“You weren’t able to. I hold your contract. Too bad I wasn’t more thorough in my instructions, but I can’t afford to have you seeking loopholes now.”
“Think of all we’ve had together, Clotaire. What we’ve meant to one another. All this time I’ve waited for you to come for us. To—”
“To what, Jada?” he interrupted with a sneer, kicking her away. “Surely you didn’t believe I would ever have anything to do with you again.”
“But you said…” She trailed off. “You lied,” she said dully. “To manipulate me.”
“Turnabout is fair play,” Clotaire commented without remorse. “I think it’s fair that you stay here, in the cottage you confined Thorn to. After all, it was good enough for her.”
“Only because you asked it of me!” Still on her knees, Jada turned a beseeching gaze on Thorn. “Please. Thorn. I’ve been like a mother to you.”
Though part of Thorn felt sorry for her erstwhile guardian, Jada had never been like a mother to her. “I have a request, Father,” she said, watching Jada’s face for the pained hope in it.There. Now you feel like I did all those times I begged you to relent and you pretended to consider before you refused me.“Confine her to the garden within the briar-rose hedge, like I was. Nessie, the goat, and the hens will need tending. It’s not fair to punish them.”
“You little bitch,” Jada whispered. “I’ll kill every last one of your precious pets before I spend a moment caring for them, you ungrateful wretch!” She sprang from the floor, fingers curved into claws, dream magic leaping from her in tentacles.
Thorn slammed her into sleep. Jada fell to the floor. Clotaire gave her an interested look. “Well done,” he commented. “I believe I’ll go with my initial plan. Inside the cottage she stays. I promised your mother I’d see Jada punished and removed from our lives. This should do nicely. Just as effective as death and quite a bit more fitting. After you.” He swept a hand at the door.
Rattled, uncertain of her footing and her role, Thorn followed his direction and stepped outside. As she watched, her father restored the wards, keying them to himself. Then he twirled his finger at the soil. Black shoots popped up as if in answer to a question, rapidly burgeoning. Faster than clouds scudding across the sky before a storm, the vines grew, winding over the cottage to encase it, long thorns extending in a wickedly daunting barrier. The same briar roses as covered the fence.
Once they’d caged every bit of surface, even the chimney, Clotaire dusted his hands in satisfaction, raising a brow at her. “And they said in school that I’d never get far with phytokinesis. Remember, my little Thorn, my child that I grew myself: The key to sorcery is in your mind. Be clever and ambitious. Sheer power is excellent to have. Talent and education valuable to nurture and acquire. But how you employ what you have is what carries you to the height of ambition.”
She summoned a smile. “I’ll remember that, Father. Thank you for your wisdom.”
He cocked his head, nearly saying something, then let it go. “Come. My carriage is outside the gate.”
Outside, the hens were scattered about the garden, Nessie grazing nearby. Nessie lifted her head as if sensing what was happening, her large brown eyes dewy, and she bleated a sad cry. If Thorn left them loose in the garden, the forest predatorswould have them all. She would have hated to abandon them to that fate regardless, but now she knew through Sebastien how much her animals understood. She turned around.
“Thorn,” her father said impatiently. “Time is ticking away.”
“I need a moment,” she said, ignoring his confused questions. Taking Nessie to her shed, Thorn closed the gate on her pen. Then she went back and gathered up the chickens, who were confused to be herded back to their coop at this time of day and made the task difficult. Thorn counted as she went, naming each with affection, and getting them all back inside. Once they were all settled, annoyed with her, but in place, she cast a sleep spell over them all.
She had become Jada, putting them to sleep. But, unlike Jada, whom she’d left crumpled up where she’d fallen, Thorn moved among the animals, arranging their lax limbs and heavy heads, setting the chickens firmly on their nests. It was the least she could do and still wasn’t enough. “I’ll come back,” she promised on a whisper. “I won’t just leave you here.”
“Finally,” her father commented acidly when she joined him. “You’ll have to watch that soft heart of yours. People can and will use it against you.”
“Yes, Father,” she replied. “It won’t happen again.”
He grunted. “See that it doesn’t.”
As they passed through the open gate, Thorn saw that a second carriage sat behind the one her father went to. Elaborate, even gaudy, the carriage must be what Jada used to go back and forth. A driver waited with the horses and Clotaire gave him coin to be on his way, that Jada wouldn’t be needing him.
As they left the briar-covered fence and cottage behind, Jada now the one trapped in amber, Thorn wondered if she’d truly ever return. Soon, thanks to Rose’s sacrifice, Thorn would be a real princess, with the power to do anything she wished. She would come back and wake Nessie and the chickens, and bring them to Sebastien’s castle. Surely castles needed livestock, too.And they would be reunited with Esmerelda and all be together there and happy.
She would make sure of it. They would all have a new life. A better life, with a happy ever after.
She only hoped that Rose would, too.
29
Thorn and her newly acquired father pulled up in front of what looked to Thorn to be a grand castle, nothing like she’d pictured a hunting lodge to be. Standing in front was a beautiful woman who could be a queen, in a grand gown, with cascading blond hair.
“And look who’s waiting for you,” Clotaire said in that paternal tone he’d adopted with Thorn. While she appreciated that Clotaire had freed her from Jada—she still felt a bit in shock at her vastly changed circumstances—she hadn’t forgotten that Clotaire had been the engineer of her life with Jada. He seemed to think she’d just consider that water under the bridge. Sebastien had told her that Rose would no longer call the man her father and Thorn could understand why.
As soon as the driver pulled the horses to a halt, she threw open the door and jumped down without waiting for assistance, rushing toward the woman who could only be Shoshan, her mother. She stopped her headlong flight a few steps shy, getting ahold of herself.
Shoshan gazed back at her, fingers knotted as if to keep herself from reaching for Thorn. With her fair skin and pale blue eyes, she looked almost nothing like Rose, Thorn, and their father, and yet… There was something about the shape of her chin, the high cheekbones, the fierce glint in her eyes that reminded Thorn very much of Rose. She didn’t think she possessed much ferocity, herself, but she thought maybe she had something of her mother.
“Thorn,” Shoshan said, almost tentatively, seeming as if she didn’t like the name. “Or I should call you Lily, I think.”
