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“The first attempt happened not long after you left,” he said in the quiet. “I was out in the gardens, minding my own business, and someone shot out of the bushes. My guard tackled them to the ground and the next thing I knew I was being whisked back into the castle. I barely understood what was going on. But it seemed frenzied, random. I naively assumed that it was an isolated incident, a one-off, that no one would try anything again. Then, just after my thirteenth birthday, they did. Took an arrow to the shoulder.”
He touched his collarbone briefly, an echo of pain hovering beneath his fingertips, though the scar, unlike hers, had long since vanished.
“Wound healed quickly, but I… I could feel it for weeks, months afterwards. And sometimes even when I sleep—” He shook his head. He’d intended to blot out the nightmares, not drag them to the surface. “The time before this, it was poison. Spent the better part of two days in agony, vomiting up my guts while the castle magicians pumped me full of magic to keep me alive whilst they worked out an antidote. That was the worst. I think there have been other attempts I’m not privy to. Haven’t asked. Not worth the extra paranoia, right?”
He waited for Juliana to speak, to tell him he was foolish, that she’d been through worse. He doubted she would put him at ease, let him know his fears were unfounded. What he’d do for a mortal lie right now, someone to tell him that it was all right, natural to be scared—
“Why sneak out to the taverns if the threat is so high?” she asked eventually. Typical Juliana response, practical to a fault. “Giving your guards the slip and everything—”
He shrugged. “There’s a lot of reasons. The first time I did it, I was rather drunk and it seemed like a great idea. Plus, I hated my guard at the time and I rather wanted to get him in trouble. He didn’t notice. Not for hours. It was… freeing. Like telling the world I wasn’t scared of it.”
Juliana’s pause seemed to stretch on for an eternity.
“The other reasons?” she asked, returning to her sword.
He sighed. “The castle isn’t that safe, either. All the attacks so far have been organised. Visiting the tavern is random. No one’s tried to kill me there… or not for being what I am, anyway. It’s fun. I enjoy it.”
“Still seems like a big risk to take.”
“Risk can be fun.”
Another pause followed, and he wondered if she truly believed him.
“I guess there’s also a small part of me that invites the chaos,” he admitted, his voice slow and quiet. “A part that says, if they’re going to kill me, they can do it. But I won’t be cowering in fear when they do.”
Juliana stilled, her hands against the blade. “You’d rather die in a seedy tavern?”
“Better than dying hurling up my insides in my comfortable castle. Nothing’s comfortable when you’re dying, anyway.”
“Fair point.”
“You, I think, would like to die in battle with your sword in your hand.”
Juliana snorted. “If I have to die young, sure. But I rather prefer the future where I retire after a full life of adventuring and die peacefully in my own home.”
“Hmm. I wouldn’t have imagined that for you.”
“You? If you could choose how you would die?”
“Hmm. Naked and surrounded by beautiful people?”
She raised her eyebrow.
“Not alone,” he said instead. “I just don’t want to die alone.”
There might have been a healer in the room while he writhed under the poison’s influence; he couldn’t remember. They hadn’t spoken, hadn’t come to him other than to administer the antidote. The vines were better company. He remembered them more than anything else, arching over his bed, twisting round the posts, almost as if they understood.
No one in his life had ever understood him, and Hawthorn was almost certain they never would.
No one would sit by his side when that day came.
Curse or no curse, he was doomed to die alone.
SixweeksbeforeHawthorn’seighteenth birthday, Lucinda returned to court, unexpectedly and without invitation.
“You could send her away,” Juliana suggested, as Hawthorn wrestled himself into a fine velvet doublet in maroon and gold.
“Where would be the fun in that?” He winked, as if this was all a game to him, as if she didn’t know him well enough by now to sense a forced smile, to see his fingers twist around his blackthorn ring, to notice the pitch of his voice altering whenever he was caught off guard.
