Princess of Thorns

“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, gri

“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 u

“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.