Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  The human heart held four hollow chambers inside it. Anatomists had once believed the spirit of the gods flowed freely between the four hollows. It was only by careful, patient scrutiny that scientists had debunked these myths, reducing the body to a collection of rules and theorems, pieces and parts. There were no gods inside the human heart. Only suffering. Loss. Loneliness. And sometimes nothing at all.

  In her darker moments, Mia wondered if she’d been mismade. Did her heart hold more than four empty chambers? Was it more hollow than full?

  “Mia!” Quin saw her and clambered down from the bar, pulling his shirt back over his head as he approached. His face was flushed, his hair appealingly mussed. Mia fought the urge to reach out and run her fingers through his curls. “I didn’t see you come in.”

  “I think maybe we should talk,” she said.

  Chapter 48

  Everything You Thought You Knew

  DUJIA MILLED ABOUT THE merqad as Mia led Quin down the avenues, searching for a quiet place to talk. The prince wasn’t stumbling in the slightest, which meant he wasn’t nearly as drunk as he’d appeared in the tavern. Why would he pretend? They passed the abandoned stall where Mia had been sitting minutes earlier, now filled with two older women in an amorous embrace.

  “Not here,” Mia said, taking Quin by the arm. She barreled past the tents and stalls until she found herself on the narrow footpath winding out of the merqad. Had it only been a day since she and Quin arrived in Refúj? It was hard to believe. She marched past the gnarled, spotted trees, and she was almost to where they’d landed in the red balloon when Quin stopped her.

  “Mia,” he said, “what is going on?”

  She didn’t understand all the emotions teeming inside her, so she reached for the one she recognized.

  “I can’t stay here. My sister is in danger, and I’m going back.”

  “Like I said, I’m happy to go with you. I just needed—”

  “To drink and dance?” Her words were laced with anger. “My entire life is going up in flames, but I’m glad you’ve found time to throw back some sqorpion liquor. Is it just Dom’s company you prefer over mine, or boys in general?”

  “I prefer whom I prefer. Girls. Boys.” Quin set his jaw. “What are we really talking about here? It seems to me we’re pretending to have one conversation but really having another.”

  “You would know. Prince Quin, Master of the Pretending Arts.”

  He studied her, a swarm of complicated emotions flickering across his face. Behind him, she thought she saw the red balloon in the distance, descending slowly toward Refúj.

  “You feel like I betrayed you,” Quin said.

  “It’s not about being betrayed! Or maybe it is.” She let out a huff of breath. “Look, I don’t mean to blame you. I’m trying to stay clear in my head. It’s just . . . I can’t tell what’s real and what’s pretend anymore. I don’t know if you care about me . . .”

  “I care about you, Mia.”

  “. . . or if you’re just pretending. I don’t want to be lied to anymore. Everything I’ve ever been told was a lie. For the past three years I have had only one ambition: to find the Gwyrach who killed my mother. I came here to Refúj, thinking I would find her, but I found Dujia, not Gwyrach. Instead of demons, I found angels. I don’t know anything anymore. I don’t know who hurt her, Quin.”

  She blinked back tears. “If I could find who did it . . . if I could put this to rest . . .”

  “Perhaps there’s something you’re missing. Something that happened the night she died. She had no wounds when your father brought her to the Kaer. She looked like she was sleeping. But perhaps he—”

  “What did you just say?”

  Mia had gone as still and quiet as a tomb. A worm of an epiphany slithered across her neck.

  “I only meant,” Quin said, “that perhaps there’s something you’re missing.”

  “You said she looked like she was sleeping.”

  He held her gaze. All the cold she’d once felt oozing off him came rushing back, coating her skin in frostbite. The sun bathed her shoulders in balmy warmth, and yet she felt as if she were buried under frozen earth.

  “You saw my mother.”

  He yanked a nervous hand through his curls. “I don’t see why that should concern you. I was there in the crypt when the guards brought her body, yes. But it isn’t as if I—”

  “You didn’t think to mention you were in the crypt that night?”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  He was lying. His blood somersaulted through his veins.

