Princess of Thorns

“You were … seven?” I ask, sitting up.

She nods. “I remember almost everything about that time, but not how I was hurt. My mother said she thought she saw the solider carrying me strike me but …” She shrugs and a determined smile thins her lips. “Ready to go again?”

“I’ve never killed a man.” I take the hand she reaches down and let her pull me to my feet. “But if I could find that solider … What kind of monster hits a little girl?”

“The same kind who totes her to the dungeon knowing there’s a good chance she’ll die there.” Aurora’s forehead wrinkles. “Now I know Ekeeta was telling the truth about wanting Jor and me kept alive until the long summer of the prophecy, but then …”

“She’s not going to get her hands on you again.” I take her chin in my hand, making sure she doesn’t look away. “You promised not to go to Mercar. Remember?”

“I promised not to go alone,” she says, gaze sliding to the left.

I sigh, suddenly tired. She’s going to put herself in danger. Of course she is. I shouldn’t have expected anything else. “Then I’d better spend the day making sure no one in this village will leave with you.” I turn, but Aurora stops me with a hand on my arm.

“Wait.” Her fingers fist in my shirt. “Let’s not fight today. We can fight tomorrow morning before you leave if you want, but let’s … let’s have a good day.”

“Is it possible for us to go a day without fighting?”

“We had good days on the road, didn’t we? We just won’t talk about Ekeeta or my brother or your curse or … anything that makes us quarrel.”

“What’s left?” I ask with a wry smile.

“Battle techniques?” She blinks with an i

With a roar, I fling myself forward, tackling Aurora in a combination leap/bear hug that no self-respecting combat instructor would view as anything but laughable. But the ridiculous succeeds where my other efforts failed, and less than two seconds later I have a giggling Aurora pi

“One for me,” I say, joining in her laughter as I pull my arm away. “But I can’t keep my hand on you. It looks too dastardly.”

“Dastardly?” she repeats.

“Yes, dastardly.” I tickle her the way I did last night and am rewarded with a peal of throaty laughter. “I will fight a girl, but I will not be a dastard.”

“Of course not.” She bites her lip, regaining control with obvious effort. “I’m proud of you, really. A lesser man would have let me win every round.”

“Is that a compliment?” I brace my hands on either side of her face.

“Maybe.” She shifts beneath me, making me aware of the places where we touch, where her legs tangle with mine, where her stomach brushes against my ribs as she pulls in breath. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

I look down at her, at her softly parted lips and her eyes the gray of the ocean before a storm, and something shifts inside of me. My pulse escapes its usual haunts, begi

“We should get inside.” I scramble off of her, heart thudding in my ears as I come to my feet and back away. “That’s enough for your second day out of your sickbed.”

“But I haven’t won yet.” She props herself up on her elbows, but makes no move to rise from where she is sprawled on the grass.

“I forfeit.” I look at the barn, at the willow trees in the distance, at the horizon full of marmalade, sunrise clouds—anywhere but at Aurora. I’m too ashamed of myself. I can’t believe I had those sorts of thoughts about her, even for a second. She’s like my sister, and the last thing I’d want for my sister is to see her taken in by a boy like me.

Maybe Aurora was right; maybe you do only know two ways to manage women. Too bad neither method quite applies to her.

“What’s wrong?” Aurora sits up, propping her elbows on her knees.

“Nothing.” I force a smile, pretending not to be bothered by the realization that it isn’t only Aurora’s time spent pretending to be a boy that makes it hard to know how to behave with her. It’s the fact that she doesn’t fit into the usual baskets. She’s not a family member, and she’s not a girl I’d have an easy tumble with. She’s a little of both, as well as a friend of the kind I thought I could only find in another man. I never dreamt I could have fun sparring with a girl, or making rude jokes, or traveling across country with nothing but two horses and a single bedroll. I’ve never known a girl who could travel with less than two saddlebags and a pack mule.

But then … most of the girls I’ve known were raised in Kanvasola, and Kanvasol people expect a girl to be an i

“You have an odd look on your face.” Aurora cocks her head as she studies me. “Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

“I was just … thinking.”

She hums beneath her breath. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

I narrow my eyes. “I’m not stupid, you know. I speak five languages, know the lineage of every royal family in Mataquin back ten generations, and have an above-average grasp of mathematics.”

“I’m sure you do,” she says in a patronizing tone clearly intended to provoke me.

I smile, determined not to be drawn in. “It’s not my lack of intelligence that kept me from knowing you were a girl. I was raised to think girls incapable of certain things. Obviously, I was raised poorly, but that shouldn’t be a surprise, considering I had no mother and, well, you know who my father is.”

Aurora’s grin slips away. “I’m sorry, Niklaas. I was only teasing, I didn’t—”

“I know you were.” I wave off her apology. “But I wanted you to know that I realize I was wrong, and that maybe I need to change … some things.”

“What kind of things?” she asks, her eyes searching mine.

“The way I think. The things I expect. Just … things.” I reach a hand down to help her up. She ignores it, vaulting to her feet with a shove of her arms and a jackknife motion of her body that is impressive. U

“Maybe you should think about changing a few things, too,” I continue.

“Like what?” The look of surprise on her face makes it clear she considers herself above reproach.

“Like accepting help a bit more graciously,” I say, waving the hand she ignored in her face. “You don’t have to take on the world all alone.”

“I know,” she says. “Why do you think I was looking for an army?”

“An army you could order to do your bidding.” I snort. “That’s not the same thing as figuring things out with another person. Working together?”

“I worked with you,” she says, her voice getting bristly.

“No, you manipulated me.” I cross my arms and stand my ground. “You refused to give me what I wanted until I did your bidding.”

She rolls her eyes. “What else was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t have taken me to the Feeding Hills otherwise.”

“Exactly.” I tug her braid and am rewarded with a glare. “And then we wouldn’t have had to leap off a cliff to escape from the exiles, and you wouldn’t have been shot by ogres or almost died. If you had trusted my judgment from the start—”

“I didn’t know you at the start!” She throws her hands up to either side of her head. “I thought you were trying to get out of a week long journey, I didn’t know that—”

“But you know now.” I take her hands. “So will you promise me you won’t go to Mercar. Please?”

“How about you trust me this time, and come with me?” she begs, her fingers squeezing mine. “Please, Niklaas. Just … come with me.”

I drop my eyes to the hay scattered beneath our feet. “I can’t, I—”