A Wicked Thing (12 page)

She tugged the door open, but he spoke again before she could move. “You're making a mistake. I won't be able to protect you.”

She laughed. It wasn't funny, not really, but the idea that this was his parting message, half warning, half threat, that in the end it all came down to keeping her safe for others to manipulate . . . it was too painful to be serious. “I survived a hundred-year curse, Tristan,” she said. “I don't need you to protect me.”

She slipped through the door and let it click shut behind her. He did not follow her.

Outside, rain drizzled, forming a light mist along the alley. Aurora lingered in the doorway, her head buzzing. A customer bumped into her as he entered the inn, and she jerked aside.

Nettle, the singer, leaned against the wall. The slight overhang of the roof protected her from the rain. She looked willowy and angular, her long black hair falling over her eyes, her knees and elbows jutting out in points. She glanced across at Aurora. “Are you all right?” she said. Her voice was as smoky as when she sang, but it sounded slightly unnatural and as angular as her
body, as though the words were sharp in her mouth.

“Oh,” Aurora said. “Yes. I'm sorry if I disturbed you.”

Nettle stood up straighter. “No,” she said. “You did not disturb me. You look like you have had a shock.” Nettle was watching her with barely a flicker of an expression on her face, as though merely commenting on the weather.

“I guess that's true.”

“Tristan told you that he knows?”

Aurora stared, too startled to pretend she did not understand what the singer meant.

“You are surprised that I know too? Do not worry. I doubt any one else has noticed.”

“Tristan noticed,” she said. “Right away, he noticed.”

Nettle tilted her head to the side. Tristan had described the singer as prickly, but that wasn't quite the word for the way she tossed her head, carefully pronouncing each word. She was aloof, but sincere, watching Aurora like she was a curiosity that had stumbled into her path and needed to be decoded. “I believe he found you hard to miss,” she said. “The girl destroying all his hopes.”

“I am not destroying his hopes,” Aurora said. “I don't even know what I'm doing.”

“Neither does he,” Nettle said. “At least you are able to admit it.” She sat. Her long dress darkened as it fell in a puddle, and her legs would be brown with mud by the time she stood, but Nettle either did not notice or did not care. She stared straight ahead, the
picture of calm. “Will you sit with me? It is too cold and quiet out here to be alone, but I do not want to return inside just yet.”

Aurora hesitated. But the singer was right. She did not want to be alone.

She sank down beside Nettle. The rainwater soaked into her skirts.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don't know,” Aurora said. “I just . . .” She stared at the wall across the alley, watching the way the rain trickled down the stones. She tightened her grip on her knees, pulling them under her chin. “Tristan said some things that . . . I don't know.”

“He has a lot of bitterness in him,” Nettle said. “He tries to hide it with jokes, but he is always angry. It is a dangerous way to be.”

The sound of conversation from the inn hummed behind them, and the rain patted out a rhythm on her bare arms. “He's not who I thought he was.”

Nettle continued to watch her. “You have known him—how long?”

The nights all blurred together, a mess of smiles and fear and mead warming her lips. “Four days, maybe.”

“So. You meet a boy, and you imagine he is everything you want to find. Comforting. But now the real boy is fighting back.”

“It's not that,” she said. “He was keeping secrets from me. All the time, he was thinking . . .”

“But you were keeping secrets from him too, were you not?”

“It's different,” Aurora said. “My secrets . . . I needed to stay quiet. It was the only way to keep me safe.”

“Maybe he felt the same way.”

“No,” she said. “He made it quite clear that safety isn't the issue here, his or mine.”

“Tristan is a fool,” Nettle said. “He does not know what he means. He is so full of his own plans and ideas that he cannot see anything else.”

Aurora rested her head against the wall, letting it scrape her scalp. The rain pattered out a rhythm by their feet. She needed to talk about something else, to shift the attention away from herself. “Is Nettle your real name?” she asked.

