Princess of Thorns

by Unknown

  By the stars, I miss him so much. This is so much worse than I imagined it would be. I would rather see him dead. Worse, I know the true Niklaas would rather be dead.

  I clench my jaw and grit my teeth, refusing to cry again. I vowed to be done with crying when we left Gettel’s cottage. Tears only upset Niklaas, and I don’t deserve to cry, not when all of this could have been avoided if I’d only asked for someone else’s advice. Janin was right. Niklaas was right. My pride and my stubbornness are a danger to everyone, poisoning everything I touch.

  “Are you tired? Can I do anything to help you?” Niklaas asks.

  I suppress the urge to sigh. “No, but thank you for asking. That was kind.”

  “You’re welcome,” he says, pleasure at even that small praise obvious in his voice. “Anything for you.”

  I bite the inside of my mouth, resisting the urge to curse my mother for this “blessing.” Mother was innocent; I knew I was walking a dangerous line when Niklaas drew me into his arms to dance. If only I had told him the truth about my gifts. If only I could go back in time and shove him to the ground before his lips met mine.

  By the time we reach the cabin, I’ve replayed how I would save him a hundred times, each one more painful than the last.

  “This looks nice,” Niklaas says.

  He’s right. The cabin is a pretty little thing made of split oak logs, nestled at the edge of a moonlit glen. It even has its own miniature barn and a privy with a window in the roof to let in the moonlight. Once Niklaas and I have made use of the privy, we unsaddle the horses, pen them into the two-stall barn, and give them fresh hay.

  “We’ll water them in the morning,” I say, lighting the oil lamp we found hanging from a hook on the cabin’s front stoop. “It sounds like there’s a stream nearby. We’ll be able to see it better in the daylight.”

  Niklaas doesn’t say a word, but I know he agrees with my decision. He will always agree with my decisions, until the day he is transformed into a swan and the last of his humanity is stolen away.

  Inside the cabin, the interior bears signs of Gettel: a mantel crowded with unusual odds and ends, a kitchen nook with pans hung above the cook table by long hooks, and rugs of all sizes, shapes, and colors warming the floor. The coziness of it makes me sadder. Even Gettel loathes me now. Gettel, who I believed incapable of hating a spider hiding in her sheets. But she couldn’t bear to look at me another moment and was willing to give away her favorite horse—a mare with a black satin coat so shiny it reflected the moonlight as we road—to get rid of me. She may be a witch and the one responsible for cursing Niklaas, but I’m the monster, and we both knew it.

  “Are you hungry?” Niklaas pulls a bag of food from his pack. “I have biscuits and apples and—”

  “No, let’s get some rest.” I set the lamp on the small eating table and tug off my boots. “We’ll have to pull a long day tomorrow and be ready to keep moving after only a few hours of sleep if we need to. We have to make sure you’re the one to deliver me to Ekeeta. If we’re overcome and brought in by her men, our chances of saving my brother will be even worse than they are already.”

  “All right.” Niklaas drops the bag of food and steps out of his own boots.

  Our chances couldn’t possibly be worse, the real Niklaas would have said. This is a suicide mission, and you’re a fool, and we aren’t leaving this cabin until you come to your senses.

  I take comfort in imagining what the true Niklaas would say until I circle around the wall separating the kitchen from the rest of the cabin to find the small space dominated by a single large bed. It’s big enough for three of me and two of Niklaas. Even a day ago, I would have been secretly thrilled by the thought of spending the night with his warm back pressed to mine, but now …

  “You take the bed.” I back into the corner while Niklaas perches on the edge of the bed. “I’ll look for extra blankets and sleep in the kitchen.”

  “That won’t be very comfortable, will it?” he asks, but he doesn’t rise from the bed, apparently taking my order to “take the bed” seriously.

  “I’ll be fine. It’s more important that you’re rested.” I open the trunk at the end of the bed, relieved to see several quilts and two knitted blankets inside. “I’m supposed to be your prisoner. It won’t matter if I look a little worse for the journey.”

