, and a chorus of giggles. From the sounds of it, Quin had help in the kitchen, either from one or both of the twins.

  A sudden wave of homesickness spilled over her.

  Mia sank heavily on the stoop and pressed her back into the wood beam, her sleepless night catching up to her. On a whim she opened the journal to see if her sadness had coaxed more sangflur onto the page. When she saw the ink, her heart lurched toward it.

  Mia, my Mia.

  My sharp-eyed raven, my little love. You are still small, but you are so smart, so dangerously clever. I urge you to listen to your heart, to let empathy and compassion guide your choices, but your father lavishes praise on your intellect, your logic.

  Logic is insufficient. Love will always expose its flaws. It is good to have a mind, but it is better to have a heart.

  Today we went to the merqad, you on your father’s shoulders, our little family of three. Only, it isn’t a merqad here, it’s a market. There is no music, no laughter, no touch. The market becomes a coffin: full of bodies with no life in them. It seems laughable that we bring our knives to be sharpened in a place so dull.

  You asked me if the things I wrote about in this little book caused me pain. I told you I wrote about myself, the most painful thing of all. I could see how much it hurt you that I was hurting. In moments like this I see the woman blossoming inside you. A wise, kind woman with gray eyes and a brave, loving heart. You will be better than I am, stronger.

  Will you promise me you will always keep the Three Laws? They are beautiful in their simplicity: Do not harm another Dujia. Do not harm yourself. Do not abuse the power you have inside you. Three simple rules for a life worth living.

  I have broken the Third Law, Mia. I break it every day with your father. And I have broken the First Law, to my eternal shame. But I have always kept the Second. Small recompense, perhaps, for the mistakes I have made.

  Mia frowned. Twice now her mother had referenced hurting a fellow Dujia. An awful thing, an unforgivable thing.

  It would appear Zaga was telling the truth.

  Mia didn’t want to believe her mother had ever been cruel. Wynna was perfectly preserved in her mind, her sweeping beauty and gentle heart.

  People were flawed. Mia knew that. But had her mother really tried to stop Zaga’s heart? Why?

  The Hunters say we are demons, bodies with no souls. They say we feel no remorse. They say we feel nothing at all.

  Lies! All I do is feel. It is relentless. To be a Dujia is to feel, feel, feel.

  Have you learned to use your magic, little raven, now that you have bloomed? Have our sisters taught you how to channel your gifts for good? It is good to feel your feelings, and it is also good to learn to calm them before they take you places you do not wish to go.

  I will give you a short lesson. The next time your breathing becomes quick and irregular when you are frightened or upset, sit in a chair and plant your feet firmly on the ground. Press your left hand to your heart and your right hand just beneat
h your ribs, until you feel your belly rise and fall. Then close your eyes and imagine the wind coursing through the trees of Ilwysion before a rainstorm. Recall it whipping through the oaks and maples, the whispering leaves. Let the memory pool in your fingertips as your breath becomes the wind. Your lungs will soften, and your breathing will slow.

  In the old language, the word for breath was the word for life. The ancients believed our breath was the seat of our spirit. I agree. Every time we take a breath, the goddesses breathe through us, their daughters.

  We are not demons, Mia. We are the goddesses’ greatest gift to the world.

  “HELP! HELP US!”

  Mia’s blood curdled. It was Junay’s voice.

  She leapt up from the stoop and flung the door open, stepping over the uzoolion border with her mother’s book clutched to her chest.

  Quin stood motionless in the kitchen, holding a copper spoon. Junay’s face was frozen in panic. At their feet, Nanu lay face-up on the ground. Choking on air.

  Chapter 46

  Sister of Mine

  NANU CLAWED AT HER throat as she writhed on the cottage floor. She coughed and wheezed, her tiny gnarled fist pounding against her chest, a film of sweat on her forehead.

  “Mia!” Junay cried. She took Mia’s arm and pulled her to her grandmother’s side. “I don’t know what happened, she just stopped breathing. . . .”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “She’s at the merqad with Sach’a.” Junay was terrified. “Please help her, Mia. I can’t help her. I don’t have magic.”

  Mia sank to her knees. Nanu’s puffy twists had broken free of their knot and were thrashing like silver snakes around her head.

  “We have to get her out of here,” Mia said. “Away from the uzoolion.”

  Quin sprang into action. He grabbed hold of Nanu’s frail ankles while Mia took her beneath the arms, her head lolling on her neck as they lifted her off the ground.

  “The door,” Mia said.

  Junay charged toward the back door and kicked it open. Mia and Quin hefted Nanu onto a soft patch of earth by the vegetable garden.