  “Why are you lying to me?”

  Fear poured off him in a cold draft, but it was mingled with something else. Mia felt a buckling in her sternum, as if her lungs were folding in on themselves, and then a tremendous heaviness. The weight was so crushing she staggered forward, her chest a block of iron and ice. She knew intuitively what it was. Shame.

  “What are you ashamed of, Quin?”

  He stared at her intently. His lips were parted, his eyes wide, and for a moment she thought she could see the color of his shame: red, then gray, like a cauterized wound. He let out a long, low breath.

  “That was the worst night of my life,” he said.

  Mine too, she thought. Mine too.

  For three years she had refused to let it in, but memories were like water: they trickled under doors, seeped through cracks and holes, and pooled into pockets you never knew you had. They churned and grew stronger, strong enough to slam into you, to break the dam of everything you thought you knew.

  The memory came in a flood, spilling out of her like a torrent.

  The day her mother died.

  Chapter 49

  Deserve It

  MIA WAS FOURTEEN, STUBBORN and precocious. She knew she was smart, obnoxiously so; she used her intellect to strike down anyone who didn’t agree with her particular point of view. She felt big by making others feel small.

  “An ogre,” Angie called her, with affection. “A very brilliant ogre.”

  Mia prided herself on being an excellent student. There was good and there was evil, and the lines were clearly drawn. For her, the world was a clementine sliced neatly in two: one half sweet, the other half rotten.

  Her mother thought the world was a dappled sparrow’s egg in lovely hues of gray.

  The day it happened, Wynna was packing a basket of provisions for a woman in a nearby village who had fallen ill. She had just lost her daughter; the girl had been delivered to King Ronan by one of his spies. The woman herself was rumored to be a Gwyrach, so the Hunters set up watch outside her house, scrutinizing her every move. “The poor dear,” Wynna said. “They’ve taken everything from her. Even her grief.”

  Griffin and Angelyne had gone to the market, so Mia sat alone at the kitchen table, sketching the cranial nerves of a brain, while Wynna discarded her lambskin gloves. She rolled up her sleeves and set to work packing the basket with stone fruits, a loaf of bread, slabs of fresh butter, sweet brown mustard, a flask of blackthorn wine, and fried salted skalt wrapped in crisp brown paper.

  Mia was fuming. Domeniq’s father had been murdered only days before. All the mountain villages and river towns were on edge; the Gwyrach who had killed him roamed free, her rampage of death and destruction unchecked. Tensions were high in Ilwysion—including in the Roses’ cottage.

  “I don’t understand why you’re going to see this woman,” Mia said to her mother. “She might be a Gwyrach.”

  “And what if she is?”

  “She’ll kill you without a second thought!”

  “Or perhaps she won’t. Perhaps she’ll help me.”

  “That isn’t the way magic works.”

  “And what do you know about the way magic works?”

  “I know my best friend lost his father to a Gwyrach,” Mia spat, “and that this woman might be the one who killed him. And you want to reward her with bread and wine?”

  “It’s not so simple. The world is far mo
re nuanced than you think. There will always be a place for compassion and for love. Sometimes love is the stronger choice.”

  “How can you talk of love when they thrive on hate? The Gwyrach hurt and kill people. You talk about them as if they’re human, Mother. I hate them for what they did to Dom.”

  “Hatred will only lead you astray. I’ve watched it change your father.”

  “Father has far more sense than you do. You would hand out loaves of bread and invite the Gwyrach to murder us in our sleep!”

  “Mia, please.” Her mother grabbed her hands. “You are so very talented. So smart, so gifted. But you must promise me this. You must learn to quiet your mind so you can listen to your heart. This is the most important thing. Whatever you’re feeling—fear, anger, love—let yourself feel it. And then use those feelings for good. Use them to know and heal others; to ease their suffering, not cause them more. You must not let your feelings become warped by hate.”

