The Firethorn Crown (19 page)

“Bay!” Hazel said.

No. No, he wouldn’t. Lily rubbed her arms. It was so cold.

Eben slid down and squashed himself into the seat with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

“Stop.” Gwen ordered, her tone fierce. “She’s okay. There was another miss—” She cleared her throat. “It could have—” She coughed and gave up, but knew what she meant: it could have been the wheezer.

Yarrow stopped pacing. “They can’t talk about this?”

“The necklaces stop them.” Eben had figured it out. “But Lily can speak underground.”

“And what does this . . .
prince
want?”

“The girls couldn’t tell me, but I overheard enough to guess he’s under a curse of his own. He’s keeping them all bound through the necklaces. He wants Lily.” His voice was calm, but his hand tightened into a fist atop his knee.

Yarrow loosened the cord that bound his iron-grey hair, fluffed the strands, and then tied them back again. He’d entered royal service after Father had been well established as king, and even then, he wasn’t young. He hadn’t even been in Ituria during the time the sorcerer had trapped Tharius’s family in the undergarden.

“Once the girls are free, the man can rot in the dark. I don’t care about his curse.” He ran his hand over the tattoo on his cheek, that of an ancient rune meaning
truth
or
honesty
, a mark all sorcerers were required to take upon entering an apprenticeship. It had become a warning to ordinary folk to beware their deception.

Tharius should bear such a mark on his face.

“Can you take me tomorrow night?” Yarrow asked.

She didn’t want to risk his safety any more than she’d wanted to risk Eben’s, but he might see things Eben had missed. She nodded once.

“Good. Meantime, we need to find out what we can about the sorcerer who put the curse on . . . the sorcerer. Do we have his name?”

She shook her head.

Yarrow scrubbed his jaw, his calloused hand rasping against his short beard. “See if you can find out tomorrow night from the prince. Couldn’t hurt to look in the registry, too.”

“I’ll go,” Gwen said.

“A sorcerer can undo his own curse. If this one’s nearby, might be Brido can persuade him to do it.” With a growl, he added, “Might be I can.”

“Yarrow.” Eben’s voice contained a warning.

None of them wanted to see Yarrow go back to sorcery, for Ivy’s sake, if not for his own.

Yarrow sighed. “Yeah, I know.”

“He’s probably long gone, anyway.” Eben explained what Lily had found in the library about the missing princess and the sorcerers. She wished she’d had time to tell him Tharius’s own version of his past while they were underground.

“Good.” Yarrow finally sat. “We’ll focus on Sotan and the Sky Mountains. See what turns up.”

Eben squeezed her shoulder and then rose.

“Oh.” Yarrow stood and held out a note. “A paper arrived with a message from your father. He’ll be here late tomorrow.”

Chapter Nineteen

Father arrives tomorrow.

Lily melted into the chair, not bothering to read the note.

The girls reacted to Yarrow’s news with tears and relieved sighs. Yarrow must have used one of the palace’s paper dragons to send word to Father. The little messengers flew faster than pigeons, but they only worked for their handlers. Of course, Father would have taken one with him for messages to the palace.

How would he react to the mess she’d gotten them into? She had no right to wear The Firethorn Crown; she couldn’t even keep her sisters safe. She wanted to crawl into bed and wake up when this was over, but there was no one to make it go away.

“I’ll be leavin’ in a few hours to meet your father on the road, fill him in.” Yarrow paused. “Should the queen be told any of this?”

Lily shook her head.

“Let Father tell her,” Hazel said. “When the time is right.”

*

Lily’s brain shut down quickly when she fell into bed. She woke in the morning, not refreshed, but with a renewed sense of purpose.

Gwen, Neylan, and Melantha joined her in the library, and Eben relaxed his guard enough to help fetch books and read a few pages.

More than a list of names, the registry of sorcerers documented random deeds and misdeeds of spell casters across the kingdoms, with no reasoning behind what information was recorded. Where some entries went on for pages, others took up only a line or two. A few included drawings, as if a scribe with artistic tendencies couldn’t resist doodling in the margins. Landscapes, faces, clothing, and wildlife. Lily understood, having given Ivy a book of her own doodling yesterday.

“Here’s something.” Melantha tapped her book and read. “‘Sorcerer missing. Wife kidnapped. Oji.’ It’s around the right time.”

“The northern half of Oji is in the Sky Mountains,” Gwen said.

Could this be referring to
the
sorcerer? But he hadn’t been married to Tharius’s mother, and she wasn’t kidnapped. She ran off.

“The details don’t fit,” Hazel said.

Eben rubbed the scar on his jaw and frowned at the entry. He hadn’t heard Tharius’s once-upon-a-time story.

Lily sat back and pressed her palms to her eyes. They were getting nowhere. If only she could find a sketch of the sorcerer, or the princess, or Makar. If she had Tharius’s ring, someone might even recognize that.

Oh. A chill crept over her from her core to her toes. Even her scalp prickled with goosebumps.

