Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  “We were children, Mia! Real life is not about twirling. It’s about shame and loss and painful choices. Choices that blur the line between what is lovely and what is foul.” Angelyne let out her breath. “You think this has been easy for me? I’ve looked up to you since I was little. I thought you knew everything. But when I discovered I had magic, I was afraid of what you would do.”

  “I only wanted to protect you. There are so many things to be frightened of in this world. My whole life I’ve tried to keep you safe . . .”

  “What if I told you I’m the reason Mother is dead?”

  Mia willed herself calm.

  “It isn’t true. I killed Mother when we fought.”

  “No,” Angie said. “You didn’t. She was still alive.”

  The objection withered on her lips. Mia heard no whoosh of blood. Angelyne was telling the truth.

  “She was there when we came home from the market,” Angie said. “Father left to help the Hunters cart their latest trophy to the Kaer, so I went into the cottage alone and found a basket of food half packed on the kitchen table. And then, through the window, I looked out into the woods behind our house and saw Mother with Lauriel du Zol.”

  Tears were filling Mia’s eyes. If what Angie was saying were true, it meant Mia hadn’t killed her mother by touching her. As she had stomped through the woods that day, her rage slowly dimming, her mother was still alive.

  “She wasn’t wearing her gloves,” Angelyne continued. “She had her hands on Lauriel’s head—and Lauriel was sobbing, saying she wanted to die. I thought Mother was killing her.”

  “She was healing her! Lauriel had just lost her husband. Mother was calming her mind.”

  “I know that now. But at the time all I saw was our mother touching her best friend while she shook and screamed. In that moment I saw it all so clearly: Mother was the Gwyrach the Hunters were looking for. She had murdered Sach’a and Junay’s father, and now she would murder their mother, too.

  “But I was too much of a coward to stop her. I cowered in the kitchen, too frightened to go outside. I was weak—you were right about that part.”

  “I never meant—”

  “I’m not finished. I didn’t know what happened to Lauriel, only that one minute she was there and the next she wasn’t. I was still trembling when Mother came back inside holding her moonstone, exhausted from whatever she’d just done. I said, ‘You’re a Gwyrach.’ She was too tired to deny it.

  “I thought she was going to hurt me. I started screaming for Father, for the Hunters—anyone. I was hysterical. She tried to calm me down, tried to touch me, but I wouldn’t let her anywhere close.”

  Angelyne darkened. “My fear gave way to anger, as fear will often do. I’d just seen Junay and Sach’a ripped apart by grief. I was furious she would subject them to an even greater loss. Only Mother knew how volatile I could be when I was angry. You’d never seen my temper, nor had Father. But she knew.

  “She begged me not to reveal her. She said she’d rather die a thousand deaths than have her hand grace the king’s Hall. But I was too angry—and too afraid—to listen. I told her I would tell Father the truth as soon as he returned. Then I watched her wrap one hand around her wrist and press the other to her heart. She dropped to the floor.”

  Angelyne’s blue eyes were dewed with tears. “Do you have any idea what that’s like, Mi? Watching your own mother die in front of you?”

  So it wasn’t Mia’s rage that had killed her mother. It was Angelyne’s.

  “I was wrong, of course. Terribly wrong. Not wrong about her having magic, but about her being wicked. Whatever inchoate magic I had inside me, Mother’s moonstone summoned it to life. I bloomed within the week.”

  Angie brushed the moisture from her eyes. “Every morning I wake to shame and regret. Shame walks with me through the day, and each night I wrap my arms around regret before I sleep. All these years, I’ve borne the truth alone.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped you. We could have helped each other.”

  Angelyne shook her head. “You think you’re a cool-headed scientist, but you hold grudges, and you don’t forget. The two things I could never tell you were my two biggest secrets: I had magic, and I was the reason Mother was dead.”

  Mia choked down her tears. She had been wrong about everything, everything but this: her mother had broken the Second Law. Faced with certain death at the hands of the Hunters, she had taken her own life.

