A Wicked Thing (23 page)

Aurora flinched away. The energy welled up inside her again, the hate. It slammed out of her, and fire scorched the air. Celestine jerked aside. Her fingers were still caught in Aurora's hair, so Aurora's head jerked forward as well. The muscles in the back of her neck snapped.

Celestine's grip tightened. She shoved her face in front of Aurora's. Their noses almost touched.

“Don't try me, girl,” she said. “I may be weak, but I could still make you burn in an instant if I wanted. Right now, you are nothing without me. So don't underestimate me, like your dear mother did. It won't end well for either of us.”

Aurora did not dare to move. “You knew my mother?”

“Yes.” Celestine smiled, ever so slightly. “I did. She was so like you. So willful, and so unwilling to accept when she was beaten.” That did not sound like the mother Aurora had known at all. She continued to stare at Celestine, not saying a word. “Give me a little of your magic,” Celestine said. “Repay me for saving your life, and I will tell you how I know her. There is so much I could tell you.”

Aurora swallowed. “And if I do,” she said, “you will leave me alone?”

“For now,” Celestine said. “If you wish.”

She had to know. Even if Celestine lied to her . . . she had to know. “All right,” Aurora said. “Do it.”

Celestine's fingers curled like talons. She slashed her nails across Aurora's cheek, slicing into her skin. Before Aurora could react, Celestine pressed her fingers over the scratches, her nails digging into the wounds. Heat spread along the lines, building and building, a hand reaching through Aurora's veins, snatching and squeezing at her chest. A jolt ran through Aurora, and she retched.

“There.” Celestine released her, and already her voice sounded warmer. “Thank you.”

Aurora continued to gag, her arm against the wall to hold herself steady. “I did what you asked,” she said. “Tell me how you knew my mother.”

“Why, she came to me. Like you will come to me one day. Crying and desperate. Begging me for help. For who is more hated than a foreign queen who cannot have a child?”

Aurora swayed with the effort to keep upright. “You're lying.”

“Do you still wish to believe that?” Celestine said. “I never lie. She came to me. She pleaded for my magic. She wanted the only thing that could save her, the only thing that would make people support her again. She tried to betray me, of course, as I knew she would. She had the choice to follow our agreement. But she did not. And so we have you.”

“You cursed me to punish my mother?”

“I cursed you because I need you,” she said. “Because of what you are. You chose to prick your finger, as your mother chose to betray me. You chose to bring yourself here. And so I know that you will join me, in the end.” She turned to look down the alley. “Listen to those screams, Aurora. The city is burning. People are dying, because of you. If you had left with me when I offered, they would still be alive.”

Aurora shook her head. “That's not true,” she said. But it was.

“It is a familiar story, Aurora. Fleeing the city, fleeing their control, determined to be so very good. They will beat it out of you in the end. They will wear you down until all that is left is bitterness. Until you are just like me.”

“No,” she said. “I could never be like you.”

“You are exactly like me. That is your curse, you see. Not true love, not sleeping the years away. Those were all just threads to bring you here, to this moment. If you fail to help these people, they will destroy you. And if you show them how powerful you really are . . . they will destroy you for that too. Your curse is that you cannot help but choose me. The only question is how much you burn along the way.”

“I would rather burn everything than work with you.”

Celestine's fingers brushed Aurora's neck, leaving spots of blood. “That is a pretty necklace you're wearing,” she said. “A gift from the prince of Vanhelm, perhaps?” She ran one finger along the chain. “I can understand the allure. I also have a
fascination with dragons.” She slid back, smiling. “We will see each other soon, I know. Tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now, when everything is crumbling around you . . . you will wish you had accepted my offer. Until then—good luck, my dear.”

Her footsteps faded away. Aurora stood still, barely daring to breathe. Celestine did not return.

She could hear panic in the streets, people shouting and screaming, weapons clashing together. She could not stay here, but her legs shuddered under her weight, and her head felt hot and clammy, like she had been struck with a sudden bout of the flu. Her mother had made a deal with the witch.

But Celestine could not be trusted. She was only trying to trick Aurora, to bewitch her. Nothing she said could be believed.

