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Hawthorn didn’t like that she was winning. He equally didn’t like how insidious the rest of his friends were getting, but he refused to lose face in front of them. Faerie friends were hard to come by, mortals were as common as mice. Only one could stand beside you as the centuries turned.
But Hawthorn had never much cared for torturing creatures, so, one afternoon, sparring in the ring, he cornered her.
“Just give up,” he advised. “Let me glamour you. I promise it’ll be quick and meaningless—I’ll compel you to make a cartwheel and we’ll be done with it. My companions… I cannot promise whattheywill do, when they win.”
Juliana narrowed her eyes. ”Ifthey win,” she said, and then ducked away from him.
A few weeks later, the group finally caught her bathing by herself, her clothes on a pile by the bank. There was the necklace she wore, and they tore the rest of her clothing to shreds, discovering she’d sewn berries into the hems.
The group cackled, hid in the bushes, and waited until she returned.
Hawthorn wasn’t having the best of times—he knew mortals were frequently ashamed of their natural bodies, whereas faeries just wore clothes for decoration, and this type of entertainment seemed far from sporting—but he didn’t want to call it off for fear of what the others might say if he did so.
Besides which, he’d offered her a way out. She deserved this humiliation. She did.
He gritted his teeth as she slunk from the water, knowing he’d not be able to speak those words.
His friends sprung from the bushes, but not before Juliana had discovered her shredded clothes, sensed a trap, and drawn her sword. They’d not thought to take that from her, assuming they could glamour her into submission.
“Stand down, mortal,” said Maize, a particularly cruel boy from Spring, “there’s no point. We found your wards. Now…” He stepped forward, black eyes blazing. ”Crawl to me.Crawl like the insect you are.”
Juliana did not crawl. Instead, she kicked him over and slashed the back of his hand. “No,” she hissed, her body still dripping with water.
Maize clutched his hand, whimpering. “Witch! I’ll see you whipped for this! My father—”
“Myfather is one of the Queen’s most trusted knights,” Juliana continued. “If you want to play that game. You think he’ll let any harm come to me after what you’ve just done? And in any case… I’m the one holding the blade. I could take off your hand before you could move. Are you willing to risk it?”
Maize’s face paled. “You… you wouldn’t.”
Juliana moved closer. “Wouldn’t I? Shall we test it?”
The rest of the group murmured, wondering if they should step in, what they should do. Juliana appeared immune to glamours. What else could she do? They’d never encountered such a mortal before, and most weren’t proficient with swords. They stared at her like she was a wildfire they needed to evade.
“Give me your cloak,” Juliana demanded.
Maize stared at her incredulously. “What?”
“Your cloak. I require it. Unless you’d like to explain to the entire court what happened to my clothes?”
Reluctantly, Maize obliged.
No one ever found out where Juliana kept her third ward, but they never bothered her again. There were all sorts of rumours—that she swallowed a potion every morning, that she painted her nails with rowan-berries, that she’d made a deal with a forest god or eldritch terror.
Hawthorn, for his money, suspected the truth was far more simple; she had another somewhere about her person.
He searched for it now as she peeled off her layers, but found all thoughts of wards washed from his mind as he saw the scars and bruises dotting her skin and arms.
For some reason—even though he knew he caused a bruise or two of his own when he was younger—the sight of them twisted. He found his fingers twitching towards her skin, as though he hoped to rub them away.
She turned, sensing movement. “What?”
“Don’t they hurt?” he asked.
Juliana paused. “I really don’t notice them any more.”
That didn’t answer his question. He turned his gaze to the wooden ceiling, thinking of how different her life had been that pain was like a shadow to her.
He thought of how he’d frozen in battle and she’d drawn a sword, how she’d not complained once about being wounded, or going hungry.
