Dreamer of Briarfell: A Retelling of Sleeping Beauty (Fairytales of Folkshore Book 7)

by Lucy Tempest

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Robin knelt by me, staring in horror at my right leg where it stopped above the knee.

  “The last time I saw something like this, there was a lot more blood and screaming involved,” he choked, the sight of my missing leg seeming to disturb him even more than when my arm had vanished. “Somehow, this is even worse.”

  The panic that had risen within me like a wave, crashed and dissipated at his distress. “I guess this trip is costing me an arm and a leg.”

  Robin’s whole face crumpled as he groaned at my attempt to make light of it.

  Will turned green like the bark of the pink-leaved trees in the distance. “The medic called it—a trans-formal amputation?”

  “Trans-femoral,” Robin said, his expression one of drowning helplessness. “Can you stand?”

  I tried to will myself upright, and couldn’t.

  Robin exploded to his feet and ran away, yelling over his back, “I’ll bring Amabel.”

  “I forgot all about the horses!” Will cried out.

  Ashen-faced, Meira pointed ahead, her gaze fixed on me.

  Our horses seemed to have long found their way out, were grazing in the distance. If we’d paid them any attention, we could have followed them out, saving ourselves the time that was eating away at me. The time I’d purposely wasted in my reluctance to find the Spring Prince.

  Robin ran back with Amabel galloping beside him, and she kneeled so I could drag myself onto her back.

  Before I could get my frazzled thoughts together, the others mounted their horses, and we began our foray into the Spring Court.

  None of us spoke, thankfully, since I couldn’t hear any more about how I reminded them of the soldiers the war had maimed. I was nothing like those brave men who’d defended our land. I was the useless girl who was disappearing under a petty curse, while unable to find the right words to break it.

  Meira finally broke the silence. “Since this is the time the Wild Hunt use the caves to go to the Folkshore, if we keep on this path, we ought to bump into them. I just hope we don’t go too far east, as I’d really like to avoid being spotted anywhere near the capital.”

  “Why not?” Will asked her.

  Meira’s lips worked nervously. “King Theseus would have executed me for staying behind to help Fairuza without his approval. The Spring Queen would probably turn me into a frog or a butterfly, while keeping my mind intact, to punish me for altering her curse and interfering with her will.”

  Yet she was braving such a terrible fate and wading deeper into said queen’s territory, all to help me.

  Weighed down by guilt for ever blaming her for any of this, I fell behind as she and Will galloped ahead. Robin hung back, keeping me company.

  And I couldn’t take it anymore. Just having him so close was killing me faster than this curse.

  I had to tell him.

  As if reading my mind, Robin said, “You were going to tell me something in the cave, but you stopped. Don’t stop now. You can tell me anything, Fairuza.”

  He was right. I’d told him everything I’d never dared tell anyone else, including myself.

  Then as I met his fervent gaze, a new hope blossomed within me. He cared, deeply. Maybe more than I thought?

  What if what he felt for me was enough? If it was, and he broke the curse, I would make sure he was free to do whatever he wished afterwards…

  “ROBIN!” Will’s bellow splintered out our charged moment. He was galloping down the hill towards us, shouting maniacally, “I found them! I found the Wild Hunt!”

  Then he swung his horse around, and thundered up the hill once more.

  Robin’s face split into a bright grin of relief. “Looks like all our worries are almost over!”

  Any thought of blurting out the thoughts roiling in my mind vanished as he turned away, towing Amabel in a speedy gallop up the hill.

  As we rode up to the others, I saw Meira put a hand over her mouth, sharing Will’s stunned expression.

  “What do you see?” Robin called as we approached.

  As soon as we were beside them, Will pointed downhill at a group of riders heading towards a lake. All but one had fantastical characteristics, such as blue or green hair, massive yellow eyes, bird wings, or horns.

  The odd one out was a smaller, slighter figure in hunting gear, wearing a red hooded cloak with a quiver of arrows slung across her back.

