Princess of Thorns (26 page)

Every yearning note wrung from the fiddle’s strings vibrates inside me, making my blood rush and my breath ache in my lungs. I have seduced more girls than I can count on my hands and feet, and I’ve even imagined myself in love once before, but I’ve never cared whether a girl said yes or no as much as I do tonight. Knowing my life depends on Aurora’s answer is part of it, but not even close to all. She is already my dear friend, but by the end of the night she might also be the girl I’ll spend my life with, the girl I’ll make a family with. A family where people love and trust each other, where children are treasured, not cursed and thrown away, and no one has to pretend to be something they’re not.

The thought is thrilling and … terrifying. Together we could be magical … or a disaster … or maybe a magical disaster, I’m not sure which. I only know I want the chance to find out if this is real love, the kind that lasts after the first rush is gone, the kind that makes a home a place to find refuge instead of a prison to escape.

“What is this, Niklaas?” Aurora’s whisper is so soft I can barely hear her over the rustling of the trees.

“It’s called dancing,” I say, so anxious that the palm I’ve placed at her waist begins to sweat. “I think we’re pretty good at it.” I draw her closer, gaining confidence when she doesn’t pull away.

“Niklaas …” Her hand squeezes mine. “I have to tell you something.”

“What?” My stomach pitches. What if I’m wrong? What if she doesn’t feel what I’m feeling? What if I’ve tricked myself into believing she cares in order to soothe my pride, to make it all right to accept her offer of marriage and save my own skin?

“I …” She looks up, the torment in her eyes making me forget where to step.

We stop dancing at the same moment, but neither one of us pulls away.

“What’s wrong? Just tell me.” I firm up my expression, making sure she can’t see how deep it will cut if she says something to hurt me.

I’ve been covering hurt with a smile my entire life. I can do it for another eight days. After that, it won’t matter. I’m sure a swan knows nothing about what it’s like to long for a proud father, or a mother who’d lived, or a future without any dark certainties in it and a life without the ending written in stone.

“What?” Impatience colors my tone. “Why do you look so miserable? Please tell me, because I don’t understand it, especially when I’m breaking my back to be charming.”

She frowns. “I didn’t realize it was so torturous for you to be charming.”

“Only with you, Princess.”

Anger flickers in her eyes, but that’s just fine. I’ll take anger. Any emotion is preferable to her pity.

“Why? Because I’m like a sister to you?” she asks, dropping my hand.

“No!” I throw up my arms in frustration. “I’ve been trying to—”

“Trying to forget how nauseating it is to put your hands on me?” Her eyes glitter as she reaches out, slowly fisting her hand in my shirt. “Is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.” I glance down, eyeing her clenched fist. My head tells me to prepare to be taken to the ground, but my gut tells me something else. It tells me Aurora wants me as much as I want her, and the only reason we fight is because the energy simmering between us needs a place to go. It tells me to take a risk, to quit being a coward and
show her
how wrong she is.

“You didn’t say it,” she says. “But I’m not a—”

Her words end in a sharp intake of breath as I wrap my arm around her waist. A moment later, my fingers are in her hair, sending pins flying as I fist my hand, making sure she can’t pull away and flip me onto my back.

“Stop telling me what I’m feeling,” I say, leaning in to whisper the words into the hollow beneath her ear.

This close, she smells like lilac soap and the flowers in her hair, with an undercurrent of something sweeter, like melted sugar, and she feels … She feels like a piece of the Land Beyond, like she was made to fit against me, to fill every empty place, to match my strength with her own, tempered by a softness that makes my head spin. I flex the arm around her waist until every inch of her is pressed tight to every inch of me, until I can feel her stomach trembling against mine and her breath in my lungs and there can be no doubt that I’m far from repulsed by her.

She shivers and her arms wrap around my neck.“Niklaas,” she whispers. “I …”

“Don’t talk.” I press a kiss to her throat, feeling her pulse racing beneath my lips, its rhythm confirming that her blood is rushing as fast as mine.

