Princess of Thorns

  I’m not a child, of course, but I might as well be. I’ve allowed myself to be drawn into danger like a babe who grips the finger of anyone who reaches into its crib. I’m not safe here. I feel the danger lurking beneath Lord Heven’s silken promises. I didn’t miss Crimsin’s second warning. I understood what she meant when she mentioned the northwest swimming hole. She meant that—no matter how at ease she seems—I am in danger, and that I must flee to her aunt in Frysk at the first opportunity.

  The opportunity doesn’t come.

  Even after we emerge from the tunnels, the trail is a perilous thing, a dusty scratch between a rock wall and a cliff so sheer the world seems to disappear beyond the brown grass tufted at the edge of the trail. There is nowhere to run. Even if I were to abandon Button and attempt to escape up the mountain, the exiles could easily pluck me from the rock wall before I climbed too high.

  I have a feeling they would, too. Lord Heven has stayed close. Very close. So close Niklaas and I haven’t had the chance to exchange a word without being overheard.

  I long to ask him what he’s feeling, if his gut is screaming for him to run the way mine is, but I can’t even shoot him a look without being observed. And so I ride and smile and do my best to pretend I am among friends, and wait. …

  We reach the settlement—a gathering of cottages on the far side of a waterfall that rushes over the cliff with dizzying abandon—by midafternoon. The exiles cut off the flow of the water so that we may pass over the slick stones of the riverbed, but I’m too far back to see how the feat was managed, and there is no way even a sturdy horse could pass through the rushing water without being swept over the side. Once the water is allowed to resume its flow—again via means I can’t determine—Niklaas and I are truly caught. Trapped. The settlement is built on a promontory cut off from the land around it by the river on one side and sheer drops into a cavernous gorge on every other. There will be no way out except the way we came. Should the exiles decide to allow it.

  I’m careful to conceal my rising panic as Niklaas and I are shown about the settlement and assigned rooms for the night. I smile and make polite chatter throughout the feast, and put on a show of being grateful for the armed men Lord Heven assures me will be ready to march on Mercar within a few days’ time. I don’t allow myself to fully experience my dread until I am alone in my room long after dark.

  I lie fully clothed on my mattress, shredding a piece of paper from the writing table into pieces, wondering when the men in the common yard will go to bed and it will finally be safe to slip across the settlement to Niklaas.

  They couldn’t have put our rooms farther apart. I am in a spacious suite at the back of Lord Heven’s home, while Niklaas sleeps in a cabin three fields up the mountain, where the unmarried men live in small homes perched along the cliffs, separate from the family dwellings on the main level of the settlement. The exiles are purposefully keeping Niklaas and me separated. I wasn’t even seated near him at the banquet.

  I was placed to the right of Lord Heven, while Niklaas dined at the far end of the table, near Crimsin and a mob of giggling girls. Crimsin was dripping all over him like melted candle wax by the end of the meal. If I hadn’t felt the truth in her warning, I would have believed she was a girl without a care in the world aside from convincing a handsome prince to warm her bed.

  Warm her bed.

  I wish Niklaas were warming my bed. It’s freezing in this room, even with all my clothes on and a quilt pulled up to my chin. I haven’t felt this chilled since I visited Jor in the mountains two Harmontynes ago, when a blizzard trapped the mountain Fey and the island Fey together in the great hall and an epic forty-eight hours of drunken gaming ensued. Jor lost his entire allowance in three hours, while I took so much gold from a pair of mountain brothers that Janin made me give it back when everyone sobered up. But then, I’ve always been lucky at cards.

  If only I could say the same about quests.

  “Please,” I mutter to the shadows on the beamed ceiling, willing my luck to change. Being taken captive by mercenaries was bad enough, but if I’m taken captive by my own people …

  I have to find a way out and take Niklaas with me. I can’t leave him to be ransomed to his father. We must both escape. Tonight. Together we’ll find a way through the Feeding Hills and cross over into Frysk, with or without our horses.

  If only the exiles would go to sleep and give me the chance to fetch him!

