Misrule, page 9
Aurora’s knees wobble as she stands. Derek rushes to help her, but she leans out of his reach. “I require no further assistance.”
“Don’t pay him any attention. He’s not important,” I say before he can cause any more distraction, and Derek wisely takes the hint to be silent. I inch toward the bed, hardly able to speak the words that are burning through my mind. “Aurora. Do you…remember me?”
But she doesn’t answer. Slowly, she assesses the room. Apprehension skates across my nerves. Even a hundred years ago, this chamber was a decrepit ruin. But now it is far worse. Cobwebs drape the shelves like shredded curtains. The windows are grayed with grime. The furniture is warped and stained with rainwater from a century’s worth of storms. The wreckage of Briar looms in the distance. What does she think of it?
“How long has it been?” There’s a tremor in her voice.
I twist my fingers together, the bramble band of my signet ring digging into my flesh. I’d imagined this conversation a thousand times. Practiced it, even. But now the words slip about like eels, completely out of my grasp. “Not terribly long. Well…a hundred years.”
Wind stirs her spun-gold hair. “One hundred years.”
At last, she turns. Takes one foal-like step after another in my direction. I bite the inside of my cheek and hope that my thudding heart doesn’t explode out of its cage, then hope that it does. Her scent washes over me, far more potent now that she is awake—apple blossom and summer nights. I drink it in, a single wild thought whirling through my brain: Does she taste the same?
A sharp sting cracks along the side of my face. The room blurs past me and I stumble.
She slapped me.
“How could you?”
The question is low and lethal, unlike any I’ve heard from Aurora before. Because it isn’t really her, I register. It’s the curse taking root. I clutch the throbbing in my cheek. And for the first time since my siege, I wish Endlewild were alive so that I could kill him all over again. “You don’t understand. Laurel and Endlewild altered your memories while you slept. They deliberately confused you so that you would think I was…”
But I can’t even finish. Laurel. My blood roils. While I was living in Lavender House, I thought the wisdom Grace was my friend, or as close to a friend as I ever had. But she’d been spying for Endlewild, reporting all of my activities to the Fae ambassador.
“They altered nothing.” Brittle pages flap around us. “I remember it all. The fountain. Your bird. The summoning ritual. The night we spent here.”
An image of those hours sear through my mind, the two of us tangled together. And I am suddenly acutely aware of Derek’s presence. No one in the Dark Court knows of my history with Aurora, and I certainly can’t start with him piecing it together.
“Get out.” I jerk my chin toward the entrance.
The boy has the gall to stand straighter. But his feet begin to shuffle as the bond between us compels him to obey my command. He grabs at his arm and grits his teeth.
“What are you doing to him?” Aurora wrests Derek’s arm away from his chest and pulls up his sleeve. The wreath of bramble and thorn is glowing like a burning coal. “What is this?”
“Nothing to be concerned about. He swore his service to me. Willingly,” I add, at the judgment on her face. “This is the consequence when he doesn’t honor his vow.”
Aurora touches the mark and Derek hisses in pain. “Yes, it looks like ‘nothing.’ Let him go. Immediately.”
Mortania rouses in the place where my magic lives. Is SHE the one giving orders?
I tamp the ancient Vila down. Aurora simply doesn’t understand yet. Tiny curls of smoke are rising from Derek’s brand. The scent of scorched flesh stings in my nostrils. “You may stay,” I grind out.
The ancient Vila rumbles her displeasure, and Derek exhales in relief. The mark fades to black, but I sorely hope the pain lingers.
“Thank you, Princess,” he says. “If I can ever be of service to you—”
“I do not know you, Sir Darren.” Aurora steps away from him. “And I would thank you not to presume an acquaintance you do not enjoy. Do you make it a habit to kiss women while they sleep and are unable to fend you off? And why did your kiss wake me anyway?”
Sparks of surprise and relief flare in my veins. She doesn’t know that anyone could have woken her—anyone but me. And she cannot find out, not after this.