“Niklaas wait, I—”

I slip my hand from her hair, trapping her jaw between my fingers as I fit my mouth to hers, cutting her off with a kiss. She moans, a panicked sound that surprises me as it vibrates across my skin, but when I part my mouth, she parts hers, too, her lips gliding over mine with a ragged sigh. She doesn’t pull away, and after a moment I regain the courage to angle my head, brushing soft against softer, breath held, then rushing out, warming the whisper of space between her mouth and mine.

A whisper is too much.

I never imagined it would be like this, never thought a kiss could make my body feel as electric as the air before a thunderstorm, make my chest ache and my heart pound and my soul feel too giddy for my body to contain it.

“Are you okay?” she asks, her lips teasing against mine.

“I’m better than okay,” I whisper, sliding my hands down to grip her hips. “I’m perfect.
You’re
perfect.”

And then I kiss her again, soft becoming hard, breath coming faster, until all our hesitation vanishes. She buries her fingers in my hair and I lift her into the air, drawing her up my body until her feet dangle and our lips are even with each other and the kiss grows deeper, until her breath is my breath and her taste fills my mouth and there is nothing but her, nothing but how much I want her.

How much I want to please her, to do … whatever … it takes …

Whatever … anything …

Anything at all …

My head spins sickly. I pull in a breath between kisses, but it doesn’t help. The ground is tilting beneath my feet, the wind whipping in from all sides, battering my body until I can’t tell which way is up. My heart lurches and my arms tremble, sending Aurora sliding to the ground as I grow too weak to hold her.

“Niklaas?” she asks, panic in her voice. “Niklaas? What’s wrong?”

I try to tell her that I’m okay, but my lips won’t move, and when I reach for her I stumble and fall. I land in the grass, sticks jabbing into my knees, but I barely feel them. I am outside my body and inside it at the same time, torn apart like a fruit from its peel, my mind and heart and soul screaming though my mouth refuses to utter a word.

I am terrified and ripped and bleeding and broken and then suddenly the suffering parts of myself are gone, tossed away into the far beyond and I am as peaceful as a shell filled with the echo of the sea. I am a vessel, calm and empty, waiting to be filled.

I think that I should be afraid, but I’m not and so the thought vanishes, swept away with the rest of my unnecessary thoughts and feelings. I can’t seem to feel anything aside from the overwhelming need to be with Aurora, to serve her in whatever way I am able. To show her that I …

I … Who am I?
I wonder, the notion of self confounding in a way it has never been before. I’ve always been so sure of who I am, but now … I am here with her. She is here with me. That’s all that matters. That’s all that will ever matter. The thought soothes me, banishing some of the dizziness, making it easier to breathe.

“I’m sorry.” Aurora falls to the ground and wraps her arms around me, hugging me tight. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Of course,” I say, voice still weak, though the world has stopped spinning. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

“Yes, there is,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “I’ve done a terrible thing.”

“No, you haven’t.” I take her hand in mine, wanting nothing more than to comfort her, to make her happy. It’s all that seems important, the only thing worth living for.

“Yes, I have,” she says, then adds in a choked voice, “Don’t argue with me.”

“All right,” I agree, tucking a lock of hair back into the arrangement on her head.

“And don’t touch me.”

I drop my hands to my lap with a smile. It feels good to do as she asks, so good I can scarcely remember why I ever wanted to quarrel with her.

She shakes her head, her throat working as she fights to swallow. “It’s true, then. I was hoping, but I … I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, love.”

My grin is so wide it feels like it will break my jaw. “I love you, too, Aurora.”

“I know,” she says, sadness in her voice that I can’t understand. I can’t understand it, but it makes me sad, too, and when she begins to cry it feels as if the world has been plunged into darkness. I want nothing more than to comfort her, but she told me not to touch her and so I sit and watch, tears rolling silently from my eyes until she finally stops crying and swipes the damp from her face.

“Come now, don’t you cry.” She brushes the tears from my face with a trembling finger before standing and reaching a hand down to me. “We’ll ask the village priest to marry us as soon as the lamps are lit. At least something good will come of this.”

I hesitate until she sighs and shakes her head. “You can touch me. I’m sorry, I’d … forgotten.”

“It’s all right.” My sadness vanishes as she leads me across the field. I follow her through the tall grass, utterly at peace. No misery can touch me so long as my love’s hand is in mine and she is happy with me and I am doing as she wishes.

