Desperation grasped at him. He tripped and nearly fell to his knees. He sobbed in a breath, stumbling madly through the city and the night, shrinking away from jadelight and the sound of voices. If anyone saw him, they likely thought him drunk.
He was choked with memories. His mother’s white hair in its usual braid, her dark eyes fixed on his. Rowan, go! Her strong hands pushing him out the window. The sound of glass breaking from within, beakers and cylinders and whatever else his father had thrown at their attacker. It wasn’t enough. Arcs of blood, the thud of bodies. Thorn, cowering in the birch grove beyond the house, watching the first flames lick up the walls. Consuming his mother and father and all their work.
Leaving only him, and what remained of their voices in his mind, in the shapes of secrets and stones.
But not for long. Thorn finally reached the abandoned warehouse and made his familiar scramble through the broken planks. Up the creaking stairs, into the dusty, empty office that boasted merely a thin straw pallet on the floor, a cracked jade lantern, and a small barrel of rainwater that tasted of iron.
He fell to his knees, fumbling with the obsidian. He drew in sharp, rasping breaths, and it was hard to believe that just moments ago he’d been kissing Sage, warmth and sugar and the edge of possibility. There was none of that now—just cold ash on his tongue in the wake of the truth, and the weight of the impossible in his hands.
He held the obsidian before him. Hundreds of galaxies contained between his palms.
“I wish,” he croaked, but he had to stop, to close his eyes tight and simply allow himself to shake under the thrall of wild despair. How cruel it seemed for it to walk hand in hand with hope. “I wish…”
He forced himself to breathe, to let the tears escape, to think only of his mother’s dark eyes and his father’s loud laugh, and the big and extraordinary way in which he had once been loved. The magic swirled against him, almost as if raising its head, almost as if taunting, Yes?
“I wish,” he whispered, curled around the obsidian, his lips nearly brushing its glassy surface, “for my parents to be alive.”
He waited. Despair and hope. Hope and despair. The magic swirled, as if thinking.
And then it sank back down into the rock, unused.
His universe had rejected him.
Thorn allowed the stillness to become its own living thing, a silence that was made for boys like him, with nothing and no one. His tears dried, and his mind was quiet. The moonlight crept across the floor through the window, and although it could have whispered all his secrets back at him, it, too, was silent.
His hands tightened around the obsidian. Sage. He had used one of the wishes, diminishing the power he’d been building for so many nights. If he collected more—if he tried again—
He eased back into motion, shedding the stillness, the silence, until he was running back out the door.
* * *
Thorn made sure to grab the shovel on his way out. The night was still heavy over Rastre, but dawn was a few hours off, and he didn’t have much time to work.
He couldn’t go back to the funeral parlor. He couldn’t.
Even though a part of him—a traitorous, weak part—wanted to.
Instead, he took his familiar route to the graveyard, shovel slung over one shoulder and determination calcifying his heart.
Belief was stronger than wishes, and he believed that his family’s death would not be in vain.
Trees blotted out the moonlight as he stole through the boundary of the cemetery. It was a verdant block within the city, a walkable path from the park. The citizens of Rastre didn’t shy away from death; they didn’t cart out their dead or burn them. They preferred to visit, to make outings of it. Thorn had watched families gather around tombstones and lay out offerings: flowers, candles, incense, coins, food. They would linger and sit on the grass above their late loved ones, sharing lunch and stories, their laughter like birds taking flight.
Thorn would never have that experience.
Gritting his teeth, he waded through the shrubbery and made it to the central plot. Grave markers stood in neat rows, occasionally interrupted by statues limned in moonlight. A carving of a girl with smooth marble limbs held a hand outstretched as if to tell him, Go back, Thorn.
He trudged into the forest of stone. His eyes swept the ground, looking for the telltale signs of a new grave: disturbed earth, the smell of restless soil and newly shed tears.
Dig it up, take your wish, and get out.
He didn’t hear the rustling grass behind him. He didn’t see the shadow rising up beside his.
A hand smothered his mouth before he could cry out. Another strong hand took hold of his arm and wrenched it up behind his back.
“Got you,” said a voice in his ear, low and male and like the scraping of metal on metal. Thorn’s eyes widened; it was a voice he associated with breaking glass and the crackling of fire, a voice woven with memories of blood and loss.
“They said there was a white-haired boy sneaking about the cemetery,” the mercenary drawled. “I was about to give up, but now here you are at last.”
Thorn couldn’t breathe. His valor turned to terror.
But something else filled him. Not vengeance—what was that, really, but the expulsion of helplessness and anger? He wasn’t helpless, and he wasn’t angry. He was livid with loss, and brimming with power.
He didn’t want more death, he wanted life. He wanted his parents alive.
And this man had taken that away from him.
Thorn swung the hand that still held his shovel and knocked the spade against the man’s head. The mercenary grunted and staggered, loosening his grip enough for Thorn to tear free. Gasping for breath, he turned and finally looked at his parents’ murderer: dressed in black, hair shorn close to his scalp, eyes tight with pain.
Thorn grabbed the obsidian in his pocket. “I wish—”
“What’s going on here?”
