Heir of Thorns Read online

  Just as long as she listened to me first.

  The rose carving was smooth under my fingers and full of convenient hand- and footholds. It gleamed dull silver under the moon, its head fat with petals and the shadows between them. I reached the top, my stomach still churning with the height and my nerves, then hoisted myself up onto the queen’s windowsill.

  Light shone from within her chambers, filtered through a gauzy curtain that faded in color from apricot to deep plum. I had only been inside the monarchs’ apartments a few times when I was still quite young, but my memory had served me well. Through the curtains, I made out a bed.

  A bed, and a queen, sitting amid its blankets, her hair bound for the night by a purple silk handkerchief and a book propped up against her knees. The king was nowhere to be seen.

  I hesitated and watched her for a long moment through a gap in the gauzy curtains. The lamp next to the queen’s bed burned brightly enough to illuminate the whole room, and it was easy enough to make out everything from the framed embroideries on the walls to the stack of novels sitting on the queen’s bedside table.

  She smiled a little and turned the page of her book. She was as beautiful as ever, her skin touched with roses and her eyes bright with interest in whatever she was reading. She seemed normal. Happy.

  Healthy.

  I crouched on the windowsill and leaned in against the glass as if a closer look would reveal the truth behind her perfectly ordinary appearance. But that only confirmed one thing: If my eyes were any kind of reliable judge, the queen was fine. Better than fine. She looked in the peak of health.

  It didn’t make sense. Queen Rapunzel liked to be out and about, and she would never step away from her hostessing duties, especially not when her guests were also her future in-laws. Not unless something was horrifically wrong.

  Perhaps the threat wasn’t to the queen’s health. Maybe there was something else afoot--a threat on her life, perhaps, from another kingdom that had tired of the peace between the nations. Or perhaps the illness was a strange one that didn’t follow the course of normal illnesses. Perhaps this one attacked from the inside, and didn’t affect the appearance of health until the very end. Or maybe she had already recovered, and King Alder had simply asked her to stay in bed for a few extra days to be sure she was well before she resumed her duties.

  That had to be it. Anything else was too ludicrous.

  And if she was almost well, that meant Lilian would be able to see her soon, and I would be able to ask her about the blight. All would be well if I could only wait a couple of days.

  And yet…

  I sat, watching the queen through the window, my mind churning. If she would be well in a few days, I could leave without knocking on the window and having what was certain to be an awkward and difficult conversation. But if I was wrong and the queen didn’t emerge from her chambers soon, the gardens might pay the price.

  And I couldn’t allow the gardens to get worse, not if anything else was in my power. I glanced down from the window ledge. The devastation was enough to take my breath away. Off in the distance, the burn barrels carried by roving apprentices glowed orange as they eradicated what had already been destroyed. Closer, it was easy in the moonlight to make out the patches of bare earth.

  The gardens had never looked like this, not ever. They were dying. Under Hedley’s watch, they had thrived. Under mine…

  I took a deep breath. I had to have the awkward conversation.

  I turned back to the window. Inside, the queen turned another page of her book. She seemed tranquil, content--entirely unlike someone who would be glad to be interrupted by a young man perched on her windowsill.

  I raised my hand to knock anyway.

  And then she shifted. She sat up and turned to adjust the pillow behind her back. Her loose purple scarf slipped at the movement and tumbled to the floor, revealing her gleaming golden hair. She twisted to bend over and pick it up from the floor.

  My breath caught in my throat, and I jerked back. My left foot slipped off the ledge. My stomach dropped in sudden terror, and I reached out to grab hold of anything that could break my fall--but there was only the smooth glass of the queen’s window, and it wasn’t enough.

  The weight of my body forced me from the ledge. I reached out with desperate fingers to grab onto the carved rose that twined up the palace wall. My fingers met stone, but it was smooth, too smooth to grip. I clung to it, searching for a crag, but each one my fingertips landed in shallow enough to only slow my fall, not break it.