  And now Angelyne possessed the moonstone. She had warped their mother’s healing gifts into a dark, powerful magic, one that no longer required touch. If Angie could enkindle a roomful of people—if one crushed goblet spawned ten instant deaths—what did the future hold?

  Mia loved her sister, but she hadn’t truly seen her, not for years. Angelyne, Daughter of Clan Rose, Keeper of Secrets. Grief and shame and magic had frayed the goodness in her heart.

  And yet, in spite of everything—or maybe because of it—Mia loved her. Angie had struggled alone under the weight of these crushing secrets. Mia didn’t feel hate or rage or disgust. She felt only grief.

  “I’m sorry, Angie,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t see.”

  “Still obsessed with the seeing.” Zaga spoke for the first time since Mia had arrived in the Gallery. She rose from the king’s seat at the feasting table. “Your sister is able to do what you are not: to think with her heart and feel with her mind.”

  Zaga leaned into her cane as she came toward them. “She will make a fine queen.”

  Another puzzle piece clicked. What were the words Zaga had whispered to Mia as she knelt beside Princess Karri, trying desperately to save her? Stillness. A dark corridor. An empty room.

  Mia ran her fingernails across her palms. Karri’s blood was still caked into the creases.

  “You never meant for me to heal Karri, did you? You wanted me to kill her.”

  “It is time Glas Ddir had a new queen. A powerful queen who can put aside personal passions and grievances for the good of her sisterhood.”

  Zaga stood beside Angelyne and curved an arm around her shoulders.

  Mia sensed what was about to happen a split second too late: Zaga snatched the moonstone from her sister’s throat. One quick yank was all it took to snap the fragile chain.

  Chapter 59

  Who You Are

  MIA COULDN’T MOVE. HER feet had sprouted roots that moored her to the floor. She had never felt so powerless in her own body, her cranial nerves compromised, her brain unable to spur her muscles into action. She pooled all her concentration into her hands but couldn’t move a single finger. Her blood was clumped sand, her bones a skeleton in an alabaster box.

  “You are wondering why you cannot move,” Zaga said, her voice razor calm. “You Glasddirans tell your children fairy tales about the Gwyrach. You say we steal into your chambers at night, bewitch your breath and blood and bone to do our bidding. In your stories, we are always cast as the demon or the witch. And sometimes you are right. We are demon, and we are witch. We are also human. This is what your fairy tales forget.”

  Mia watched, helpless, as Zaga folded the moonstone into her fist.

  “No human is good or evil, black or white. We are all of us gradations. But we do have one thing in common: at heart we are creatures, and creatures do what they must do to survive.”

  In her peripheral vision, Mia could see Angelyne pinned in place where she had lurched toward the moonstone, her arms outstretched. Zaga held up a hand, and both Angie’s arms fell limp at her sides.

  “You will leave the stone in my care.”

  Angelyne’s mouth went slack. Her eyes widened, though her body stayed immobile; Zaga must have released her face.

  “Please,” Angie whispered. “You swore you wouldn’t take it from me.”

  “You have brought the Dujia a great gift with this ‘enkindling,’ as you call it. We have never seen the likes of it before. But you are self-taught. You have skipped over certain bui
lding blocks. For example: how to know when someone is lying.”

  She appraised the Rose sisters as if pleased with her handiwork.

  “Your heart believes you cannot move, and so you cannot move. Your body does not want to move, because it wants what I want. Do you know why I can control you so completely? I am using your own magic against you. And your magic is stronger than you think.”

  Though her body was motionless, Mia’s mind was wheeling. So this was what it felt like on the inside of enkindlement. It was terrifying. She’d spent her whole life feeling more connected to her brain than to her body, never realizing how much she took for granted having autonomy over her own anatomy, her own flesh.

  Zaga waved a hand and the saliva began to seep back into Mia’s mouth. She felt her jaw unhitch, her face loosen as blood flushed once again into her cheeks. She ran her tongue over her teeth, feeling a deep sense of unease at how strange the texture, how foreign. It was a hideous feeling, being invited by someone else to reenter your own body.

  “You never wanted my sister or me, did you?” The words inched out of Mia slowly, painfully. “You wanted the moonstone.”