  “All right, but … will you be where I can see you?” he asks, an anxious note in his voice as I fill my arms with blankets and head toward the other side of the cabin.

  “I’ll sleep by the wall, right here.” I point to a spot where I’ll be within sight, not surprised by his need to have me where he can see me.

  Thyne was the same way. He would beg to be allowed to sleep—just sleep—in the same room with me, saying it made him feel empty when I was out of his sight. Janin said she would allow it, but I refused him every night. I couldn’t stand to be alone in a room with him, and knew I wouldn’t sleep a wink with him watching, desperate for a chance to please me, even in my dreaming state.

  “But I want you to get some rest,” I say firmly, feeling like I’m talking to one of the Fey babies back home, the ones I’d warn to stay out of the jungle when walking them back to the cots after a swim. “I’ll be unhappy if you don’t have a good long sleep.”

  “I’ll go to sleep right now.” He peels off his shirt and stands to unbutton his pants.

  I turn away, busying myself setting up my pallet and turning down the lamp as he steps out of his clothes and crawls under the covers. I don’t want to see him undressed. It would be too strange, to see the body I’ve lusted after and feel nothing.

  Because I would feel nothing, the same way I felt nothing holding his hand or allowing him to hug me in an attempt to offer comfort when I was crying. The way I felt changed when he changed, making it clear it wasn’t Niklaas’s godlike outsides that made me want to be close to him. It was who he was. It was his mind and his heart and his wicked smiles and his maddening advice and the way he’d tease me from laughter into fury and back to laughter within the course of a conversation. It was just … Niklaas.

  “Good night, Aurora,” Niklaas says, grinning at me from his place in the big bed.

  “Good night.” I force a smile before lying down with my face to the wall and squeezing my eyes shut, praying for the strength to make it through the next few days, to hold together until I save Jor and redeem some small part of my soul.

  But I am not strong and I am not sure I’m doing the right thing. I feel more lost than I ever have. I long for Janin. I long for my mother. But most of all I long for Niklaas, mourning him like one of the dead, though he lies right across the room. I can’t even bear to think about what it will be like to watch him transform in eight days.

  I expect to lie sleepless for hours, but all my crying exhausted me more than I realized. I must have slept, because when I open my eyes, the moonlight is cutting through the window at a different angle and Niklaas is snoring his middle-of-the-night snore, that deep, measured sawing that only comes when he’s deeply asleep.

  Tears rise in my eyes before I can stop them. He sounds exactly the same, so much like the old Niklaas that for a minute I wonder if …

  Maybe …

  I climb silently from my pallet and pad around to the opposite side of the bed in my stocking feet. I pause, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. After only a moment, I pull his face into focus and my heart turns to stone. My moment of hope was foolish. He hasn’t returned to me. His eyelids are too still, his brow too relaxed, and his mouth too soft. Only children are so untroubled, even in sleep.

  “You should have a little grit in your jaw,” I whisper. “And a flutter behind your lids every now and then.” I watch him for another moment, wondering if he will attempt to obey me even while unconscious, but he doesn’t stir. He sleeps on, determined to get that good sleep I demanded of him.

  “I
’m sorry,” I whisper, tears filling my eyes no matter how I try to stop them. “I really do love you.”

  I do, so much more than I realized, more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I would marry the shell of Niklaas and spend the rest of my life pretending he made me happy if I could. No matter how lonely a life it would be, or that seeing him every day would make me mourn the loss of the real Niklaas all the more terribly.

  “If I could take your place, I would.” Tears wet my cheeks. “I swear it.”

  I close my eyes and bury my face in my hands, struggling to regain control, while Niklaas’s snore rumbles in and out like a gargling dog. Despite my abundance of self-hatred, after only a moment or two the familiar sound begins to comfort me. Keeping my eyes closed, I pull back the covers and crawl into bed beside him, curling against his wide, warm back, inhaling his Niklaas smell, aching and grieving and dying inside with every breath. Being so close to him is like pressing on a bruise, a bruise at the center of my heart that throbs so savagely it feels like my chest will implode.

