Through a Tangled Wood

  * * *

  Lucia counted the locks as the servant unfastened them with shaking fingers. One, two, three… her count reached six before the door, as thick as her thigh, swung open on creaking hinges.

  A different girl would have taken off running, would have offered a protest so eloquent that the king couldn’t help but be moved. A different girl would have waltzed into the room with a tilt of her head and a sway of her hips, confident in the success of her mission. But she was Lucia, good for nothing but her small attempts at magic, and when the servant took hold of her shoulders and propelled her into the room, she let him.

  He disappeared into the corridor; the door slammed shut. Behind her, the locks snapped back into place, one by one.

  Candles in every corner illuminated the ruined chamber. A once-fine couch, its lush fabric now marred by what looked like—she shrank back—claw marks, sat directly ahead of her. To its side, a chair lay in pieces, as if it had tried to take on too much weight. Shreds of fabric sealed the windows against any hint of light. And in the corner, a table piled high with—

  Oh.

  Forgetting herself, she rushed to the table. She picked up one book, then another, handling each as if they were the royal crown itself. This one couldn’t have come from anywhere but the vault of Qurilan Mari, and that one—oh, that one, with its gilded pages and crumbling spine, could only be a relic of the time before the Elders raised the Tower. And that one on the bottom, with its haphazard scrawls, had to be a journal of some sort—priceless, one of a kind. A sharp pang of longing shot through her as she flipped through the journal, struggling to decipher the script.

  “Get out.”

  The low growl filled the room like thunder, sending the journal tumbling to the table. Lucia’s head jerked up.

  The prince—or what had once been the prince—stood before her.

  Fur dotted his skin in mangy tufts; the furless patches gleamed with golden scales. Claws as long as Lucia’s fingers curled off his twisted hands. Teeth a wolf would envy jutted unevenly from a mouth that couldn’t contain them. Ram’s horns scraped along the ceiling despite the way he had lowered his head toward Lucia as if considering her for a meal.

  Run, her mind screamed. She forced her quivering legs to hold their ground.

  “Prince Rikkan.” Her voice shook.

  Another growl, wordless this time, was the creature’s only reply.

  She studied the monster in front of her, counting her breaths to keep her mind from collapsing into jelly. This is magic. That’s all it is. Another spell to figure out. How much of the prince remained in him? Should she talk to him as a wild animal, or as a boy? Not that it mattered—she didn’t have the first idea how to tame either.

  “It’s all right.” She steadied her voice, pretending to a calm she didn’t feel. “Your father sent me to help you.”

  The creature bared his teeth and snarled. This time his voice shook the walls. “Get out!”

  Lucia shuddered, but remembered the king’s warning about the price of failure and held her ground. “Shh.” She patted the air with her hand. “Shh, it’s all right.” Soothing him like she would a vicious dog, because dealing with a vicious dog was easier than dealing with a boy.

  But no one, of course, would expect her to kiss the dog.

  She stared at his mouth—at the warning curl of his lips, the knife-sharp points of his teeth. Panic roiled in her belly. She glanced over her shoulder at the door. But she couldn’t overcome six locks on her own—and if the guards let her out, if they returned her to the king, how would he punish her for her failure?

  “You don’t have to go on like this.” Soft. Careful. “I can break your curse. All you have to do is kiss me, and this nightmare can be over.” Whether his nightmare or hers, she didn’t say.

  “I won’t warn you again.”

  Maybe if she could move quickly enough… if she could reach that terrifying mouth before his claws found her… Her legs turned to water at the thought. But what choice did she have?

  She took a breath—and darted forward.

  He howled in rage. He thrust his arms toward her, and she cried out in anticipation of claws sinking into flesh. Her feet left the floor—he had skewered her with his claws, lifted her clear off the ground and over his head—she would die here at the crazed hands of a cursed prince—

  But no pain came.

  She opened her eyes.

  She hovered in the center of the room, her head brushing the ceiling. All around her, wind whispered where no wind should be, tickling her feet as it held her aloft. But the window coverings, mere feet away, didn’t so much as twitch.

