Thirty-Seven #2
The other girl was staring at her, with intent, captivation, delight.
For all that she was familiar with the sad parts of Oskaren, her playful side, when it was not weighed down by bitterness, was new.
And under the weight of her hunter’s focus, Thia realized just how often the girl had avoided her previously, how careful she was to never look too long or too fully.
“Are you tired?” Oskaren asked.
“Not really.” Not enough to sleep. She had no idea where they were supposed to sleep anyway.
“Would you like to sit?” Oskaren removed her hand from Thia’s waist and gestured to the stones where she had sat before.
“Sure.”
They strolled across the meadow toward it, walking close together, but not enough to touch. Oskaren reached the stones first, but remained standing, hovering hesitantly. Thia sat, crossing her legs one over the other. She patted the boulder in front of her.
Oskaren waited one second longer, then flashed a smile and sat.
“So,” Thia started, when the other girl was settled. She paused, suddenly shy. Without any danger to distract them, without the curse standing like an ugly wall, she was deeply aware that it was just the two of them.
“Thia,” Oskaren said, as though that were an answer. And again, “Thia.” She said it slowly, like she was savoring the taste of it, the way it felt to shape it free of pain.
And it was a wonder to Thia that her name would cause the girl pain at all, when she only felt pain when she was happy.
And here, now, free of the curse in this moment, she looked happy. Her gaze was bright, and the corners of her lips kept twitching as though she was trying to contain her delight and couldn’t.
“What?” Thia asked, squirming under the inspection.
“Nothing,” Oskaren said. “I’m just glad to have met you.”
Thia’s insides warmed. “Tell me something,” she said.
“Like what?”
Thia pursed her lips. “Anything. Something real.” Something to hold on to when the danger returned.
Oskaren looked at the ground. “Can’t we stay in the dream?”
Thia knew what she meant. It was like a dream, the two of them in the most beautiful glade she’d ever seen, surrounded by flowers that glowed like stars, warmed by the embers of a bonfire as dozens of majestic voices serenaded them.
But Thia didn’t want a dream, not when her entire life no longer felt real.
She wanted to know that this feeling, this longing, was something that would last even when the magic fell away.
Perhaps it was the sadness in the other girl’s tone, the diffidence in the tilt of her chin, but Thia found confidence she didn’t know she had.
She reached up, smoothing that tendril of black hair off the girl’s forehead.
Oskaren wasn’t breathing; she was as still as a statue as Thia ran a finger down her scar.
“I want to know you,” she said gently. “All of you.”
“If you knew all of me, you wouldn’t say that,” Oskaren said, so quietly Thia almost didn’t hear her.
“Oskaren—”
“The things I’ve done…. My own mother can’t stand the sight of me.”
Thia didn’t think that was true. The woman’s devastation was clear in the tears she’d shed while describing her daughter’s fate. “Sorscha loves you,” Thia insisted. “Very much.”
Oskaren sighed. “Oh, I know. That’s why she can’t stand me.
” She stared at Thia’s hands where they rested in her lap.
“That’s why I left. After I was cursed, I escaped the Tower and I…
I had nowhere to go, so I went to Black Forest. I didn’t care exactly, but I could see the pain I was causing, my mother’s disgust at it. So I left.”
“Dess said he tried to come with you,” Thia hedged.
Oskaren grimaced. “Yes.” She waited, hesitant. “What…else did he say about me?”
Thia chewed her lip, wondering how much to share. “He said you threatened to kill him,” she said finally.
Oskaren’s eyes were still on Thia’s hands. “Ah.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I thought for my mother’s sake I should break the curse or die trying. Apparently, he had the same idea.” Her expression hardened. “He would’ve followed me, and he would have gotten himself killed. I needed to make him believe there was no hope for me.”
Thia’s lips parted, struck. She understood Dess’s hurt, the pain of feeling abandoned by the ones meant to love you best. Wasn’t that why she had been so angry with Melina?
But she understood Oskaren, too, the impulse that had led her to lie for the sake of his safety, because that was what Grandma Winnie had done.
And what Thia herself had done when she’d lied to keep Dess in the barn, and again when she’d avoided telling him her suspicions about Oskaren’s curse.
They were all just trying to do right by one another, for better or worse, hindered by their own wounds in the caring.