  But Crimsin was right about the young men of the settlement. They’re thrilled out of their minds by the prospect of going to war. They’ve been drinking to it for hours, singing battle songs and hurling Feeding Tree cones into a bonfire in the middle of the common yard, shouting like naughty children when the pods explode with a sizzle of sap.

  They’re ridiculous … and saddening. I’ve never been to war, but I know it won’t be the adventure they’re imagining. Even if I believed Lord Heven’s promise to hand over his army, I wouldn’t want those boys joining the campaign. We’d be better off with a smaller force of older, seasoned warriors.

  But at this point, it seems I’ll have to make due with no military force at all.

  My eyes slide closed and a pained sound vibrates in my throat. No friends in the Feeding Hills means no army. It means Janin’s vision will come to pass and my brother will die come the changing of the leaves.

  “No,” I whisper into the darkness. There is still time. It’s cold in the mountains, but it’s still summer in the west. I could have weeks before the leaves turn, and I will make the most of every day. I will find allies, I will secure an army, even if I have to—

  The knock on the window shatters my thoughts.

  I throw off my quilt and jump out of bed, staring hard at the shadow outside. I recognize the outline of Niklaas’s shoulders and my breath rushes out in relief.

  “I was waiting to come to you,” I whisper as I open the pane.

  “Are you alone?” he asks, peering past me into the room.

  “Yes.” I motion him inside. “Did they see you crossing the common?”

  “No, I climbed down the cliff from the cabins.” Niklaas shoves his pack through the window and then follows it, dropping down to crouch on the floor in a pool of moonlight. I squat beside him, not bothering to close the pane. If I have my way, we’ll be going back through it in a few moments.

  “I couldn’t wait,” he says. “The sooner we leave, the better.”

  “I agree,” I say, relieved he won’t require any convincing. “I don’t trust Crimsin—she’s too changeable—but something isn’t right. The young men seem to think we’re going to war, but Lord Heven and the other counselors are hiding something. I can feel it.”

  “I feel it, too. In my gut.” Niklaas presses a fist to his stomach. “There were Vale Flowers in my drink again.”

  “What?” I curse myself for not warning him to be careful. The counselors have hardly paid him any attention, but he’s still a prince with a price on his head.

  “Are you ill?” I ask, searching his face in the dim light. “Can you travel?”

  “I’m fine,” Niklaas says with a grimace that betrays his words. “Crimsin spilled the glass before it was half empty and warned me to fake a true poisoning.”

  “I assumed the stumbling was an act,” I say, fetching my pack from beneath my bed and dragging it to the window. “It wasn’t nearly as convincing as the real thing. Better stick to princing. I don’t see a future on the stage.”

  Niklaas doesn’t smile. “Crimsin was the one who drugged me. She was told to make sure I wouldn’t be up and about tomorrow. The counselors don’t want me interfering when the ogres come to collect you.”

  My lips part. “But the ogres wouldn’t dare come here.”

  “The exiles sent men to lead them in through the tunnels and keep them safe from the trees they’re so afraid of. Ekeeta thought this was the best way to capture you alive.”

  “But why would they help her?” I ask, pulse speeding. “By the gods
, what could Ekeeta have promised that—”

  “She’s promised the Feeding Hills and the fertile flatlands to the east, all the way to the sea,” Niklaas says. “The exiles are to be recognized as their own nation, provided they turn you over to her general tomorrow morning.”

  I shake my head, too numbed by betrayal to know what to say.

  “This is my fault.” Niklaas grips my shoulder, a strained look on his face. “I knew the exiles were traitors. They change their allegiance like stockings. Probably more often than they change their stockings. I shouldn’t have let you come here. I should have found another way to your sister.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” I cover his hand with mine. “According to everything I’ve ever heard, the exiles and the queen are enemies.”

  “That’s the other thing. …” Niklaas pulls away with a sigh.

  “What other thing?” I ask, not sure I can take more bad news.

