Chapter 24 #2
Suddenly nervous in a way he’d never been about meeting a woman, he dismounted and prepared to lead Kismet through the garden gate.
The gelding, at least, had finally relaxed about Bunny’s presence and no longer asked Sebastien if he was sure the scáthcú wasn’t a tiger.
He’d also, blessedly, stopped asking about Nina as often, as had Nonna, so Sebastien was grateful for the distraction of Bunny’s strange arrival.
Sebastien reached for the latch on the gate and found himself pulling his hand away. Also, very oddly, he’d also started to lead Kismet away. What was going on?
Wards, Bunny informed him. Several kinds.
Woven all through this rose stuff. He sniffed the rose canes, snaking emerald black in a dense weave over the wooden fence.
Following Bunny’s lead, Nonna sniffed, too, her thoughts a confused grumble.
Makes you want to leave and won’t let you through if you decide to try, Bunny explained.
No wonder Thorn had been so insistent that first day that they not go inside.
Sebastien had learned a little bit about wards and wardbreaking, though all theoretical so far, and only at the remedial level.
That particular class he took with mostly ten- to twelve-year-olds, all of whom already knew more than he did.
But he did know some of the fundamentals.
“Well, I’m going to try,” he declared, drawing his sword.
“Sometimes might is the solution to a magical problem,” he told Bunny, who watched him with a quizzically tilted head, one ear cocked.
“I’ve learned that wards need a structure, so if I destroy the fence, the wards will fall apart. Watch this.”
His swordmaster would cringe at him using his sword like an axe, but Sebastien didn’t care.
He could always get another sword. He began hacking away at the rose canes that braided around the borders of the gate, thinking to free the wood of their binding embrace first. Somehow, though, as soon as he sliced some away, others seemed to slither in to replace them.
He didn’t actually see them moving, but from one thought to the next, what had been open space would be again filled, and more densely.
Worse, though he used a long sword and quite deftly—he might be an amateur sorcerer, but he was an expert swordsman—the thorns on the rose canes kept finding him, snagging the skin of his hands, arms, and face.
Soon out of breath, he staggered back from the gate, feeling hundreds of pricks from the thorns, his wounded thigh aching.
Sweat and blood ran hot on his face and crimson streaked his hands, soaking the fabric of his shirt.
If only Rotten Rupert could see him now, he wouldn’t call Sebastien too pretty. Though he’d have plenty to mock.
Was that the part you wanted me to watch? Bunny asked.
Kismet, who’d settled in to graze on shoots of new grass nearby, snorted in laughter. I knew a horse once who tried to bite through his stall door. He looked a lot like you after.
“Some support you two are,” Sebastien commented sourly.
I love you, Nonna said with staunch loyalty.
“Sebastien?” Thorn, as if conjured from a dream, gazed at him through the open arch of the gate.
She glowed with sensual beauty, hair gleaming like black glass as it spilled long and loose around her.
She wore a simple, faded pink gown that emphasized the richness of her skin and the dark blush of her cheeks.
Her dark eyes sparkled with artless happiness to see him, her rosy lips parted and curved in a smile of pure delight.
Sebastien’s heart swelled with such immense emotion that he felt as if it might burst. “Thorn,” he breathed, feeling as if he could sing her name to the skies.
“Are you really here?” she asked, lifting a hand and then dropping it again. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m really here.” He grinned, giddy with the knowledge of that. “I wanted to…” What should he say? His usually glib charm escaped him. He probably looked terrible, sweating and, yes, bloody. He’d torn his clothes, too, he realized. “I wanted to be sure you’re all right.”
She smiled, breathing a laugh. “I’d venture to say that I’m in better shape than you are.”
He gestured to himself ruefully. “I’ve had a bit of an argument with your rose briar.”
“Ah, that.” Her smile clouded over. “It’s warded. I told you. No one can come in and I can’t leave.”
“Unless you walk the Dream.”
“Yes.” She wove her fingers together, slender as the rose canes. “But I promised I wouldn’t do that again. I don’t have enough control.” Her expression saddened. “As you know. I’m so very sorry, for everything.”
“You don’t have to keep saying so, Thorn,” he told her in all sincerity. “It’s not your fault you haven’t been taught. I’m an amateur at magic, too,” he thought to add, rewarded when her smile bloomed.
“Thank you. I haven’t forgiven myself, but I—” She broke off, shaking her head. “How are you?”
“Me? I’m fine, why—Oh, my leg. It’s stiff and sore, but healing.”
