Princess of Thorns

Illestros lays his hands on Jor’s shoulders and I scream, “Wait! I can’t kill her! I’m blessed with mercy. I can’t kill someone who isn’t fighting back.”

“Can’t? Or won’t?” Illestros shoves Jor, sending him stumbling forward. My brother falls through the hole in the planks with a terrible choking, gasping, suffering sound and I scream as if the rope grips my own throat.

I surge toward the scaffold but make it only a few steps before I’m captured by guards who grip my arms, ensuring I can do them no damage with the dagger in my hand.

“Give Ekeeta a knife and I’ll fight her,” I shout as Illestros descends the dais and Jor writhes at the end of the rope and my soul dies a little with every passing second. “I’ll win! I’ll kill her and win, I swear it, but please—”

“Kill her now and Reende will pull the boy up.” Illestros takes a cup from an awaiting priest and holds it above the altar, meeting my eyes across the flames. “Kill her, child. It isn’t too late.”

The guards release me and I turn to face Ekeeta, the knife clutched in my sweating hand. I take two frantic steps toward her, the dagger lifted level with my eyes, ready to slaughter her like a pig if that is what it takes to save Jor, but as soon as I tense to drive the blade home, my muscles seize with such force that my spine arches and my breath freezes in my chest.

I fall to the ground, knees slamming into stone as the knife goes skittering across the floor. I scramble after it, panting against the pulse of angry magic burning beneath my skin.

My hand closes around the knife and I spin on hands and knees to see Jor still moving, but just barely. “Please! Pull him up!” I scream. “Give me time!”

“There is no time.” Illestros lifts his arm and crooks two fingers. On the scaffold, a soldier moves closer to Niklaas.

“No!” I wail as I crawl back to Ekeeta.

She has fallen to her side on the stones, knocking the gag from her mouth. She cries out as I flip her onto her back and lift the dagger, but I can’t understand her. I can’t hear anything over the hurricane of terror swirling inside of me, the howling of magic fighting to do as it was bidden, to honor its rules as stubbornly as anything born of the natural world.

But it is not natural to allow your brother to be murdered. I can’t do it, I won’t! I will kill Ekeeta, even if it kills me.

And it might. My body feels ravaged by lightning, every inch of my interior scalded and raw and my head on fire, filled with smoke and wailing so loud I don’t realize I am screaming until I thrust the dagger down—shoving it into Ekeeta’s beating heart—and the world goes silent.

So quiet. Quiet as the center of a storm, as the breath before dying.

I gasp as I sag to the ground, but it’s as if there is no air left in the room. I roll onto my back, clawed hands clutching at my chest as the lightning storm within me rushes out to sea, streaming from my body, leaving me alone and friendless and empty as a pocket. Emptier. Within only a few moments, there is not even an echo of magic left inside of me, only a weak, whimpering, sweating husk of a girl.

A girl mortal in every way.

The magic is gone. I have betrayed the laws of my fairy blessings and now they have abandoned me. I know it as sure as I know I am a murderer and a fool.

“Jor,” I moan, rolling onto my side, clutching my aching core with both hands. I look up, but I can’t see the scaffold from the floor. I can’t see anything but the fire and the shadows it casts. I don’t know if Jor is alive, I don’t—

“Please … listen,” Ekeeta whispers from my other side.

“Jor!” I cry out in a strangled voice, but there is still no answer, only shouting from the scaffold and footsteps thumping back and forth across the boards.

“Aurora, please.” Ekeeta gasps, a liquid sound that makes my stomach roil.

I roll over, tears streaming from my eyes, hating myself for what I’ve done even before I see the black cloud filling the air around the ogre queen, spreading out like ink in water. The blood pouring from her chest is turning to black smoke that swirls away, swept up on some unfelt breeze to hover above the room like an ominous cloud.

The living darkness. Ekeeta is becoming the living darkness, and I’ve made the transformation come to pass. I can feel the magic shivering in the smoke, the same magic that once pulsed beneath my skin.

Fairy blessings can only leave a person in blood. I’ve known that truth since I was a child, but I didn’t stop to think that the blood might not have to be my own, or that a murder would serve as well as a suicide.

“I’m sorry.” I touch Ekeeta’s cheek. It is still whole, her eyes full of life though she is dying. Bleeding, dying … murdered. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” she whispers. “I forgive you.”

I sob as she lifts her hand to my cheek, mirroring my caress. I’m surprised to find her hand still warm and her touch so gentle and … human.

She smiles and I cry even harder. “It’s all right. The … Fey army … at the gates … told my guard to help them.”

“What?” I ask, hope and grief twisting inside of me.

“I tried … to tell you.” She sips in air with a labored rasp. “They will … break through. I … only wish …” She swallows with obvious pain. “Forgive me?”

She doesn’t have long, soon she will die and I will have committed murder—real murder, not an accident made while defending myself—and the entire world will suffer for my failure.

Our failure. Hers and mine. We are both wicked and selfish, we were both weak when we most needed to be strong. She is my enemy, but she is also … my sister.

“I forgive you,” I say, meaning it with my entire heart. “I forgive you for everything.” I bite my lip, tasting misery salty on my skin.

“Yes … that is …” She doesn’t finish. She drifts away like a ship sinking to the bottom of the sea. Her hand falls from my face. She dies. She dies and I am alone on the floor before the fire as the ogre soldiers charged with guarding me suddenly rush away.

Perhaps they’re going to fight the Fey army Ekeeta said was at the city gate. Perhaps they’re simply terrified by the black cloud filling the room. I don’t know. I only know that I am lost.

I roll onto my back, feeling stronger than I did a moment ago, but too scared to sit up. It will be too late now. If Jor wasn’t cut down, he will be dead. I can’t bear to see it, can’t bear to know that I have committed murder, squandered the gifts my mother died to give me, and cursed the world, and haven’t even managed to spare Jor in the process.

I lie broken on the stones, staring up at the swirling black smoke, watching as the cloud begins to thin, going gray in patches until I hear—

“Aurora!” Niklaas shouts from the scaffold. “Some help!”

I bolt into a seated position, the room spi

I look to the scaffold to see Niklaas and my brother—my brother! Alive! Still alive!—fighting off the ogres surging up the stairs. Niklaas stands at the top of the steps and Jor defends from behind. My brother is obviously weak, but he’s managing to help keep the ogres at bay. Somehow he and Niklaas have both acquired swords and are doing a decent job of defending themselves, but even with many of the ogre soldiers ru

Spi

Wincing, I grip the hilt in one hand and give the dagger a tug, and then another tug and another, but it barely moves. Finally, I fist both hands around the hilt and haul at it with all my strength until it pops free with an awful sucking sound and I fall onto my bottom, breathing hard.

Breathing hard, simply from pulling a knife from a motionless body.

My gifts really are gone. Completely gone. I am as weak as any smaller-than-average, too-ski