A Wicked Thing (20 page)

“Princess, dessert will soon be—”

“It can wait.” She needed to get out of this stifling air. She needed to leave, just for a moment, and hear Nettle's soothing voice. She had made things seem so much plainer once before. Aurora could not miss the chance to speak to her again.

The guard nodded. “You heard the princess,” he said to Nettle. “Do as she commands.”

They stepped into a passage beyond the hall, not the bright corridor that Aurora had entered through but a narrow, dimly lit place. Servants scurried past, carrying plates.

“I did not mean to command you,” Aurora said. A blush crept over her cheeks. “I just . . . wanted to talk to you.”

“Do not apologize,” Nettle said. “You did nothing wrong.”

Aurora stared up at the singer. Her dress was more elegant
than usual, fine material clinging to her waist and pooling at her feet. Her instrument hung loosely from her fingertips, and she watched Aurora with her head tilted slightly to one side. “What did you wish to speak of?”

“Tristan,” Aurora said quickly. “Is he—”

“He is alive, if that is what concerns you.”

Relief rushed through her. “You've seen him?”

“Yes, I have seen him. I was supposed to perform at his inn tonight, before the guards forced me away.”

“And he's all right?”

“He has more bitterness in him than before, and guilt, I believe, too. His efforts over the past few nights have not gone as he had hoped.”

“His efforts?” Aurora echoed. “You know about what—about what happened?”

“I know about many things. It is my job to observe.”

Aurora thought again of the servant with scruffy brown hair, walking to the higher tables. “Is he here tonight?” she asked.

“I do not believe so,” Nettle said, “but he does not tell me all his secrets.”

“I wish I had known what he was like,” Aurora said softly. “Before—” Before she kissed him, before everything. “Just before.”

“You should not,” Nettle said. “Change one thing, and everything else may tumble apart.” She ran her fingers across Aurora's elbow, the lightest of touches. “I believe he cares for
you, in his own way.”

“He cares for his revenge more.”

“Perhaps,” Nettle said. “Things are getting tense.”

“Tense? With Tristan?”

“With everyone.” Nettle's expression was almost sad as she looked down at her. “There is so much joy before your wedding, so much hope . . . it always turns to fear in the end. People think . . . what if it goes wrong? What if you are an impostor? They are nervous.”

Aurora looked down at her feet. They were hidden under masses of skirt, so heavy and impractical compared to the fashions donned by the queen. “Then I will have to make sure I don't disappoint them,” she said.

Nettle's smile was definitely sad now. “Impossible.”

Aurora did not want to think about that. She hardly had a choice. “You performed for Prince Finnegan?” she asked instead. “In Vanhelm?”

“Yes.” Nettle's expression closed off. “You should watch him. He is another who is more than he seems.”

Aurora did not doubt that. “Did you ever see a dragon?”

“Once. I took a boat across the river from the city. Everyone was so afraid of them, and I was young. I saw a flash of fire in the sky, and a shadow that swept over me. . . .”

“Were you afraid?”

“Yes,” she said. “And no. It was beautiful.”

“I wish—” Aurora paused, not sure how to put her dreams
of fire and freedom into words. Before she could finish the thought, a guard appeared in the doorway.

“Princess, the queen requests that you return to the banquet hall immediately. Dessert has been served.”

Nettle instantly sank into a curtsy. “Thank you for speaking with me, Princess.”

Aurora nodded in response. She wanted to stay out here, away from the crowds and the expectations, but she did not dare ignore a direct order from the queen. Everyone was already seated inside the hall. They watched in silence as Aurora moved slowly across the room and took her place between Rodric and Isabelle.

“I am glad you have finally rejoined us,” the queen said.

“I wished to speak to the singer.”

“Still.” The queen frowned. “It does not do to keep everyone waiting.”

“Leave the poor girl alone, Iris,” the king said. “Girls will be girls. We must all have our frivolities. But now, I say we eat.”

A thick slice of cake waited on a plate in front of Aurora. It looked heavy and sickly, with cream lashed around the outside and piles of soft fruit gathered at the edge. Aurora did not want it. She wanted the night to be over.

“You have cherries,” Isabelle said. She spoke quietly, her chin inches from Aurora's arm. “I love cherries.”

“Do you not have any?” Aurora asked. Isabelle shook her head. “Here.” Aurora plucked a cherry off her plate with her fork. Cream stuck to the red. “Have as many as you like.”

