AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She really was so very different from him.
Silence descended. His eyes turned around the scrap of space that had been hers not so very long ago. On the windowsill sat a line of tiny bones and eggshells—an old remedy to ward off danger. Little patches of faerie in this otherwise mundane hut.
There was nothing else up here but the bed and three trunks. What did they contain? Weapons in one, surely. Clothes in the other. What of the third?
A chipped vase rested on the surface, filled with wilted flowers. Behind it, he saw the faded pattern of leaves stencilled into the wooden walls, then half chipped out with a knife. Why had she done that? Were they not good enough? Had she grown out of them?
Something had happened to Juliana in this hut. Not one thing, but a dozen, a hundred tiny things she probably didn’t even remember, but something that had chipped away the smiles she used to wear and the ease she used to flaunt as surely as the blade against the stencilled leaves.
He ought to have been exhausted, but it was still early, and worries churned inside him. He had no idea if his parents were safe, no idea that they wouldn’t be tracked here.
Unseelie had never come for him before. They wanted the curse to come to pass. Was it a random attack, or had Ladrien sent them? What was the objective if he had? Just to scare him?
It worked.
Sleep evaded him still.
“If you were a bird, what bird would you be?” he asked, shattering the silence.
“Titania’s thorny tits!” Jules seethed. “Do you ever stop talking?”
“I’m sorry, I have a tendency to talk whenever I’m nervous or bored or afraid or in the company of someone I’m trying to impress—”
“And which one are you now?”
Hawthorn went silent, not entirely sure himself.
“I’d be a raven, obviously,” he continued. “Dark, handsome... majestic.”
“Really? I always thought you were more of a tit.”
Hawthorn scowled at her. “For the record, you’d be a sparrow. Small, brown...common.”
“This sparrow has a knife under her pillow, so watch it.”
“Ha…” he said, not believing her for one moment. “Wait a minute…” He tapped her pillow, sliding a hand underneath it. “Youdohave a knife under there!”
“Of course I do. It’s foolish to presume I’ll be able to stay awake all night. I need to be prepared in case of attack.”
“Juliana, I won’t have a knife in my bed space. What if I roll over and accidentally impale myself?”
“You roll over onto my side, the knife is the least of your worries.”
Hawthorn stilled, finding his words again. “You know it’s entirely possible to have a conversation without a threat of violence in it?”
“Oh, shut up.”
He lapsed into silence, but it was lighter than before, less tangible. Juliana’s warmth spread through the thin, musty blankets between them. His body felt heavier, the bed not nearly so lumpy or uncomfortable.
Slowly, sleep pulled him under.
He dreamt the sluaghs were chasing him through the woods, their claws transformed into arrows. They chased him until he slid into the mud, and then they gathered around him in a circle and twisted into thorns, growing closer and closer around him, coiling like snakes.
Bleed, Prince, bleed,hissed a voice.You were born to curse them.
Then a memory, standing outside his parents’ room when he was only a boy. They were discussing the curse in hushed, desperate tones. He knew that they’d been talking about it with their advisors earlier that day. That’s why he’d come to see them.Tell me what to do to make it right. Tell me it’s all right to be cursed.
Instead, he heard his father’s voice. “Perhaps we should have him taken out of Faerie. Make another to fill his place.”
