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“Relax, sweet viper, I’m not trying to dance with you…” He swished his free hand in an upwards spiral, and a vine twirled down from the boughs above, wrapping itself around them and tugging them off the floor.
Juliana buckled, clutching onto Hawthorn instinctively, hating that the faint smell of sweat and cheap ale only seemed to enhance the scent of apple spice clinging to his skin.
Hawthorn grinned as her fingers dug into the damp silk of his shirt. “Not often I get to be the dashing one.”
“If you think being forced to be this close to your disgusting, drunken self is in any way dashing—”
“Ah, Juliana,” said Hawthorn as the vine deposited them on the balcony, “but Ido.”
She groaned, freeing herself from his embrace and yanking him back into the bedchamber. He collapsed on the bed as she turned to fetch him some water, forcing it on him whilst she wrestled with his boots.
Hawthorn smiled, setting aside his glass, but not being particularly helpful when she freed him of his shirt, carefully inspecting his neck and chest. “See something you like?”
“Checking for rashes. Faerie fever can come on quickly, or so I hear.”
Seeing nothing, she returned to the area set aside for bathing and dampened a cloth to attend to the slight cut on his eyebrow.
“If you get sick,” she told him, “I’m not looking after you!”
“Fair enough,” he responded, and his fingers drifted to a slight sting in her cheek—the broken tankard must have caught her earlier. Something buzzed at his fingertips, and a warmth spread through her face, the cut healing.
“That wasn’t necessary,” she said.
“Take it as practice, then,” he replied, and sank back against the pillows. “You get hurt too often on my account,” he remarked, staring lazily up at the ceiling.
The cut was nothing, and ordinarily, Juliana would have reminded him of such. But not tonight, when he’d lied to her—or the faerie version of it, anyway. “Then stop doing dangerous things!”
“I can’t help it,” he said, “it’s in my nature, playing with fire…” He made flames dance around his fingers.
Juliana wrapped the damp cloth around his hand and extinguished them in an instant. “If you set fire to the bed sheets again, I’m leaving you.”
Hawthorn’s fingers brushed against hers. “I still detest you sometimes,” he said, voice like wine. “And yet I still want you to stay. How strange is that?”
Juliana groaned, rolling her eyes. “Hawthorn, in all seriousness, please stop trying to hurt yourself.”
“Hurt myself?” He blinked up at her. “I’m not trying to hurt myself. Other people are trying to hurt me. If other people could just stop trying to do that, that would be great! Although… you’d be out of a job. That would be less great.”
“I would cope.”
“I might not,” he said, sliding further into his pillows. “Jules?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t want to die, see. I like life too much. Even with the bad bits there’s too much enjoyment to be had.”
He reached out, and for a second, Juliana thought he might be going for her hair, but instead he flicked her nose and erupted into giggles instead.
Juliana could not think of a response to that, and thankfully, she didn’t have to; seconds later he was asleep.
She pulled off her own clothes and slid back into bed.
Very strange,she thought,very strange indeed.
Thechangestothecastle in the lead-up to Hawthorn’s eighteenth birthday were both minute and imperceptible and also sudden and all at once.
Whilst rumours surrounding Princess Serena’s role in ending the curse were rife, so few knew the truth of it that many were disinclined to believe anything had been put in place at all. Juliana heard all manner of whispers from the servants.
“They don’t care about us. They’ve given into the curse.”
