Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  Mia paled. It was too horrible.

  “I’m sorry, Quin. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

  He straightened, scrubbing the emotion from his face.

  “Like I said, worst night of my life.”

  For the first time, Mia understood why Quin had been cold and withdrawn every time she spoke of her mother. The fear and shame from that night mingled in his blood like a blizzard.

  Something sparked in Mia’s memory. “Is that why you told your father I was dangerous the night before our wedding?”

  “Actually, he told me. Since they suspected your mother was a Gwyrach, they suspected you, too. Though to be honest, I had long suspected you might have magic. The circumstances of your mother’s death were too odd. It was easy to blame your father, the great magic Hunter, but I had seen her body, and there were no wounds. In my darker moments, when that awful night played relentlessly in my head, I wondered if you’d done it.”

  “So you stuck a knife in your boot at the wedding.”

  He smiled, rueful. “You weren’t very fond of me—that was readily apparent. I think it gave Father great pleasure, the idea of marrying me off to a girl who might actually kill me.”

  “You never did seem particularly surprised I had magic.”

  “And now you know why.” He cleared his throat. “But I’m not afraid of you anymore, Mia. I know what kind of woman you are, and I’ve seen how much you grieve the loss of your mother. There was a while in the forest when I wondered if you’d killed her by mistake. But I don’t think you can kill someone by mistake, even if you do have magic. I’ve only seen you use your magic for good.”

  Mia couldn’t speak. A hole had opened up inside her. He’d meant the words to be a comfort, but they landed like an arrow in her heart. I wondered if you’d killed her by mistake.

  She heard Zaga rasping: If you want to kill a Dujia, touch her wrist when you are angry. The veins in our wrist are delicate but direct. They make beautiful vessels for rage.

  Mia had gripped her mother by the wrists, seething with rage.

  “Quin.” The words were fire in her throat. “I think I killed my mother.”

  He didn’t have time to answer—a shout pierced the air. It was close, just around the corner. Through the trees Mia saw a flash of red in the distance. The hot air balloon.

  More panicked shouts filled the air. She couldn’t move. She was pinioned to the earth. But women were pouring out of the merqad, brushing past them and barreling toward the balloon. Whoever had arrived, they certainly weren’t receiving the same dispassionate welcome Mia and Quin had received the day before.

  I killed her. I killed my mother.

  Quin took her by the hand. “Come on.”

  At the landing pad, an eerie hush descended on the crowd. The balloon bobbed gently, not yet secured, and the dark-skinned woman in the brilliant purple scarf—the one who seemed to be in charge—stood very still by the edge of the bronze bucket.

  “They have found us,” she said.

  Mia stood beside Quin, dazed, as the woman pointed a long, accusing finger.

  “Because of you.”

  Mia’s heart constricted. Had the Hunters tracked her to the island, exposing the Dujia? How many angels would she unwittingly kill?

  The woman in purple beckoned her closer. Mia loosed her stiff fingers from Quin’s and moved slowly, as if walking to her doom.

  There were no humans in the balloon. But when she peered into the bucket, her stomach sank. She wished she could erase what she’d seen.

  A bird floated in a bath of blood. A slender, elegant white swan, its throat slit. As Mia stared at its mangled feathers, all she could think of was her sister. Angie, my little swan.

  Written in blood on the inside of the bucket was a glistening red message.

  Mia,

  Come Home.

  Part Four

  Blood

  Chapter 51

  The Threat of Violence, or the Promise

  THE DUJIA BOATS WERE sturdy, albeit small. The fleet was banked in a spacious cove an easy swim from the waterfall. “Fleet” was generous: there were only a dozen, each fitted with two oars and carved from a tough, fibrous wood varnished black. Unlike the Sunbeam’s walnut shape, the boats were long, pointed at one end and bulbous on the other. Like tears, Mia thought. Or drops of blood.

  The arrival of the swan in Refúj had sent everyone into a panic. Their refuge, their safe haven, their sanctuary against the rest of the world—gone. Never before had the balloon arrived with a dead animal and a warning. Little girls cried while their mothers tried to calm them, but the women were just as frightened. They had been exposed.

