A Wicked Thing (16 page)

“But others would,” Aurora said. “If I help you, you'll hurt others.”

“Perhaps,” Celestine said. “But only those who deserve it.”

Aurora still did not move. “You're a liar,” she said. “Do you think I don't know what you've done, how many broken deals you've made? Why would I ever trust you?”

“I never once broke an agreement,” Celestine said. She freed her fingers from Aurora's hair and brushed one sharp fingernail along the sweep of Aurora's jaw. “It is not my fault if people chose their bargains badly, or if they broke them once they were made. But you are clever, are you not, Aurora? You were meant for this. You will not have to marry the prince. You will not have to continue here, pretending that you can be happy, when we both know you cannot. I can offer you everything, Aurora. You could be with your family again.”

Aurora stepped back, jerking away from the witch's touch.

“My family is dead,” she said. “I should be dead too, if not for your curse. I would help you, and you would kill me, and call it a fair bargain. Isn't that right?”

“Perhaps,” Celestine said. “If you did not join me. But you will want to join me. With me, you'll be who you were meant to be. You have so much potential inside you, and I would help you.”

Aurora's throat was dry. “I will not help you,” she said. “Not ever. Do you understand?”

“Poor, naïve girl.” Celestine reached for Aurora, her fingers sliding through her hair, and Aurora jerked away. Her back thudded against the wall. “I am all there is for you now.” Her voice was still soft, almost ethereal, like nothing she said mattered much to her at all, but then she moved, snatching both of Aurora's wrists. She squeezed so tightly that Aurora felt like her bones would snap. “Come with me, and you can avoid a lot
of death and heartache. Wait, and this world will grind you up until you are begging for me to help you. You do not want that, now, do you? I am offering you an easier path, Aurora. An easier life.”

“I don't want anything you have to offer me.” Aurora pulled her arms away, but she could not loosen Celestine's grip. The witch's fingernails dug into her wrists, prying between the bones.

“A pity,” Celestine said. “You will look back on this moment and regret it, I promise you.”

“I will not.” She yanked her wrists away again, but Celestine did not let go. “If you want me to go with you, you'll have to force me. And I will fight you every moment if you do. You cursed me. If you're looking for an ally, you won't ever find one in me.”

Celestine sighed. The breath brushed against Aurora's cheek. “I am not the monster you think me to be,” she said. “I have rules, Aurora, and there is no satisfaction in forcing anyone to do anything. I always give people the choice to refuse me. Even on the rare occasions, like today, when they would be fools to say no.”

“You did not give me a choice when you cursed me.”

“Did I not?” Celestine tilted her head again, a mockery of puzzlement. “I remember it differently.” She released Aurora's wrists and glided back. Her eyes glinted in the darkness, blue and unforgiving. “Go then, if you must,” she said. “When you
change your mind, remember I will be close. You will come to me. Together, we will be wonderful.” The green light sputtered behind her, and the wall behind Aurora's back seemed less solid, her shoulder slipping into the stone. “You will see, my dear,” Celestine said, and her voice echoed in Aurora's head. “You will see.”

Aurora closed her eyes for a fraction of a moment, sucking in a breath. When she opened them again, she stood in the corridor. Celestine was gone.

THE GUARDS DID NOT SEEM TO HAVE NOTICED
Aurora's absence. As soon as she stepped into their midst, they began walking again, the alert expressions back on their faces.

Aurora sat awake all night, her eyes fixed on the locked door. She could still feel the witch's nails digging into her arm; little half-moon crescents remained, red and fierce against her pale skin.

Celestine was alive. Everyone Aurora had ever known was dead, but Celestine was alive, lurking in the shadows, talking in riddles about powers that Aurora could not possibly possess. Aurora wrapped her arms around her knees, every muscle
tense. She would not be afraid of her. But she could not let herself rest.

Betsy appeared the following morning, as she always did, but she did not say a word beyond the required pleasantries. She brought breakfast and helped Aurora into a simple dress, and then she left, the lock clicking behind her.