  I reached out for the narrow ledge that marked the first floor. It was too thin, too delicate, and then I grabbed it, my body dangling as precariously as a broken branch hanging from a tree.

  My breath caught in my throat, and my blood roared in my ears. I forced myself to breathe slowly until my vision cleared and the rapid-fire pounding of my heart slowed to hard, steady beats.

  Carefully, slowly, I inched down the ledge toward the ladder. My foot landed solidly on the top rung. And then, too quickly, fueled by the relief that rushed through me in an instant, I dropped my whole weight on the ladder.

  The ladder jolted. My foot slipped. The ladder wobbled and fell, taking me with it as it crashed sideways onto the lilac bush. A blinding pain tore through my ankle.

  I held absolutely still, waiting for my body to tell me whether I’d died or not. After a few moments of hot agony radiating up my leg, it was clear that I had made it back to the ground with life still coursing painfully through my veins.

  It took some time to disengage from the lilac bush, and all the time, my ears stayed perked for the sound of a window opening overhead or guards rushing toward me. But it seemed that Queen Rapunzel either hadn’t heard the cacophony of my descent, or she’d decided her window had just been hit by a very stupid bird, and the world around me stayed quiet except for the sound of lilac leaves rubbing against one another as I tried to free myself and the ladder from the prickly branches.

  On the bright side, I was going to smell marvelous when I got out of here. I swatted a blossom away from my face and managed to wriggle down the side of the bush. I landed on my feet, and another round of pain shot up my leg.

  I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I tucked the ladder on my shoulder and hobbled back toward the greenhouse.

  Hedley was where I had left him, carefully watering seedlings with a clever misting fan from The Forge. Artificial lights and oil lamps filled the greenhouse with pleasant yellow light, and the scent of orchids from the back wall drifted through the room and met me when I pushed open the house’s glass door.

  The blight hadn’t been as bad in here as it was elsewhere. The disease seemed to prefer flowers that were already in bloom, and these seedlings meant for sale at the Festival were still young and weeks away from putting out their first buds.

  I hopped down a row of curling sweet pea seedlings toward Hedley, who observed me with one of his thick silver eyebrows crooked.

  “How did it go?” he said.

  I resisted the urge to make a smart remark and hoisted myself up onto a wooden worktable instead.

  “I think I sprained my ankle.”

  Hedley’s other eyebrow went up.

  “What did you do?”

  “I thought it was a good idea to climb three stories up a palace wall, is what I did,” I said. “I violated the queen’s privacy, broke a ladder, and just about murdered a lilac bush while I was at it.”

  “Sounds like a productive evening.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, and the corner of his mouth tightened as if he were suppressing a smile.

  “Did you speak to her?”

  I shook my head. “Didn’t have the chance, not before I fell off the window sill. But I’m not sure I needed to. Something is wrong with her. Horribly wrong.”

  The hidden smile faded, and Hedley’s face settled into an expression of worry.

  I’d never really seen Hedley worried before. He was too calm and competent for fussi
ng of any kind, but the concern on his face was impossible to misinterpret.

  I took a deep breath, trying to picture exactly what I’d seen. There had been no mistaking it.

  “Her hair,” I said. “It’s gray.”

  The words did nothing to explain the horror of the sight. My ankle throbbed, and frustration tightened the dread building in my chest.

  “That’s not what I mean. It’s not gray like hair is ordinarily gray.” I shook my head, annoyed at my inability to tell him what I meant. “Everyone loses color in their hair eventually. Some people started finding silver hairs years before anyone would have expected it. The queen’s hair isn’t like that.”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek while Hedley watched me, waiting with infinite patience for me to find the words.

  “It’s like the flowers,” I finally blurted.

  That was the truth. That was the reality that sickened me to admit.