“Don't you like them?”

“I'm not hungry. Go on.” She held out the fork, and Isabelle bit it. She grinned.

“Good?” Aurora asked.

Isabelle nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She picked up her own fork and skewered another cherry. Then she coughed. Her fork clattered onto the table.

“Isabelle? Are you okay?”

Isabelle nodded and coughed again. She gasped in a breath, but that only made her cough harder.

“Isabelle?” Rodric leaned forward and placed a hand on his sister's back. “What's wrong?”

“She just ate some fruit,” Aurora said. “I don't know, is it stuck in her throat? Isabelle?”

Isabelle bent forward over the table, coughing and gasping.

Iris was behind her in an instant. “What happened?” she said. “What's wrong? Somebody help her!”

The realization that something was wrong rippled through the room. Several people were now on their feet, pushing toward the gasping Isabelle. Her skin had turned white.

Iris shoved Aurora out of the way and knelt in front of her daughter. She pressed one hand on either side of her face and leaned in close. “Isabelle, Isabelle, talk to me. It'll be all right. Take a deep breath.”

Isabelle sucked in another breath, but that only made her cough and splutter worse than ever. Then she threw up. Red
splattered on the edge of the queen's skirts, but Iris did not even glance down. Several onlookers scrambled away.

Someone grabbed Aurora by the arm, yanking her backward. She gasped and pulled away, but another firm hand held her in place. “Princess.” It was one of the guards. “We need to get you out of here. King's orders.”

“What?” she asked. “Why? What's happening?”

“It isn't safe,” the guard said in a gruff voice. With a firm arm around her waist, he dragged her toward the door. “You have to come with me.”

AURORA PACED HER ROOM. HER FEET ACHED. HER HEAD
ached. Every time she tried to rest on her bed or sit in her chair, she sprang back up like it had burned her, the stillness too much to bear. Occasionally, footsteps hurried along the corridor, or loud, indistinct voices floated up from the courtyard below, but Aurora's guards stood in front of her door, refusing to let it open, refusing to answer any questions.

The sun was peeking over the horizon when the queen appeared. Her face was pale and pinched, and her elaborate hairstyle had begun to uncurl, hitting her shoulders in ropes. Dark circles surrounded her eyes, and her lips were tight and
red, worried by her teeth until blood peeked through. Aurora hurried toward her. “What happened? Is Isabelle all right?”

Iris slapped Aurora with such force that Aurora stumbled backward. A muscle seemed to snap in the queen's face, a wildness leaping up and possessing her eyes. For a moment, a single moment, hatred filled her. Aurora pressed a hand over her cheek. Her skin stung under her fingers.

The queen sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, and her face settled back into the inscrutable mask she usually wore. “Isabelle is dead,” she said.

“What?”

“Are you deaf, or just stupid? My daughter is dead.” Aurora stared. The words didn't make sense, not together, not like that. She swayed on her feet. “She is dead, and you, you ungrateful brat . . .” She raised her hand as though preparing to slap Aurora again, but stopped at the last second, her fingers held so tightly that they quivered in the air.

It didn't make sense. “How?”

“Poison.”

Aurora took an unsteady step backward, then another, until her knees collided with the arm of her chair. Uncertain questions burst onto her lips, but she held them back at the look of barely suppressed agony on the queen's face.

“It should have been you,” the queen said. She spat out every word, like speaking was almost more effort than she could manage. “They meant it for you. If you had just eaten your fruit . . .
if you hadn't decided to feed it to my daughter . . .”

“I didn't know,” she said. The words scraped against her throat. “Who—I mean . . .”

“Who do you think? The rebels have been trying to destroy us for years. Do you believe me now? Do you believe what lengths they will go to?”

She remembered the servant she had seen during the dance. A boy with scruffy brown hair, carrying plates to the higher tables.
No,
she thought.
He wouldn't.
But she could not know that.

“I will kill them all,” the queen said, her face as still as ice. “I will tear them out of hiding and burn them until their very ashes scream. And you will watch. And you will smile and be grateful for all we have given you.”

“What happens now?” Aurora said. Her throat felt raw. “I mean, the wedding . . .”

“Is in two days' time, as it always was. Do you think we will let them win?” The wildness flickered in Iris's eyes again, but she held it back. “If it were up to me, you would be thrown out to starve on the street with the dogs. If it were up to me, we would cancel this farce of a wedding and properly mourn for my daughter. But as you may have noticed, nothing is really up to me. You will marry Rodric. And you will smile and thank the world for all it has given you. And then you will come to my daughter's funeral and you will look at the body of the girl you killed. Do you understand?”