  Zaga walked to the nearest fireplace to warm her injured hand.

  “Your mother was the best healer I knew. She was always far more talented than I was.” She gestured toward Mia. “You have the same gift.”

  Mia felt a gentle tug in her neck, a slight easing of the muscles. She was able to swivel her head half an inch to catch Angelyne’s eye. Her sister’s face was a mix of fury and regret. So Zaga hadn’t been honest with her, either. They had both been puppets in a grander scheme.

  “I loved your mother,” Zaga began, “but so did everyone. Wynna sparkled brighter than most. I wanted to steal her away to a place we would be safe, to make her mine and never have to share her with anyone. But I could feel I was losing her.

  “My magic was my only hope. She knew I was a better Dujia, because I had spent so many years alone, honing my gifts. So I taught her. Then, when she started to lose interest, I began breaking the laws of magic. I thought if I could make her worry about me, she would love me more. But I could see in her eyes she loved me less.

  “So I took drastic measures. Picked fights. I craved her attention, and her anger was better than her neglect. I poked at her, found the places of her private hurt and shame and exploited them. It drove me mad how distant she could be, so I hurt her. At least if there was hurt, I knew there was love.

  “And then one night, I pushed her to the limit. She coiled and struck back. She was angry, and when she grabbed me by the wrist, her anger shunted through my veins.”

  Zaga touched her chest softly, as if the memory still lived in the flesh. “When she realized what she’d done, she brought me back from the brink of death. Wynna was always a gifted healer. But a part of my body died that she could not revive. She was consumed by guilt. She said she could no longer be with me, that we were poison to each other. I told her she could redeem herself in only one way.”

  “Marry my father,” Mia said. She was unable to see him at the feasting table, but she thought she could detect the cold frost of his fear.

  Zaga’s faced was rimmed in shadow. “I have borne the wound of that night ever since, and not just on my skin. When she left me, she destroyed my heart. Love died inside me. I could not love anyone. Not even my own flesh and blood.”

  Mia was dimly aware of Pilar at the feasting table. A new sensation drummed in her ears, neither hot nor cold. More like a resounding crack, a hard shatter, then a gust of thin, papery air. Mia wondered if this were the sound of a heart breaking.

  “Why didn’t you just come for the moonstone?” she said. It took great effort to work her mandible around the words. “Why did you embroil us in your petty jealousies and revenge? Pilar could have stolen the stone from around Angie’s neck without ever having to aim an arrow at my heart.”

  Zaga let the pendant slip through her fingers, where it dangled off the chain.

  “You are both your mother’s daughters. Angelyne, you have a great gift. You can stop a heart without a single touch. You have taught yourself to channel your feelings, your sadness and your rage. You have used your heart to burnish your magic to a fine gleam.”

  She turned to Mia. “You have fought your magic, but it rises up in you still. You can enthrall, you can unblood, and you can heal as beautifully as your mother. Your mind tells you all the things you should never be, but your heart tells you who you are.”

  Zaga stood tall, majestic, the lloira stone gripped tightly in her fist. “Your mother’s legacy is powerful, and it belongs to all Dujia. We are a sisterhood. But we demand allegiance from our sisters. Loyalty. Love. Sacrifice.”

  Mia could feel the magic trickling out of her marrow as the energy began to flow back into her fingers and toes. But as it trickled out, dread pooled in the cracks.

  “You will have to make a choice,” Zaga said. “But before you do, your mother owes me one final recompense.” She beckoned to Angelyne and Mia. “Come.”

  She turned and faced the feasting table, pointing a long finger at Quin. “You will come with me as well.”

  As he rose from his chair, fresh terror bloomed in Mia’s chest.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

  Zaga smiled. “To pay your mother a visit.”

  Chapter 60

  Nothing

  THE CRYPT WAS QUIET, as crypts are wont to be.

  They filed in one after the other, Quin, then Mia, then Angelyne, with Zaga coming last. If she was worried about them running away, she needn’t be. Most of the enkindle had burned off, and Mia’s calf muscles were humming, aching to run. But where would she go? Her sister had betrayed her, and Zaga had betrayed them all. Every map Mia had ever clung to—even the one that promised safe haven—was now a blank page.

