Heir of Thorns Read online

  Heir of Thorns

  Kingdom of Fairytales Rapunzel book 2

  Emma Savant

  J. A. Armitage

  Contents

  1. 1st April

  2. 2nd April

  3. 3rd April

  4. 4th April

  5. 5th April

  6. 6th April

  7. 7th April

  After the Happily Ever After…

  A NEW FAIRYTALE ANTHOLOGY

  Join us

  A note from the author

  About Emma Savant

  About J.A. Armitage

  The Kingdom of Fairytales Team

  Copyright © 2019 by J A Armitage

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited By Rose Lipscomb

  Cover by Enchanted Quill Press

  Created with Vellum

  Kingdom of Fairytales

  You all know the fairytales, the stories that always have the happy ending. But what happens after all those storybook characters get what they wanted? Is it really a happily ever after?

  Kingdom of Fairytales is a new way of reading with one chapter a day and one book a week throughout the year beginning January 1st

  Lighting-fast reads you won’t be able to put down

  Read in real time as each chapter follows a day in the life of a character throughout the entire year, with each bite-sized episode representing a week in the life of our hero.

  Each character’s story wrapped up at the end of every season with a brand new character and story featured in each season.

  Fantasy has never been so epic!

  1st April

  Ten days.

  I had ten days until the Spring Flower Festival, the biggest event to happen annually in the kingdom of Floris, and the best chance we had to shine on the world stage.

  And I was sitting here, trying to revive a couple of dying tulips with the judicious application of unicorn manure.

  It wouldn’t save these flowers, of course, but I hoped it might slow their progression. I’d already applied dragon manure, pixie dust, and phoenix mites to other plants whose petals were tipped with gray. This blight progressed quickly; if any of these interventions had worked, one of these plants should have at least a trace of color left in the next few hours. If any of these worked, I could fill the gardens with dragon manure or basilisk castings or whatever it was, and then maybe the festival could proceed, and the gardens would be saved.

  I just needed something to work.

  Someone knocked on the greenhouse door. I removed my gloves and covered the diseased plants with their glass covers. The covers were a likely futile attempt to keep the blight from spreading to plants outside this small greenhouse, but I had no evidence they actually helped. Several new patches of blight had appeared in the gardens this morning, all of them further from the palace walls than any we’d seen before.

  Olive entered the greenhouse, her hair pulled back with a floral handkerchief.

  “Sorry to disturb you, but we’ve finished packing up the last of the viridian hydrangea starts,” she said. “The cart isn’t back from the festival, though, and I didn’t know where you wanted us to store them in the meantime?”

  “They’ll have to go inside the palace,” I said. “The ballroom’s been reserved for our use, so go ahead and stack them in there until the carts arrived.”

  She turned to go.

  “Make sure they’re not too close to the orange trees that are already in there,” I added. “Just in case.”

  “I’m not putting anything too close to anything else,” she said grimly.

  I nodded. It was a good rule of thumb now that everything in the gardens seemed to be poisoning everything else.

  The temptation to watch these tulips for signs of spreading gray was strong, but I left the greenhouse and locked the door behind me. This building was small and ordinarily used for propagating houseplants for the palace; now, the place was a hospice for sick plants that had no hope of revival.

  I didn’t need the tulips in there to come back. I just needed one of them to die a bit more slowly than the others.

  Halfway to the palace, where I was supposed to be working on the staffing rosters for the palace’s festival booths and displays, I stopped in my tracks. There, across the lawn, amid a colorful party of courtiers in pastel gowns and gold-edged tunics, stood Princess Lilian. She had a croquet mallet in her hands, and her betrothed, Duke Garritt Remington, was helping her improve her swing. His arms were around her, and his lips brushed her cheek as he spoke, and a dozen warring emotions rose up in my chest.

  I had kissed Lilian just last night when she’d come to my garden and confessed her enduring love to me. We both knew being together was impossible, and we both found it equally impossible to let go.

  One of Lilian’s ladies-in-waiting glanced up and caught me staring. I looked away and kept walking briskly toward the palace, but it was too late: she was already on her feet and trotting after me.

  “Mr. Gilding!” she called as she approached, and I had no choice but to stop and greet her with a bow.

  “Lady Camellia.” My smile felt so forced I was worried my face might freeze that way. “What can I do for you?”

  She checked behind her shoulder. Lilian was still focused on her croquet game, and no one paid attention to us. Lady Camellia pressed her hands together.

  “I was wondering,” she started hesitantly. She leaned in and lowered her voice. “I’m sorry; I have to ask. Are the rumors true?”

  “Rumors, my lady?”

  Playing dumb didn’t come naturally to me, and I was almost relieved when she didn’t dance around the subject.