Aurora did not reply.

“You are cursed. I knew you would bring nothing but ruin to us all.” She left so quickly that it was almost a run. The door hung open in her wake, and a guard moved to close it, shutting Aurora back up, alone.

Her legs buckled, and she sank to the floor. Her head scraped against the side of the chair, and she crashed it backward, savoring the way the thud rang through her. She did not know how long she sat there, staring at the door. The wind howled outside, sending spring rain splashing against the window. Aurora could not stop picturing the girl who had peered at her around doors and stared up with huge, curious eyes, doubling up over her stomach, spitting blood onto the table, shrieking and screaming in pain, or falling over sideways, dead without a sound.
It was meant for me
, she thought, over and over, and she shivered, guilt crawling under her skin. Guilt and filthy, sickening relief that she had not taken a bite herself, that she was not as dead as every law of the world demanded she must be.

At some point, she began to doze in fitful bursts. She woke with a jump, cold sweat sticking to her arms.

She leapt to her feet, ignoring the shudder that ran through her, the way her collapsed hair stuck to her neck and her cheek. She had never asked for any of this. People were suffering and dying and it was all her fault and she hadn't asked for any of it. They expected her to save them, but what could she do? She smiled and curtsied and played along, and now Isabelle was
dead, and her mother did not even have the time to grieve. Who was to say that when Aurora became queen, she would have any more power than Iris had now? Alyssinia did not need change decades away. It did not want to wait through hunger and murder and fear, through the cruelty of the king and the spiteful retaliation of the rebels, with innocent people thrown to the wayside. If she sat and did nothing, it would only continue.

There's always a choice,
Rodric had said.

He had had faith in her, through everything. Faith that her presence was a gift, that together they would make things better. And this was his reward. He had loved Isabelle, and now she was dead, and Aurora was alive, and nothing was as it should be.

She wanted to see him. She wanted to apologize to him, or comfort him, or do
something
. She did not want him to be alone.

She hurried across the room and pushed the door. It rattled against the lock. “Please,” she said. “Open the door.”

The lock clicked, and one of the guards pulled the door open. He glowered at her under heavy eyebrows, but his expression softened as he took in her appearance. “Princess?” he said. “What is it?”

“I wish to see Rodric,” she said.

“You must remain here.”

“Please,” she said. She clutched the doorframe to keep herself upright. “I know the king and queen wish me to stay here, but—I need to see Rodric. Please.”

The guard looked at her for a long moment. Something like
pity crossed his face. He nodded. “Of course, Princess,” he said. “I can get you a few minutes with him.”

Her relief, her gratitude, almost brought tears to her eyes. She exhaled slowly, trying to calm her pounding heart. “Thank you,” she said.

The guard led Aurora to a wing of the castle that she did not recognize, far from her own rooms. He knocked once on a thick wooden door.

There was no answer.

“These are Rodric's rooms?” she asked.

“Yes, Princess.”

She nodded. “Thank you for your help. I will only be a moment.” The door creaked as she pulled it open and slipped inside. It closed behind her with a dull thud.

The room was large and neatly kept, with red fittings and little in the way of decorations or amusements. The only thing out of place was Rodric himself. He sat on the floor in the middle of the room, a book clutched in his hands. He was holding it so tightly that the pages bent.

“Rodric?”

“I was going to give her this,” he said. “Before the wedding. But I can't now.” His grief was so intense that Aurora could feel it in the air.

I did this
, she thought.
I allowed this to happen.

“I'm sorry, Rodric,” she said. Tears stung her eyes. “I'm really sorry. Isabelle was—I can't believe—”

“She was here,” he said. All the joy, the cautious optimism, had been sucked out of his voice, leaving a dull, resigned monotone in their place. “And now she's just gone. How can that be possible? It doesn't really make sense, does it?”

“None of this makes sense.” She knelt beside him, their bodies inches apart. The gap felt huge, uncrossable. She rested a hand on his shoulder, but even that contact felt too distant, like he was in a place she could not reach. “Everything's gone wrong,” she said, and her voice cracked. “I didn't mean for this to happen.”