  “She…she…” Robin trailed off into speechless shock.

  Will found his own voice as he tore down towards the Wild Hunt, shouting, “MARIAN!”

  The rider in the red hood stopped, whipping her head in our direction. That was all it took for Robin to regain his senses and follow Will, yelling her name, too.

  “What’s going on? Why are they upset?” I asked Meira.

  “We came here to rescue a kidnapped girl,” Meira said quietly. “And hopefully strong-arm her captor into marrying you. But she doesn’t look like his captive. She looks like his companion.”

  “But this makes no sense.”

  “We’re about to find out what it means.”

  Meira led the way down as we galloped behind our friends. Marian and the blue-haired fairy man rode to meet us halfway.

  When we came within feet of them, Robin dismounted mid-gallop and Marian did the same, running to each other.

  They reunited in a hug, and I felt my heartstrings snap.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  This was it.

  This was the real reason I hadn’t wanted to leave that cave.

  Because I hadn’t wanted to see this moment, and live its agony. This was why I hadn’t been able to tell him he was the one for me. After all my rationalizations, with all my longings, all my desperation, I couldn’t find the right words to ask him to save me. Because I couldn’t bear to rob him of his chance to follow his heart. Because, all along, I’d felt he’d been someone else’s. Someone who’d been lost to him.

  But he’d found her. The girl he’d spent a year looking for, whom he’d known for years, and Leander had told me he’d been promised to. The girl who, by the looks of things, had more in common with him than I ever could.

  And more than anything, he could hold her.

  When I couldn’t bear witnessing their reunion anymore, Will mercifully came between them.

  He pounced on Marian, gripping her by the shoulders, shaking her, spitting with fury. “What is going on? What are you doing here?”

  Marian broke free, throwing off her hood, unveiling a mass of glorious brown curls that framed a heart-shaped face with large, almond-shaped dark eyes. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you! We thought that this—thing had kidnapped you!” Will stabbed a finger at the blue-haired fairy.

  The huge, handsome man gave a small bow of his head. “This thing is Prince Guidion, leader of the Wild Hunt, Heir of Spring. You must be Willoughby.”

  “Nice to see you know of me,” Will spat. “Now I want to know why you took my sister.”

  Prince Guidion shrugged elegantly. “Because she asked me to.”

  “Asked you…?” Will became shrill in his anger. “Why?”

  Before Guidion could answer, Robin touched his shoulder and pointed at me, whispering things I couldn’t make out. Nodding, Guidion walked away with him.

  Will tried to storm after them, but Marian dragged him back. “You deserted your post because you thought I was carried off by the Wild Hunt? What do you think I am, Willoughby Scarlett? A lamb?”

  “You disappeared when the Wild Hunt was riding through our part of the Folkshore! What else was I supposed to think?”

  Marian rolled her eyes at him. “Next time I’ll leave a note.”

  “Next time…!” Will went as red as their cloaks as he launched himself at her.

  Robin came back in time to hold him back, but he looked almost as angry with her. “We thought they could be torturing you, or worse. So yes, a note would have been a good idea!”


  Marian started looking bewildered. “I thought you both were at the frontline. I didn’t think of leaving word, because I would have been back in a couple of weeks, anyway.”

  “A couple of weeks?” Robin gaped at her. “Marian, you’ve been gone for over a year.”

  “A year?” Realization dawned on her blanching face, followed by guilt as she winced at her brother. “Time. Faerie. I forgot…”

  “You forgot?” Will practically shrieked.

  Marian retreated, holding her hands up. “I was in a hurry when I spotted Guidion and his people riding through our part of Arbore.”

  I was too caught up in their reunion, and the fallout I was crumbling under, I didn’t notice Prince Guidion coming to stand by me.

  “Your friend says my aunt is responsible for your condition,” Guidion said, sounding amused. “I didn’t know she made half-formed ghosts these days.”