  Once again, I don’t expect to sleep, but I do. I sleep and dream of Niklaas’s transformation. I hear him scream, watch his flesh ripple as feathers burst through his skin, smell the blood and sweat and filth left behind as what’s left of his human body is abandoned and the swan Niklaas takes to the sky, lost to me forever.

  I wake up breathing hard, drenched in sweat, and pull my sticky shirt from my chest with a shaky hand.

  “I’m glad you’re awake,” Niklaas says, making me flinch. I turn my head on the pillow to find him propped on one arm, watching me with a blank expression that’s even more unnerving than his childlike grin. “You were having a nightmare, weren’t you?”

  “Ye-yes.” I swipe the sweat from my upper lip with the back of my hand.

  “I was going to wake you, but I couldn’t decide if you would like that,” he says. “So I waited for you to wake up.”

  “Thank you,” I say as I slide off the bed.

  “It was nice to find you next to me. So much better than seeing you on the floor.”

  “I was cold and couldn’t sleep.” I gather the blankets from the floor and dump them back into the chest at the end of the bed. “I thought it was best if I got warm and was able to rest. At least a little.”

  “I think we should always sleep together,” Niklaas says, proving there is something going on in his mind, at least when it comes to the desire to stay close to me.

  “That won’t work on the road.” I prop my hands on my hips, fixing him with a hard look. The queen’s spies will be able to see us soon. We have to make sure we’re putting on the proper show.

  “You have to remember our story,” I say. “I refused to marry you and break your curse, and so you’ve decided to deliver me to Ekeeta in hopes that she will come to your aid with her magic. You must treat me like your prisoner, someone you hate.”

  “But I love you,” he says, that anxious look creeping into his eyes again.

  “I know that, and I … love you, too,” I say, bringing a smile to his face that sets self-loathing to sharpening its claws on my heart. “But to save my brother we have to pretend to be enemies. From the moment we leave this cabin until we escape the castle with Jor, there must be no kindness between us. Do you understand?”

  He nods, but I’m still not entirely convinced.

  “Nothing will make me happier than if you are cruel to me until you deliver me to Ekeeta at Mercar,” I whisper, crossing to take his hand in mine and stare deep into his eyes. “Be as cruel as you can be. We have to make Ekeeta believe you hate me. Can you do this for me, Niklaas?”

  “I’ll do my best.” He gives me a shy grin. “I’d do anything to make you happy.”

  “Good.” I back toward the door, already needing a moment away from the stranger Niklaas has become. “I’m going to wash up and water the horses. When I get back, we’ll decide how to travel. I’ll need to be bound so it’s clear I’m your prisoner.”

  “I’ll make breakfast and get some rope from the barn,” Niklaas says, throwing off the covers and practically leaping from bed in his rush to do my bidding.

  I try to take his eagerness as a good sign, but I can’t help but worry as we go about our morning tasks, preparing for the journey. It will take four days to reach the capital, and that’s if we ride hard all day, swapping our horses for fresh ones when we can, and part of every night. Is Niklaas capable of keeping up an act for that long?

  And what about when we reach Mercar? Will Ekeeta be able to see he’s under an enchantment the way Gettel could? Ogre magic isn’t the same breed of magic as that of witch-born women, but still … Ekeeta is powerful and likely to be suspicious. If she asks too many questions, Niklaas may falter and end up in the dungeon right along with me.

  I’ll have to remind him what to say and how to behave, I think, palms sweating with nerves as we leave the cabin and set out toward the open road, where we will no longer be sheltered by Gettel’s wards. I’ll remind him every hour if I have to.

  “Niklaas, I—”

  “Quiet!” Niklaas snaps at me over his shoulder, making me blink with surprise. We agreed he should ride ahead, leading my horse by a rope tied to his saddle, since my hands are bound behind me, but at the moment I wish I could see his eyes.

