Seven Deadly Thorns

Chapter Twenty-Two

I open my eyes the next morning to the dim light of my room. The stars that speckle my bed canopy are blurred as I gaze up at them, and it takes several seconds for me to realize that I am not in a forest, that I am alive, that my heart is beating.

My face feels wet and cold—I’m crying. When did I start crying?

But then my grief is broken by a slobbery tongue slurping up my tears.

“Waffles,” I mutter, reaching up to nuzzle his little scaly head. I scratch him behind the ear, and he responds with a whimper, laying his little head on my shoulder. I curl my face into his leathery skin.

“What happened?” I wonder aloud. My throat is rough with disuse.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

I lurch, twisting my head toward Roze’s voice. He sits in a chair by my bed, his long legs propped up on one of the four posters, his head resting thoughtfully on his fist.

“Roze.” I can’t ignore the relief that spreads through me at the sight of him nor the undeniable truth that I’m glad to see him.

I’m glad to see Roze Roquelart.

“In fact,” Roze continues. “That’s exactly what I was going to ask you.”

His silver eyes are shadowed with violet, and the pallor of his skin is haunted, wrung thin.

I sit up in the bed and wrap my arms around my knees. I don’t want to tell him about what I just saw—a vision? A dream? A nightmare? No, I know better than that. This was one of Queen Maria’s illusions, which means I really should tell him.

“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “One minute we were in the tomb, and then … I saw things.”

“What things?”

I take a breath. My chest feels uncomfortably tight, and I fiddle with my locket to calm myself. “I was in a forest. I saw my brother.” Now I can’t help the tears that are leaking from the corners of my eyes. I feel exposed and raw, but I force myself to keep going.

“I’ve been seeing his ghost for weeks, everywhere I go. I tried to ignore him, but he was in this dream—vision—whatever—and he was more real than ever. He attacked me. I thought I was going to die. But then I saw hands wrap around his throat—your hands. And then his face turned into your mother’s.”

Roze is silent for a moment, his face expressionless—not a glimmer of empathy. Silently, he lowers his legs to the floor and sits on the edge of my mattress. I’m not looking at him, but I can feel him watching me. Saints, I wish he would look away.

“Tell me what happened to your brother.”

I can’t look at him. Instead, I stare down at Saint Waffles on my quilt, who gives me a sad look that seems to say, You should tell him.

I can’t. Not even Cerise or Kole knows this.

“Sinclair?” he says. I don’t look up. My heart has a thick adamantine fortress around it. I will not lower the bridge for Roze.

“Viola.” My eyes jump to his. Gone is that bored, austere expression of his.

In its place is something almost tender, still edged in poison and the bite of winter, but gentle, nonetheless.

I once read a tale of a man who killed his horse and climbed inside its carcass to keep warm in a blizzard.

That feels like the sort of solace Roze offers me now—terrible, bloody comfort.

When I open my lips, it’s like jumping from a cliff. I know there are rocks at the bottom, and I’m trusting the boy with the poisoned hands and the broken heart to catch me.

“I killed him,” I whisper.

I watch Roze carefully, but his face doesn’t change.

No fear.

No judgment.

Instead, he nods, as though it’s the most normal thing to say in the world. But this is the boy who just killed his own mother and hasn’t shown an ounce of regret.

“How did it happen?” he asks.

That’s the worst part of it, and I almost stop myself from telling him. But there’s a tear in my careful armor, and the truth feels like it’s being ripped from me.

“We were very small. He tried to steal my locket.” I lift it up to show him.

He comes close, peering at it. “May I?” he asks.

I nod, and he takes it in his hand, flipping it over, examining it.

The short chain is still around my neck—he’s close enough for me to smell spice and cold.

What would it be like if he closed that locket in his fist and yanked me closer?

I internally shake myself. I shouldn’t be thinking like that right now.

He looks up. “What do you have inside it?” he asks.

“It doesn’t open. Or at least, I’ve never been able to get it open.

I’ve had it for as long as I can remember.

” I take the locket back from him. “I was very possessive of it when I was little. My brother was just a baby, and one day he wanted to play with it. He didn’t know any better—to him it was just a pretty thing he wanted to hold.

But I wouldn’t give it to him. I remember him screaming and hitting me.

I was angry, and … I wanted to hurt him.

I remember that feeling—that I wanted to hurt my little brother.

And then … there was just darkness.” I look down at my locket. “I woke up, and my brother was dead.”

Roze swallows, the moth tattoo on his throat bobbing. “Your shadows—they can kill.”

I nod.

“My middle name is Annette, and I went by Annie when I was little. I’ve been hearing his ghost say my name—bloody Annie. Then your mother called me that in the vision.” I choke on my next words. “That’s who I am. Bloody Annie.”

There it is. The reason he should hate me, fear me, regret me.

“I didn’t mean to,” I whisper, my vision blurring as I stare down at the locket. “I swear by the Saints. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

Roze laughs, and I peek up at him, horrified. “Of course you didn’t,” he says. There’s a quiet gleam in those crystalline eyes of his. “You were a child.”

I stare at him as he reaches a hand up. Leather cools my face as he sweeps a strand of hair behind my ear.

“It was an accident, Sinclair. You had power you couldn’t control. I can relate.”

I don’t want to believe him. Claiming innocence feels like a betrayal of the small, truly innocent life I took. Isn’t the appearance of my brother’s vengeful ghost evidence of my guilt?

Roze’s eyes darken. “Is that why they got rid of you? Because you killed your brother?”

I nod, dreamlike, incapable of words.

“Bastards,” he mutters. His hand is still on my face. He clears away a tear with his gloved thumb. “What happened isn’t your fault. What you are isn’t your fault.”