  The queen’s hair wasn’t turning from gold to the equally dazzling silver of age. I hadn’t discovered a few white hairs threaded through her sparkling tresses. Queen Rapunzel’s hair was decaying, the dull colorlessness of blight creeping up her hair from the tips inexorably toward her scalp.

  I couldn’t bear to imagine what would happen when the gray met her skin.

  Hedley took a deep breath. His gaze didn’t flinch. He didn’t swear or exclaim or smash things around. He just stood there, letting the horror of it sink in, and his stillness made goosebumps rise on my skin.

  “I think it’s going to kill her.” My voice was dead, colorless, just like the rot covering my grounds and creeping towards my queen. “This disease… It’s not a blight. It’s a plague.”

  Hedley nodded, and the single tiny gesture hit me like a thorny branch to the face.

  Queen Rapunzel was dying.

  Lilian’s mother was dying.

  The land, this beautiful country of flowers and fruit and sweet-smelling air, was dying.

  My throat closed up.

  “It’s as I feared.” Hedley’s voice was low and steady. “This is no ordinary pestilence, and magic is to blame. Magic, or the lack of it. I told you that all the world seemed to get brighter after the king and queen were married. Now it seems that the queen is linked to the life of the flowers, and the flowers are linked to the happiness of the kingdom.”

  “And what’s happening in our kingdom will eventually happen throughout the world.”

  Hedley nodded wordlessly.

  I dropped my head into my hands, and we stayed, suspended in horror and silence, for a long, long time.

  I couldn’t sleep. The throbbing of my ankle was partly to blame, and some of my restlessness had to do with the fact that my new bed was a pile of unicorn manure bags covered with blankets I’d gotten one of the maids to sneak out of the palace for me. I’d lied about why I was sleeping and eating outside now, and had a feeling the palace was full of gossip about how the Head Gardener felt so badly about the blight that he’d decided to penance himself by sleeping on what was essentially a pile of droppings.

  That was still better than anyone knowing the truth. It seemed that Duke Remington and Lilian’s guards had all kept their mouths shut about why I’d been thrown from the palace, most likely because the duke’s fragile ego couldn’t stand the thought of anyone knowing that Lilian hadn’t turned to him for comfort.

  Even if I’d had my bed, though, I suspected I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw blight--on my flowers, in Lilian’s strawberry patch, creeping up the queen’s hair. I tossed and turned, and finally, when it was close to midnight, I got back up and pulled on my clothes.

  Sharp pain danced around my ankle, and I welcomed the pain. It stole attention away from the aching in my heart, and its pain was something I knew would pass with time. I bound the swollen joint with a few scraps of landscaping cloth to keep it from twisting, then headed out into the cool spring night.

  The apprentices were easy enough to find, but I walked past a few of them in the darkness until I spotted someone who looked like he could use a break. Purslane was one of the youngest of the apprentices, barely thirteen years old, and he walked around the gardens with his glowing burn barrel like someone in a trance. His eyes were glazed, and his eyelids kept drooping, but still, he kept moving and pulling up blighted plants.

  I tapped him on the shoulder, and it took him a second to react. When he realized who I was, he straightened and blinked a few times as if trying to force himself into alertness.

  “Mr. Gilding, sir,” he said.

  “Purslane,” I said. “You’re doing good work out here. I want to help, but all the burn barrels are being used. Would you be willing to let me take yours for the rest of the night? And then you can go to bed?”

  He couldn’t hand the barrel over to me fast enough. He waited long enough to help me secure the straps over my shoulders with the glowing barrel down near my stomach, then shifted from foot to foot.

  “Are you sure, sir?” he said, words slurring a little. “I can keep working.”

  I bit back a smile. His earnestness was at odds with his body, and the boy looked like he was about to topple where he stood.

  “I’m sure,” I said. “Thanks for letting me borrow your equipment. I appreciate it.”

  He offered an awkward and unnecessary little bow before nearly sprinting away toward the palace.

  He was a good kid. He didn’t deserve the devastation that was coming.