The ring. The princess had been fairer than Hazel, who had been compared to The Golden Makar.

Tharius’s hair was raven black.

She stood, her chair thunking to the floor, and pulled Melantha’s book over. Flipping through the pages, she searched for a picture, a sketch. Anything.

Nothing. She slammed it closed, walked to a window, and smacked her hand against the stone wall. She needed to know what the sorcerer looked like. She needed to know if Tharius told the truth about his parents. Whether his mother was kidnapped or ran away, whether she was married to Makar or not. Could she have been carrying the sorcerer’s child before she entered the undergarden? If so, why would the sorcerer condemn his own son to be born and live in darkness? Could he have been that heartless? Did he even know?

Did any of it matter?

“Lily?” Gwen touched her shoulder.

Lily couldn’t explain her suspicions. No one else knew about the ring.

Or did they? The other girls had danced with Tharius. They might have seen it, even if they didn’t know the story. She had to try.

She held her arm in the air until she had their attention, and then she tapped her ear.

“You want us to listen . . . er . . . pay attention,” Gwen guessed.

Charades had never been her first choice among games, but she’d played it enough over the years not to feel too awkward. But this time it wasn’t a game. She had to be careful, though, with the curse in full force.

She took the wire ring off her finger, held it up, held it next to Eben’s hand.

“A ring and a man,” Melantha said. “A wedding? Mother’s decree?”

Lily pulled her braid over her shoulder and held the ring next to it.

Melantha wrinkled her nose. “Hair jewelry?”

“I think she’s talking about a . . . mourning ring . . . with pale hair,” Neylan said.

Lily tapped her nose. Exactly.

Eben crossed his arms, observing, piecing together what they were talking about. He lacked a few clues the girls had.

“What else?” Gwen asked. “Is this about . . . you know who?”

Lily shook her head and lifted her braid.

“It’s about
hair
?” Melantha said.

Lily nodded.

“Okay?” Melantha drew out the word, emphasizing her confusion. When Lily didn’t contradict her, she threw out guesses as they did during the game. “Braids. Long hair. Dark hair. Light hair.”

Lily tapped her nose again.

“Light hair, then.”

“A
person
with light hair, I think,” Neylan clarified.

Lily held up two fingers.

“
Two
people with light hair.” Melantha said. “First person is?”

Lily tapped her ring, hoping they knew whose hair Tharius kept.

“Mom,” Neylan said, careful not to use too many words and risk fainting.

Lily nodded.

“Okay. Second person.” Melantha threw out guesses again. “Dad—”

Lily grabbed Melantha’s hand and nodded emphatically to stop her there. By association, she’d guessed right the first time. Hopefully, they would understand the significance.

“So, a mom and a dad with light hair,” Melantha said. “What are we talking about?”

“His hair is dark.” Gwen’s face turned ashen. She got it.

Lily dropped her hands to her sides, breathing as if she’d taken the stairs two at a time.

“Oh.” Neylan had caught on, too.

“Do you know what they’re talking about?” Melantha turned to Eben.

“I rarely know what you girls are talking about.” His words were light, but his brows lowered in concentration, as if he was on the verge of understanding. Or as if he understood, but didn’t want to.

“You should ask Orin about dark-haired sorcerers from Oji today.” Neylan fingered the dewdrop jewel on its chain, a thoughtful look in her eyes. Whatever idea she’d just had, she would share it when she chose.

Having found an answer to a question she hadn’t asked, Lily set out with Eben to ask questions about someone who might have all the answers. If the sorcerer were still alive, she would have him found, and she would make him undo what he’d done.

That was big talk from someone who couldn’t speak or summon the courage to tell the man she loved how she felt. If only Eben’s response were certain, she would do it. But she couldn’t risk her sisters and her kingdom, not when the sorcerer might be out there with the ability to set things right.

*

When they reached the goose field, Lily took off her boots and ankle stockings and settled on the ground next to the boulder, wiggling her toes into the thick grass. True stuck her head in a boot and then emerged with a
hwonk
and pecked at the laces. The silly goose had no concept of the seriousness of the situation. A laugh bubbled under Lily’s ribs. She swallowed it, and two tears escaped instead.

Eben wasted no time discussing what he’d learned with Orin. By the time Lily had sharpened her pencil with Melantha’s dagger and drawn a picture of True wearing a boot hat, they had gotten to the question of a sorcerer from the Sky Mountains.

“It’s a big range and riddled with sorcerers, being that it’s so close to Sotan.” Orin poked at the ground with a large stick, not quite a staff, loosening dirt and uncovering bugs for True. “And I’m no scholar.”

In other words, he had no idea who the sorcerer could be.

“Even if we knew his name,” Orin said, “we might never find him. Maybe we should be focusing on figuring out how to break Lily’s curse.”

Eben turned over a clod of dirt with his toe. “Those things are complicated. Is it possible?”

“Maybe. There are solutions that show up over and over in folk tales. We could start there.”