We hurry past the dancers to where Gettel and Kat are playing juggle sticks with some of the village children. Aurora squeezes my hand as we approach the healer, sending a wave of contentment surging through my body, rushing through the empty space left behind after the other parts of me were cut away, filling me with joy.

I smile as Aurora explains that we want to be married and asks the healer to bear witness to our joining, but Gettel isn’t looking at Aurora. She’s looking at me, staring with a horrified expression that would trouble me if I cared what anyone but Aurora thought of me. But I don’t, and so I smile. I smile until she sends the children away and begins to shout at Aurora, demanding to know what’s she’s done, demanding she release me from whatever enchantment she’s worked upon me.

I move forward, ready to defend my love, but she stops me with a hand on my arm and a softly whispered, “No, Niklaas, don’t interfere,” and I step back.

I listen as Aurora explains a fairy curse she’s under and what it has done to me, but none of it makes sense until she swears that she did what she did so that we could be married, so she could save me from my own curse. Mention of our marriage makes me grin again. I can’t wait to be her husband, to be by her side, forever and always.

“You can’t marry him now,” Gettel says, anger and sadness thick in her voice.

“Yes, I can,” Aurora says. “I must! If I don’t, he only has eight days left.”

“You don’t understand, child.” Gettel wipes at her eyes, sweeping away tears. “A true marriage can only occur when two souls freely choose to bind themselves together. Niklaas isn’t free. He’s incapable of making his own choices.”

“But he can speak the vows,” Aurora says. “He can—”

“Even if you find a priest willing to perform the ritual with him in that state,” Gettel says with another sad look in my direction, “the marriage will be invalid in the eyes of the gods.”

“Damn the gods,” Aurora snaps. “I don’t believe in the gods, and even if I—”

“Believe or don’t believe,” Gettel says, her tone harder than it was before. “There
is
a force that connects us all, binding us together. It is from that force that all magic arises, and the laws of that magic are absolute. Niklaas’s curse can not be lifted unless his will is his own.”

“That’s not true.” Aurora shakes her head. “It can’t be.”

“It is true,” Gettel says. “No one knows what it will take to banish a curse better than the one who placed it.”

She lifts her arm, touching two fingers to my forehead, throwing open a door in my memory. Images from the night I met the witch in the shrine flood my mind. In each one of them it is Gettel’s face that looks up at me, Gettel’s voice that assures me there is a way to change my fate.

“It’s you,” I say. “The witch, the one who took my armor.” I know I should be furious for the trick she played on me, outraged by the lies she’s told, but any emotion not tied to Aurora’s happiness is impossible to muster.

“What?” Aurora’s eyes widen as glances between us. “What do you mean? Why didn’t he know that before?”

“I banished the memory of my face so that Niklaas would trust me when we met again.” Gettel turns to me. “And I took your armor to keep you from being spotted by your father’s guards on your way here. My magic told me you would come to me in Frysk, bringing a girl who would break your curse with you. I wanted that for you. That’s why I went to Kanvasola. To help you.”

“Help him?” Aurora shouts. “You cursed him!”

“If I hadn’t cursed him, his father would have found someone else to do it. At least I was merciful. Or tried to be.” Gettel rubs her forehead with a shaking hand. “But now, it’s too late. Niklaas will be transformed, like his brothers.”

“No.” Aurora shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.”

“As I said, it doesn’t matter what you believe; it’s the truth.” Gettel’s shoulders slump and suddenly she looks every one of her sixty-two years. “In eight days’ time, Niklaas will become a swan. There is nothing anyone can do to save him now.”

“But there must be.” Aurora begins to cry again, filling me with despair. I can’t help but feel what she feels. It’s as if I have no heart of my own, only an echo of her heart, reverberating in the cavernous space within my chest. “I can’t have ruined him for nothing. I can’t!”

“If only you’d spoken to me, I could have warned you.” Gettel pulls her shawl tighter. “He loved you. He would have realized the truth before it was too late. You only had to have faith.”

“I wasn’t raised to have faith in love,” Aurora says, fingertips digging into her temples. “I was raised to have faith in the blood that blessed me and the power in my own two hands.”