A Wicked Thing (15 page)

“IT IS ONLY A SHALLOW CUT,” THE HEALING WOMAN
said as she pressed a cloth to Aurora's side. The wound stung under the pressure, but Aurora refused to wince. “It looks a lot worse than it is.”

“Good,” the queen said. She stood behind Aurora, her face pale. “What needs to be done?”

“Very little,” the woman said, and she peered at the cut again. “I will clean it and bandage it, and as long as she doesn't do anything strenuous over the next few days, it should heal fine.”

Aurora nodded. What strenuous things could she possibly do? Move the furniture around her locked room? The light
poured in through the queen's high windows, making the room look unnaturally cheerful. Aurora felt cold and faraway. She had to wait up here until the healer gave her permission to move, until the square had been emptied and the guards had searched the castle, hunting for any lingering threats. Rodric had been swept away as soon as they reentered the castle, leaving Aurora with her fretting future mother-in-law. The queen's lips were thinner than Aurora had ever seen before, and she seemed to be having trouble standing still. She paced the room frequently, and even when she stood in one place, she twitched her skirts every few seconds.

“Will it leave a scar?” the queen asked.

“I do not think so, Your Majesty. But perhaps.”

They talked back and forth, the queen sounding increasingly peevish, but Aurora stopped listening. She glanced toward the sunny windows. Had the guards caught Tristan, or was she the only person who had seen him, watching the scene from the rooftop?

She had been such a fool to trust him. Even after he had told her his intentions, she had done nothing to stop him. She had not thought he would hurt innocent people. She had not thought he would hurt
her
.

The healer dabbed a wet cloth against Aurora's side, cleaning the blood away.

The queen continued to pace the room. Her knuckles were white where she gripped her skirts.

The healer tied the bandages in place. They covered Aurora's whole stomach, crisp and white against her pale skin.

“Thank you,” Iris said as soon as she was done. “You may leave us. Please attend the princess again this evening.” The healer curtsied and shuffled away.

“Do you believe me now?” Iris said as soon as the door closed again. “I knew something like this would happen.”

“Yes,” Aurora said. “I believe you.”

“There will have to be some new rules,” she said, sweeping across the room to look out of the window. “This cannot be allowed to happen again.” Now that the only other witness was gone, she did not even pretend to be calm.

“What's going to happen?” Aurora asked. “Is there still to be a wedding?”

“Of course there is still to be a wedding,” the queen snapped. “We are not going to let a few noxious weeds destroy the most important day this kingdom has seen in a hundred years. But we are going to need to take extra precautions to ensure your safety.” She spoke quickly and precisely. “Once the castle has been properly searched, you are to remain in your room until further notice. No walks in the garden. No afternoons with the court. No brunches outside. If you must leave, you will be provided with a guard to accompany you at all times.”

“But—”

“Do not interrupt me, Aurora.” Iris's face turned red. “You must listen and be silent, for once. Do you understand me?”

Aurora nodded.

“Good,” the queen said. “I am glad you will cooperate.” She stepped away from the window. “I wish they had given us more guards here,” she said. “We really do not have enough. We must search every inch of this castle, and interrogate all the people they caught in the square—”

“Is that necessary?” Aurora asked. She did not want more innocent people arrested or punished because of her.

“Do you think we would be making such a fuss if it were not?”

“It's just—” She looked down at the ground, remembering the people huddled by the city wall on that dark night, their faces blank with hunger. “They must think what they're doing is right.”

Aurora half expected Iris to snap at her, call her a naïve idiot of a girl, but instead, she sighed. “I was once like you,” she said. “Trusting. It didn't work out well.”

“What do you—”

“Four years ago was our last big rebellion,” she said. “The biggest one since my husband became king. Drunken crowds stampeded the castle. They killed our guards. Our servants. Innocent people outside were crushed in the rush. My own personal maid was murdered in the street, just because I sent her out on an errand. They are animals, Aurora. They don't have morals. They want to ruin us, and they don't care who else they destroy in the process.”

Aurora swallowed. She could not stomach the thought of Tristan's involvement in something like that. In murders and mobs screaming for blood.

Someone rapped on the door.

“Come in,” Iris said. A messenger stepped into the room.

“The guard who attacked the princess is in the dungeons,” he said. “We have arranged a public execution for tomorrow morning.”

“No!” Aurora said. She stepped forward with a jerk, and her side throbbed in protest. “It was an accident.” She did not want him to die for her.

“He was reckless,” Iris said. “We cannot have people hurting you without consequence.”

“Then choose a smaller consequence.”

“Do not talk about things you do not understand,” the queen said. “A smaller consequence is no consequence at all. If we show leniency, this will happen again.”

This is my fault,
Aurora thought. If she had not run into the crowd, the guard would be safe.

But then the girl he attacked might well be dead, and no one would have punished him for that.

“It is wrong,” Aurora said. “You cannot kill him.”

“I can,” the queen said, “and I will. Thank you, Stefan. That will be all.”

The messenger bowed.

“Did you catch who was responsible?” Aurora said quickly. “For the disturbance?”

The messenger glanced at the queen. “We will, Princess,” he said. “Do not worry.”

So they had not yet. Aurora felt a spike of relief. Tristan was not the person she had thought he was. But she could not wish him dead.

If she told anyone what she knew, she would be slipping the noose around his neck.

The sun had set before Aurora was allowed back to her room. She walked with two guards on either side, their footsteps echoing along the empty corridors. One floor above Aurora's own, one of the guards paused.

“Why are you stopping?” a second guard said. “This isn't her room.”

“No, I know.” The guard frowned, as though he wasn't sure why he had stopped either. “I—I heard something.” He glanced behind him.