Their guesses, some of them absurdly off-base, soon turned to a discussion about what they did and didn’t know about curses and sorcery. Unable to provide input, Lily walked to the pond. Even if they guessed correctly, she couldn’t tell them so.

Lifting her skirts to her knees, she tiptoed past reeds and stepped into the pond. Sun-warmed water lapped at the shore. It cooled as she waded deeper, and mud squished between her toes. Keeping to the shallows, she waded to the other side. By the time she returned to the boulder, the grass had dried her feet and brushed off most of the mud.

Eben pretended to scan the field, and Orin swung his arms back and forth.

“We’ve come up with a plan,” Orin said.

She waited for him to continue. The silence stretched like afternoon shadows.

Finally, Orin spoke, his words spilling rapidly from his mouth. “We know you can’t comment on any ideas we have about breaking whatever curse you’re under, so we’re just going to jump in and try something.” He paused. “You can run off, if you’re not up for it.”

She didn’t run off. Their plan wouldn’t work, but they didn’t know that. And she couldn’t tell them, so she might as well let them find out for themselves. It couldn’t hurt.

Could it? Eben’s face reminded her of the time he’d overindulged on sweet rolls during his first trip to the festival.

“Okay. Here goes.” Orin stepped up to her, put both hands on her shoulders, and planted a light kiss on the corner of her mouth. His lips were chapped. He took three steps back and crossed his arms.

“Anything?”

She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.
That
was their big plan? Orin must have come up with the idea from his talk of folk tales: every little girl dreamed of true love’s kiss. She was surprised that Eben was willing to go along with it. That explained his behavior.

But why would Eben be nervous?

Orin stepped aside, and Eben edged closer.

Her whole body prickled with heat. This was not how she’d imagined their first kiss, not that she’d had any hope there would be one. For all she knew, this would be it. The one and only.

She could run.

She should run.

This wouldn’t work. What would Eben think of her, letting him kiss her, while knowing it was pointless? Maybe he’d think she was desperate.

He would be right.

She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to. Her face tilted up to meet his without her thinking about it. She wanted him to kiss her, to see how he reacted. Her stomach fluttered with the hope that Eben would never kiss her unless he loved her. She might be able to break the curse right now. She could tell him she loved him after the kiss, and he would say it back, and everything would be all right.

Her arms tensed with the desire to slip around his neck, but she held still.

He inched closer.

This nightmare could be over soon.

His jaw clenched.

Father wouldn’t need to see her failure.

He turned away.

Her heart fell into the grass.

“What’s wrong?” Orin’s face appeared at the corner of her vision.

She already knew the curse couldn’t be broken that way, but Eben hadn’t even tried.

“I knew it wouldn’t work.” He stalked towards the pond.

She backed up to sit on the boulder, but missed and landed hard on the ground. She pressed her knuckles to her eyes, refusing to cry. It wasn’t his fault it hadn’t worked, but he’d known it wouldn’t. He knew he didn’t love her like that.

She couldn’t risk telling him how she felt now. Tharius was right. Her curse was unbreakable.

She needed to find the sorcerer.

*

The sun had trudged to the other side of the field when Lily woke to a nudge on her hip. Orin handed her an apple and a chunk of bread.

“I’m sorry.” He sat down a few feet away.

She shrugged and bit into the apple.

Eben paroled the edges of the field with True under his arm. A grin spread across her face, despite the ache in her heart.

Orin stretched out his legs. “True’s taking her guard job seriously these days.”

A quick toss, and Lily’s apple core became a buffet for a trio of robins. She opened her book to a mostly-blank page and started outlining the birds. Nothing from the undergarden. Orin flipped onto his stomach and watched, gradually inching closer, until his nose risked getting a paper cut.

“Can I see that?” He pointed to a smudge near the edge of the page.

Tharius’s ring.

She passed him the book.

“I’ve seen rings like this before, mourning rings. They’re popular with the nobility in Rhodena and Sotan.” He sat up. “Was this sorcerer you’re trying to find out about married to a princess?”

She grabbed his hands and nodded.

“It’s not every day a princess marries a sorcerer. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Princess Ambergina of Sotan married one. She was hardly next in line for the throne, but then the heir died. And his successor, and the next. This sorcerer was on his way to becoming the king of Sotan by eliminating the competition, but his wife died. Or something. I can’t remember all the details; it was before I was born.”

She snatched her sketchbook and shoved it into her satchel.

“The sorcerer disappeared.” Orin whistled to get Eben’s attention. “I can’t remember his name, but you can look it up in your registry of royal marriages.”

She intended to do that now.

Eben jogged up and deposited True at Orin’s feet. “What’s up?”

“We may have a name.”

Orin explained as Lily donned her stockings and boots. She was too excited to be bothered by any lingering awkwardness between her and Eben.

“Lily!” Melantha flew down the dirt path, copper hair tangling behind her. In her leggings, she was faster than Azure. She reached the tree, put her hands on her knees, and took a few deep breaths.

“Father’s home.”