49. Rosalina
49
Rosalina
K eldarion is upon Caspian before he even has a chance to draw me up. He tackles him to the ground, and I smack hard against the floor. Keldarion lifts Caspian up by the front of his tunic.
Caspian stares down at him with a bemused expression on his handsome face, mouth quirking into a mocking smile. “Oh, Kel, you had me worried. You nearly let me get an entire dance in before your jealousy got the better of you. And here I was, thinking I wasn’t special to you anymore.”
“Leave.” Keldarion’s eyes flash with dark promise.
I stand at the same moment Caspian pushes out of his grip. He lands gracefully and snatches Kel’s wrist. “I had to come. I was getting impatient.”
His eyes flick to me, and something crawls around my head. Slowly, I stare at my reflection in the icy wall. A crown of thorns weaves across my brow.
“It looks better on her,” Caspian says.
Kel freezes, and I feel like I’m trapped in a strange little bubble with them. Caspian stands on his toes, bringing his lips to Kel’s ear. “Just how long before you break, and she belongs to me?”
It’s the movement of Caspian’s hand that catches my gaze: his thumb brushing over Kel’s wrist in a strangely intimate gesture. Brushing over a dark line right above the bargain tattoo I created with Kel. What is that?
“Never,” Keldarion snarls. With a roar, he throws Caspian across the ballroom.
Keldarion stands before me, hunched and panting. Frost crackles beneath his feet, and the tips of his fingers shimmer blue with ice magic. If his rage gets the better of him, it will reveal his secret to all the nobles of the Winter Realm.
Caspian picks himself up from the floor and dusts off his jacket, looking positively unbothered. A rush of wind blows my dress and hair as Dayton, Farron, and Ez all sprint to Keldarion’s side.
“Even now, you can’t bear to hurt me, can you?” A positively cruel smile carves up Caspian’s handsome face.
“You. Are. Not. Welcome!” Keldarion howls, and a series of huge icicles, tips sharpened to deadly points, erupt out of the floor, surging toward the Prince of Thorns.
Caspian raises his hands, and the ground splits with huge purple briars, wrapping around his legs and lifting him out of the way of the ice daggers. “When will you get it through your head?” Caspian yells. “You are not in control.”
More thorns explode out of the walls, the ground, even the dais. Guests scream and stampede from the ballroom. The briars shove over the tables of food. Ice sculptures smash to the ground, splintering into millions of pieces. Kel’s throne is wrapped in a thornbush until only a glimmer of blue is visible beneath.
The thorns rise Caspian even higher into the air. “Ah, I do love a little chaos.” His black eyes settle on me, and he winks. “Goodbye, princess.” The briars wrap tighter and tighter around him and then—
He’s gone.
A sigh of relief is nearly out of my throat… But a murmur shivers through the panicked crowd.
“He brought the Prince of Thorns here.”
“Once a traitor, always a traitor.”
“Keldarion allies again with the Below! He’s brought the thorns back to Winter!”
“It’s Keldarion’s fault for trusting him at all.”
I stand on shaky legs. The princes have formed a circle, all staring outward.
Something is wrong.
A nobleman steps forward from his hiding place behind a table crowded with briars. “Look at this! Prince Keldarion returns after years of abandonment, only to have the Prince of Thorns ambush us! He is still in alliance with the Below—here is the proof!”
“No,” Kel growls. “My allegiance is to the Queen.”
A fae woman screams from the crowd, “Then why do you not carry the Sword of the Protector? Why didn’t you kill Caspian while he was here?”
“I didn’t…” Kel stutters.
Oh no. The rebellions Perth Quellos kept mentioning. Is this the making of one? I turn in a circle and catch sight of the vizier skulking in a doorway. Why isn’t he doing anything?
Something sails through the air and lands upon Kel’s fine tunic. A pomegranate. Purple juice slides down his chest.
“Down with the Prince!” a young noble shouts. “Let us take back our realm from the traitor!”
“I’m not a traitor,” Kel roars. “Stop this—”
But a fever has overcome the crowd. Panic rushes through my veins, but there’s nothing I can do. Guests rip up the thorns and brandish knives and forks from the tables. A group rushes the dais and begins overturning the thrones. Ezryn and Dayton step before Keldarion, and the spark of magic erupts around them. A swirling water barrier forms as Dayton moves his hands like a conductor. Ez touches the floor and the ground beneath shifts, turning into churned earth and a tangle of roots so thick, the nobles surging toward them trip and fall. Kel stands stricken between them.
Where is Farron? Is he okay? I turn in a circle, locking eyes with a fae woman, her expression one of wild fervor. “You were dancing with the Prince of Thorns. Are you one of his succubae from Below?”
She holds the carved decapitated head of a swan: the remains of a fallen ice sculpture. “I’ll pound your fucking round ears into your skull,” she cries.
A scream on my lips, I fall back. But a breeze ripe with red and gold leaves blusters from Farron’s hands as he leaps in front of me. The fae woman sails across the room, the swan’s head shattering on the floor.
Farron turns to me, an auburn curl falling between his eyes. “Hurry. I have to get you out of here.”
He grabs my hand and I let myself be tugged across the ballroom. Total anarchy has fallen. Guards have formed a perimeter around the other three princes, protecting them from the rioting nobles, and others try to subdue them. But I see some guards on the other side, trashing the ballroom with their spears.
“What’s going on?” I cry.
“The Winter Realm has been burned by the Prince of Thorns before,” Farron pants, shoving me beneath a table as we attempt to pass through a heated tussle. “This is the culmination of fear and rage from that last betrayal.”
“But they’re taking it out on Kel.” My beautiful dress rips as Farron tugs me to the other side of the table.
“Well, Kel hasn’t exactly been a model ruler,” Farron mutters. “Come on.”
“But he’s trying to make it better!” I cry, panting to keep up. Where is Perth Quellos? He’s been the one ruling in Kel’s stead. But I don’t see him anywhere.
Farron shoves me out of a door and into an empty hallway. We sprint until we’re out in the garden. I blink up, trying to find the sun through the dark clouds.
Farron grabs his shimmering leaf locket and holds it out. The iridescent mirror beams with light. “Hurry, Rosalina. Think of your quarters in Castletree. You’ll be safe there.”
“Not without you.” I grab Farron’s arm.
He shakes his head. “I have to stay and help allay this in any way I can.”
“What about Kel? He’s in danger. They could kill him.”
“Ez and Dayton will never let that happen. I’ll never let that happen.” Farron touches my cheek. “Trust me.”
Doors clatter open and out streams a group of nobles holding carving knives and sharp thorns ripped from the briars. “Go, Rosalina,” Farron breathes.
I think of my warm bed in the castle, of sitting in front of the vanity with Astrid and Marigold. Of the murals of crawling ivy and lush meadows that remind me of sunshine and the smell of fresh earth.
I think of home.
With one last look back at Farron, I leap through the light and the calamity behind me disappears.