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“Because I fell in love.”
Liar. Charmer. Liar.
“You’re saying that to save yourself,” I whisper.
“My curse, my ruin, my Violet—my heart is yours. It was always yours. Take it.” Cyrus reaches up, thumb brushing my cheek. I flinch at the wet press of skin—my own tears.
I hate him. I hate himso muchfor making me feel this way. “Shut up.”
“Make me.” He has the audacity to smile.
I raise the thorn high. Enough of our games. Free him from my life. Free me from our destiny.
“Go ahead.” His gaze is as sure as any challenge he’s given before, tracing over my face with the marvel of a lover. So sure,toosure. “At least I’m not a coward.”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I snarl.
And I drive the thorn into his chest.
Iron and earth flood the air. The spark of triumph burns fast as Cyrus’s lips, too late, part in shock.
He never thought I’d actually do it.
Blood seeps between my fingers. My hand smears with it in its shaking. It’s too late for regret, but nausea travels up my gut anyway, and I can’t look at him a second longer—
The wound explodes with a spray of leaves.
Vines snake out in a starburst, running over his body and my knees and the rug and the floorboards. I scramble backward, tripping over the growth, and it tangles around my ankles eagerly with a cool touch of magic.
His body jerks as if under the control of something worming in his veins and—alive and horrified—he clutches the hole in his chest. “What did you—what’s happening tome?”
But I can only gape at him, because I don’t know. The nightmare floods my memories, vibrant: Cyrus in a bed of green, his lips red as blood. Redwithblood. The wound is already closed up, a brown welt of a slash with ribbons of plants rooted in it. The caked gore falls away like dirt. No evidence of the thorn is left.
The door swings wide open. I try to yank my feet away and scramble back, as if the extra distance would make me look less guilty.
But it isn’t the king or anyone from the palace who comes in. The two guards who had been at my door are slumped on the floor.
Standing in the doorway is a ghastly figure that one might call Lady Raya if not for the fact that half of her face seems to be melting away. A glimmering blink later and the remaining disguise fades to reveal the Witch of Nightmares I once saw in Nadiya’s memories.
“Took you long enough,” she trills.
Dizziness nearly tips me over as I push myself to my feet. The urge to run or fight dulls under my hunger for answers. “You’ve been invading my head,” I say, low and seething.
“Invadingis an ugly word. I was merely trying to help.” She sweeps in, wrapped in a cloak of night so dark that no light pierces it. She’s neither crone nor maiden, but in between—eyes grooved and sage on a wrongfully young face, framed in silky, black ringlets. She might have been a queen, had she a kingdom.
“Who are you?” I brace myself for a scuffle, and I’m suddenly aware of how I look in turn: my glamoured dress is tattered where Cyrus’s blood has stained it and my chemise peeks through. The pretty updo I pinned myself has become mostly undone. I look more like a hag than she does.
“I never gave myself a name, unlike you,” she answers simply. “As I crossed this land, I have been called a Witch of Nightmares, a Witch of Dark Fires, a Witch of Wanting. But you, little star, may simply call me a sister.”
“You—you can’t be—”
“Come, little star, you feel it. We share a kinship, if not in blood then in soul. We are of the same kind.” She paces leisurely around Cyrus and the explosion of undergrowth that’s sprung up, clucking, “He is a pretty one. Fairy-tainted, but pretty.”
He’s still breathing; the sound is ragged and wet. His skin is ashen as birch bark. I swallow the lump in my throat and scramble farther into the room, eying vases and trays I could smash over the witch’s head. “What did the thorn do to him?”
“Did you want to simply kill him? He will die in time, worry not. He is rose-cursed, like the other beasties.” She bends over him, one eye on me as she curls a finger under Cyrus’s chin. His gaze is glassy, his limbs limp. Something glints from his head.
The stubs of horns.
