Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(22)

“I am certain this is the best course, Gil,” she said at last. “There’s only one thing of which I’m not fully certain yet.” Already she’d begun to pack a small store of food and a change of clothes.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

She stopped what she was doing and stood to face him again, her eyes landing just at his chin. He sucked in a breath. How he wished so often he could grab her in his arms and make her really understand him. . . .

“Whether or not you’ll be joining me,” she said.

And so here they are, on the pier, about to board an oil vessel that will sail right through the strait, just under the noses of the sleeping castle village, and out across the North Sea . . . to Aubin. Even now, the sails slap one another in the crisp winter air, as though applauding Isbe’s recklessness.

Gil doesn’t need to have his luck with him to know this is a bad gamble.

But there is one thing of which he can be certain: he’ll always gamble on Isbe. He’ll do anything—barter any sense he owns—to be near her, to remain a part of her. Even though she may never know.





11


Aurora


Time may have stopped; seconds or centuries may have ticked by while she remained held within the wall, but finally Aurora parts the stone—parts from it—though the cold still clings to her like a shadow.

She begins to take in her surroundings . . . and an eerie sense of recognition floods her. But it must be a coincidence. It has to be. She’s still shaken from moving through the wall illusion—and from seeing all the soldiers deformed, crushed, morphed into stone.

Across a barren field, an old castle rises up from a tangle of dying vines and rotting tree trunks. Some sort of ivy, dotted with dried purple flowers, climbs from window to window, many of them boarded up. One entire tower has collapsed in on itself, and stone rubble litters the grounds. The day—if this even is the same day—has waned; purple-pink light veins the dried grass, almost obscuring the long, narrow road that snakes to the mouth of the gate. In the distance beyond the estate, she can see that the road leads to the low, lopsided peaks of huts and even a church—though it’s all blackened and in obvious disrepair, as if the whole village was razed by a bad fire.

“What is this place?” she whispers.

Heath smiles at her, all the wariness and urgency he exuded in the Borderlands now gone from his face. “Welcome to Blackthorn,” he says. “Home of Queen Belcoeur.”

Blackthorn. So she was right, in a way. She did recognize it. The Blackthorns used to hold a great spread of land in the rocky LaMorte Territories. It’s where Queen Malfleur now rules. From there, it is said, the faerie queen can look out across the mountains to her entire kingdom, and can even see, if she squints, the gleaming cupolas of Deluce’s palace, her childhood home, in the distance.

But Aurora and Heath aren’t in the mountains. And this Blackthorn is inhabited not by Malfleur, but by her dead sister—who is not, Aurora reminds herself, dead at all, apparently. She can’t help but wonder if she’s tumbling through a dream.

Then again, she has never dreamed with her lost senses.

“You live here?” Aurora stares at the castle, distress creeping into her lungs.

“Most of us do. Our grandparents, and their parents, were Blackthorn’s staff. But now we’re more like tenants. We live here, and we work here, but we don’t really work for her. We don’t even see her. She doesn’t leave the north turret. For all we know, she subsists by eating the stray moths that find their way through her windows.”

Aurora looks at Heath. She is having a difficult time separating her confusion about him with her overwhelming curiosity—and wariness—about this place. She clears her throat, picturing whittling her words into a knife, one that can cut through the fog. “I need to get home. My sister . . . and the prince . . . and . . .”

“Home,” he repeats, as though the idea were an uncanny one.

“Deluce. The palace. Yes.”

“I’m afraid that may be a bit complicated,” Heath replies. “Come on, evening is approaching. You and I have much to discuss. Very much to discuss.”

“We do?” No one has ever had much to discuss with her, other than Isbe.

But he is already hurrying ahead at a half jog. Aurora follows, then abruptly stumbles, landing hard on her knees with a sharp cry. She has fallen countless times before, but this is different—it takes the breath out of her. Her legs feel wobbly, and one of her ankles throbs.

“Aurora!” Heath runs to her side.

She sees the object in the grass that tripped her: a glass jar, lying in the dusty earth, which looks almost blue in the ebbing light.

The jar is cool and firm in her hands . . . and full of dead fireflies.

She lets it drop back to the ground as Heath helps her up. “Here, lean on me.”

All of the lifting, the touching, the shuffling—hand to shoulder, arm to back—it’s too much. But she has no choice. Her ankle is weak. It is singing a silent song of despair. She can’t listen to it anymore, but the pain won’t go away. It’s constant. She never knew what it really was to be hurt, even a little.

She swallows, and swallows again, trying not to cry, trying not to faint. Other people, she reminds herself, live with a sense of touch. They are not consumed by it. She breathes deeply and tries to distract herself.