Derek’s face shades the color of a ripe plum. “No. I don’t know. I just—”
“We’ll deal with him later,” I interrupt, putting myself in front of Aurora. “You’re angry, I understand. But please listen to what I have to say. When you were cursed again, Laurel and Endlewild tainted your memories of me with an elixir or something. They wanted to change your perception of me. Whatever they did is the reason you can’t see clearly right now.”
“See clearly?” she repeats. “My home doesn’t exist anymore. What else is there to see? There’s nothing tainting my memories.”
“There is,” I insist.
“Really?” She ticks items off on her fingers. “Your bird’s name is Callow. You muddied up a fountain in the gardens on the night of my birthday. I rescued you from a prison cell after my father was going to use you as his weapon against the Etherians.”
My mind is spinning. She does remember. And a cold understanding pools in my belly. Could I really have spent the last hundred years seeking a way to lift protections that were never in place?
“But Laurel told me,” I repeat.
“Then her elixir either didn’t work, or she lied.”
“She had no reason to—” I stop short, that terrible day coming back to me in waves. Laurel in Aurora’s bedchamber, urging me to run before Tarkin’s guards broke down the door. Before the light Fae arrived, deposed the king, and executed me. “She knew I wouldn’t leave Briar without you,” I whisper. “She lied so that I would go…and live.”
Dragon’s teeth. What a fool I’ve been. Despair settles over me like a wet woolen blanket. But this revelation, if it’s true, does nothing to quell my anger toward the Grace. Laurel might have been trying to help me, but she achieved the opposite. I think of all the days I’ve lost, when Aurora and I could have been—
“And I assume Laurel is dead now, for all her gallant attempts to rescue you.” Aurora folds her arms, and guilt jabs at me. Laurel had helped her rescue me from Tarkin’s dungeon. She was part of our plan to stage a coup.
Until she changed her mind and allied with the Fae, Mortania whispers.
She’s right.
“What Laurel did doesn’t excuse—”
“And everyone else?” Aurora asks. “Are they all sleeping in their own cages, waiting for Eric to come and free them?”
“Derek,” he corrects, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Quiet!” I snarl at him. This is worse than any curse. “You were never in a cage,” I say to Aurora. “I was protecting you from your father. You’d be married to that infernal prince right now if it weren’t for me. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Protecting me?” She laughs again, but it does not sound like the same laugh we shared together in my Lair, mocking the vapid courtiers. “I thought I had died and been delivered to some sort of personal hell. I saw visions of the Grace District burning. Courtiers and merchants and children reduced to charred corpses—by your hand.”
“You weren’t here,” I say, anger spiking. Why won’t she listen to what I’m trying to tell her? “You’re confused right now, but—”
“Confused?” The cry of a raven carries through the room. “You know, Alyce, I think Laurel’s elixir was more effective than she guessed. I don’t recognize you at all. But not because of any Grace magic. Because of you. You are the curse.”
Thunder growls as yet another line of storms trudges inland. Salt stings on my lips, tears track down my face. But whether they are from shock, or sadness, or rage, I cannot tell. I swipe them roughly away.
There’s a stampede of feet in the distance. Dragon’s teeth. The others. And it is far too late to do anything to salvage the situation.
Malakar is the first to skid to a halt inside the entrance, followed by Torin and a few Demon sentries. An Imp points, open-mouthed. “Wha’s that pretty one doin’ here?”
“Never seen her before,” another agrees.
Regan elbows her way to the front of the crowd, then freezes as she comprehends what’s occurred. She mouths something to me, but I shake my head. I’ll explain later—if I survive whatever disaster is about to fall upon my shoulders.
“Nimara?” Torin asks, expectant.
The taste of loam fills my mouth from where I’ve been biting my tongue.
“This is Aurora,” I force myself to say. “The last princess of Briar.”
And apparently, from the way she is glowering at me, my enemy.