  I didn’t know if he was trying to be funny, or if he was being his irritating fairy self. I couldn’t care less. Robin was talking to Marian with everything I had deluded myself into thinking was reserved for me. Open ease and familiarity, pleasure at seeing her mixed with genuine worry. But he could hold her hands in his.

  Meira started singing my praises to Guidion, listing what Leander and court advisors had fed all my failed suitors, mostly what the six other fairies had gifted me with at the celebration of my birth. Basically, traits I had no hand in, and were, as Robin had said, ornamental. I doubted anything about me could interest a fairy prince. And I wasn’t interested in him.

  I had eyes only for the two figures in matching hooded cloaks and hunting gear. I was deaf to all other voices beyond their argument.

  Marian’s voice was rising. “I couldn’t wait until the Wild Hunt returned the next year.”

  “Why?” Will exclaimed. “What’s so important about these fairies you couldn’t wait for our return?”

  “This!” Marian tugged down her cloak and collar, baring three angry-looking claw marks stretching from beneath her ear to her shoulder.

  “What is this?” Will hissed. “Would you stop being vague and tell us already?”

  Marian rolled beseeching eyes to the skies. “Use your head, Will! That night I left was a full moon, and what was I patrolling for? Predators. Well, one got me before I could get it. But instead of killing me, it infected me.”

  “No,” Will gasped, looking sick. “No.”

  “That’s why I came with the Wild Hunt,” Marian said with a determined set to her jaw. “They said if I rode with them on an important hunt, they’d help me find the werewolf that scratched me. Once they do, and before the infection sets in, and it’s too late for me, I’m going to track it down, and I’m going to kill it.”

  Werewolf? Like that horrific Lycaon.

  “We’ll come with you,” Robin said firmly, his tone final. “We’ll help you, just as we would have from the start had we been there.”

  And that was the final nail in my coffin.

  I couldn’t ask him to help me now. Because he would. He would tear himself apart trying to save us both. And he would never live for himself.

  That was my fate, but it shouldn’t be his. I wouldn’t let it be.

  He was the one for me, but I wasn’t the one for him.

  Now he’d do what he’d come here to do, save Marian—and marry her. Because he loved her. He would have a free, fulfilling life with her.

  But for him to do that, I had to remove myself from the equation.

  “Are you listening to me?” Prince Guidion snapped irritably.

  Staring down at him, like he was as see-through as I was becoming, I rasped, “Listening never did anything but waste my time, my whole life.”

  As he opened his mouth to answer, I urged Amabel to gallop away, feeling the devouring numbness starting to consume my remaining limbs.

  Meira galloped after me. “Where are you going? Fairuza! Fairuza, stop! This is your last chance!”

  But her voice sounded so far away, like I had waded into a tunnel, leaving her at its threshold. The edges of my vision followed suit, dimming, becoming unfocused as I felt the tug in my center.

  My other arm vanished, breaking my hold on Amabel, sending me flying off her back and out of Faerie.

  It happened almost instantaneously, yet felt like a torturous descent. Then the Underworld emerged all around, with its eerie, green river coursing beside me, and dark, glittering ground and walls encompassing me.

  The Horned God was there to receive me this time, the incandescent whiteness of his skull, and the silver of his bident the only stark brightness against our gloomy surroundings.

  He waved, and I was whole again.

  Tears flooded my eyes, sizzling like acid as I shook and sobbed, stuck in place, watching him approach.

  My breath hitched, my heart hurt, everything burned.

  But I knew what would happen. What I should do and say, to leave this existence with some dignity.

  I forced my shaking legs to straighten, my quivering chin to rise as I faced him and said, “I’m ready to die now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Death stared down at me with endlessly dark, hollow sockets.

  His nearness became more nauseatingly terrifying with each passing second.

  I somehow held my ground.

  I still jumped and moaned when he spoke, his deep, calm voice permeating everything inside and around me in a wave of terror and despair. “No, you aren’t.”