  Mia, come home.

  The message was crystalline: if she ever wanted to see Angelyne alive again, she would return to Kaer Killian.

  There had been no discussion. From the moment she saw the swan with its severed throat, she knew she would go back.

  What she hadn’t accounted for—and had fiercely protested—was that Zaga would insist on going with her. Zaga promised her Dujia sisters she would assess the threat herself. If only a few people knew, she would take care of them; if the Glasddirans were launching a full-scale attack, they would prepare to fight.

  She instructed Dom and Pilar to accompany her, and to everyone’s surprise, Quin. He had never met Zaga, and Mia knew from the icy gusts peeling off him he was afraid. Zaga cut a formidable figure, and when she ordered the prince to join them, he didn’t argue.

  They took only two boats, Quin and Domeniq rowing one; Pilar and Mia helmed the other, with Zaga hunched in the stern, her back deeply bowed. Two lone teardrops hugging Glas Ddir’s eastern coast: one tear for the boys, and one for the Dujia.

  I killed my mother.

  Every few seconds the horror ripped through her anew. Mia’s mother was dead because of her. Her sister would soon follow . . . if she wasn’t dead already.

  The boat rolled and listed on the waves. Mia’s seasickness blended seamlessly into her guilt, muddying her grief. She tried to distract herself by postulating who had sent the bird. Was it Tristan? It seemed unlikely he had made it all the way back to the Kaer—they’d left him in the woods less than two days ago. King Ronan? Slitting a bird’s throat seemed like just the sort of thing the king would do.

  Or was it the Circle? The Hunters had spent enough time around the Roses’ cottage to hear Wynna call Angelyne her little swan. Did Angie have unbloomed magic, too? The thought sent fear shrieking through Mia’s heart. If the other Hunters had discovered the truth about Mia and her mother being Gwyrach, they would kill Angie in a heartbeat, eliminating any risk. And if they’d already killed her father for treason, he wouldn’t be able to protect her.

  “Do you wish to learn more about your magic?” Zaga asked from the stern, her voice smoky.

  “No,” Mia said. Then after a moment, “Yes.”

  All those senseless hours, poring over anatomy books, thinking she could have saved her mother if she’d only understood the way arterial blood circulated through the heart. She had been such a child. Mia’s magic had killed her mother, but if she had known about it—if she’d been able to harness and control it—she could have saved her mother’s life.

  She thought she saw a flicker of softness behind Zaga’s hard eyes.

  “Did you know I was the one who taught your mother the art of the enthrall?”

  She did know, from her mother’s journal.

  “I already know how to enthrall.”

  Pilar jumped in. “You know a simplified version. My mother can enthrall ten men at once.”

  Zaga nodded. “It is possible to enchant a roomful of men with desire.”

  A seed of dread settled in Mia’s stomach. “Without touching anyone?”

  “Yes. It requires great focus, but it can be done.”

  The ocean slapped against the boat in white-capped waves. Every time Mia closed her eyes, she saw Angie floating in a bath of blood. She gripped the oar
more tightly. If she had failed to keep her mother safe, now was her opportunity to make it up to her by saving her sister. Mia had never meant to wield her anger like a blade, but perhaps now she would learn how to—a lesson learned three years too late.

  “Why does nobody talk about the Three Laws?” she asked.

  Zaga shifted. “There is nothing to discuss. The Laws have been passed down from one generation of Dujia to the next, simplified and codified over hundreds of years. The First Law: we do not use magic to hurt our fellow sisters. The Second Law: we do not use magic to hurt ourselves. The Third Law: we do not use magic to hurt those without magic—unless we have just cause to do so.”

  “And what qualifies as ‘just cause’?”

  A smile warped the edges of Zaga’s lips. It was the first time Mia had seen her smile, and she was rusty, as if her mouth had forgotten the shape. “The Laws have always been somewhat open to interpretation.”

  If that’s true, Mia thought, then what’s the good of having laws?

  “My mother said you were toying with a darker magic. Something about breaking the Second Law.”