Two members of the city guard were stalking over, weaving through the tombstones. Thorn cursed under his breath.
No time to make a wish. He turned to run, to hide, to do again what he’d been doing over and over for two years.
But before he got very far, the mercenary lunged and grabbed him again, and Thorn felt the sharp kiss of a knife at his throat.
How ironic, to die in a cemetery.
Before he could close his eyes against the inevitability that glinted along the blade’s edge, he heard another voice, familiar and clear. It rose above the confused shouting of the city guards. It rose above the fear that he was about to die, and all his family’s secrets with him.
Sage stood at the edge of the graveyard, chest heaving and eyes wide with horror. He called Thorn’s name, and it was its own kind of magic.
“Thorn!” Sage called again.
The mercenary growled. The knife dug into Thorn’s skin.
“I wish everyone knew the truth!” Sage shouted.
The night froze. Thorn’s heart faltered. Everything turned fragile, the city as delicate as a lacework of sugar.
In his pocket, the universe of wishes swirled and lifted. The magic leaked out of the rock, up into the air, dancing and darting higher. And, like a firework, it blew apart and rained down over Rastre, sparks of glittering possibility.
Thorn heard twin gasps behind him from the guards. Even the mercenary’s grip had grown slack. Thorn pushed himself away and ran to Sage, nearly collapsing into his open arms.
They watched as the guards touched their sides. There was wonder and uncertainty in their expressions. The mercenary’s brow was furrowed, the tip of his knife red with Thorn’s blood.
What exactly had been Sage’s wish? There were mechanics to these things—there were rules. I wish everyone knew the truth. The truth Thorn had told him hours ago? The truth about magic?
> He had his answer when the guards’ eyes focused on the mercenary and hardened. They hurried forward and pinned him to the damp cemetery grass, wrestling the knife out of his grip. They claimed he was wanted for the murders of Dr. Ash Briar and Dr. Tansy Briar, and that one way or another, he would lead them to his employers.
Their words blended and lost shape in his mind. All he heard was Justice, justice, justice.
But the taste of it was not sweet. He was scraped out, hollow. Defeated.
Because the truth was out, his wishes were gone, and he was falling into the reality he’d refused to believe, even when he’d always known: his parents were never coming back. Not even wishes could raise the dead.
He didn’t realize he was shaking until Sage wrapped him in his arms, and they swayed together. The little tiger padded from Sage’s shoulder onto his. Thorn felt like a flame blown out, charred and tired, and the only thing he cared about was that the boy who held him smelled of lavender and life.
Thorn would have gladly stayed there all night, but there was a cough behind him and he had to draw back from Sage’s embrace. A guard was looking at him strangely, as a dreamer woken abruptly from sleep. It was the wish; it had been sloppily crafted, and she likely had no idea why she was doing what she did. But the guard knew what had happened to him. He could see it in the pity on her face.
“Rowan Briar?”
His chest tightened. “Yes.”
“Can you come with us, please?”
Sage held on to his wrist, a question and a promise.
Thorn met his gaze. “I’ll find you,” he said.
Sage nodded. Thorn turned to go, stopping with a muttered “ow” when the tiger bit his earlobe. He returned it to Sage and followed the guards and their prisoner out of the cemetery, looking over his shoulder at boy and figurine. Even from a distance he could read the trepidation on Sage’s face. But Thorn believed that everything would be all right.
And after all, belief was stronger than wishes.
* * *
The tall, slender boy closed the door to the funeral parlor behind him, digging out his keys to lock up for the night. He didn’t see the other boy across the street, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
“You know, you’re really bad at making wishes.”
Sage jumped and whirled around, dropping the keys with a clatter. His eyes widened when he saw Thorn.
“You’re all right,” he whispered. The little tiger poked its head out of his pocket.
“I said I’d find you.”
Sage’s mouth trembled, as if wanting to smile, but he didn’t give in to the urge. His gray-green eyes looked Thorn up and down. Looking for signs of injury or worse. But there was only the cut on his neck made by the mercenary, and it was already healing.
“Well, it’s been a while,” Sage said. “You can’t blame me for worrying.”
Thorn ducked his head. He should have sent word to Sage somehow, but it had been a busy few days. Days of talking to the authorities, higher and higher up the chain of command until he was pulled into a meeting with the chief inquisitor, a severe woman who was now rounding up the stone quarry owners and questioning them for their involvement in his parents’ deaths. For their part in concealing the findings of the Briars’ research.
Justice. It still felt like a hollow word. Strangely, he was happy for the pain of the cut on his neck, the bold red mark it made. It was physical proof that he had fought for this and won.
Sage wandered over to him, from the moonlit-drunk side of the street to Thorn’s shadowed one. “And I’m not bad at making wishes.”
“No?”
“Just take a look around.”
Thorn had. All of today he’d wandered Rastre in a daze, hardly believing what he was seeing. Magic. It was everywhere. With Sage’s third and final wish, he had unleashed this upon the city: the knowledge of what sat between a person’s ribs, the swirling little galaxies of possibility. He’d seen a little girl channeling her power of heat, laughing with glee when her fingertips came alight with flames like birthday candles. He’d seen an elderly man glowing like a jade lantern. A harried mother accidentally frosting over the front of her house until icicles hung from the eaves. He’d seen…so much.