  “But Niklaas, I—”

  “I said quiet.” The hatred in his expression when he turns connects like a slap to the face, leaving a stinging sensation behind. “Shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”

  I swallow and nod, heart racing as I begin to wonder what mad thing I’ve done now, ordering a person determined to do precisely as I say to be cruel to me. I know the real Niklaas would never hurt me, but I have no idea what this shell will do in the name of obeying my order to the letter.

  “Next time, we’ll stuff something in there to keep you quiet,” he says.

  I shiver, ducking my head to my chest until he turns back around, shocked to find I’m truly afraid. Shocked and strangely … satisfied.

  Because if anyone deserves to suffer …

  And suffer I do. I ride for hours without anything to shield my face, until my skin begins to itch, the discomfort becoming torture when I’m unable to lift a hand to scratch my throbbing nose. I’m forced to relieve myself with Niklaas hovering on the other side of the bush, shouting for me to hurry up, and am hauled up from the stream where I kneel to suck down a drink and cool my scorched forehead by a handful of my own hair.

  When we finally stop for the night, Niklaas leaves my hands bound behind my back, ensuring I pass the few hours we stop to rest in a fitful sleep interrupted by flashes of pain from my strained shoulders.

  He doesn’t speak to me at all the first day or the second, not even when we barely outrun a pack of wild dogs or when carrion flies swarm around us for nearly an hour—crawling in and out of every orifice in my head, making me shudder and shake and scream with my mouth closed. Even when the wind picks up and we lose the flies and I beg him to tie my hands in front of my body so I can defend myself if the insects return, he acts as if he doesn’t hear a word.

  I don’t give him an official order to untie me, but I’m not sure it would matter if I did. He has taken my mandate in the cabin so completely to heart that there seems to be no room in his mind for anything but fulfilling his mission and making his mistress happy.

  Even if her happiness is to be won with abuse.

  By the time we reach western Norvere—racing across a farmer’s wheat fields and down into a hidden canyon just seconds ahead of an ogre patrol—my wrists are so chafed that they sting constantly, making me whimper when Niklaas urges the horses into a gallop and I can no longer hold my hands still.

  That night, he only allows me an hour of sleep before ordering me to wake up with a nudge of his boot in my side. When I don’t move quickly enough, the nudge becomes a rough hand that hauls me to my feet
and shoves me toward my horse. Still half-asleep, I stumble on an unseen rock and fall to the ground, bursting the skin on my cheek in the process.

  Niklaas doesn’t pause to see if I’m seriously hurt, only hauls me up and onto my horse with an order to “move faster next time.”

  The only good thing about getting so little sleep is that I am spared my nightmares. I’m too tired to dream of my brother’s death or the ogre queen or Niklaas’s transformation, and Niklaas seems to have forgotten that he is cursed, his awareness of his fate banished by his need to serve me. I am thankful for those things, thankful for every little kindness, even if that kindness is only the absence of further misery.

  We ride and ride, day and night, stealing fresh horses three times, until I lose track of how long we’ve been traveling and measure our progress in how many minutes I’m able to go without crying out in pain.

  By the time we reach the coast and begin backtracking to Mercar on foot—hoping to sneak into the city through the aqueducts, putting us inside the castle walls without announcing our presence at the gates—I am weary to the bone, covered in dust, and itching all over from sleeping on the bare ground where the mites could crawl into my clothes. The chapped skin at my wrists has torn open, blood oozes down my palms to my fingers, and a strange heat licks at my wrists. I suspect my wounds are becoming toxic and that I will fall into a fever if they aren’t treated soon, but I force my feet to keep moving, refusing to allow weakness to claim me. Not yet. Not when I am so close and my brother’s life is in my hands.

  My trembling hands, with the fingers swollen into near uselessness from being forced behind my back for so long.

  A sob escapes my lips, but Niklaas doesn’t order me to be quiet. Perhaps he can’t hear me over the wind sweeping in from the ocean. I look up to see if he has turned around only to have the hair escaped from my warrior’s knot lash into my eyes and stick to the crusted scab on my cheek where the blood was never wiped away.

  What have I done? By the gods, what have I done?