AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A long, elegant hand reached out to swap around the cards. Juliana stilled, following the black feathery cuff up the slender arm to an unsettlingly familiar face.
The face smiled. “Juliana.”
Juliana unclenched her jaw, just enough to speak. “Prince Prickle.”
The smile twisted further. “Not completely forgotten me, I see.”
“Believe me, I gave it my best shot.”
Hawthorn barked a laugh. “You haven’t changed at all.”
“I’d say the same for you, but it wouldn’t be a compliment.”
Only, he had. He was finally taller than she was, almost by a head. Everything about him was smoother and sharper. He moved like water, and his smile was liquid sin.
As was the look in those ridiculous aegean-blue eyes of his. Juliana had stared at those eyes for years, hating how she had no name for them and how they plagued her late at night. Not dark as the lake. Not bright as the sky. Not blue as cornflowers. Some ancient, ageless blue, stony and smooth, softer and more beautiful than they had any right to be.
One day, she came across Cedany painting a seascape in a corner of the gardens. Juliana had never visited the sea before, but she longed to, especially when she saw images like this. One of the colours Cedany was mixing was the exact shade of Hawthorn’s eyes.
“What’s that?” she’d said, pointing.
Cedany, far from being annoyed at the interruption, had smiled. “Be more specific.”
“That colour. What’s it called?”
“Aegean blue, child. Like the seas of the summer court.”
Juliana pursed her lips. She ought to have been happy she finally had a name for the beautiful, accursed colour, but somehow she was not appeased.
“Do you like it?”
Juliana’s face twisted further, and then, with a kind of painful honesty like the ones exhibited by faeries when the truth was wrenched from them, she said, “I wish I didn’t.”
Those same eyes—both hated and admired—were riveted on her now, even as he poured out a measure and handed her a goblet. “A drink?” he offered.
“No.”
“You don’t trust me?”
She ought to, as he couldn’t lie. He would not be able to say the labels had been switched if they weren’t. But perhaps they’d been switched multiple times at his behest. Perhaps he’d swapped them round twice himself. There were plenty of ways to deceive even when your tongue could only speak the truth.
“I trust you as well as I can throw you,” she snapped. “Which, given your recent growth spurt, is not as far as I once could.”
Hawthorn smirked, harder. His lips felt like daggers to her, groaning against her insides. “Ah, so you have noticed. Makes me look more dashing, don’t you think?”
“Better target practice,” she admitted, stepping closer. “Easier to aim for.”
Something flickered in Hawthorn’s eyes at that, something dark, almost fearful. “Enjoy the rest of the night,” he said tartly, and strode back to the rest of the dancers.
Julianacouldnotremembermeeting Hawthorn. He’d always been there in the background, a shadow over her life in the kitchens, a glaring presence at feasts and festivals and tournaments.
She remembered meeting Princess Lucinda of the Autumn Court, daughter to the noble High Lady and Lord. She breezed into their lives the summer before Juliana turned thirteen.
Most high ladies sent their children to the capital to be educated with the other noble children at the age of seven, but Lucinda’s parents had declared she was “not yet ready.” It did not take Juliana long to realise what that truly meant.
Lucinda was fourteen when she swept into the castle, two years older than Hawthorn and beautiful beyond measure. She had skin like milk and hair like fire, eyes of brilliant gold, and a voice like honey.
In that honeyed voice, she poured poison into Juliana’s ears, reminding her she was worthless, weak, pathetic, a worm in a house of peacocks. She made Hawthorn twice as bad as he had ever been.