The result of his parents’ work.
In this way, he thought, perhaps they were brought back after all. He saw them in people’s smiles, in their wonder.
“And you?” Thorn asked. “What trick can you do?”
Sage took the tiger from his pocket and placed it on his shoulder, where it sat and swished its tail from side to side. “Life.”
“Life?”
“My garden. My parents always thought it was odd that it bloomed through winter. I didn’t think much of it—just thought I was good with plants, like how I was good with animals.” He patted the little tiger’s head. “I guess I was tapping into a bit of me I didn’t understand.” He looked up at Thorn through his lashes, his dimple returning with his smile. “Until now.”
Thorn’s heart beat. He was alive. The simple fact rushed through him, spectacular and surreal, like a word you say too many times until it’s lost its meaning. But this, this was nothing but meaning, and he felt it from crown to toes.
Magic, he realized, took so many forms.
And when Sage leaned into him and their lips met, it was more powerful than any wish.
The Bloom of Everdale is ready to choose a consort, and I have come to win his hand.
The Garden Palace is sculpted in the likeness of the summer star flower, its walls overlapping like petals as they curl and climb toward the center, where a thin spire of glass glitters in the sun. It is surrounded by a wide canal painted silver along the bottom to give the running water a perfect iridescent shimmer. Thin bridges arch elegantly over the canal, leading to one of the six gates that give entry to the palace, each one more delicately constructed than the last.
My invitation directs me to the Silk Bridge, and as I step onto the pedestrian pathway, I am amazed to discover that the name refers not only to the fine weave of jewel-toned pennants flying above my head but also to the bands beneath my feet. What at first glance I took to be narrow boards of wood are layers of silk pressed and bound into planks that extend the width of the bridge. For an instant, I forget my purpose here and stoop to run my fingers over the material. It is both soft and worn from years of foot traffic, while also as firm and strong as a plank of wood might be. It is a metaphor for our nation, and I am astonished at its quiet perfection, astonished to find it directly beneath my feet.
If I win the Bloom of Everdale, if he chooses me to be his consort, this bridge will be a part of my home. I will walk across silk boards, learn the layered corridors of the Garden Palace, even feel the kiss of sunlight through the glass spire daily if I choose. And I will bring my mother with me. If I win.
When I win.
Of all the warriors who answered the first call and endured weeks of trials and dozens of opponents, only three of us have been invited to compete before the Bloom. We are the finest, the strongest this nation has to offer, but only one of us is his perfect balance, the force to his precision, the protective wall to his perfect vulnerability. When this started, my mother rushed home with a flyer crushed in one fist and my sword clutched in the other. Her eyes were a little wild, her cheeks glowing as she exclaimed, “You will change the path of our family walks now and forever! Pack your things.”
I’d answered the first call with a trembling kind of desperation, my mother’s hopes always stirring in my heart. Now I don’t feel desperate at all. After weeks of trials, dozens of opponents, and a lifetime of thin soup, I know I can win.
“Strength in the slight,” I whisper in an attempt to release the swell of love that threatens to unsettle me.
“Grace in the might.” The answering voice is both rev
erent and amused, like silk itself in my ears.
I raise my eyes, knowing my moment of admiration has exposed me as one who has never before tread so near the Garden Palace, to find a girl standing over me. And for a moment, I do not breathe.
Her eyes are a golden honey brown, barely darker than the sun-warmed tan of her skin. Her round cheeks perch above lips pressed into a lopsided smile. Only her top lip has been painted in a dark berry purple to signify she is unpaired, and I don’t think I have ever been so grateful to see an unpainted lower lip. It is full and pale peach, and I immediately wonder what it would taste like between my teeth.
She is dressed like me, to boast the obvious strength of her body, as is traditional for those who follow the way of the sword. A bodice fits against her breasts and her belly, tight enough to cling to the muscles there, but not enough to restrict her movements. Ochre bands tied around her bare upper arms highlight the dip and valley of her biceps, and a skirt of flawless purple damask splits over each of her thighs, where four matching ochre bands sit above and below her knees.
With her standing over me, I forget my entire reason for being here.
“Are you lost?” she’s asking, and I realize at once that she has been speaking to me for, well, I don’t know how long.
“I am not lost,” I say, feeling as though for the first time in my life I have found my way. “At least, not yet.”
I rise slowly to my feet, noting the way my head spins. Whether it’s from spending so long crouched on the ground with my hand pressed to the deceptive layers of silk or from my proximity to her, I cannot tell. Now that I’m standing, it’s I who looks down and she who looks up with a squint of her golden-honey eyes that makes my mouth go dry.
“This must be your first time. Most people don’t stop to bless the bridge.” She says it all with an amused twist to her mouth. “Though I suppose they really should. It is a marvel. Perhaps even more so than the Winged Bridge or the Bridge of Whispers.”
A Universe of Wishes Page 3