  “We weren’t as good at evading Ekeeta’s spies as we thought. Crimsin said the queen was watching our journey through her creatures the entire time.” He turns to dig in his pack. “That’s how Ekeeta knew to send word to the exiles, offering her deal and telling them to watch for us in Goreman.”

  I sit back hard enough for the floorboards to bruise my bones through my thick overshorts. But the pain is a welcome distraction from the misery filling my heart. If this is true … If Ekeeta has been watching us all along …

  Then there is no hope, no chance I’ll be able to outwit her and save Jor.

  I cover my mouth with my hands, holding in the moan that tries to escape as I squeeze my eyes shut and curse every soul on this mountain. Everyone knows that the ogres require a briar-born child to fulfill their prophecy.

  How could the exiles do this? How could they damn our world in exchange for lands that will be worthless when the ogres plunge all nations into darkness?

  “They don’t believe,” I mumble into my hands.

  Like Niklaas when we first met, the exiles must consider the ogre prophecy a mad legend. It’s the only explanation, unless …

  Unless the exiles know Ekeeta has Jor and figure they might as well give the ogre queen a matching set, seeing as she already has one briar-born child locked in her dungeon. But even then, I can’t understand why they’d give up and await their own destruction rather than rage against it.

  “They don’t believe,” Niklaas says, pulling me from my thoughts. “Or they simply don’t care. Either way, we need to be gone before morning.” He pulls a wad of cloth from his bag and tosses it into my lap. “Crimsin gave me something she thinks will help.”

  “What’s this?” I lift the fabric between two fingers.

  “It’s one of Crimsin’s dresses and a shawl. You’re about the same height. If you wrap the shawl around your head, it should hide the fact that you’re not her.”

  I blink, drop my eyes to the dress, and blink again. “You want me to—”

  “I want you to put on the dress,” Niklaas says. “And Crimsin and I are going to go for a walk. She’s gone swimming after dark before. If anyone sees us bound for the road, they shouldn’t question us, and if they do, you’ll look at the ground and giggle and let me do the talking. We’ll have to leave the horses, but this is our only chance.”

  I’ll be a girl … pretending to be a boy … pretending to be a girl. The thought alone is enough to make me dizzy. “But how will we get across the falls?”

  “There’s a lever set into a stone by the road that diverts the water. Crimsin described it well enough. I’ll be able to find it.”

  I bite my lip. “You trust her?” I ask, hesitating. There’s no way I’ll be able to conceal my true identity from Niklaas wearing Crimsin’s dress. The plunging neckline will reveal my bound chest. I don’t have nearly as much to bind as Crimsin, but without my shirt to conceal the bandages, it will be obvious I’m a girl.

  “Of course not,” Niklaas says, nervously running a hand through his hair. “But what reason would she have to lie about this?”

  “None that I can think of.”

  “I believed she was afraid for you when she told you to run. She didn’t want you trapped here,” he says, waiting until I look up before he continues. “You got to her. You made one of your subjects love you. Now get changed and let’s get out of here before you lose the chance to win over the rest of them.” He stands, moving to the window.

  When he turns back, I’m still on the ground, the dreaded dress puddled in my lap.

  “This is the only way we’ll get past the guards, Ror,” Niklaas says. “It’s a dress. It won’t bite.”

  “I know.” But I don’t move. I’m frozen, rendered immobile by the force of my indecision. It’s not only that I hate for Niklaas to find out the truth this way. This is dangerous for Crimsin, as well. If someone sees me in her clothes, she’ll be implicated in our escape. But I can’t leave dressed as myself, and there’s only one way out.

  “There can’t be only one way,” I mumble, letting the dress fall to the floor as I join Niklaas at the window, staring out at the cliffs and the mountains beyond.

  “What?” Niklaas asks.

  “There must be another way out. The counselors wouldn’t trap themselves here with only one avenue of escape,” I whisper, scanning the world outside.

  Lord Heven’s cottage is perched on the edge of the promontory, and has the best view in the settlement. There is nothing between my window and the wide expanse of snow-sifted mountains and dark valleys, but half a field of rock and an outhouse built of the same glossy wood as the lord’s cottage.