“Someone tried to poison you,” he said. “It isn't your fault.” But she knew it was. For ending up here in the first place, for offering Isabelle food off her own plate when she had been warned, over and over and over again, that people were willing to hurt her. They had all been right, and she had been so stupidly, blindly wrong.

“I should have—I don't know. I've done everything wrong.”

Rodric shook his head. “It's not your fault,” he said again. “I am sorry, Princess. We must carry on, I know. I am simply—I need a second to collect myself.”

He sounded so confused, so guilty, that she had to take a moment to breathe, to steady herself, before she spoke. “You don't need to collect yourself,” she said. “Why should you have to? Why should you pretend this is anything other than awful?”

He stared at the twisted book in his hands. “Because everything is awful,” he said. “That's why you're here, isn't it? That's
why all this is happening. To make things right. We can't stop now.”

“We can,” she said. “We can always stop. We can—”

“No,” Rodric said, more forcefully than she'd ever heard him say anything before. “We can't. Why would we? If we don't marry now, what was the point of this? What was the point of any of this?”

She looked at the floor. Her hand slipped off his shoulder.
What if there isn't a point?
she thought, but she could not say it aloud. She could not bear to make Rodric look any more broken than he already did, to take his last bit of certainty away.

“If I stay,” Aurora said, “if we marry now, what's to stop these things from happening again?” She grasped at her skirt, twisting the silk in her fist. “I don't know, Rodric. I don't know what to think.”

He looked up at her, his eyes pleading. “Are you going to leave?”

Was she? It sounded so impossible. “I don't know,” she said again. The thought filled her with terror, but every thought terrified her now, and she had sat still and allowed the world to make her decisions for too long. “I don't know.”

He looked back down at the book. “I was happy, you know,” he said. “I know I wasn't always the most eloquent person to be around, but I was happy. I finally felt . . . capable. This is the first time I've been of use to anyone.”

“That's not true,” she said. “I know you don't believe it,
but—you're wonderful. Isabelle loved you. And you've been a friend to me. You didn't have to be, but—you've always been kind.”

“Kind?” He laughed bitterly. “What difference does that make?”

“It makes all the difference.”

He shook his head, and she reached out, wrapping an arm around his neck. For a moment, they hung there, barely touching. Then Rodric clutched her side, pulling her toward him, until her face pressed into his chest, his arms squeezing her so tightly that she could barely breathe. He rested his cheek on the top of her head. She opened her mouth, hoping that the right words would appear if she began to speak, but before she could make a sound, someone knocked on the door.

“Princess?” It was the guard. “I must return you to your room. Their Majesties will not like it if we linger.”

“You should go,” Rodric said. “But—I was glad to see you.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “You too.” She got slowly, achingly to her feet, and then sank into a curtsy, her skirts sweeping behind her. It seemed natural, somehow, in this moment when no words would do. Rodric stood up as well, and gave her a jerking little bow. Then he reached out and took her hand. He squeezed it, once.

“Do what you think is right, Aurora,” he said. His voice broke. “I'll do the same.”

She nodded. His hand fell from hers, and she walked slowly out of the room.

Another guard waited by Aurora's door when they returned. He bowed as they approached.

“I took the princess to see Prince Rodric,” the first guard said, as though daring the newcomer to criticize him. “She wished to stretch her legs.”

“Of course.” He held out a roll of paper. “I only wished to give this to the princess. A letter of condolence.”

She reached out and took it automatically. The paper felt rough under her fingertips—certainly not the high-quality stock used in the castle. Her throat tightened. “Thank you,” she said. “I trust you are busy with your duties.”

Her dismissal was clear. He bowed again, and she watched him until he had walked completely out of sight.

When she was back in her room and the lock had clicked behind her, she opened the note. It was written in the rough, unsteady hand of someone unaccustomed to writing.

I heard what happened. The king is keeping it quiet, but I heard. And I know how it looks, but I had to tell you, it wasn't me. It had nothing to do with any of us.

You are not safe in the castle. Come to the inn tonight.

Trust me.
—
T

She read the note over again, then again.

She wanted to believe him. He had been her friend, the fire when everything else felt cold and dead. But he had warned her
that he could not protect her. He had broken into the castle and then fled when danger approached. He might have cared for her, but he cared for his cause more. If he had to sacrifice her in order to take down the king . . . he might be willing to do it.

And Tristan did not know everything about those around him. He might believe that they were innocent, but that did not make it true.

It did not change the fact that Isabelle was dead because of people like him.

She tossed the note into the fire and watched as it burned.