  Her mother brushed a stray curl off Mia’s cheek.

  “You’re just like me. I fought it, too. For years I fought my feelings. They are frightening, treacherous things. But they are the only things. In the end, love is all that matters. Fidacteu zeu biqhotz limarya eu naj. Trust your heart, even if it kills you.”

  Her hands were as sickly soft as the rest of her. Mia grabbed her by the wrists.

  “I’m not like you. You say listening to the heart makes you strong, but I think it’s made you weak. Father keeps us safe by hunting Gwyrach, while you rush care baskets to them, feeding them like ducks. They’re not ducks, Mother. They’re demons. If a demon killed Dom’s father, what makes you think a demon won’t kill you?”

  She saw the hurt in her mother’s hazel eyes, but she plunged ahead, fueled by righteousness and rage. “Maybe it’s only your heart that will kill you. And maybe you deserve it.”

  Mia stormed out of the house, the door slamming behind her.

  She didn’t look back.

  Mia walked the forest on a bed of spruce and pine needles, waiting for her hands to stop shaking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so angry, and never at her mother. But this was different. After his father’s death, Dom went numb, the twins cried for hours on end, and Lauriel walked the cottage like a ghost. The du Zols were decimated by their loss. And now Wynna was bringing treats to a woman who might be the Gwyrach who killed him? Mia couldn’t forgive her for it. There was a place and time for gentleness, but it was neither here nor now.

  She came to a small clearing where she heard a strange sound. A songbird was fluttering and thrashing on the ground, its wing broken. It warbled a long, melancholy note, eyes darting in their sockets. The little wren knew it was going to die.

  Before she could attempt to rescue it, the bird twitched and went still.

  Mia observed a moment of respectful silence, then drew a knife from her pocket. She sliced the bird’s breast open, poking at its bones and tendons, marveling at the fragile anatomy that made it fly. She carried the wren to her secret cave, where she stored all the exotic treasures her father brought home from his adventures; she dipped the songbird’s wings into a pot of chinchilla dust from Fojo, fluffing the feathers until they were glossy. She buffed two tiny pieces of Pembuka black schorl for the eyes. Then she stuffed the body with dry kindling and sewed the torn skin back together with needle and twine.

  Though her thumbs were stippled with pinpricks by the time she was done, it was worth it. She threaded a filament of bronze through the songbird’s feet and wrapped the wire around a forked twig. The wren looked like it might burst into song at any minute. She’d brought it back to life.

  By the time she finished, night had slunk into the forest. Mia felt calmer now, penitent. Angelyne was right; she’d acted like an ogre. Even if her mother was misguided, she was only trying to be kind. Mia resolved to apologize as soon as she got home.

  But something was wrong. She sensed it the minute she saw the cottage: the light inside was strange, the shadows long and ghoulish.

  Then she heard her sister scream.

  Mia flung the door open. She saw her father first—at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Angelyne was sprawled facedown on the floor, weeping. Only after Mia stepped inside did she realize Angie had thrown herself on top of their mother’s lifeless body.

  In her shock, Mia defaulted to logic. She knelt and ran her hands over her mother’s unbroken skin—her throat, her chest, her wrists. It was Mia who found the moonstone clutched in Wynna’s fist, the talisman that had failed to protect her. “No wounds,” she said, over and over. “She’s not bleeding. She can’t be dead, Father.”

  Her father’s grief was so thick she could breathe it, a cloak of acrid smoke that burned her throat. “Gwyrach don’t need swords or arrows,” he said. “They can stop a human heart.”

  The king sent a royal summons that Griffin accompany his wife’s body to the castle, and a few hours later, eight guards came and lowered her mother into an alabaster box. Even in her shock, Mia thought the number excessive. Eight men for one dead woman.

  Mia begged to go with them.

  “Stay with Angelyne,” her father said. “Keep her safe.”