  “The news in the papers about there being a blight on the palace grounds that’s spreading to nearby farms,” she said. “I normally wouldn’t pay that kind of gossip any mind, but, well…” She glanced pointedly at the grounds around us. Bare patches of soil were visible in almost every bed, evidence of diseased plants that apprentices had pulled up and burned. The garden normally looked a bit disheveled around the Flower Festival, but this was above and beyond anything from years past.

  “We are facing a disease that’s been affecting some of our flowers,” I said, which was the biggest understatement I’d personally ever heard. “There’s no reason to think that has anything to do with the issues the farmers are experiencing, though. It’s likely that all of our gardens are reacting to quirks of the weather.”

  The corner of her lip drew down. She was clearly trying to figure out what weather I was talking about, as Floris’s spring had been every bit as mild and predictable as usual this year.

  “We’re doing our best to make sure the festival proceeds uninterrupted,” I said. At least, that much was the truth.

  Lady Camellia considered this. She seemed to want to say something more but decided against it. “That’s good to know,” she finally said. “Thank you, Mr. Gilding.”

  “Of course.” I offered another slight bow. “I’m always happy to clear up confusion about our gardens.”

  She slipped away, back to the carefree game. None of those courtiers knew the danger our land was in. I silently prayed I’d find a solution in time to keep it that way.

  Lady Camellia hadn’t been the first one to stop me to ask about the flowers this morning. She had come third, after a stablehand and one of Lady Primrose’s maids. It felt like the only people who hadn’t come to talk to me about the spreading blight were the king and queen, the two people I needed to see most.
/>   Assuming I could look them in the eye after the way I’d kissed their daughter yesterday, anyway.

  There were a million corners in this garden where a person could hide from their thoughts. I went to the most foolproof of them all: My private garden, with its thick stone walls and the lock on the door.

  The contagion, whatever it was, hadn’t spread to my garden. Not yet. It was still perfect. The vines that swung overhead exploded with profusions of leaves, each one greener than the last, and everything seemed to be in bloom, from the magenta agrostemma to the yellow-striped sun tulips.

  The sight of my thriving tulips hit me with a pang. The vast tulip fields surrounding the palace and the Flower Festival grounds were suffering from blight, too, with gray patches creating pockmarks in otherwise colorful fields. The Festival’s hot air balloon tours of the region would be marred this year, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  At least, I could ensure my entry to the flower breeding competition would be ready. I’d spent years cross-breeding and refining this variety. When it debuted, it would be beautiful and unique enough to hold its own against all the other entries. People came from around the world to enter their plants in the Festival, but someone from Floris usually won. If I could get this bloom to the competition before blight got it, we’d win again.

  I hoped so, anyway.

  I heaped fresh mulch around the base of the competition flowers in their raised bed, then applied my homemade seaweed-and-banana-peel compost. I’d refined this routine over the years, first with Hedley’s help and then on my own.

  Hedley hadn’t seen my blooms since he’d left the palace. This year’s flowers had improved drastically over last year’s. I couldn’t wait to see his face when he showed up for the flower competition.

  Assuming the Flower Festival even happened this year.

  Whatever pride I felt over my flowers faded as I considered the upcoming event. It was ten days away. At the rate the blight was progressing, there might not be any point in holding the festival at all. Two weeks ago, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me to imagine this kind of devastation. Now, it seemed as if all the plants in the kingdom were dying.

  I could forget about the festival. At this rate, we’d be lucky to have food by harvest time.

  Frustration made me clumsy. I jerked my elbow toward the compost bucket perched on the edge of the raised bed, and it crashed to the paving stones, sending compost fragments everywhere. I swore and kicked the empty bucket. It rolled across the walkway, rattling loudly.

  From the other end of the garden, a cautious voice called out, “Deon?”

  Lilian.

  My heart leapt, and my stomach dropped, which was beginning to be a frequent reaction to the sound of her voice. I turned the bucket upright and hurried toward her before she could come find me. My flowers for the competition weren’t ready for their debut, especially when they were surrounded by a veritable lake of rotten banana peels.

  I hadn’t needed to hurry. Lilian was sitting on the rock wall that formed a curving flowerbed along the garden wall, as elegant as ever in her trim, emerald, riding gown. She crossed her ankles and swung her legs, her riding boots gleaming in the sunlight filtering through the web of vines overhead.

  “I let myself in,” she said. She held out a key. “I stole this from Culpepper’s office.”

  The palace’s Head of Security, Clay Culpepper, had skeleton keys for every door on the palace grounds, including my garden’s.

  “Sorry,” Lilian added, while I pretended to scowl at her. She pretended to look ashamed of herself.

  “What am I going to do with you, Lils?” I said.

  Her face grew serious. “I have an idea about that.”

  My shoulders tensed. Whatever she was about to say, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. As it stood, the choices were to give her up, which was impossible, or to fall more deeply in love with her, which was impossible to avoid.

  I sat on the stone wall, too, far enough from Lilian that there was no chance of our legs accidentally brushing against each other.