Aurora sank into a chair, slightly feverish from lack of sleep. Her eyes fell closed, and then snapped open again. She did not move for what felt like hours.

Then she heard the buzz and chatter of a crowd outside her window. Drums resounded through the castle.
The guard's execution,
she thought. After the shock of seeing Celestine, she had forgotten it.

She hurried across the room and banged on the door. She could not pick the lock with Iris's men on the other side, but if she made it down to the square, then surely they would have to listen to her. The king and queen would not want to seem in disagreement with her. But her guards ignored her, and the door held firm.

The drums rolled, the crowd gasped, and Aurora's opportunity was over.

She wavered in front of the door. Her bookshelf caught her eye, and she hurried over to it, pulling books out almost at random. Hunting for something, anything, to distract herself.

Her hand grasped the story of Alysse, founder of the kingdom, Aurora's favorite book for as long as she could remember.
The book said Alysse had been so good, so noble, beloved by all. Someone who had always done the right thing. Yet the books suggested the same things about Aurora, and not a word of it was true. It was all smiles and curtsies and promises, and Aurora chafing behind them, suffocating with expectations. Was that all Alysse had been too? Some girl, useless and confused, forced into an image by everyone else's hopes?

Aurora grabbed a page at random and tore it away, crumpling all its promises inside her fist. She ripped out another, and another, until they littered the floor. Every dream, every lie she had believed as a child, crushed in her hands.

“Princess?”

Rodric stood in the doorway. His mouth hung open as he took in the scene. “Are—are you all right?”

Blood rushed into her cheeks. Her display suddenly seemed foolish, now that she had an audience. “Yes,” she said. She bent over, ignoring the twinge in her side, and gathered the crushed pages.

“Disappointing story?”

“You could say that.” She tossed the fragments into the fire. Each one curled up instantly, the edges blackening, shrinking as though hiding from the heat, before the entire piece vanished in the flames.

“Do—do you mind if I come in?”

She shrugged, keeping close to the fire. The blaze warmed her skin. “It's not like I can go anywhere.”

His footsteps crossed the floor. “I brought a game.” His voice rose like it was a question. “I thought you might like company, but if you'd rather be left alone . . .”

“No,” she said. She turned back to look at him. “I'd love to play.”

The game involved multicolored squares and round pieces that leapt across the board. Aurora barely grasped the rules, but she won the first game, and the second. Either Rodric was an appalling player, or he was letting her win. Apart from explanations of the rules, and his corrections whenever she made a mistake, they played without speaking. No mention of the day before. No mention of the wedding. He didn't make any demands on her attention, and she no longer felt like she had to chatter aimlessly to please him. Yet the walls of her room loomed around them, and every time he shot her a nervous smile, she was reminded that they still did not fit together. Neither of them had chosen this.

She picked up a piece, and then put it back where she found it. “Why are you marrying me?”

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “What do you mean?”

“You don't—you don't know me. And . . . I just don't understand.”

Every tick of the clock jolted in her chest as she waited for him to speak. He stared down at the game board. “I guess—when I was little, I always wanted to do something. I don't
know. When my father was arrested, and I was locked up in that tower, and the king was killed . . . I wanted to help. But . . . well, look at me.” He shot the game board a self-deprecating smile. “Not exactly the noble prince. People always said the realm was broken, and the only thing that could fix things was—you. You, and now I guess me.” He looked up. “If we have a chance to bring goodness and magic back, just by getting married—I want to do it. I want that chance. And if the promises are true, and if we will have true love, then that would be wonderful, but I would choose to do it either way, because I think you are good, and the people think you are good, and we have a real chance to make things the way they were before everything fell to pieces.” He sounded so open, so honest, that Aurora blushed again. “Do you—do you not want that?”

She clutched her hands in her lap, twisting them tight. She could not be like him, so accepting and optimistic. “I guess—I guess I just want to be myself while I do it,” she said.

“You can be yourself.”