Another child. She will be my last, I know. Tarkin shows barely any interest in me on the best of days, though there was a time, long ago, when a dashing prince of Paladay lifted my curse with his kiss—true love’s kiss—and guaranteed me every happiness.
I envy my younger sisters. Due to the curse, they are not allowed to bear their own daughters. They do not have to stroke their baby’s down-feather hair and hold their plump starfish hands and know the heartbreak that is to come.
But this daughter.
Aurora.
Tarkin judged it a ridiculous name, pretentious and indulgent. I don’t care. This violet-eyed girl may be the last—the only—gift I bestow on my realm. For if the thorn-and-bramble crown ever rests on her head, she will very much need to live up to such a name.
She will need to bring the dawn to this interminable night.
—Excerpt from the lost diary of Mariel, Briar Queen. Age of the Rose, 956
CHAPTER TEN
The unsettled energy of the court eddies in a rush of whispers and rustle of bodies. A familiar feeling of pins and needles prickles through my limbs—so like what I endured as the Dark Grace that I have to resist the urge to huddle under an invisible cloak. It is a sensation I have not experienced in a hundred years, and I despise it. Despise the fact that, after everything, I can still be reduced to that girl again. Mortania undulates in her cave.
You are not that girl, pet.
It had taken a long time and much shouting to convince the others to leave the old library and convene in the throne room, then far longer for Aurora to complete the journey. After a century of sleep, she is as weak as a fledgling, but she refused to let anyone carry her—even though it meant frequent stops during which she had to brace herself against a wall to recover. And then she had halted for other reasons, like when she found the statues of ancient queens defaced, and her mother’s portrait shredded and—most disastrously—when she glimpsed the great doors of the throne room, relieved of their array of jewels.
“Are those,” she’d whispered, “eyes?”
The Imps proudly confirmed that they were, and that they had embedded the Etherian eyes into the doors themselves. Then the creatures happily pointed out the tattered banners hanging from the ceiling, the crest of Briar’s royal family obliterated. The thrones with their assortments of broken Fae staffs. The Etherian heads mounted to the walls. Aurora accepted each display with steadfast silence, but I know there is a storm brewing between her bones. I just need to get her alone. Her waking was too much of a shock. But I can explain.
Torin’s staff, carved from the diamond-grooved trunk of an ash tree, taps against the marble floor as she approaches Aurora. “This is the crown princess? The very same whom we assumed to have perished with the royal family?”
“The sleeping princess from the boy’s story?” Malakar’s snout wrinkles. I overheard several of his Goblins muttering to one another about the supple, peach-pink hue of Aurora’s skin, and the luster of her hair—fine spun gold they yearn to add to their collection. This is not the way Aurora’s introduction to court was supposed to happen.
A few heads turn to Derek, who is hovering near the east bank of windows. He’s kept as close as possible to Aurora since we left the abandoned library. His muscles are coiled, as if he’s waiting for the right moment to swoop in and rescue her. But he’s done quite enough of that today. Perhaps it will soon be time for the ship’s boy to take his leave of us. Permanently.
“You knew she was alive, Nimara?” Torin’s coal-bright attention only intensifies my discomfort.
“She was under a sleeping curse,” I reply with as much dignity as possible. “I did not know how to lift it. I’ve been housing her in the old wings since my siege.”
“A hundred years you kept this from us?” Wisps of shadow curl from Torin’s skin, signaling her anger. Anger that is, admittedly, deserved. “Regan—did you know?”
The Vila leader lifts her chin. “I did.”
Demons whisper to one another. I twist the signet ring on my finger.
“She kept the secret because I asked her to,” I explain, clearing the hitch in my voice. “I wasn’t sure how you would react if you knew.”
“And how should we react?” Malakar’s ears lay flat beside his horns. He points at Aurora. “Her family destroyed Malterre and banished our kind. Allied with the light Fae. They would have seen us all dead.”
“Aye, kill the princess!” A few Imps shout. Cheers.
