“Yes,” she replied quietly, her heart bleeding with some emotion that he knew this about her. That this worry, this care was for her. “I promised the cat. And I’m a danger to this world.” She gestured helplessly at all the damage.
He looked, too, as if he hadn’t noticed it all before. “I suppose you are. All right then, I’ll take you back, though I don’t like it.” Holding her gaze a moment longer, he nodded crisply, stern jaw tight.
“You’ll go with me?” she asked, hope leaping in her heart.
“Of course. I wouldn’t let you go unescorted. Then I’ll go talk to Rose, the real Rose, and maybe she’ll have ideas of what’s going on here. We won’t just leave you there. My Rose… she’s a good person. A little intense, but she’ll want to help.”
He would leave her at the cottage. Stupid girl, of course he would. Thorn nodded, covering the pain of hearing that name, so briefly hers, so much lovelier than her own, as the real one. Once again, Thorn had begun to cease to exist, fading back into a waking dreamless sleep. Back to her living tomb she’d go. Perhaps to stay forever.
And without even the hope of her distant prince to console her.
Thorn rode with Sebastien in a carriage he’d somehow obtained as if conjuring it from nothing. There would be no more intimate riding cradled in Sebastien’s lap. Two strangers rode on top of the carriage, driving the horses, Kismet tied behind and following along. Sebastien had cleaned up and put on new clothes,not as fine as the ones he’d been wearing. Staring moodily out the window from the opposite seat, a glum and flattened Nonna draped over his feet, he’d said barely two words to her since they’d set off.
Miserable and fully aware that she’d brought sorrow with her like a cloud that splashed cold and muddy misery on everyone who came in contact with her, Thorn pretended not to watch him, not to be memorizing every clean line of his handsome face with a desperation akin to the hunger she felt emerging from the enchanted sleep.
He turned his head abruptly, catching her in her absorption, and giving a wry smile at her immediate flush of embarrassment. “I’m not sure what to believe of your story,” he said, as if delivering a verdict. “But if you’re telling the truth about your ignorance of the world, you should still know that people do not fall in love at the drop of a hat.”
“I know,” she replied with quiet dignity.
“If you’re so sorry, then why did you do it? You let me believe you were Rose. Ikissedyou.”
“It was an accident,” she answered, knowing as she said it how stupid that sounded. The same thing she’d said to Moriah. She knotted her fingers in the skirt of her plain gown.
“Anaccident,” he repeated with scorn that singed her raw heart.
“I don’t know how to explain.” It all seemed so crazy now. For so long she’d believed her prince would somehow know the inside of her heart, as she knew his. Sebastien was a good person and now he thought she was some pitiful creature.
“How about you try,” he suggested. “It’s a long ride,” he added with just a glimmer of his usual humor, but it was enough for her to cling to.
She did have to at least try. Taking a deep breath, she resisted touching the gem in her pocket for reassurance. Would it ever provide her with comfort again, or would she be foreverreminded of this horrible moment? “I…” she began when it became apparent she’d delayed too long already, then realized she still didn’t know what to say. Sebastien folded his arms, gazing at her expectantly, and she briefly thought about flinging herself from the carriage rather than face this.
“I know you,” she said in a rush. “I know it sounds stupid, but I did walk through the Dream—to escape from a root cellar where I’d been locked in and restrained with the Sleep of Ages—and I was desperate and afraid and so when I made it out of the Dream it made a kind of sense to me that you were right there.” And Moriah had been there, too. Had the cat somehow engineered this apparent coincidence? “I could see that, in the world outside, maybe love was just like that. Walking all your life toward someone and then finding out they were walking toward you too. I had been waiting for you, truly all these years. And there you were, like a wish granted, like in the stories, you know?” She faltered, her words feeling like fragile bubbles that sank to the floor and popped, leaving no impact. “You’re exactly like I thought you’d be from your belt buckle. I know you don’t believe me, but—”
He stopped her with a raised hand. “A belt buckle.”
“I’m skilled in psychometry. I’m not good at oneiromancy, but I can do that too. Kind of.”
“Describe this buckle,” he commanded in that casually imperious way of his. When she did, he frowned. “I lost that buckle years ago. My father was so angry with my carelessness.”
“Not lost, but stolen,” she corrected eagerly, wanting to give him at least that much comfort. “Someone who’d been dismissed and was desperate. I saw that in the buckle,” she explained when he looked dubious, then plowed on. She dug out the lint-covered dingy ball of sealing wax, begrimed from years of dust and oils from her fingers, the once-sparkling gem smeared with the waxy residue. “Look, I can prove it!”
She held it out on her flattened palm to show him, and withgreat care he took it from her. Frowning, he examined it. “The buckle did have sapphires.”
“Your father gave it to you. I saw his crown and his long red beard. You were so happy.”
He smiled, seeming to remember that day, before he frowned in concentration again. “Everyone knows my father is King Soren and what he looks like.” He carefully handed the waxy ball back to her.
“True. But I knewyou. All of these years, I felt like… like we were…” This all sounded so silly now. Why hadn’t she realized sooner what a foolish, girlish dream this was? “I just thought…” Again she couldn’t finish, too self-conscious, afraid she might start weeping. “This all sounds so stupid.”
He gazed at her for a long moment. “Do you realize you call yourself stupid all the time? I do it to myself too, mostly in my head. I didn’t realize how bad it sounds. I think we should stop doing that.”
She flushed. “I’m trying to be smarter.”
“You are smart,” he said slowly. “You figured out how to walk the Dream all on your own. And you’re definitely crazy brave to try what you did.”
With a watery laugh, she dashed tears from her eyes before they could spill. “I worry sometimes,” she confessed, “that I might just be crazy.” She dared a look at him, nearly undone to find him gazing at her with compassion.
“I sometimes have felt that way, too,” he said, like a confession.