Footsteps passed the entrance of the alley. She flattened herself against the wall, but the person did not stop.

She had to leave. Now.

She stared at the pile of crates. Tristan had said it was possible to get halfway around the city on the roofs. High up out of sight. Could she get out that way as well? The crates looked rotten, unstable, but if she was careful . . . Her heart pounding in the back of her throat, dagger tight in her left fist, she hoisted herself up. Her skirt caught on a splinter, and she ripped it free. The wood creaked and buckled beneath her feet, but it did not break. And then she was on the roof.

People below were running, jostling, fighting. Guards hurried in every direction. Swords clashed. In the sky, she could see the sun, creeping toward noon. Turning her back to it, she hurried west. She would have to trust Finnegan's word one more time.

AURORA CLIMBED DOWN FROM THE ROOFS NEAR THE
western edge of the city. The buildings were sparser here, with beaten earth for roads. The whole place felt deserted. Everyone, it seemed, had gone to the wedding.

The wall loomed ahead. Aurora looked up, her eyes roving over every building nearby. Most of them were rundown huts, houses thrown up too quickly or old stone things that no one had bothered to care for except the birds. She tilted her head back toward the sky, following the path of lazy clouds, seeing the ragged ends of the wall, the high tower Finnegan had mentioned, and the few tall buildings in this part of town, crooked
and twisted so much that they seemed to be held up by hope alone. A stylized fairy perched on top of one, balanced on tiptoe, her wand held out pointing north. She had taken quite a battering, and she was half toppled over, as though about to fall to her death.

The drunken fairy.

Aurora hurried over to the building, following the curve of the wall. The tower looked even more decrepit up close. Shadows hung from the windows, and a rough ditch wove through the ground in front, reaching toward the wall. The ditch ended in a patch of brambles. She scrambled forward and pulled the branches aside, revealing a carved hole in the base of the wall, just large enough for a small person to wriggle through. And beside it, hidden among the brambles, a brown satchel. She pulled it open. A flask sat on top, and she gulped down the liquid without stopping to check what it was, too thirsty and worn to care. Then she threw the satchel over her shoulder and crawled forward into the gap, pushing the brambles out of the way with one hand while keeping her balance with the other. Her knees scraped on the hard ground, and her skirts caught around her shoes and in the branches that crashed back behind her, but she kept crawling, until she was forcing herself through a tiny space in the stone. Her shoulders banged the wall, and she pictured herself stuck for the rest of forever, but then she wriggled free, her head plunging forward into the fresh air.

The forest grew right up to the edge of the city, with the
highest branches brushing against the top of the wall. Light filtered through the evergreens, dappling the grassy floor, while buds, in pinks and whites and greens, were sprinkled over the branches of the otherwise naked, stooping trees. The smell of pine tickled Aurora's nose, and she could hear the birds, hurrying about in a twittering, fluttering chorus.

It smelled like home. Aurora pressed her hand against the nearest oak. The gnarled knots on the trunk seemed to whisper a story under her fingertips, running round and round, deeper and deeper and older and older into the tree.

Every princess part of her, everything that connected her to the past, everything that had brought her solace in this past month had been discarded or burned or torn from her, leaving nothing but empty space. She was a mixture of guilt and fear and selfishness, yet for the first time in weeks, in her life perhaps, she was free of the panic that clutched her chest, of the restriction that weighed her down. She was breathing open air, and for this moment, even if it only lasted this very moment, she was free to be whoever she pleased. And no one, not the king, not Iris, not Tristan, not Celestine, could take that away.

She set off through the trees.

Light broke through the branches in dappled patches, and the birds were chirping above her, waiting for the spring. After a while of hurrying through the undergrowth, her knees shook with exhaustion, so she sat down against the trunk of a tree, pulling the satchel onto her lap. A woolen dress lay inside, of
the modern style but cheaply made. Perfect for blending in. She tugged it on, stuffing the bloodstained wedding dress in the bag in its place. Blood clung to her fingers as well, although she had no memory of how it got there. It could have been anyone's.

People were dead because of her. They had died, and she had not even looked over her shoulder as she'd run from them. But death had been inevitable, no matter what she chose. She had only had impossible choices, ever since she awoke.