Vila propose that Aurora’s body should be chopped up and dumped over Etheria, as Neve’s Starlings were in our courtyard. Though I can tell she’s trying to fight it, Aurora’s shoulders bow slightly inward. No—I will not let them treat her this way.
“Enough!” The word echoes in the chamber like the lash of a whip. Several Imps, who had been creeping closer to the dais, shrink back. “I’ve spent the last century welcoming each and every one of you into this court. Creating a home for you when you had none. If Aurora is the sole surviving royal, don’t you think I had good reason to protect her?”
“Aye, and what reason was that?” Malakar asks. “Was she to be some kind of hostage?”
“No,” I say, exasperated. “I’m aware of your opinions concerning the former rulers.” I gesture around at the ruined portraits hanging at crooked angles. “And I cannot fault you for assuming the worst of one of their princesses. But Aurora is different. She’s my…”
Aurora arches an eyebrow, and my throat tightens. She’s everything. But I cannot admit that when, only a moment ago, the court was talking of scattering her broken body over Etheria. Later, when they get to know her, their hearts will soften.
“She befriended me,” I say. Aurora tenses. “Accepted me, when no one else in this realm would. She deserves a place here as much as the rest of you do.”
Uncertain murmurs swell. But I sense that a fraction of the court’s bloodlust has cooled to curiosity, and I count that as a victory.
“Aye, and what does the princess have to say about it?” Malakar drums his stubby fingers on the arm of his chair. “Does Nimara have it right? Are you different?”
The seconds drag on. I hold my breath, silently willing Aurora to say something that will support my claims. They will love her as I do if only she would—
“Your…Your Highness.”
There’s a stir in the court as a human servant slips her way through the sea of onlookers. The Goblins and Imps block her path and pinch her limbs. One of them sticks out a foot and trips her. She goes skidding across the floor, then crawls on hands and knees toward the dais.
“Do I know you?” Aurora asks.
The human rakes her matted auburn hair out of her thin face. “Elspeth, Highness.”
The same servant who was digging around in my drawers. The skin around her curse mark still bears faint scars from our encounter. I let out a sigh. This day keeps getting worse.
“My mother was a member of your household when…” Her focus flicks to me, and I dare her to continue. That bright spot of lapis fury from my bedchamber leaps and dives within her gaze.
I never did ask the Goblins about Elspeth’s brooch. Perhaps I will.
Aurora kneels to the servant’s level, still wobbly. “Who was your mother?”
“L-Lady Elipsa.” A tear tracks through the layer of grit on her cheek and drips onto her uniform, which is blotched with colorful stains and ripped at the sleeves. “But she is long passed now.”
The first real happiness in a hundred years illuminates Aurora’s face. And it’s directed at someone else. My fists clench.
“Yes, I think I do remember her,” she says. “Lady Elipsa was a skilled dancer.”
A vague recollection of this courtier surfaces. Her laugh sounded like crows cackling, and she frequented my Lair regularly for hair-thinning and waist-thickening elixirs she used to sabotage the other ladies of court. And Elspeth is a greedy vulture, who is likely already plotting how she might use this situation to her advantage. But Aurora is reaching for her hand. Regarding her like she’s a saint.
Ignore them, pet.
I cannot.
“Yes, Highness,” Elspeth goes on in that breathless, simpering tone. “My mother adored you. The others will be relieved to know that you’re alive. I’ll be sure to—”
Regan slams her staff on the stone close enough that Elspeth half-tumbles down the steps. “You’re disrupting the business of court.” She jabs the staff at the door. “Get back to your duties.”
Aurora rises stiffly. “You will not speak to her that way. She deserves respect.”
“Respect?” A Goblin spits. “What gives you the right to instruct this court on its manners?”
Giggles from the Imps. But Aurora doesn’t even flinch at their derision. She adopts that regal posture I’ve seen too many times to count, and my stomach drops. “Because this is my home. My court. Because I am the Briar Queen!”