Oskaren was waiting for a reply. Thia fingered the ends of her hair, wanting to say too much and not knowing where to begin. “But you did have hope,” she said at last. “He suggested you come here, and you did, alone. Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Oskaren admitted. “I knew what they did to trespassers, so I camped by the falls for—I don’t know, a few months?
Every day I told the trees of what had befallen me, hoping someone would hear.
No one ever came. Then Asha attacked.” Thia’s breath hitched.
“I fled across the bridge, preferring Losrohiri wrath to hers, but not before she gave me this.” Oskaren gestured to the scar across her face.
“The trees swallowed me. I can’t quite describe it; they sprung up around me like the maws of a beast, forming a den so thick there was no way for the witch to get to me.
I thought she would use fire, but I suppose even witches fear the Losrohir. She left.”
“Were you trapped?”
“For a while. Eventually a Losrohiri man came. He said the heart must be protected. I assume he was being ironic, since the trees would have told him of my curse.”
Thia’s eyes widened. “The Heart,” she echoed, turning it over.
Oskaren frowned. “What?”
“In the Losrohiri prophecy,” Thia said, more certain now. “Lord Sagan thought you might be the Heart.”
Oskaren’s laugh was bitter. “A pretty idea, but we both know I have none.” You do, Thia wanted to protest. But Oskaren was still speaking.
“Whatever the reason, he told me of the Vale and guided me along it. I was never permitted here, nor to the City of Stars. When we came to a clearing deep within Losrohiria, an emissary of the Luminae arrived. She told me that he had learned of my coming, but since the curse was not made by his people, they could not unmake it.” She folded her hands in her lap.
“Anger consumed me. I couldn’t go home, couldn’t go on, couldn’t stay as I was.
I became fixated on the only path left to me: vengeance.
Starting with Asha.” Her fingers absent-mindedly brushed her scar.
“Then the emissary said the last thing I expected.”
“Oh?”
“She told me the way to the lair. At first, I thought it was pity, one small way to help since they could do nothing else for me. But her next words tempered my rage somewhat: go now, and she foresaw only death for me. But if waited, my greatest want would be fulfilled.” She smiled sardonically.
“So of course when you appeared, ready to seek the king, the meaning was obvious to me. Finally I’d have a chance at my ultimate vengeance.
Asha was nothing in the face of that. And you’d already taken care of her anyway. ”
Thia didn’t like the reminder of what she was to the girl, simply a ticket to royal access, even if her tone was light enough to suggest she no longer felt that way.
She shifted on her rock. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said.
“Why does Dess think you went to the witches, if you never made it?”
“I couldn’t very well tell him I’d taken his advice,” she replied.
“He would have known I hadn’t given up, and he would have done something even more reckless in the name of helping me.
” Her rubbed her palms down her thighs. “He kept asking about my scar, why I’d bothered to come back when I’d been so intent on leaving.
So I lied. Let him think I’d gone on some foolhardy witch-slaying adventure.
Between the two of us, I was always the more levelheaded, so naturally he took it as a sign the sister he knew was gone.
” Her mouth stretched bitterly. “And it wasn’t entirely unfounded.
I had considered it, after all.” She leaned back, taking a large breath.
Her eyes found Thia’s. “So now you know everything.”
Not everything. Not the most important thing. Oskaren seemed to be waiting for her to ask it, her expression braced, shoulders tensed. “Ren,” Thia started, waiting for her to protest.
But Oskaren only nodded. “Ask.”
So Thia took a shaking breath of her own and said, “Why were you cursed?”
For a long time, she thought Oskaren wouldn’t answer. Her eyes were closed against the memory, her long fingers clutched in her lap. Just when Thia was about to tell her to forget it, to spare herself, she spoke.
“It was the queen,” she whispered. “King Caradoc’s wife.
Solanthe. About five years ago, there was a particularly harsh winter.
I was in Black Forest at the time, Ma and I having fled there after my village was destroyed in the king’s northern quelling.
Haven was starving, so I left to find work.
With my skills, I was accepted as a page to the Kingsguard. ”
They were knee to knee; Thia contemplated resting a hand there.
“I hated it, learning to defend the man who had destroyed my home. But it kept my family alive.”
At the twinge in her voice, Thia braved it. She reached out and lowered her palm to the girl’s leg. It was firm through the spider silk, but warm.