  Mia watched the softness evaporate from Zaga’s face. “There are certain things I do not care to remember.” She snapped herself shut like a box. “Do you wish to learn the craft of enthrallment or no?”

  As Zaga droned on, Mia tried to focus, but her mind roamed back to her father. To enthrall someone is to enslave them, little rose. You’ve stripped them of consent, robbed them of their choice. And without choice, what are we?

  Had he known his wife had been enthralling him for years?

  A tiny flame of hope glimmered. Her father had not wanted to marry her to the prince. If Griffin had in fact been disloyal to the crown, did it mean he’d found out about her mother . . . and tried to help her?

  The flame grew bolder. Mia’s father had given her the journal. Down in the crypt, he’d quizzed her on the fojuen stone, said it was the most important test she’d ever take. He might as well have handed her a custom-made map to Fojo. In a way, he had. She felt for the journal, tucked safely into the jacket Pilar had loaned her.

  Her father knew. He must have known.

  Your mother loved you more than anything. A love like that has power. You, too, bear this love.

  What if he was using the word love in place of magic?

  And if he knew she had magic, did he know she’d killed her own mother?

  Mia could still feel his hand on her back as he escorted her to the Royal Chapel. Firm and solid, more book than hand. It was almost certainly her father who had slipped the journal into her wedding train as he walked her to the altar. Had he wanted her to run away, after pretending that he didn’t? And why would he knowingly subject Angelyne to a royal wedding and the same cruel fate?

  “Have you heard a word my mother said?” Pilar said, startling her.

  “Of course,” Mia said, though they both knew she was lying.

  The journey back to the castle was faster by sea than by land. High above them she could see a smudge of blue swyn needles, the mountains slumping into hills before they sank into the river.

  As their two boats cut swiftly up the coast, day blurred into night, then day, then night as they sailed into the Opalen Sea.

  Mia’s father had spoken fondly of the Opalen Sea, but she had never seen it. Now she hardly registered the water’s opalescent glister, the silver starlight spilling onto the waves. She’d read that the ocean derived its distinctive color from animalcules banded together just beneath the surface, creating an otherworldly sheen. She didn’t care. All she could think was: Angie. Angie. Angie.

  “Won’t there be an army waiting?” Mia murmured. “Whoever sent the swan is no doubt expecting us.”

  “If you had been listening,” Pilar said, “you would know the enthrall makes us much more powerful than they are. If we can control the hearts of men, we control the men. Ronan could send a legion of ten thousand and they’d be no match for us.”

  Pilar seemed a trifle overconfident, Mia thought. If that were true, she highly doubted the Dujia would have spent so many centuries oppressed.

  She gazed out at the other boat, where Quin and Dom were talking quietly. Every so often, a laugh rolled across the waves. She was jealous of their ease with one another, the innate trust. With Domeniq, Quin would never have to wonder if he were being enthralled. He could trust his own wants. His own desire.

  They rowed for hours, fighting the waves slurping and sucking at their oars, stopping only briefly to eat the food they had packed. Mia’s lips were chapped, burned by salt and sun. After two days of rowing, the cliff tapered off and the Opalen Sea spat them sharply into the mouth of the Natha. From there the path to Kaer Killian was swift: a clean, black line.

  Mia’s shoulders ached; the blisters on her fingers stung. Overhead, the moon broke into a thousand silver knives and danced upon the river. In the dark, the water simmered with the threat of violence, or the promise.

  Mia recognized them first: the tall trees of Ilwysion. She inhaled the scent of pine. After three days of rowing, they had arrived.

  “Quietly,” Zaga instructed as they dragged the boats onto the riverbank, their feet sinking into the spongy black sand. They were a short distance outside Kaer Killian, far enough that the forest was deserted, close enough to see a dusky orange haze where the brothel torches burned bright.

  Pilar helped her mother out of the boat. Considering how stiff Mia’s limbs were, she could only imagine how Zaga had weathered the waves. She had required surprisingly little care on the boat; if the rocky trip had aggravated her injuries, she didn’t show it.