Nettle looked at her. A single strand of black hair brushed across her nose. “That is what I have told people to call me,” she said. “Does that not make it my real name?”

“I'm sorry,” Aurora said. “I did not mean to offend you.”

“It takes more than that to offend me. But you must know that names do not mean everything.” She shifted, pulling her right knee toward her chin. “It is not the name my mother gave me, nor a translation of it, although some people once told me otherwise. Boys like your Tristan, and yet not like Tristan at all. When I had only just begun traveling outside my kingdom, when I did not speak your language so well, they named me. Nettle. Like the flower that was my name before. They said it suited me. It was not until later that I found out what it meant.
They thought me a weed. Something unwelcome, to be torn out.”

Aurora tilted her head to look at her. Her hair tangled on the stone. “Why did you keep using it?”

“You have seen flowers, have you not? Such delicate things. A rough hand, a strong breeze, the slightest frost . . . they die so easily. Even left to their own devices, they shrivel and die so quickly. But a weed . . . a weed is strong. Almost impossible to kill. And if someone tries to destroy a weed, it will hurt them back.” She stood up, as abruptly as she had sat down. “Let me give you some advice,” she said. “Don't trust anyone except yourself.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I was you, once.” Nettle shifted on her feet. From Aurora's angle on the ground, she looked disheveled, cold, and utterly beautiful. “People do not hear me in my songs. They only hear themselves. Selfish, self-centered, each thinking this is about me. This is about my life. And that is not a bad thing. But right now, I am not trying to tell you how you feel. I am telling you how things are. And the truth is that you must not expect others to be the way you would like inside your head. You must not let them in.” Nettle turned to look at the open door. “I must return to sing. But think about what I said.” She slipped inside before Aurora could reply.

Aurora rested her chin on her knees, shivering slightly. The rain had stopped, leaving a cool mist and sharp, fresh air in its
wake. Soon Nettle's music laced its way out of the inn. She took a deep breath, then another, savoring the sting of hurt that nestled in her chest. She closed her eyes and soaked in the music, trying to make the moment last. She could not come back, she knew. But even now, Nettle's voice filled some emptiness inside her, and she did not want to let go. Not yet.

THE QUEEN WAS WAITING FOR HER WHEN SHE GOT
back to her room. She sat in Aurora's chair, a piece of embroidery in her hands.

“I am glad you finally decided to rejoin us,” she said. “Do close the door.”

Aurora shut the door behind her and stepped farther into the room. How could the queen have known that she left her room? Had Betsy told her she was gone?

“I admit, I was curious,” the queen said, and she placed the embroidery aside. The chair scraped the floor as she stood. “I wanted to be the first to see you when you returned.” She
sounded almost friendly. “Where have you been?”

“I went for a walk,” Aurora said. “Around the castle.”

“That is strange. I did not know it was raining inside the castle. And I do believe the door was locked.”

“Somebody must have forgotten to lock it, Your Majesty.”

“Do not lie to me, Aurora. It does not become you.” The queen brushed her skirts, smoothing out invisible wrinkles. “Betsy came to me, after she returned to your room and found the door unlocked and you absent. She was most concerned.”

Aurora wrapped her fingers in the folds of her cloak. “I am sorry if I worried you, Your Majesty.”

“Worried me? Would you have liked that?” The queen reached for a crystal decanter and poured herself a glass of water. Her hands shook, and water splashed onto the floor. “All of us running around, panicking about you? The center of everyone's attention?” She took a sip, her lips pursed. “No. Your silly maid might have assumed that something terrible had befallen you, but I knew better. If you had been kidnapped by some vicious group of rebels, it would be unfortunate, of course, but something we could work with. You leaving your room at night and getting into all sorts of trouble . . . that is, I think, less acceptable.”

“Less acceptable?” Aurora said. “You locked me in, like a prisoner. All I did was go for a walk.”