“I didn't hear anything.” The other guards looked back too. At first, Aurora could hear nothing but the dim sounds of the castle, the whistle of wind through the stone and the sound of faraway footsteps. Then she heard a whisper mingling with the wind, half singing, half laughter. The song crept along the inside of her skin, a memory of a memory.

When the guards glanced back, their faces were blank, like
they were focused on something much farther away than the end of the hall.

“What's wrong?” Aurora asked. They did not respond. She grabbed the arm of the nearest one and tugged, shaking it. The guard was still breathing, but he did not react. His mind seemed to have been sucked away.

Aurora stumbled backward. She turned, preparing to shout.

A light glowed at the end of the corridor. Green, indistinct, shifting like water.

The song, the light . . . she knew them.

Celestine.

The memory tugged at Aurora, light bobbing out of reach, the urge, deep in her stomach, to see where it led. Her finger slipping against something sharp.

It was impossible. The witch could not be here, not after a hundred years had passed. But the light slid closer, so familiar, so certain. If Celestine could make Aurora sleep a century away without aging a day, her own survival could not be beyond her power.

Aurora followed the light. Torches on either side of the passageway dimmed as she passed. With every step, the green orb floated another step away, guiding her down the corridor, around the corner, farther from the guards.

She knew she should stop. She knew she should turn back. But what could Celestine do to her? There was nothing left for the witch to take away. And if she was here, Aurora needed to know what she had to say. She needed to see her.

The light paused in front of a blank expanse of wall. Aurora walked closer, her arm outstretched, until her fingers were inches away. Then the light melted into the wall itself, making the stone glow for a heartbeat before fading back into darkness.

Still Aurora followed. Her fingers met a hint of resistance as they brushed the stone, more a memory of a barrier than a barrier itself, and then she was stepping through the wall, the corridor slipping away.

The room beyond was round and bare, without windows, without doors, without anything but dust and stone. The green light hovered in the center, just above Aurora's head, casting shadows across the walls.

A woman stood beside it, her fingertips dancing across the light as though caressing the feathers of a bird. Her blonde hair curled around her elbows, and the light emphasized the cheekbones in her heart-shaped face. Everything about her was either sharp or soft, from her tiny, pointed nose to the long nails at the end of her delicate fingers. All so familiar, but it took Aurora a moment to place her. She was the woman from the square, the one who had watched her with hunger in her eyes.

“Aurora,” she said, stretching her red lips into a smile. “How good of you to join me.”

“Celestine,” Aurora said. The witch nodded. “You're alive.”

“Of course,” she said. “You didn't think something as fleeting as time would stop me, did you? I have been watching you since you awoke.”

Aurora screwed her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into the soft skin of her palms. The pain helped to keep her focused. She could not be afraid. “Watching, but not speaking to me?” she said. “You should have introduced yourself.”

“I did not think you would welcome my presence,” Celestine said. “And I admit, I wanted to see what you would do alone. It was rather unimpressive, I must say.”

“And yet you're talking to me now.”

Celestine tilted her head. Her blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, seeming to flow in the green light. “Well, you finally showed some potential. I wanted to congratulate you. You put on quite a show today. It made my skin buzz to see it.” Her smile felt like it was nestled under Aurora's skin. “It was good to feel that way again, after so many years.”

Aurora's fists tightened. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“That little explosion,” she said. “Attacking your true love . . . not the sweetest of things to do on your engagement day. It is lucky you are not more powerful, or you might have set the boy on fire.”

“Those explosions weren't me.”

“Not at first,” she said. “But the last one. Oh, your anger was something to behold. I knew you had the strength of it in you. You hated him in that moment, didn't you, Aurora?” She spoke lightly, as though it were all theoretical, a mild curiosity she had observed. “Hated him and his family and all this ridiculous
show? And you could not stop it. You did not mean to, but it burst out of you.”

“I do not hate him,” Aurora said. And it was true. But, she realized, only partly true. She could not hate Rodric, the sweet, awkward prince, but she could hate Rodric, the prince who awoke her, who spoke of true love and happily ever after and forced her into this fate. She could hate everything he represented, and in that moment, with the chaos of the crowd, her panic and anger at the guard, her fear for the girl, it had come out. She had, for the briefest of moments, hated him.

And the ground exploded around him.

But that was a coincidence.

“I did not want to come to you before you had proved yourself,” Celestine said. “I cannot abide useless people, Aurora, and I did not want to do everything for you myself. But now you have done this, now you've shown the fire in you . . . I think it is time we came to an arrangement.”

Aurora stepped back, moving slowly, keeping her weight on the balls of her feet. “An arrangement?”

“Each of us has things that the other needs. You have magic, Aurora, burning inside you. And there is so very little of that left, even for me. But I know how to use it. I know how to make it count.”

Aurora could not look away. Celestine was lying, she had to be lying. But a tightness had formed in Aurora's chest, compelling her to listen. “What are you offering me?”

Celestine slid closer, her footsteps so light that she seemed to float on the stone. “A choice,” she said. “If you wished to use this power, to make these people suffer for every indignity they've given you . . . I could give that to you. And if you don't want it, I can make all of this go away. I could send you back to your family, let you be with them again.”

Aurora's heartbeat pounded through her, counting out the seconds. The witch was trying to ensnare her, she knew it. She knew, but she could not look away. “What would I have to do?”

“Come with me,” Celestine said. She was so close now that Aurora could see every dip in her smooth, porcelain skin. She ran her fingers through Aurora's hair, tangling the strands around her knuckles. “Let me teach you. Allow your power to strengthen me, return me to the woman I was before. I am a mere shadow of myself, Aurora. But you are the key. They are not lying when they say you can bring magic back. And once you have learned all I have to tell you, once you have done as I wish, you can make your own choice. You can stay with me, or you can return to your family, and never have to worry about me again.”