  Now Zaga leaned on her knotted white cane. “We will make camp here, sleep a few hours to recover our strength. Our magic is of no use if we are too weak to wield it. Then, when the night is at its darkest, we will descend into the quarry and follow the tunnels into the castle’s underbelly.”

  Mia resented Zaga for taking control of what was meant to be a rescue operation. She wanted to go to the castle and find Angelyne immediately. But she knew she needed sleep. Zaga had indeed given her magic lessons on the boat, guiding her in a series of rudimentary exercises that had left her feeling exhausted.

  They made camp. Zaga rested on a mossy rock while Mia busied herself building a fire. Pilar disappeared into the woods to hunt for supper, and Quin and Domeniq strung up a crude tarp for shelter. She hated how they were tiptoeing around her, speaking in hushed voices. She would rather they screamed.

  Mia was jittery, nervous. Every twig crack or leaf crunch made her whirl around, half expecting to see Tristan or the king’s guards come stumbling through the trees. If she’d done the math right—and she rarely did math wrong—the duke would be closing in on the castle right as they did.

  She blew on the smoking branches until they sizzled pink. She heard a sound and pivoted, but it was only Pilar, marching proudly into camp with a wild boar slung over her shoulder. Whether she’d killed it with magic or arrow, Mia didn’t ask. They roasted the meat over the fire, shredding tender hunks off the bone.

  They spoke in hushed tones until Quin asked pointedly, “What am I doing here?” and the others fell silent. His eyes flicked from Zaga to Pilar to Mia. “It’s clear you three are perfectly capable of laying siege to the castle yourselves.”

  Mia expected Zaga to answer his question with a question. But for once she spoke plainly.

  “You will stay with Dom in the woods outside the Kaer. If we encounter any trouble, I am sure the king will be happy to know his son is just beyond the castle walls, whole and undamaged.”

  Mia’s stomach slid over an inch. She heard the unspoken threat behind Zaga’s words: whole and undamaged, for now.

  Quin was collateral.

  My blackmail groom.

  She looked at Dom, who was feverishly rubbing his head. He didn’t like it, either. Pilar wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Take what sleep you can.” Zaga reached for her cane. “I will wake you wh
en it is time.”

  She limped to a tall oak tree and sat on the mossy earth, back against the wide trunk, and shut her eyes.

  Mia could feel Quin’s fear, a veil of cold prickling her skin. She also felt his sadness, a bone-thick weariness in her hands and feet. Once again she wasn’t sure how much his feelings were tangled up in her own; she, too, felt frightened. She, too, felt sad. Hadn’t they hurt Quin enough? In the Royal Chapel, he’d nearly died, all because he’d been standing a little too close to her. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong wife.

  How many people would die because of her?

  Quin left the campfire. They were all being overly careful with one another as they silently buried the bones of their meal. Mia fluffed spruce needles into a makeshift pallet and nested the journal in the middle like a soft leather egg. Then she sculpted a protective mound of leaves and pinecones. She curled her body around it, but she was too anxious to sleep. She thought of waiting until the others drifted off and stealing into the castle by herself—she could spirit away Angie and take her somewhere safe.

  But where would that be? Refúj was no longer a haven. Nowhere was safe.

  She heard someone plop down a few feet away. The prince.

  To her shame, she pretended to be asleep. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him lying stiffly on the cold ground, nowhere near the tarp he and Dom had erected, fists clenched tightly as he stared up at the sky. His curls seemed to breathe in the gentle wind, his face kissed by moonlight. In another world, she thought, in another life, I could love him.

  Then his terror was a tent spike in her skull. If something went wrong tomorrow, would Zaga kill him?

  Mia should have never brought him to Refúj. Dancing and drinking at the Blue Phoenix seemed a world away, the harmless diversions of children. Zaga was no child. She wouldn’t hesitate to hurt Quin to protect her own.

  Perhaps all mothers were that way.

  “Mia?” Quin’s voice was soft. “Are you awake?”

  She said nothing. She hated herself for her silence. Did she really have so little left to give?