Page 2 of How to Marry a Winged King

“Even if you weren’t a worthless baseborn, you could not go, Cinders. The dancing will likely go past dawn.”

THE CURSE OF DAWN

DID I MENTION I’m cursed?

I don’t mean metaphorically. If I’m not within

the bounds of Bloodthorn Manor every dawn, it causes me immense pain that won’t cease until I return. Lord Bloodthorn bound me so when I was little, the first time I ran away. He hated me, but I was still his, by fae law, and he doesn’t give up his belongings.

Usually, the curse means I simply stay inside the grounds until dawn has safely passed. But sometimes, I wake early and can’t settle until I’ve pushed both my luck and the walls of my cage as far as they’ll go.

The first day of the thrice-held ball was such an occasion. I spent the pre-dawn hours in the wilds of the Golden Wood beyond Bloodthorn Manor, beating my mood into the earth with each footstep. Today, I would have to help my stepsisters prepare for a ball that I was forbidden to attend and be reminded of all the ways in which I was lacking.

I wasn’t angry, I told myself sternly, squashing the rebellious feeling down. Why did I even want to go to a probably dull royal ball? With the land’s most skilled musicians playing their hearts out, and rooms filled with laughter and enchantment, and dance after dance to enjoy … I pulled my mind away from those imaginings sharply. It wasn’t as if anybody would dance with a lowly human, anyway. Foolish to yearn after it.

I should be grateful for what I had, for food and shelter and family that cared for me, in their way. Some of them, at least. Many couldn’t boast of so much. I stomped as I made each point to myself. Healthful morning exercise and all that.

With only a few minutes to spare before dawn, I turned back toward the boundary. A whirr of dark wings caught my attention. The bird followed my path, flitting from tree to tree beside me. A tūī, iridescent blue-black feathers sparkling in the pre-dawn, its crisp white throat tuft bobbing. The birds were common in the Golden Wood, though I’d heard that hadn’t been the case before King Tāwhiri’s rule. The Wood changes to reflect its ruler, they say.

Other birds called in the still air, but the tūī didn’t join them with its distinctive song. It moved instead with odd deliberateness, approaching the same garden wall as me tree-by-tree in careful stages, until—

“No!” I gasped, too late.

The tūī landed on the deceptively smooth-barked tree that marked Bloodthorn Manor’s entrance, and all the tree’s thorns sprang from their retracted sheaths. The tūī squawked and took flight—or tried to. The branches had already closed around it, forming an ever-tightening cage, long cruel thorns turning inward toward their prey.

I sprinted the distance to the bloodthorn and slammed my hand against the trunk. The thorns retracted around my hand just in time, forming a palm-shaped hollow.

“Stop!”

The tree shuddered, and I could feel its reluctance to obey, the desire for blood that its maker had impressed upon it.

“I am a daughter of the house, and you may not hurt me! Stop!” I cried again.

With a final shiver, the thorns stopped tightening, but they didn’t retract. I peered up through the interlaced thorns and branches. The bird huddled in a cage of thorns, trapped, but at least none had yet penetrated its flesh. The dark eyes of the tūī met mine.

“Let it go,” I told the tree.

The tree ignored me.

I shouted at the tree for a bit, and it pretended not to hear me. The bloodthorn only barely respected the authority I’d claimed over it. I knew as soon as I removed my hand from the trunk, the tree would leap back into action. It was hungry; the local wildlife had long since learnt to give it a wide berth.

Dawn was nearly upon me, and I could feel the tether in my chest beginning to grow tight. But if I left the tree to cross the bounds, it would kill the bird before I could make it back.

“Fool bird,” I grumbled up at the tūī, tucking my skirts up in a way that would outrage my stepmother’s sense of propriety and starting to unlace my boots. I kept a palm against the trunk the entire time.

I climbed, the tether in my chest growing tighter, hotter. It was slow going, the thorns retracting sullenly as I reached for each handhold, as if the tree were making a point of being as unhelpful as possible. It was Lord Bloodthorn’s creation, and it was just as resentful of me as he was. But oaths bind fae and their magic, and the tree could not harm those who belonged to the manor, no matter how much it might want to in my case.

When I reached the branch that held the tūī at its far end, I thought the tree might give in, but no, it continued to make me fight for every inch. Obstinate bloody thing.

“Hang on,” I told the bird.

I scarcely see what else I could be doing at this moment.

I nearly fell off the branch. The voice had sounded in my head, deep and resonant, prickling with sarcasm. A magic-touched creature, then. They weren’t so uncommon in Faerie, though I would have thought a wyrling would have more sense than to alight on a bloodthorn.

“A bit of gratitude wouldn’t go astray, since I’m rescuing you,” I said as I eased my body along the branch.

A very slow rescue, I might note.