  The weight of the small barrel was enough to make my whole leg throb with every step. I moved slowly but steadily through the garden, bending every so often to pull up a blighted flower by its roots and toss it in the glowing coals. Each time, enchanted flames rose to lick the plant into bright, pulsing ashes, and the magically cool metal of the barrel against my stomach flared for a moment into heat.

  I passed apprentices now and again, and each time, we exchanged glances and nods. Everyone was tired, and everyone was equally committed to doing their part to keep this disease from spreading. Our efforts seemed futile, but we had to make them anyway. To do otherwise was to admit that we were powerless against the blight.

  I couldn’t admit that. Not yet. Not when it meant giving in to a future in which Lilian had to survive without her mother, and in which we all had to learn to live without the colorful flowers that formed so much of our culture and identities.

  And our happiness, if Hedley was to be believed.

  I’d never faced a gardening problem that Hedley couldn’t solve. But tonight, in the greenhouse, when I’d finally broken our long silence to ask what I could do to help, he had only shrugged.

  I moved slowly through the gardens. Ahead, along a walkway of sparse tulips, a familiar figure crouched, his figure lit by the flame of an oil lamp that sat on the cobblestones next to him. I hesitated and turned to go in the other direction, but Jonquil had already seen me.

  He raised a hand in an unusually civil greeting. There was nothing for it but to keep walking forward and trying not to limp.

  “What are you doing up?” I said.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He gazed across the tulip bed lining the walkway. The blight was visible here, in the empty spaces between tulips and the wilted leaves sitting where the plants’ sharp green blades should have been. A pile of sickly, rotted plants sat on the cobblestones next to him. “You?”

  “Same.” I crouched and tossed the flowers from his pile into my barrel one at a time. They flared and died down, each one a blinding reminder of the devastation we couldn’t stop.

  “I can’t figure it out,” Jonquil said. “I know more about tulips than anyone in the kingdom.”

  It could be argued that a few of the other specialists were a little ahead of him, but I didn’t say anything.

  He sighed. “I’ve tried everything. Nothing even slows the spread of the disease.”

  “I know,” I said, and thought back to the time I’d tried to use magic I didn’t even possess to heal the
spreading sickness. “I’ve attempted dozens of interventions, and each one is as useless as the last.”

  “Does burning the plants seem to be helping?”

  For once, his voice wasn’t edged with aggression. It was a real question, and I hated the answer.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But I’m not willing to stop long enough to find out for sure.”

  “I wouldn’t be either.” He glanced up at me, his expression cautious, but he seemed too tired or discouraged to start one of his usual arguments. “The situation is getting pretty dire.”

  I nodded and threw the last of his plants into my barrel. The flames rose and licked their way up the soggy stem, devouring the damp plant with as much magic as fire.

  Jonquil’s jaw twitched as he stared out at the devastated flower bed. I followed his gaze, scanning the area for any hint of gray he’d missed. He turned and looked up at me, his eyes hard.

  “You’d better find a way to fix this,” he said, his voice equal parts plea and threat. “You’ve got to.”

  5th April

  If I’d thought the brief moment of peace between Jonquil and me was a signal of cooperation to come, I’d been sorely mistaken.

  I looked out across the fire garden. It was a gloomy sight, the usual array of blazing daffodils and yellow freesia and flame-like orange irises now a mass of gray death.

  “It is what it is,” I said, voice loud and blunt with exhaustion.

  My body practically vibrated with the coffee I’d chugged this morning in an effort to stay awake. I’d been up most of the night wandering the palace gardens like a spirit of destruction, tearing up plants and burning them with an intensity I had regretted the moment I’d opened my eyes this morning. My body ached. My swollen ankle throbbed. My eyelids scratched against my eyes with every blink. Two of the general gardeners, Rue and Ash, stood next to me with their arms folded.

  “We have nothing for the Flower Festival,” Rue said, panic edging her voice.