“There’s no reason to be disappointed if he doesn’t come today,” she told herself. “He’s busy. It could be tomorrow. Or the day after. You yourself told him you’d be fine, sobe fine.” She made herself go inside so the animals would calm down, then gazed in dismay at all the food she’d made. She could feed Sebastien a dozen times over. This was utterly ridiculous. It made her look crazed. Which, to be fair, might not be entirely wrong.
She wasbeingridiculous.
Then she caught a glimpse of movement out the kitchen window. A bright flare of gold. Her heart leapt. Sebastien.
All worries forgotten, she ran out the door open to the warm spring afternoon and raced down the garden path to the gate. Sebastien swung down from Kismet, his scarlet cloak flying, and grinned at her as Bunny and Nonna gave welcoming barks. She found herself laughing with pure joy and relief. If the warded gate hadn’t still prevented her, she’d have flung herself into his arms.
As it was, she pulled up short, clutching her hands to her chest, feeling as if she needed to prevent her heart from leaping through her ribs. Sebastien smiled at her through the archwayof the gate. The buds on the rose canes had grown larger in only the last two days, she realized, the nodules unfurling here and there on their way to being full leaves. Spring always seemed to come this way: long months of chilly waiting with nothing happening and then all at once a burst of life.
Just like her own.
“You looked so beautiful,” Sebastien told her, “running toward me with your hair like a banner of black silk, your eyes sparkling. I wish I could kiss you.” He wound the fingers of both hands around the gate as if he could pull it apart with brute strength, wincing as the wards pricked at him, the rose canes rustling with a hiss as they moved to intercept with thorns.
Thorn had been about to warn him when those last words of his brought her up short. “You do?” she breathed, hardly daring to hope.
“More than anything, Thorn.” He gripped the uprights as if they were the bars of a cell restraining him. “I talked to Rose and she gave us her blessing.”
“Her blessing?” Thorn echoed, not that she was confused by the term, but afraid to jump to any conclusions about what it all meant.
“For us to… formeto… well, court you?” A wrinkle of uncertainty crossed his handsome face, and he raked back the golden curls that had tumbled over his forehead. “I… This is new to me—and I never imagined I’d feel this way, much less have to declare myself through a warded bramble of malicious roses—but I think I’m in love with you. I mean, I am. I love you, Thorn.” He shrugged helplessly, shaking the rose canes, who rattled back with menace, a thorn curving to dig into his wrist. Bright blood trickled down, but he seemed not to notice, his gaze fastened on hers. “I am not a good person, though. I seduced Rose because my father asked me to, to pressure her into joining his court.”
“Oh. Poor Rose.” Thorn’s tender heart pulsed with sympathyfor them both. She slipped her hand through the rose canes and slid them next to his, their fingers brushing, then overlapping, the canes sprouting more and longer thorns. She didn’t care. The touch of his skin sent sparks through her. “I’m not a good person either, Sebastien. I went into your dreams to try to see you and I messed things up. Rose had to fix it. There’s my story for yours.”
He smiled, a crooked twist of pleasure twined with regret. “Rose is the good one, I suppose, having to deal with the two of us.”
She gazed at him through the thickening bramble, and their gazes intertwined like their fingers and the tangle of the prickly barrier. “I love you. I know that even if I know nothing else. I love you beyond rationality and reason, so I believe you can love me the same way.”
“I didn’t even believe in love until you,” he averred, gazing through the briar lattice, like one of the golden roses that hadn’t yet bloomed.
“In this, also, we are both ignorant amateurs then,” she replied with a smile. “We shall have to practice loving each other diligently.”
“I like the sound of that,” he replied, echoing her smile and stroking her fingers. Another thorn pierced the back of his hand and he grimaced, glaring impotently at the bristling barrier. “How I wish I could find a way through to you.”
“Oh, all right,” said a velvet, accented voice in amused exasperation. “Who am I to stand in the way of young love? Go in already, Prince Charming.”
Both Thorn and Sebastien stared in shock at Moriah, sitting primly like an obsidian statue. Sebastien recovered first, throwing an accusing glance at Bunny. “You couldn’t have warned me?” he asked thescáthcú. Then he laughed. “He says Moriah is a friend.” Bunny thumped his tail with enthusiasm and flicked his black, forked tongue through dripping fangs at Moriah.
The cat gave him a narrow, green-eyed stare that belied Bunny’s words, then hissed at Nonna, who came bounding up fromwherever she’d been exploring. Nonna skidded to a stop, tucked her tail between her legs, and shook her floppy hound’s ears in confusion.
“All this time,” Sebastien demanded of Moriah, “you could have let Thorn out and you didn’t?”
Moriah transferred her disdainful and quelling gaze to Sebastien. “Lilythorn still cannot come out.Youmay go in.” The gate sprang wide, the canes drawing back almost demurely. With a flick of her long tail at Nonna, Moriah ambled off, quickly lost among the marching columns of trees.
“She’s a cat of few words,” Thorn said, almost feeling as if she should apologize.
“Why am I wasting time?” Sebastien exclaimed and dashed through the open gate, Bunny and Nonna galloping alongside. Nessie bleated and the chickens scattered—then all suddenly calmed. “I told them they were safe from the dogs. Dog andscáthcú,” he amended, rolling his eyes at Bunny. He set gentle hands on Thorn’s hips and she steadied herself by laying her hands on his strong shoulders, feeling the incredible privilege of being able to touch him as she liked, while he studied her upturned face. “Have I told you how beautiful you are?”
She flushed. “I look just like Rose.”
“No.” He shook his head, a curl falling to wave over his forehead. “I know I messed that up at first, but now I don’t see how I ever confused you. You are radiant as your true namesake, Lily. Rose told you that’s what you were named at birth, yes?”
“Yes, but…”
“But what, sweetheart?” he asked softly, and she fluttered inside at the endearment.
“It’s hard for me to think of myself as her,” she admitted. “I don’t think I’ve been that girl for a very long time.”
“Moriah just called you Lilythorn.”
