Princess of Thorns

I stare, frozen.

I can’t … I never …

I am … I am an idiot, so devoid of sense I might as well be blind, deaf, and dumb.

I have a fleeting memory of feeling those bandages under my hand, a hazy recollection from the night Crimsin drugged me, but I don’t dwell on it. There are too many other memories rushing in, little morsels from the moment I woke a giggling Ror in the mercenary tent to the moment he burst through the water with a girlish gasp, a hundred clues I was too stupid to catch until this very female bound chest was laid bare before my eyes.

Ror, my hound’s ass. It is Aurora unconscious in my arms. I’ve had the princess sleeping next to me for over a week, and I never even paused to consider that my traveling companion wasn’t a small, soft-cheeked pretty boy of fourteen, but a girl. A flaming girl!

“Fool!” I growl, angrier than I can remember being in my life, shaking with it, sweating with it, wishing I could smash something with the hand balling into a fist behind Ror’s—Aurora’s—head.

I’m furious with her, with myself, with every minute of my life before I met her, every experience that made me so certain a girl could never pass as a boy, never fight like a boy, never do half the things Aurora does every day without thinking twice.

The realization that it was a girl of seventeen who shoved me into my saddle when I was hurt, who bested that monster of a man in the practice ring, who took out five Kanvasol soldiers and is stubbornly bent on raising an army to march on Mercar hits me fully, sending my thoughts stumbling like headless chickens until an arrow shoots past within a breath of my neck and my ability to focus returns. Thank the gods.

There’s no time to dwell on my stupidity. I have to get the princess of Norvere out of danger before she’s captured by ogres and the entire world damned to darkness.

I reach for the pack with my feet, dragging it close enough to dig into the top with my free hand. I find Aurora’s purse and shove it into the back of my pants before tucking the flint and waterskin in the pocket of my borrowed cloak. If we manage to escape the ogres, we’ll need fire, water, and, soon after, gold. The rest of the pack is weight I can’t shoulder while carrying Aurora.

Still, I know there’s one other thing I can’t leave behind.

I lay her on the tree and come onto my toes, squatting low. Tensing, I kick the pack over the side, taking advantage of the ogres’ surprise as it falls to dash back to where Aurora was shot, snatch her staff, and hurry back toward the shelter of the trunk.

I’m less than ten hands from Aurora’s side when the tree begins to vibrate, the limb beneath me shaking hard enough to knock me off my feet. I fall to my belly, clutching at the thick bark with clawed fingers as a quake rocks the Feeding Tree, sending Aurora sliding closer to the edge of the limb.

Closer … closer …

Going … going …

Chapter Eighteen

Aurora

I’m on a glider, soaring through a starless sky. Below, fields wither and people weak with hunger run from ogres come to herd them into cages and I know the living darkness has come to pass.

I watch through tear-filled eyes as an old woman is dragged by her hair into a pen intended for animals and the ogres fall to feasting on her like wolves, forgetting their “enlightened transition” and their vows to forego human flesh, knowing they need not fear retribution now that the world is theirs.

I see the old woman’s head snapped from her body and draw in breath to scream, but before I can make a sound, the glider vanishes and I am falling, tumbling through the air toward where the ogres feed for a heart-stopping moment before—

My eyes fly open with a howl. I scream before I understand why and then scream again as I realize I am dangling in midair by my injured arm, swaying back and forth while the Feeding Tree shakes like a dog out of water.

“Please!” I shout, too dizzied by agony to do anything but beg for mercy. I can’t think how to end it, can’t explain what’s happening or how I came to be hanging here, watching the bark of the tree peel from its trunk like lips curling from a giant set of teeth.

Rotten teeth, so sticky with black sap it looks like the bark is oozing decay as it moves apart, opening a passage into the midnight hollow at the behemoth’s core.

With one last shudder, the tree’s shaking ceases and the wood falls silent. The ogres don’t shout or run; the wolves cower with their heads tucked. Even the wind seems to hold its breath.

“Aurora. Take my other hand!”

I recognize Niklaas’s voice and realize he must be the one holding my arm, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the tree’s mouth. Wisps of black smoke drift from within, spreading out to touch the ogres, twining between their thin legs, caressing their bald heads, beckoning with graceful smoke fingers until, one by one, the ogres’ eyes slide shut and their weapons fall to the ground. And then, slowly, stumbling like sleepwalkers, the soldiers shuffle into the impenetrable darkness at the Feeding Tree’s heart.

I catch a smell, like ancient dust and heat rising from long-baked bones, accompanied by the tang of sap nearly turned to syrup before the wood groans and the passage into the tree’s belly begins to shake closed. It is nearly a human sound, that groan, a mixture of vengeance and relief, succor and restitution that makes me shiver. It’s a cry of satisfaction after being too long from what you crave, a feast after too many months of famine.

Or years … or centuries …

Who knows when this tree last had a meal, but if the legends are true, it should have a few human lifetimes to enjoy tonight’s spoils. The Feeding Trees are said to take centuries to digest, leaving their ogre prey alive for a hundred years or more before the hardy monsters finally succumb to starvation.

The thought is almost enough to make me pity the ogres who shot me. Almost.

“Aurora!” Niklaas calls over the moaning as the tree rearranges its bark, sealing itself so completely no one would guess there had been a gaping hole at its center a moment ago.

I look up, blinking into his worried face, my heart racing though the ogres are gone and the wolves crouched in the shadow of the tree, whining in shock and confusion. My arm has begun to go numb, and the pain that was overwhelming is now a manageable misery, but for some reason I’m still afraid.

“Take my hand,” Niklaas demands, reaching his other hand down for mine. “I need it to pull you up.”

“Niklaas.” I gasp his name as I reach for his hand, as confused and panicked as I was a moment ago. Something is wrong, something—

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve got you, Aurora.”

Aurora. Aurora.

He knows. I don’t know whether to be outraged or terrified, to weep with relief or demand that he keep calling me Ror, that nothing be allowed to change now that my secret has been revealed.

But that would be stupid, pointless.

Everything has changed. I can hear it in Niklaas’s voice, feel it in the careful way he pulls me up and over the edge of the limb.

The skin below my bandaged chest scrapes against bark as I slide, revealing what gave me away. As soon as Niklaas releases me, I clutch my torn shirt with my good hand and pull it up, for modesty’s sake. It’s too late for anything else. Too late to tell Niklaas the truth the way I wanted to tell it, too late to make him understand that not everything between us was a lie, that he is still my friend whether I am a prince or a princess.