“All you did? You could have ruined everything.” The queen's knuckles were white against the glass. “I have told you
that the world is dangerous. I told you that it was not safe. Do you think I say these things for my own amusement? I locked this door for your own protection, and you break through it, like it means nothing, like you know better.”

The worst part was that the queen was right. Aurora had escaped from the castle, and the first person she met was a rebel. A boy who planned to kill Iris's husband, who attempted to recruit her. Her stomach twisted with guilt. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But—”

“But?” The queen raised her eyebrows. “You should be begging my forgiveness, Aurora, not contradicting me again. You have a willful, stubborn, spoiled mind, and we do not have the time or space for your mistakes.”

Aurora balled her fists at her sides. First Tristan, now the queen, treating her like she had no valid thoughts of her own. “If you think so little of me, why keep me here at all? If the idea that I was kidnapped is so much more convenient to you, then why even bother with me?”

The queen frowned, as though seriously considering the question. “I do not think little of you,” she said. “You do not factor into things much at all. You may despise that, but it is the way of things.” She closed her eyes as if in pain. “I know you think I am some wicked woman, forcing you to bend to my whims. But I am only trying to help you. You do not know what is best.” When she opened her eyes again, she looked weary, her expression tinged with distaste. “This is not how I would have
liked things to be. But we have no choice. You are going to have to listen to me, or you are going to suffer for it. Everyone will. For goodness' sake, Aurora”—and her hand slammed down on the table—“all you have to do is smile and curtsy. The people will fill in the rest! Why is that so difficult for you?”

“Are you asking me why it's so difficult to pretend to be nothing? To just be this blank little smiling thing? You don't know what it's like.”

“I don't know what it's like?” The queen's laugh was like shattering glass. “I was living it before you were. Lost all your family? Far from home? I know what it is like, Aurora, so do not try the poor-soul act with me. Life is hard. We do not get what we want. We do not get to be who we want. And we have to deal with it. You think intentions are good enough for these people? You think anyone in this world cares what you meant to do?” The queen, usually so full of polite smiles and cold shows of affection, almost burned with intensity. “I have always been an outsider. But the people want to love you. Let them.”

“I didn't ask for this.” Aurora felt stupid even for saying it, but she could not stop the defiance in her from issuing a final plea. “I didn't want this.”

“I did not ask to be queen,” Iris said. “I did not ask them all to hate me, or to have you in my charge. Yet here we are.”

“They hate you?”

“I am from Falreach,” she said. “Of course they hate me. But
things are quieter now. People have hope, for the first time in years. Do you want to destroy that? Do you want Rodric to be torn apart in the streets? Because I promise you, Aurora, people have suffered for too long. And if you fail them—”

“But what if they want more than I can give?”

“Well.” The queen smiled her narrow, icy smile. “You had better give your all then, don't you think?”

Aurora turned to look out of the window. If things were as terrible as Tristan claimed—and she had no reason to doubt that they were—then she needed to help. Somehow.

“Luckily,” the queen continued, “no one else knows that you were gone. Rodric does not know. John does not know. This is between you and me, Aurora. I am giving you that chance.”

Aurora knew she should thank the queen, for that discretion at least, but the words would not come. Her limbs felt heavy and strangely faraway.

“The maid will be punished, of course, for allowing you to leave in the first place.”

Betsy? She had never shown anything but care for Aurora. The queen could not punish Betsy. “But it's not her fault—”

“You are right. But I cannot punish you.” She placed her glass on the table and stood up. “It will not be too arduous. But if you wish her to stay safe, I would not do anything so reckless again. Is that understood?”

“Yes.” Aurora could barely hear the word herself.

“From now on, my own personal guard will stand outside
your door. You are not to leave unless accompanied. Whatever you may feel, it will not be worth the consequences if you disobey me again. Am I being perfectly clear here?”

Aurora forced herself to look Iris in the eyes. “Yes, Your Majesty,” she said.

