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The Queen, who was, like most faeries, unused to children, suddenly found herself in charge of two. One howled in her arms, the other went stiff with terror.
So did the Queen.
No one knew what was going on in her mind at the time. Juliana had never asked. But the handmaids later reported that the Queen held on tightly to them both, and that after the fighting was done, nothing short of her own parents could pry Juliana from the Queen’s arms. She had found some safety in whatever comfort she had offered.
The reports on what happened next differed. Some said the fighting was over in a matter of minutes and the party resumed within the hour. Others said it took weeks to weed out the creatures that had spread to the corners of the castle, that no one smiled or danced for weeks, that the days after were filled with meeting after meeting, all debating how best to avoid the curse, to delay it, to punish Ladrien.
Naturally, the entire of Faerie was scoured. “Not a leaf left unturned” reported the mortal storytellers, whose tongues were crafted for metaphor. No sign of the Unseelie King was ever found.
Every mage and sorcerer was consulted: the curse could not be broken. On the Prince’s 18th birthday, Ladrien would return, and the kingdom would plunge into slumber. Unless, somehow, a bride could be arranged, made immune to the curse, and delivered to his sleeping form after the event.
Juliana liked to imagine creeping up to Hawthorn’s crib at the end of the day after all the chaos had ended, and staring at his little scrunched face. She liked to imagine, that if she could talk properly, if she’d known then what would happen next, she would have looked at the faerie boy and said,
“Little prince, you may have doomed us all.”
ItwasJulianaArdencourt’sday off, and she was trying to make the most of it. The thing was, she was never sure what to do with time off, and it almost felt lazy to be sitting beneath one of the trees in the castle’s orchard, polishing her sword.
You’ve earned this,she reminded herself.
But had she?
She looked down her palms, scarred and calloused from years of handling the blade, yet they’d grown softer since she became the personal guard of Crown Prince Hawthorn. Aside from the occasional training mission or sparring in the knights’ ring, she rarely got the chance to practise any more.
Well, aside from the occasional failed assassination attempt, which did happen with surprising frequency.
More so, of late, with his eighteenth birthday only three months away. People were keen to spill his bloodbeforehe came of age, to avert the curse from happening at all.
There were days when Juliana was sorely tempted to let them have him. The prince had been a definitethornin her side growing up. Despite Queen Maytree’s insistence that mortals were treated with respect in her kingdom, the reality was that spoiled faerie children were the same as spoiled human children, and that growing up beneath the thumbs of folk who could literally summon sparks from their fingers was far from easy.
One day in high summer, Hawthorn and his friends had manipulated the roots of the apple trees and tied up the mortal children as a game. Of course, Juliana had cut her way out with one of the knives she hid about her person, and rigged a bucket of cold water over Hawthorn’s fancy bed in retaliation.
“The thing about fae is they always expect everything to be magic,” Juliana’s father had told her. “They’re never prepared for mortal tricks.”
So Juliana became the master of them. Every time Hawthorn and his group frightened a friend of hers with fire, every time they glamoured spiders to scuttle out of books, every time they pulled at braids, or tied them up, or locked them away, she returned it back ten-fold.
One time she even tied his hair to his bedpost as he slept. He hadn’t worn his hair long since.
Not once had she ever been caught.
The pranks had come to an abrupt end, when, just after her thirteenth birthday, her father had packed up their bags and moved the two of them to a hut in the middle of the Autumn Forest.
For three years.
Juliana had hated it at first. As much as she loathed Hawthorn, she’d missed the palace. She missed her friends and the fellow servants, like Iona, the cook that had half-raised her. She missed the palace gardens where all seasons reigned, the enchanted library where books flew, and the vines that hummed and murmured against the walls. She missed the feasts and the gowns and the revelry.
Her father never fully explained why they had to go, only that it would be ‘character building’. He barely explained when they returned, either, three years later on Hawthorn’s fifteenth birthday, or why Juliana had to suddenly serve as Hawthorn’s guard. He insisted it was all for her, and as Hawthorn had promised her knighthood and riches after his eighteenth birthday, she hadn’t complained.
Much.
Often.Lately.
Hawthorn hadn’t pulled a prank on her since they were children. That did not mean he was easy to work with.
For,she reminded herself.You workforhim. Not with. You are not one of them. You will never be one of them.
She sighed, sheathing the sword she was polishing, and packed up the rest of her equipment. Really, it was foolish to be spending any of her day off thinking ofHawthornof all people.
She swung her bag onto her back, and continued through the gardens.