  “If there’s another way, Crimsin didn’t mention it.” I hear frustration in Niklaas’s voice, but I don’t turn to look at him. I can’t pull my eyes from the outhouse. There is something strange about it, something …

  “And we don’t have time to waste,” Niklaas continues. “Either put the dress on, or—”

  “But there’s a privy at the left of the cottage,” I say, wondering why Lord Heven would need two privies when he no doubt has servants to empty his chamber pot.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Niklaas growls beneath his breath. “Grow up and put the damn dress on, Ror. I’d wear the flaming thing myself if it would fit, but—”

  “Come with me.” I snatch my pack from the ground, stuffing the dress into the top before slinging the strap over one arm and claiming my staff from against the wall. “I want to look at something. If my instincts are wrong, I’ll put the dress on and we’ll go.”

  Right after you finish losing your mind when you realize you’ve been deceived.

  Before Niklaas can argue, I lift my leg and climb out the window, landing softly on the ground outside and turning to look up. The windows on the second and third floors of the cottage are dark.

  With a deep breath and a wish for luck, I pad silently across the rocks to the outhouse. As soon as I get within sniffing distance, I know it’s not what it appears to be. There’s no odor lingering in the air, only the cold, conifer-scented breeze blowing in from the mountains on the other side of the gorge.

  “What are you doing?” Niklaas hisses as I tug open the heavy wooden door, revealing a circular staircase leading into the rock below our feet.

  “Finding the other way out.” I glance back at Niklaas with a smile, a smile that vanishes when a lamp flares to life on the third floor of the cottage.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  NIKLAAS

  “Niklaas!” Ror grips my sleeve. “There’s a light in—”

  Before he can finish, the bell atop Lord Heven’s home begins to ring, a deep, resounding gong, gong that foretells the end of the world.

  Or the end of our escape, and of Ror’s life come morning.

  “Go!” I shove him down the stairs ahead of me. The front of Lord Heven’s house is guarded and the common beyond teeming with people. There will be no chance of slipping by them unnoticed now. We’ll have to hope Ror’s gut is right and this staircase leads to a way out of the
exile settlement, because if it doesn’t …

  I won’t think about what happens if it doesn’t. I won’t think about Ror dead or worse because I was too focused on saving my own skin to consider how dangerous a journey to the Feeding Hills could be for the prince of Norvere.

  Ror rushes down the stairs carved through the mountain’s crust with his usual speed, moving so swiftly he seems to hover over the ground. I lose sight of him before we’ve spun around twice. By the time I reach the bottom, racing through an archway onto a ledge where kite-like contraptions sit in rows facing the gorge, Ror is across the field-sized expanse, throwing his pack to the ground before meeting two exile men with his staff.

  I drop my pack and draw my sword, but before I reach his side Ror has knocked one man unconscious and sent the second sailing off the edge of the outcrop. The exile screams as he falls, a cringe-inspiring cry that seems to go on forever, leaving no doubt how deep the chasm is between this mountain and the next.

  Ror stands staring over the side, breathing fast. “I didn’t mean to,” he says, turning to me with frightened eyes. “It was an accident, Niklaas. It was an—”

  I grab him by the back of the neck and bring my face even with his. “It’s all right,” I say, willing strength into him, knowing there isn’t time for him to dwell on his first killing. “Don’t think about it. We have to escape, or it will be for nothing.”

  Ror clenches his jaw and nods. I race back across the ledge, snatching Ror’s pack and my own in one hand before sprinting to the nearest oversized kite.

  “It’s a glider,” Ror says. “We should be able to fly it off the edge.”

  Fly it. That’s what I’d assumed, but still … By the gods … Fly.

  Up close, the contraption is larger than it first appeared, with a wooden seat big enough for two and a basket underneath for luggage. The basket isn’t big enough for both packs, so I shove Ror’s beneath the seat and toss mine to the ground, knowing he has more gold in his purse than I do.