“GOOD MORNING, PRINCESS.” BETSY LOOKED AT THE
floor as she slipped into the room. Her hair was pulled back into a sloppy bun, and her normally rosy skin was blotchy. “I am sorry I am late.”

“Betsy.” Aurora stood up and hurried toward her. “I'm so sorry—”

“There is no need to apologize to me, Princess,” Betsy said in a flat, steady voice. “I am only the maid.”

“That's not true,” Aurora said. Betsy still did not look at her. “I didn't mean for you to get hurt. I didn't think—”

“Prince Rodric will be here soon,” Betsy said, as though
she had not heard her. “The queen wishes you to take a walk together. Which dress would you prefer to wear?”

“Anything,” Aurora said. “It doesn't matter.”

“I cannot choose one for you, Princess. Please make a choice.”

Aurora stared at Betsy's back. One of the few people she could count as a friend here, lost through her own idiocy. “The green one,” she said. “The green one is fine.”

Betsy helped her dress and styled her hair in silence. Then she left with a small curtsy, still not looking Aurora in the eye. Aurora sat by her dressing table, braiding and unbraiding the ends of her hair. She should have been more careful. Betsy had warned her, but she had stupidly, blindly gone on. And for what? A few dances, a kiss in the dark? She had been a fool to trust him, and this was her reward.

“Are you ready for our walk?” Rodric said when he appeared half an hour later. “The garden is looking lovely today.”

Aurora watched him, all stiff back and burning cheeks, as he bowed his way into the room. He was, she thought, rather sweet. He did not keep things hidden, like Tristan, or smile and flirt and manipulate, like Finnegan. It was a naïve sort of honesty, but honesty nonetheless.

Maybe, if she took Rodric someplace where she could be her old self, just a girl in a tower, waiting for the day when she would be freed from the curse . . . maybe then, she would feel more comfortable around him. “Actually, I was hoping we could
go somewhere else,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

“Do you not like the garden?” Rodric asked. “I am not sure my mother would approve if we went too far. . . .”

“I do like the garden,” Aurora said quickly. “I just—please. Let me show you.”

Rodric gave her a small, tentative smile. “Okay,” he said.

She strode down the halls, Rodric falling in step behind her. Aurora's heart pounded as she approached the heavy wooden door that led to the tower, seized by a fear she could not quite define. This place had been her prison and her escape, all at once. Frozen remnants of her old life were scattered through its rooms.

She climbed the spiral staircase slowly, pressing her feet into the worn carpet. She kept her eyes fixed directly ahead, trying to ignore the tapestries that adorned the walls. Rodric followed, not saying a word.

She paused one landing from the top. She could not go back into the bedroom where she had slept for over a hundred years. She did not want to look at the dust-free fireplace and still-rumpled covers, and think of how she had slept while the rest of the world continued on. Instead, she turned to another door: the playroom she had not entered for years, even in her own time. Its hinges were stiff from lack of use, and when she shoved it, a cloud of dust burst into the air. She stumbled forward with a hand pressed over her mouth, coughing.

“Princess? Perhaps this is not a good idea.”

Aurora brushed a cobweb aside and peered into the gloomy room. “It'll only take a moment.” Speckles of dust spun and danced in the beam of light that fell from the window. Beneath the decay of a hundred years, the playroom looked exactly as Aurora remembered it. A rocking horse waited in one corner, his mane tattered and worn, the glorious red saddle faded to a shade that was not really a color at all. Her old dollhouse stood by another wall, and wooden games and balls were strewn across the floor. Aurora picked her way through them, her skirts dragging and catching on the mess. Once she had made it across, she sat on the rocking horse, balanced sidesaddle, her toes brushing the ground. She rested her hand between his ears and closed her eyes tight, trying to imagine that she was six years old again, hidden away in this room for hours on end.

It smelled all wrong. The dust, the rotting wood, the neglect that clung to everything . . . it scratched her nose and the back of her throat, and she could not forget.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?”