She moved a piece on the board without looking at it. “Your move,” she said.

This time, Rodric won.

“I'd better go,” Rodric said, once the game was over. “My father said he wished to speak to me before it got too late.” Aurora nodded. He swept the pieces back into their box.

“Thank you,” she said, the words tumbling over one another
in her hurry to get them out. “For coming here. Playing with me. It's been—it's lonely, sitting and waiting for things to happen.”

He nodded. “I know how that feels.” He raised a hand, as though reaching for hers, but stopped midgesture and turned away.

He was almost at the door when he paused. He did not look back. “Why did you do it?” he said.

She frowned. “Do what?”

“Prick your finger. If you knew the spinning wheel was cursed, why did you use it?”

She had never wondered that, not once. Fate decreed, and she had acted, like so much else in her life. “I didn't have a choice,” she said. “Celestine enchanted me.”

“There's always a choice, Princess.”

He hurried out of the room before she could reply.

That night was particularly cold, mocking any dreams of the approaching spring. Aurora tightened the blankets around her, but the chill crept in through every gap, and she shivered. Her eyes refused to close. Whenever she blinked, the world filled with blood and needles stabbing into her skin, princes leaning down to kiss her and ice-cold bars everywhere she turned. She was so tired. She stared up at the ceiling, watching dark, imagined shapes flit across it. Rodric's words echoed in her head as she followed the shadows.
There's always a choice
. He sounded so
convinced, but he was, in the end, like her, his life dictated by expectations and something they all called fate. Aurora wasn't sure she'd ever had a choice. It had all been laid out before her, by Celestine, by her parents' fear, by locked doors and fairy tales. Even now, as her wedding approached, she did not have space to choose. She was their savior, they said, and she had to obey them.

But Rodric's assertion would not leave her thoughts. She could choose to disobey the king and queen, to leave and accept everything that came with it . . . the loneliness, and the destruction that might follow. Or she could stay.

Yet what was the point, when she had no power of her own?

She sat up suddenly. Celestine had told her she had caused an explosion in the square in her anger. It was a terrifying thought. Impossible. But she had felt something in that moment that was not quite like herself. Anger that felt like madness, fury vanishing in a snap like the kick of a horse, and something that might be called magic, at least by a lying, manipulative tongue. And Celestine had seemed so convinced.

A spark lingered inside her.

If she had magic, and she could use it, she could help people. She could prevent Celestine from ever controlling her again.

The possibility took hold of her. Even if it was dangerous, even if the very thought of it made her feel sick . . . she had to
know. She slid from her bed in one fluid motion and clutched at her dresser. A brush. Papers. A quill. Then the unmistakable smoothness of a candle. She tugged it free from its stand, cupping the base in her palms and wrapping her fingers around the stem.

Staring at the shape in the darkness, she willed it to light.
Burn
, she thought, and then she said it, whispering the word over and over like an incantation. “Burn, burn, burn.”

Nothing. She squeezed the wax so tightly that she was sure it would snap, and pictured fire. Flames licking upward, tantalizing, hypnotic, sinful. The smell of smoke. Warmth on her face. She could almost hear the crackle and burn of it in the cool night air.

Nothing happened.

Frustration surged through her.
Useless,
she thought. She was a useless, stupid, sleeping princess, back then and now as well, playing at freedom while the bars crushed into her skin. Weak and willing to be manipulated by everyone around her. Sadness and curiosity and duty and fear had all at once seized her, but for a heartbeat, they were battered away, gone, lost under this hopeless fury. Hate stole her breath and scraped against her teeth, hate for the castle, hate for the darkness, hate for Tristan for deceiving her, hate for the queen and her stern, unbending expectations, hate for Celestine, for destroying her life and putting terrifying hopes in her head, and hate for herself, her weakness, her meekness, a life spent doing nothing.
For one bubbling, burning heartbeat, she allowed it to consume her.

The burn danced across her skin, chasing up her fingers. The smell of fire brushed her nose.

She gasped. The whole candle blazed.