She dropped her head against the tree trunk, hard, and the chain around her neck rattled.

Finnegan's gift. A silver dragon, and a note pressed into her palm.

She slipped her fingers underneath the waistband of her wedding dress. The paper was still there. She pulled it free and unfolded and unrolled it, until she revealed a piece of parchment slightly bigger than her hand.

A map. Tiny but detailed, showing a city, with buildings all crammed together, surrounded by water on all sides. Vanhelm. A star lay in the very center, marking a large building labeled as the palace. Beyond the river on the left side, the cartographer had drawn a dragon, similar to the one she now wore.

Underneath, someone had scrawled a message in black ink. It had been slightly blurred in the rolling, but Aurora could still make out the words.

Burn them all, little dragon.

She almost balled it up but stopped herself, and instead placed
it carefully inside her bag. He had helped her, after all. He had told her things she did not want to hear, but things that seemed truer with every day. And he had warned her that her escape would not come without cost. She could not trust him, not yet, but one day . . . one day he might prove useful.

When she set off again, she walked more slowly, allowing her hands to stretch out and wander across the trunk of every tree that she passed.
I am not a dragon
, she thought.
I don't know what I am.

The ground sloped upward, and she began to climb, using roots for leverage under her feet. She had never been this far into the forest before. She took a deep breath, trying to calm her trembling heart once again. The breath caught in her chest as she peered over the edge of the hill.

The ground dropped away sharply in a smooth, treeless slope, cradling a large lake at the bottom of the valley. It reflected the afternoon sun, but the surface was far from smooth, broken by drinking deer and the splash of birds. Beyond it, trees stretched out into the distance, an endless blanket of brown and green.

For a moment, she stared. Then she set off at a run, her skirts flying behind her. The bag crashed against her side, jingling with coins that would be her salvation.
I know nothing
, she thought as her feet pounded the ground, tumbling, down, down, down toward the lake. Not who she was, not where she was going, not what she should do. She was going to get her answers . . . but where that would lead her, she did not know. She had no path to
follow, except instinct and desire and the sense that something awaited her, out in the world, beyond the edge of the trees. Duty would catch up with her, and she would play the part she was meant to play, but not yet.

She felt invisible, impossible. Infinite.
I am nothing
, she thought.
Nothing but myself.

I'M SO LUCKY TO BE SURROUNDED BY MANY AMAZING,
wonderful, supportive people who make writing possible. Endless thanks are due to:

My agent, Kristin Nelson, who believed in me and my book from the beginning. I'd be lost without her.

Sarah Landis, whose insight and enthusiasm helped take a book called
After
and guide it into the far superior
A Wicked Thing
.

Catherine Wallace, who rescued this book from the editor-less abyss and immediately threw herself into giving it the best chance possible.

Everyone at HarperTeen, for supporting this book, for the gorgeous cover design, for so much hard work on my behalf, for everything!

Phoebe Cattle, who was the first person to read this book, the first to give me encouragement, and the first to utter an oft-repeated, vital piece of editing advice: “It needs more Finnegan.” Our weekly hot chocolate sessions (and brief adventure as booksellers together) kept me sane(ish) as I wrote, and I don't know what I'd do without her.

Alexandra Ashmore, who became my first fangirl, asked all the hard questions and gave me the best Christmas present I've ever received—little paintings of scenes from the book. We're in this thing together, and I couldn't ask for a better writing partner or friend.

All the people who read early incarnations of this book and gave their opinions while I revised: the world's best roomies Meg Lee and Anna Li; fellow nerds, board-game mentors, and fantastic friends Matthew Goodyear and Rachel Thompson; and wonderful Colonialites Brendan Carroll, Maria Chevtsova, William Nguyen, and Andrew Weintraub.

And finally, my parents, Brian and Gaynor Thomas, who gave me a love of fantasy and made the whole writer dream possible. They've put up with every one of my crazy schemes—“I'm going to move to America!”; “I'm not going to grad school! I'm going to be an author!”—without looking too scared, and they've always believed in me. I'll let you read the book now, Mum!