  I shuddered so hard I felt I might break apart. “Wh–what do you mean?”

  “Giving in to your fate is not the same as accepting it. That requires peace. You aren’t happy to leave the upper world, and you’d do anything to return. But you didn’t.”

  “I had no choice. There was no use fighting your pull anymore.”

  “You did have a choice. You had a chance. The chance. But you chose to let it slip, chose to die.” He started closing the distance between us, footsteps a slow, ominous, staccato echoing in the cavernous hall. “Why?”

  It would be pointless to run. There was nowhere I could go now.

  But he got too close, and the sensations emanating from him, of sinister magic, of death and darkness, weakened my resolve, snapping the last thread of nerve I had left.

  I wept harder, ceasing the fight to appear dignified. My heart hardened in my chest, as if leaking its blood out of my eyes, desiccating into a dusty husk, filled with my last memory of Robin. Of him holding Marian, pledging his help to her, forgetting I was ever there.

  But Death was waiting for an explanation.

  So I gave it to him. “Robin spent so long being pulled off his path, living to help others, fighting for everyone’s well-being and happiness but his own. He’d been deprived of his birthright, and now may never get it back, never do what he wants, what he should, because of the other part of his legacy. But he finally found Marian, and she needs him. They can now go on one last trip together, where he would save her, then they can spend their lives together. If I had told him the truth of my need, he would have dropped everything to help me. He would have forgotten about his own needs. He would have thrown away his very life. And I couldn't do that to him. I love him enough I’d rather die than see him unhappy.”

  He cocked his head in a curious tilt. “Noble of you to put his happiness over your survival. But I’m afraid your selfless sacrifice was in vain.”

  The tears stopped abruptly, as did my slow plummet into infinite misery. “What? Why?”

  He pointed to the glowing green river, and steam rose in thick, swirling clouds. In their midst, a portal formed. Within it, images began to take shape.

  It was Amabel, galloping among familiar greenery. A hooded figure rode on her back, his green cloak billowing behind him as they tore down a yellow path bordered by massive blue mushrooms.

  Robin was riding back to Arbore!

  “What is he doing?” I cried out.

  “Your boy thinks there’s still time to save you.�
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  “He’s not my…” I choked up, not daring to blink as I watched the landscape shift around Robin from the in-between of the fairy path, into the field where we’d embarked on our trip.

  The next images showed him approaching the castle in Briarfell. The field of thorns had impossibly worsened since I’d last seen it.

  Spellbound by the sight of him riding back to me, I stepped into the river, needing to be closer to the portal, ignoring the burn of the frothing water. “How did he know that he could save me?”

  “Does it matter?” I felt Death’s heart-bursting approach, and heard the metallic thunk of his staff hitting the riverbank. “He’s too late, anyway.”

  Too late. These had to be the cruelest words ever spoken.

  The sliver of hope Robin had uncovered within me slipped from my grasp, and I waded deeper, not caring if it meant I wouldn’t get out again. I needed to tell him not to risk going through this lethal barricade again, to go back to Marian, to give up on me.

  But the portal kept receding, keeping his image out of reach. All I could do was watch as he dismounted from Amabel, then maneuvered through the black briar expanse that was engulfing my body’s resting place. He weaved through the labyrinth of glinting thorns, pain hissing from his lips as they stabbed at him. I cried out at each injury, feeling their agony in my own flesh.

  The darkness of the Horned God bore down on me, but I no longer cared. I was rooted by my worry for Robin as he emerged on the other side of the lethal barricade, his enchanted cloak intact but stained with blood.

  Not giving himself time to catch his breath, he leapt to climb up the castle wall. The images faded, and before I could cry out, they came back as he rolled himself through the broken window of my tower, and ran to my body.

  He tore off his gloves, shoved the canopy aside, and dropped by my body, panting, “I’m here. Fairuza, I’m here. Tell me you are too, please.”

  “I’m not there!” I choked through the thorns filling my throat.