  She sat in speechless horror as the Hunters stalked the woods, looking for her mother’s killer. The sick woman from the neighboring village was no longer a suspect: Mia would later discover the Hunters had taken her to the Kaer early that morning, long before Wynna was killed. Her Hand already graced the king’s Hall of Hands.

  It was Angie who had found their mother’s corpse. She had run into the cottage, proudly holding an astrolabe she’d bought for Mia at the market, when she saw her mother lying on the floor. Poor Ange was only twelve, and she screamed and shook as Mia stroked her strawberry hair.

  But all Mia could hear were the cruel words she’d said to her mother. They took on the air of augury, a malicious prophecy dancing across her eyelids every time she tried to sleep.

  Maybe it’s only your heart that will kill you. And maybe you deserve it.

  Chapter 50

  Home

  “MY FATHER’S MEN BROUGHT her to the castle,” Quin said. “Eight guards.”

  Mia dragged herself back to the present. Her whole body was trembling, the blood howling in her ears. “I remember.”

  “They took her to the crypt and left her there.”

  It hurt imagining her mother’s body abandoned on a cold stone.

  “What were you doing there, Quin? Tell me the truth.”

  He stared at her a long moment. Then the words tumbled out quickly, as if he wanted to be rid of them.

  “I was meeting someone. We needed a place where we wouldn’t be discovered.”

  “Who were you meeting?”

  “My music teacher.”

  “The boy who taught you piano?”

  He nodded. “I told you he was my first friend, and that was true. I was smitten by his sister—she was beautiful—but before long I was smitten by him, too. Our friendship blossomed into something else. But in the Kaer, people were always watching: the servants, the guards, my father himself. We couldn’t even touch each other. All we could do was play each other songs to express the way we felt.”

  “Like ‘Under the Snow Plum Tree,’” Mia said. “The song you were playing in the library.”

  “It was the first song Tobin ever taught me. That haunting melody . . .” For a moment Quin’s voice slipped away. Then he recovered it. “We wanted to meet somewhere we wouldn’t be watched. And then we realized: the crypt was under the grove of plum trees! Under the snow plums, if it’s meant to be, you’ll come to me. The song had told us exactly where to go. So we made plans to rendezvous in the crypt once darkness fell.”

  He frowned. “But the night didn’t go as planned. We’d only been in the crypt a few minutes when we heard the guards. We hid behind the tombs as they carried in the body. My father was with them, as was yours. They were quarreling. My father wanted to keep your mother’s body in the
Kaer—to study it, he said. They suspected she had magic, that the famed leader of the Hunters was harboring a Gwyrach in his home.”

  Mia’s stomach sank. They had been right.

  “My father won the argument, of course,” Quin said. “He always does. Though he did let your father choose the burial stone—which is why your mother’s vault is the only one in the crypt that isn’t a grotesque parody, in my opinion. The moon and the bird.”

  The breath caught in her throat. The king hadn’t merely used her as collateral to ensure Griffin fulfilled his quota of Hands. The truth was darker. Ronan had accused him of harboring a Gwyrach.

  Mia’s chest ached. Her father’s only hope of saving his daughters’ lives was to give the king whatever he wanted.

  “This is why we were forced into marriage,” she said.

  “That wasn’t the only reason.” A pall passed over Quin’s face. “My father discovered us lurking behind the tombs. I have never seen him so angry. When he gets angry, my father is . . . severe.”

  He exhaled. “He didn’t hurt me—not physically, at least. But he hurt Tobin. And he made me watch.”

  A chill dripped down Mia’s spine. “What did he do?”

  “You tell me. You’ve seen Tobin yourself.”

  “What do you mean? How could I . . .”

  The boy in the village.

  It struck her like a thunderclap. Quin’s music teacher was the boy in Killian Village who’d handed them bread and a pouch of snow plums. She remembered the hitch in the boy’s gait, the two fingers missing on his right hand.

  “He threw Tobin out of the Kaer,” Quin said quietly, “and banished him to the village. But not before he made sure he would never play music again.”