Aurora opened her eyes. Rodric stood at the edge of the room, staring around with a mix of trepidation and curiosity on his face. “I guess,” she said. What had she thought this would achieve? “I don't know.”

“He's lovely.” Rodric stepped toward her, his eyes fixed on the horse. “I wanted one when I was little—a rocking horse, I mean—but . . . well. My father wouldn't let me. He said I
should be busy learning to ride a real horse. If I'd known one was here . . .”

“I never rode a real horse.” Aurora ran her fingers through the remnants of his mane. It caught in knots, and she tugged her fingers free. “My parents didn't like me to leave the castle.”

“Never?”

She ran her fingers through the mane again. “I visited the stables once,” she said, “but when my father found out, he was furious, and it never happened again.”

“I can teach you. If you like.” Rodric did not look at her, and his cheeks flushed red, but he sounded sincere.

“Thank you,” she said. “That would be nice.” When she was little, she had imagined galloping across fields, ducking under trees and leaping gorges as the heroes always did in books. The wind would whip her hair back, and mud would splatter over her dress, and she would laugh, free and uncatchable. Perhaps not all of her dreams were completely lost. She slid off the horse. “Would you like to try?”

“Oh,” Rodric said. “I couldn't—I am too tall. . . .”

She smiled. “Please. Sit.” She patted the saddle.

He placed his hands on the horse's shoulders, watching it with uncertain eyes as it rocked slightly. He drew in a breath, as though steeling his courage, and then swung his leg over the back of the horse so that he sat on it like an overgrown knight. Even with his knees bent, his feet were planted firmly on the ground.

“You have to put your feet in the stirrups,” Aurora said. He nodded and pressed his knees up toward his chest, squeezing his toes into the metal rings on either side of the horse. The movement made the horse rock forward, then back, and Rodric snatched up the rope reins with a jump.

Aurora couldn't help it. He looked so ridiculous, squeezed on a child's toy less than half his size, all determination and unease. She giggled. Rodric looked up at her. He was smiling. “Do I look that silly?”

“Worse,” she said, “but I don't think Franksworth minds. Must have been lonely, sitting up here by himself.”

“Franksworth?”

She shrugged. “A horse has to have a name. It was in a book, and it seemed suitably regal. To a five-year-old.”

Rodric nodded, and the horse rocked again. From his unsteady seat, the prince almost flew over the horse's head; he grabbed a handful of mane just in time, and swung himself to the ground with a nervous laugh. “Perhaps I can keep him company on the floor.”

The pressure in Aurora's chest returned as soon as his feet touched the ground. Without the horse, without a focus for conversation, everything felt awkward and clumsy again, made worse by the memory of their silliness not a moment before. His blush deepened, and he looked around the room, at anything and anywhere but Aurora herself. “This was your playroom?”

“Yes.” Aurora moved a wooden doll from a chair and sat down. “I spent a lot of time here.”

“It's hard to picture it,” Rodric said. “You as a young girl.”

Aurora looked down at the doll in her hand. It still had both glass eyes. They stared up at the princess in an accusatory manner. “I wasn't allowed playmates, so I spent a lot of time here alone.” She brushed her fingers through the doll's hair, trying to recall the feel of it, the smoothness that flowed past and vanished like silk.

Rodric still stood beside the rocking horse, his tall frame completely out of place among the girlish toys. He stared at the floor now. Their footsteps had left marks in the dust.
Make an effort
, she told herself.
He is. Why can't you?

“Did you have a playroom?” she asked.

Rodric shook his head. “A nursery, and a few toys, but . . . my father wanted me to grow up as fast as possible. It was swords and horses for me. Not that I was any good at any of it.”

“No?”

“I shouldn't be telling you this,” he said. “You'll think less of me.”

“I won't.” That much was true. There was something deeply human about the lanky, blushing prince that made her like him far more than any godlike figure on a tapestry.