  Mia’s heart plummeted when she saw her mother’s tomb. She wanted to kneel down and draw her fingers over the grooves of the snow plum tree, say hello to the tiny bird peering up at the moon.

  Zaga gestured toward Wynna’s tomb.

  “Even in death, your mother is going to help me. But first, a test for you, Angelyne. You have done well. Very well. But I must know where your true loyalties lie.”

  She nodded toward Quin. “Enthrall him.”

  Mia stared at Quin. She tried to convey, in her eyes, how sorry she was for everything. His parents and sister were dead, and he himself had been wounded, controlled, and nearly killed. He didn’t deserve that. The prince was gentle and good. She had been wrong—so wrong—about him.

  Angie narrowed her eyes at Zaga, as if she were deep in thought.

  “If I do this,” she said, “if I enthrall the prince, will you give me the moonstone?”

  “If you do not do this,” Zaga said, “I will kill Mia while you watch.”

  Mia sensed the fear in her sister dancing with shame and regret. Surprising, since she had been ready to watch Pilar pierce her heart with an arrow.

  “Don’t do it, Ange,” she said quietly. “Not because of me. Don’t do it to Quin. Don’t take away his choice. Remember how Father used to say magic relies on a cruel, unruly heart? He wasn’t wrong; magic rises up when people commit cruel, unruly acts. But if we do the same—if we act out of cruelty—then we are no better.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, because Angie’s face hardened. “Haven’t you been listening? You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not anymore.”

  Angelyne didn’t even have to touch him. Without a word, Quin stood, scooped her face into his hands, and kissed her.

  Mia wanted more than anything to look away, but she was transfixed. His long fingers roved through her sister’s cascading tresses, fingertips pattering down her shoulders like a warm summer rain. The kiss started off sweet, then hungry, two bodies clasped together by desire. She knew it wasn’t real, but it still hurt.

  Mia closed her eyes and tried to conjure up the river, the feeling of his smooth, wet b
ody pressed into hers. Whatever that was, it was real.

  “There,” her sister said, and Mia’s eyes flew open. Quin’s cheeks were rosy, his mouth too pink. Angie dabbed at her swollen lips.

  “Good,” Zaga said. “Your talents please me. I see they please your future husband as well. A beautiful, talented, powerful wife. What more could a king want?”

  Husband? Wife? The final piece of the puzzle snapped into place: Angelyne was meant to take her place. Mia could practically see the news spreading through the kingdom: King Ronan, Queen Rowena, and Princess Karri had all been ruthlessly slaughtered, killed by Gwyrach Rebellion. With Zaga holding the puppet strings, Quin would become king of Glas Ddir, Angie his blushing bride.

  Quin would be trapped in the very life he hated. And, in a strange way, history would repeat itself: Angelyne would lock herself into a farce of a marriage, enthralling a man she didn’t love.

  As for Mia Rose, she would be a footnote in her own story. If they didn’t kill her, they would throw her back into the dungeons, or—worse—use her body as an instrument, a way for Dujia to hone their magical powers against one of their own. She would be sacrificed to the thing she had always loved: science. But she would no longer be the scientist. She would become the experiment.

  Once again she searched herself for the fury she knew should be coursing through her. But all she felt was grief.

  Mia’s voice was low, desperate. “Angelyne, listen. I was wrong to belittle you for wanting the things I didn’t want. There’s nothing wrong with longing for a husband who loves you, or children, or a closetful of pretty gowns. But this isn’t that life. This is a travesty of a marriage—a husband you must enthrall every hour of every day, just like our mother did. It’s a mockery of the life you want. You deserve so much more.”

  Angelyne wavered. Mia saw it in her face—the wanting, the ache.

  Then Zaga’s voice sliced into them with deadly precision.

  “It is as I suspected. As long as you two have each other, you will never choose anyone else. Your heart will belong to your sister over your sisterhood.” She pressed her hands together. “There is only room in the river kingdom for one queen. The choice I leave up to you.”