  The prince stood before her—below her—with his arms at his sides, his claws unbloodied.

  Magic.

  But… no. It made no sense. Even she, untrained as she was, knew what magic required. And his howl of rage, however loud, could never have been mistaken for the magical tongue.

  “You didn’t use an incantation,” she protested, her fear shocked out of her for the moment.

  A sharp gesture of his warped hands, and the wind began to pick up speed. No longer tickling, it crawled along the soles of her feet like ants as it pulled her toward the window.

  Did he intend to toss her out? From this height? But curiosity silenced the alarm she should have felt. “This is just a simple wind spell. Stronger than most, and more controlled, but it’s still a wind spell. And wind spells always begin with naming the nature of the air: adi nu’um vit nara—”

  The prince’s jaw went slack. The air under her feet gave an audible snap as his concentration broke.

  Lucia had only an instant to register what that meant before she tumbled to the floor in a heap of limbs and ruffles.

  “You know magic?” His voice still thrummed deep in his throat, but it no longer held the same menace. He tilted his head and regarded her with his slitted eyes, and she had a flash of herself discovering his books a moment ago. The look in her eyes, she imagined, must have been much the same.

  She couldn’t keep the ache from her voice as she answered. “Not enough.”

  “Have you studied at the Tower?” Something strange, and strangely familiar, colored his words.

  She shook her head. “Qurilan Mari… isn’t for people like me.”

  “Or for princes.” And now she recognized what she heard in his voice. It was her own longing, reflected back at her by this fearsome monster—no longer so fearsome now.

  “You don’t need what the Elders can teach you!” Lucia protested as she pushed herself to her feet. “What you’ve just done… magic without an incantation… the Elders would pay any amount for you to teach them.”

  “This one thing, yes.” He lowered his head, but the movement didn’t strike her as predatory this time. “But there’s so much more for me to learn. I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible. I hear the Elders have perfected a way of causing magical effects hundreds of miles from the source. And that wind spell—it could be amplified for flight, I know it could, if only I could figure out how. I’ve spent months altering and re-altering it in my journals, and still nothing. If I weren’t trying to work it all out myself, with only the books I’ve managed to have smuggled in…”

  Lucia didn’t know if his words were still meant for her, or simply a well-worn track of private frustration. Either way… to hear what could have been her own words coming from someone else’s lips… She listened in mute astonishment.

  “He used to burn the books he found.” Some long-held wound darkened his eyes. “If he caught me practicing, if he so much as heard me murmuring the magical tongue under my breath, he would beat me until I couldn’t walk. Magic isn’t useful for a prince, you see, or for a king.” He spat the clearly-hated word. “Only in this past year, with six locks keeping me from my duties as prince, have I been able to study in peace. I can even leave my books out in the open now, if I want—he’s too afraid to come to me himself, after what happened the first time he tried
, and the servants know better than to report anything he doesn’t want to hear.”

  This past year. The words hit Lucia like a dash of cold water, shaking her out of her daze of fascination. This past year—since the curse had taken hold. Shock and sympathy had driven it all from her mind—his twisted body, his animal voice, the king’s threat—but that one reminder brought it all back.

  She wanted nothing more than to talk with him forever, to confess her own longing, to discover how he had done the impossible. But her purpose here hadn’t changed.

  And she knew the consequences of failure.

  Once she broke the curse, once she saved him from his magic-marred body and escaped the king’s wrath, they could have all the conversations in the world. After all, hadn’t the king promised her marriage to the prince as her reward? She could live with a lifetime of painted faces and ruffled gowns if it meant learning the things he knew, if it meant sharing her dreams with someone who understood.

  Now. It had to be now. Before he realized he had dropped his guard.

  She ran at him. One step, another, almost there—his whiskers brushed her cheeks, and—

  His roar seared her skin. From behind the torn fabric, a window shattered. The sound of splintering wood followed close behind as the door exploded outward.

  “Get out!” The floor shook with his bellow.

  This time, she obeyed—as fast as her legs would take her.