“I always dropped my sword during practice,” he said. “One clash, and it flew out of my hands. And I used to be scared of the horses. The real ones, I mean. They would bite my toes when I
tried to ride them. I think my father gave me the meanest ones on purpose.”

“Your father—” She broke off, hunting down the right words. She did not know how to approach the whispers of his cruelty without insulting Rodric or giving her indiscretions away. “He sounds very strict.”

“He wanted me to be strong, like he is.” Rodric ran a hand down the horse's back, tugging on the loose threads of the saddle. “I never lived up to his expectations.”

“That can't be true.”

“It is,” he said. “I will never be a fighter.”

“Fighting is not the only way you can be strong. I am sure your father knows that.”

“No,” Rodric said. “He does not. But I studied hard. He made sure of that, too. I hope I've done enough to make a good king.”

Aurora tilted her head, examining him closely, from the splayed strands of brown hair down to the large, booted feet. He did not look like a king. But, she supposed, she did not always look like much of a princess either. “Your father became king ten years ago,” she said. “But he was preparing you to be king before that?”

If Rodric noticed that she had changed the subject, he did not comment on it. “My father believes there's only one way for a boy to be, be he a prince, a noble, or anyone. And he was advisor to the king for many years, through all the famines and the
uprisings and many other terrible things. Strength and knowledge were how he thought I would survive.”

Aurora ran her fingers through the doll's hair again. Her hands shook. “Were things truly so terrible back then?”

“I don't remember a lot of it,” Rodric said. “My father became king when I was eight, so the trouble before then . . . my parents tried to keep me out of it. But I remember being afraid. There was an uprising when I was six. I remember looking out of my window in the castle and seeing the city burning, and all the people, hundreds of them, filling the streets. They crowded around the castle and started hammering on the doors, screaming.”

“What did they want?”

“Food, I think. I told my mother, they can have some of my food. Give them some of ours. But she said no, it wasn't really about food at all. They hated us, she said, and they were just looking for an excuse. The whole castle seemed to shake from the way they pounded on the doors. I don't know what would have happened if they'd got in. They were there for days.”

“What happened?”

He turned to look out of the window. The narrow shaft of light fell over his face, making his hair glow. “The king—the old king—he called in the soldiers. They killed everyone who fought back.”

Aurora swallowed. “But if they had got in,” she said. “If they had broken through the doors—”

“They probably would have killed us all. They killed the guards. They killed the servants unlucky enough to be outside the castle walls. And the things they shouted . . .”

Aurora shivered. She could almost hear the screaming, almost see the hate in the people's eyes as they surged toward the castle. It was the same hate she had seen in Tristan's once-affectionate face as he spoke of the king. It could not happen again.

“After that,” Rodric said, “the king imprisoned my father for failing to save the kingdom from famine. He was the king's chief advisor at the time, so the king assumed he must have been scheming against him, giving him bad advice to undermine him. He accused my mother of being a foreign spy. For a while, it was just me and my tutors, locked up in a tower. I wasn't told what was going on, or where my parents were, or if I would see them again.” He bowed his head, staring at the faded, fraying saddle.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “That sounds awful.”

“It's over now,” he said. “And it will be worth it, if—well. It will be worth it.”

The silence was like a living thing, creeping between them, crawling over their skin.

Rodric stepped abruptly away from the horse and walked toward a large chest at the edge of the room. Two wooden swords stuck out of the top. “Are these yours too?” he asked. He freed one with a tug.

“Yes,” she said. “Not that my mother approved. They're not very ladylike.”

“This is more like the toys I knew,” Rodric said, holding up the blade for examination. It was a roughly cut, simple thing, given to her by one of her guards on her birthday. “Of course, my father would have filled them with lead, to make practice that much harder.”

“I never got much practice,” Aurora said. She stood up and placed the doll beside her. “I would swing it around by myself, but I never really had anyone to play with.”

“No one?”

“You're not allowed to make many friends when your father is afraid you might be attacked at any moment.”