  “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about yesterday,” she said.

  I clenched my jaw and let out a long breath. “I know the feeling.”

  “You’re stuck in a dying garden. I’m stuck in an engagement to a perfectly nice man I don’t want to marry.” She swung her legs, her ankles still crossed. “So let’s say no. To all of it. Let’s run away.”

  I snorted. She bumped my shoulder with hers. Even that touch, unromantic as it was, made my heart pound.

  Stars, how was I supposed to stay away from her?

  “Where would we go?” I said.

  “Badalah. I’ve always wanted to see their bazaars. Or maybe we could go all the way to Skyla and learn to fly.”

  “Do they really fly there?”

  She shrugged. “That’s what people say.”

  “Well, if people say it, it must be true.”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Rude.”

  “Very.”

  “I’m serious, Deon.” She turned to me, her blue eyes twinkling. “Why not? Let’s just run away and get married. My parents will forgive us eventually.”

  “Your parents will forgive you,” I said. “They have no reason to forgive their gardener.”

  “Papa’s never been able to hold a grudge in his life,” she said. “And Mother… Well, she’d come around.”

  The idea shimmered in front of me like a mirage, tempting me like nothing ever had before. We could do it: escape in the middle of the night, find someone across the border to marry us, find work in a foreign garden somewhere, and settle down in a little cottage in a town where no one knew our names. I was a hard worker, and Lilian had a thousand talents. We could make it.

  And then Floris would be without its crown princess, and King Alder and Queen Rapunzel would be heartbroken, and the kingdom would lose its chance to ally its princess with the duke of its most powerful province.

  Lilian was offering me a one-way ticket to heaven, and I couldn’t accept it. Not without harming the whole kingdom.

  "You're not making my life any easier," I said.

  Lilian gave me a rueful smile. "I'm not trying to make your life easier. I'm trying to make it better. Your life and mine."

  "You know I'd run away with you in a heartbeat."

  "Then do it."

  I glanced over, startled by the intensity of her voice. She stared at me, her eyes large and the same blue as the sky.

  "I mean it," she said. "Let's go. I don't want to marry Garritt. You don't want me to marry Garritt. Why are we still sitting here?"

  "You'll have to bring that up with your parents." I rested a gentle hand on her knee, and she immediately covered my hand with hers and held it tight. "We can't run off, Lils. We know we can't."

  "But what if I want to?"

  The petulance in her voice made me smile. Lilian wasn't normally the spoiled type, but she had a way of making the occasional demand that reminded me that she was, in fact, a princess.

  I leaned over and kissed the top of her head.

  "We don't always get what we want, Your Highness. Welcome to the club."

  "It's a stupid club."

  "The stupidest."

  She sighed and leaned against me, her head on my shoulder, and her fingers twined in mine.

  "We have responsibilities, both of us." I sounded like someone else: Someone older, wiser, more sensible than the man who sat here wishing life were different. "You have a kingdom resting on your shoulders. I'm trying to fix the worst case of blight I've ever seen. What will happen to Floris if we leave?"

  "Floris can handle its own problems," Lilian muttered against my shoulder, but resignation filled her voice. She wasn't going to flee the kingdom. Neither was I.

  No matter how much we wanted to.

  "How's your mother doing?" I said. "I haven't seen her in a few days."

  She hesitate
d, no doubt taken aback by what must have seemed to her like a change of conversation. Hedley had suggested that the queen might know something about the blight, but Lilian didn't know that, any more than she knew her mother was ill.

  "All right, I suppose," she said. "I haven't seen her lately, either."

  I risked a glance at Lilian's face. She didn't seem concerned.

  "Oh?"

  She shrugged. "Papa said she was feeling under the weather and told me not to disturb her. I'm not surprised. Her ladies-in-waiting have been passing the same cold around for a month; Mama was bound to catch it eventually. I suspect they're trying to avoid getting me sick. No doubt, Garritt would be less than enchanted by a sniffly, red-nosed wife."

  Wife. In a matter of months, she would be his wife, the Princess of Floris, and the Duchess of Thornton. My stomach twisted with pain.

  "I hope she gets better soon," I said lightly. "Perhaps, I'll bring some flowers by her chambers."

  "She'd love that," Lilian said. "Although you might have to give them to Papa. He insists she's not to be bothered by anyone, and the guards have been perfectly zealous about making sure he's the only person allowed into their rooms." She rolled her eyes. "Apparently, even the kitchen maids have to leave food with the guards instead of bringing it in. Papa makes such a fuss whenever she so much as sneezes."

  I smiled. "I like that about him. He loves your mother."

  "Yes, enough to drive her up the wall." Lilian laughed. "Unfortunately, her being indisposed means I've had to entertain Garritt's parents more than I planned. They're nice enough people, but there's only so much conversation a person can make about the weather."

  "You have a thousand interests," I said. "Surely, they share a few of them."