By the look on her face, so transparent with her passing emotions, that wasn’t what she meant at all, but before he could ask, she said, “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“I had to see you,” he replied baldly, no courtly charm in him. Instead, the raw need vibrated through the words, and he wished he could pull them back and make them less … aching.
“I needed to see you, too,” she answered, the sincerity in her voice and face telling him everything. They gazed at each other, separated by the brambles, connected by mutual longing.
Bunny woofed, breaking the fraught tension, and her face lit up. “Who is this brave and beautiful wolf with you?” She squinted a little. “Oh, you’re not a wolf at all, are you? You’re made of magic. How wonderful.”
I like her. She’s clever. Excellent taste. Powerfully magical, too, Bunny said, preening under Thorn’s admiring gaze.
“This is Bunny. He says he likes you.”
“How sweet. I like you, too, Bunny. Oh, and you must meet my friends. Nessie, darling! Come here, sweetie, and meet Sebastien.” The black-and-brown-patterned goat with nubby horns and a white beard trotted up, baaing in greeting, then tilted her head to eye him through the rose-entwined slats of the gate.
“Sebastien is a real prince,” she told the little goat, giving Sebastien a sideways smile.
Thorrrrn is the best person in aaaaall the worrrrld, Nessie informed him. Jada is cruel to her and maaakes her cry. You must rescue herrr.
“I plan to,” he replied to Nessie, the resolve crystallizing right then. Of course he must rescue Thorn. At her quizzical look, he said, “Nessie says that this Jada is mean to you and makes you cry—and that I should rescue you.”
“Oh.” Thorn’s face crumpled, tears welling. She sank to her knees and put her arms around the goat’s neck. “Oh, Nessie. I never realized you knew.”
The chickens came swarming over, clucking with concern and adding their agreement to the tale of Thorn’s plight.
“This is Rooney, Mimi, Daphne, Myrna, Reba, and Gina,” Thorn told him, pointing to each hen in turn.
“I used to have one more, a lovely hen named Esmerelda, but she found a hole under the fence and got out. I’m afraid a fox may have killed her.
” She whispered that last, so the other chickens wouldn’t overhear.
“Esmerelda?” Sebastien repeated, quite astonished. “Black with puffy feathers around her face?”
Thorn’s pretty lips parted in an O of astonishment. “How did you know? Oh, one of the others told you about her.”
“No.” He felt a wide grin spreading on his face, a welcome sense of joy at last alleviating the sorrow and strife of the last few days.
“I found her in the woods one day and took her home. She told me her name and about this cottage—and about you, I realize now—but I didn’t know how to look for you. ”
Rapt, Thorn gazed at him, her eyes dark with emotion. “I was always trying to think how to tell you I was here. And Esmerelda … maybe she tried, for me.”
“Well, she’s safe at Castle Vega. I even gave her a fancy hutch so the other chickens wouldn’t bother her.”
A laugh of delight burst out of Thorn. “How wonderful for her. Just like a princess, whisked off by the handsome and charming prince to live in his castle.”
Sebastien loved her laugh and loved that she called him handsome and charming. “I’m so happy I could give you good news about Esmerelda, but what an odd coincidence. Like you getting my belt buckle,” he added.
Thorn averted her gaze, touching a graceful finger to the point of one of the thorns. “A coincidence, yes.”
He drew nearer, fighting the compulsion of the wards to come close, to see her more clearly through the lace of thorns. “Or maybe something more.”
“Maybe so,” she agreed gravely, dark eyes wide.
He hesitated, on the precipice of saying more, of perhaps flinging his heart at her feet. He didn’t know what it meant, this sense of a circle clicking into place, of a key fitting into a lock, but more and more it seemed certain that Thorn was his destiny and he was hers. But Rose …
He needed to talk to Rose. “Let’s get you freed of this prison,” he said instead. Thorn smiled with tremulous joy, as if she’d heard and understood the declaration beneath his words.
Nessie gently butted Thorn’s hip, peering imperiously at Sebastien. Finalllly! Don’t just staaaannnd there sworrrrdboy. Get to worrrrk. Rescue ouurrr Thooorrn.
“Sebastien,” Thorn said, sobering and setting light fingertips on Nessie’s little head. “That might not be a good idea. I’m a danger to the world. You know that, better than anyone.” Her sorrowful gaze strayed to Nonna, napping with her belly up and paws curled.
“That was an accident,” he reassured her. “I understand that now.”
“An accident that could happen again,” she said solemnly. “I can’t risk it.”
“I can’t just leave you here,” he protested.
“You can.” She gazed at him with sober intensity. “I can endure a little while longer, because I know that someone in the world knows that I exist and cares.”