He goes quiet, and after a moment, I realize I have as well. My tears have ceased, and I stare back at him like I’m in a trance.

“I think I’ve been looking for you my whole life,” he whispers. He says it like a secret that has slipped through the cracks, like he didn’t mean to voice it out loud. But now it’s out there, hanging in the air around us.

My breath stops in my lungs. Something snaps taut between us—something soul-deep and penetrating.

“You killed your mother,” I say. I’m not sure if I’m trying to convince myself that he’s evil or relishing in the idea that he is like me, that we are two halves of the same rotten soul.

“Yes,” he says—frankly, no shame.

I lean closer. “You did it for me.”

I see him swallow, and the sense of power it gives me is heady, addicting.

“Yes,” he whispers, low and gruff and desperate.

His gaze flits over my face, finally settling on my mouth. “Viola,” he says, enunciating each syllable with what could be disgust or reverence, “I want to kiss you.”

I suck in a breath, and my eyes fall to his mouth, to those lips made for sneering and spitting insults, the lips that would kill me in an instant.

“But you can’t,” I say. “Because you’re cursed.”

A ghost of a smile passes over his lips.

“Because I’m cursed,” he agrees. A gloved thumb moves from my cheek to my mouth, brushing across my lower lip.

Something warm and liquid fills my belly as I stare at his mouth while he caresses mine.

“You’re going to need to stop that,” he says.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that,” he says. “Before I do something very stupid.”

I don’t want to stop. But a whine breaks through the tension. Saint Waffles puts his head on my knee, staring up at me with morose eyes.

I lean back from Roze, deliberately putting distance between us, and he drops my chin. I’m grateful for it, but I also hate it. I’m so tired of self-control.

He clears his throat. “There’s something else,” he says.

“I want you to know that what you saw in the tomb …” The image of the brutalized body of his mother burns in my mind.

“I didn’t do that to her. I only kissed her on the cheek.

It was painless. Like falling asleep. What was done to her …

” He takes a deep breath, and there’s something in the shiver of his mouth that makes me think he didn’t entirely hate his mother.

“What was done to her must have been done after I left her body.”

I can sense a fork in my path—to trust the tortured Prince who has saved my life on multiple counts at this point …

or distrust the Huntsman whose arm is still marked with the price on my life.

It’s unclear which path will prove treacherous, but perhaps it’s time to put a little more faith in my heart than my head.

“I believe you,” I say. “But what does that mean?”

“It’s possible it was my mother’s own doing, like I told Belladonna. But perhaps my sisters wanted you to think it was me. They wanted you to fear me.”

I almost smile. “I already fear you.”

It’s the truth. I can’t stop being afraid of him, or of myself. But I’m starting to think that there’s something lovely about fear.

“Maybe they want to brand meigas as brutal killers,” I suggest.

He nods in agreement.

Looking around at my dormitory, I ask, “How did I get back here?”

“Your shadows flooded the catacombs.” He shakes his head disbelievingly. “It was … utter darkness. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it subdued my mother’s power enough in the moment that I was able to get to you. I brought you here.”

“And Belladonna?”

The corner of his lip twitches. “Alive.”

“Thank you,” I say. “You keep saving my life.”

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t need constant saving,” he says sourly. He’s returning to our game of hate—resentment is easier to swallow than longing.

“We have two days, Roze,” I say. The hopelessness of it hits me suddenly.

Two days. And we’re no closer to figuring out how to defeat the Queen, how to stop the clock.

We still have no idea what answers the King might hold.

There is some hidden thread connecting all of this. I can feel it, but I just can’t see it.

Both of our eyes inadvertently fall to his forearm, where the tattoo is hidden beneath his sleeve.

“We need to learn what the Book of Castelle has to do with this,” I say. “Maybe we could go back to the Crypt—”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Roze says.

I cross my arms. “And why not?”

The look on his face promises violence. The prince has retreated; the assassin has returned.

“My mother’s spirit is alive and well, and more hell-bent than ever on sending you to an early grave.

Without a body or a throne, she no longer cares about the opinion of the Court—she won’t let politics or decorum stand in the way of killing you.

My sister is too terrified to stand against her—she’ll do her bidding, and she has an army of guards at their command.

And Belladonna has issued her first command as Queen—until my mother’s supposed killer is caught, she’s confining the entire Kingdom to their residences. ”

“Why?”

“They’re looking for you.” He eyes the door warily. “They’ve already begun to search homes. Belladonna has spread the news that you’re a meiga and a traitor to the Crown and has threatened to imprison anyone suspected of aiding you or possessing magic themselves.”

“She’s going to punish people … because she blames me for the King’s death and you for the Queen’s?”

He nods. “I believe my sisters are trying to draw you to them. They think you’re too noble to let other people suffer in your place.

” Then he glares at me. “But before you go marching into Belladonna’s arms under some misguided notion of martyrdom, I’ll remind you that my family hates all meigas who aren’t my mother.

Belladonna will kill them whether you walk into her trap or not. ”

I let out a shuddering breath. “What do we do?”

The look in his eyes could melt steel. “We keep you hidden.”

“So I can’t leave my room?”

“Actually, I’m going to insist that you do. I only brought you back here so you could gather a few items.”

“And where exactly am I going?”

“Somewhere safe, where you will remain.”

I glare up at him. “How am I supposed to find anything on the book if I’m under lock and key?”

“We’ll figure something out. But you’ll do it in hiding. No more late-night experiments with Cerise. No more traipsing about the library. I’m going to take you somewhere they can never find you, and you’re going to stay there as long as is necessary for your survival.”

I scoff. “How am I supposed to survive that and not go insane?”

He smiles cruelly. “You’ll have my delectable company for entertainment, of course.”