Chapter 1 #4
Thorn crouched on the cellar floor, not wanting to sit in the damp, counting the minutes until she could climb out.
She made a small light to keep her company, mentally practicing the wardbreaking techniques, rewarding herself by revisiting the prince’s memory of a ride through the woods for each repetition.
When an hour plus a little extra—just in case—had elapsed, Thorn climbed up the steps, easing open the door into the kitchen.
The cottage was quiet. Thorn was alone and free to attempt her escape.
Just in case Jada came back for something she’d forgotten, Thorn resolved to wait for dusk.
She completed her chores for the day. She milked Nessie and bedded the goat down in the little shed for the night.
She put the chickens in their coop, too.
Neither Thorn nor the dangers of the world could penetrate the wards, but animals could.
The foxes and forest cats would love a goat or chicken dinner, given the opportunity.
Once they lost a hen, one of Thorn’s favorites, an excellent hen, iridescent black with face tufts that she’d named Esmerelda and who’d wormed her way through the rose hedge and escaped.
Apparently the wards kept only Thorn safe. She missed Esmerelda still.
At last, the light turned from golden to violet, signaling the end of the gloaming and the arrival of twilight.
Thorn strolled slowly, sedately toward the garden gate, as if someone or something might notice if she made any sudden moves.
Although she’d looked out that small portal in the fence many times, she saw it as if anew.
The white picket fence extended in an arc, making a trellis for the roses.
Their black-emerald canes wove a dense barrier in and around the fence, the leaves bristling with tiny blades, the thorns long and curved, the buds and blossoms heavy, glowing with buttery light in the purpling shadows, as if they’d soaked up the sunset colors, radiating back the warm pink-tinged golds, their thick, sweet scent heavy in the still summer twilight.
The gate filled the opening, though not completely, closing off the only briar-free aperture.
The silvery lines of the runes shimmered along the wooden slats of the fence and through the roses themselves, sending out their unfriendly prickles for her to go away.
Resisting the discomfort, Thorn made herself trace their precise, perfect lines with a questioning fingertip, careful of the thorns.
Jada’s magic, as familiar as Thorn’s own, infused the runes, but—as Thorn had wondered about—they’d been drawn and established by someone else.
Her psychometry confirmed it, giving her an image of a tall, brown-skinned, and dark-haired man.
He’d done the work with avid ambition and a fierce desire to protect—and as long ago as Thorn had been alive.
A thousand questions flooded her mind, but she set those aside to focus on this task: to see if she could thin the wards enough to open the gate.
She didn’t need to retrieve the book to do this.
Thorn had developed her memory to perfectly reproduce the instructions from the text.
She did get out the journal she’d put in her pocket.
Precise documentation of all magical experimentation was good practice.
So, Thorn had gotten her pink leather-bound journal off the shelf.
Embossed with gold roses, the plush blank book had been a gift from years ago.
Thorn had found it so pretty, the perfection of its creamy parchment pages too pristine to spoil.
She’d never been able to bring herself to mar them with writing.
Now it would hold notes that would lead her to a new life, one where she could go to the city herself and purchase all the blank journals that caught her eye. She’d found a kind of company in writing down her thoughts and expressing her feelings.
Carefully noting the date and time, Thorn labeled the entry as attempt number one. She also recorded which technique she intended to employ. If the first didn’t work, she’d move to the second, and so on. She refused to allow any potential failures to dissuade her.
She unraveled the ward with meticulous patience, loosening it just enough to ease open the gate a narrow width that allowed her to gaze out into the darkening forest. The woods marched dense with the columns of trees.
Birds sang their evening song in the canopy.
And a path led away from the gate, weaving through the trees to a distant road.
A road that led to the greater world. Waiting for her.
Allowing herself to feel the triumph of the moment, to savor the sweet taste of incipient freedom, she finally relaxed. She had succeeded.
Jada need never know. It would be her little secret. And in the morning, she would—
“Thorn,” Jada said, appearing suddenly on the path before her as if from nowhere, a wealth of rage layered into that single, quiet utterance of her name, invisibly potent wings unfurling in a promise of punishment that set her heart frantically pounding.
Jada’s voice rose to a scream like a fox in the dark night. “What have you done?”