The Firethorn Crown (6 page)

The stone wall that Melantha had run up against, that had cut them off from the maze. It wasn’t a wrong turn. Cold seeped into her hands, despite Prince Tharius’s warmth. He must feel her heart beating in her fingertips as surely as she heard it thundering in her ears. They couldn’t be trapped here. They hadn’t been cursed, they couldn’t be compelled to stay against their will.

“There’s no way out?” She stood, and Prince Tharius joined her. He kept her hands firmly encircled in his. He wasn’t going to let her return to the girls. She couldn’t let them live down here. It would kill them, just like it had his mother.

“Deep breaths, Your Highness.” He tipped his head down. “Look at me. I never said there was no way out.”

She focused on his face, his deep eyes, the line between his brows, the fall of hair over his forehead, and his lips pressed into a thin line. And she breathed.

“Good. That’s good.” He pulled her back down onto the bench and allowed her a few moments to compose herself. The stream gurgled in its stony channel. That, at least, was not an illusion. “Better now?”

She managed to choke out a couple of words. “Explain. Please.”

“I think we may be able to help each other.”

“Okay?”

He sighed, but said no more for a minute, dropping his gaze to their hands. “I will try to explain, but remember that I am unused to conversing with people. Much less, beautiful female people.” He gave her a lopsided grin and raised an eyebrow.

She couldn’t return the smile, but her heart lifted a small bit. Perhaps things weren’t desperate just yet. She nodded for him to continue.

“A few weeks ago, I managed to weaken the barrier surrounding the undergarden enough to throw an illusion revealing the entrance.”

The mirror.

“I had hoped that someone would do just as you and your sisters did tonight, that I would finally get the help I needed to break free. But I knew as soon as you entered the passage that something was wrong. By crossing the barrier, you’ve entangled yourselves in my curse. My bondage is now your bondage. My freedom is your freedom.”

Things weren’t as bad as she’d thought.

They were worse.

Chapter Six

L
ily jerked her hands away and buried them in the folds of her gown. If Prince Tharius and his grandfather, both sorcerers, hadn’t found a way out of this place, what could she do?

“You said we could help each other,” she said.

“Yes.” He looked at his empty hands. “But it’s entirely up to you.”

“Tell me what I have to do.”

He took a breath as if to speak, but turned it into a sigh.

Lily took a breath, too, to steady herself, and released it slowly.

Her sisters danced on, the music pulsing through the air. Gwen whipped her neck around while twirling with her partner, trying to keep an eye on Lily and the prince. If they lingered much longer, she would likely march over to investigate.

Prince Tharius stood and paced back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Abruptly, he knelt on one knee in front of Lily, and took her hands again.

His words spilled out like a memorized recitation. “Love will open the way, willingly given, a union of equals.”

Love? A union of equals? How was that something she had to do to free them?

He must have sensed her confusion, because he growled softly and tipped his face towards the starless expanse above. He looked back at her with the same darkness in his eyes. “There is no good way to do this. I’m trying to propose.”

What! Lily opened her mouth to speak.

“Wait!” He put a hand lightly to her lips.

She swallowed. She didn’t want to alarm the girls. But marriage?

“Please, let me finish.” He looked both worried and hopeful.

She paused.

He seized the moment and grasped her hands again. “You’re here for a reason. The sorcerer’s curse can only be broken by a marriage between equals. And you are my equal.” He whispered her name. “Lily. Marry me.”

Her skin prickled. He was mad. She couldn’t marry him. All hand-holding aside, he was a complete stranger. Not to mention a sorcerer. She pulled away gently. He’d never danced with a woman—no doubt he’d gotten the wrong idea at her show of sympathy. Running from one attempted proposal, she’d ended up with one from a different source. This one was no less unwelcome.

“Sir, I—”

“Don’t,” he warned. “You’ve stumbled into my world, entangling yourself in my curse. You are the key to my freedom, and your own.”

“Why me?”

“Were you not the first to enter?”

She didn’t understand sorcery at all. No wonder apprentices had to study for decades before practicing on their own. “I just want to go home with my sisters. There will be guards searching for us.” Eben knew about the mirror and might think to go there.

“They won’t find you. No one will ever find you.” She let him take her hands again, if just for the warmth. “But you can go home. Tonight, if you wish.”

If she married him.

“Do you know how long I’ve waited for you? How many years I’ve wrestled with the darkness?” He brought her fingers to his lips, just as Runson had done, but stopped before they touched. His breath warmed her skin. “I want to hear the wind in the trees. Feel the sun warm my back. I want to see birds fly in a sky with no boundaries.”

She tugged until he rose from the ground and joined her once more on the bench. “There has to be another way.”

“There is no other way!”

She flinched.

“There is no other way.” He frowned. “You are mine, Lily, and you are worth all the waiting.”

Waiting. She could choose not to marry him, but then she trapped her sisters down here indefinitely. If she gave in . . .. No. She would
never
allow a sorcerer on the throne of Ituria. If only she could get home, she might find some other way to undo this mess, something that Prince Tharius might not have thought of in his limited realm.

“You . . . you must give me some time. This is too fast. Either choice I make, I give up my freedom.”

“What do you mean? By choosing me, you gain your freedom.”

“My freedom of choice is gone. How can you want a bride who comes to you because of a curse?”

He rose and walked to the bridge, arms crossed. The castle loomed in the distance, a place of sorcery. She shivered. She had no desire to experience its cold halls and echoing chambers, and much less to lead the girls there.

Prince Tharius returned and offered his arm. “Walk with me.”

He led her around the clearing to a gazebo just beyond the oaks. Black morning glories with crimson-pink centers choked the roof and twined down the wooden pillars. He moved a vine off the bench that ran along the inside, and they sat overlooking the dancers. Only Hazel, Junia, and Coral remained on the floor, in the arms of three beaming gentlemen.

She waited, unsure if she’d offended him by suggesting that marriage to him was equal to imprisonment.

“I suppose, after I have waited this long . . .” He pinched off a section of vine and wove it as he spoke. “There is something I can give you, I think—something to make the transition easier. But the end will be the same.”

She clasped her hands over her stomach. “What can you give me?”

“Freedom.”

What? She opened her mouth to speak just as he raised the crown of flowers to her head. She flinched.

“There are no thorns,” he said. “I would not harm you.”

She allowed him to place it on top of her hair. “How can you give me freedom, when you said we’re stuck in your curse?”

“I cannot free you from the curse, but I can arrange for you and your sisters to have a certain amount of freedom each day. Quite a lot, actually.”

“You can’t free us, but you can allow us some freedom? I don’t understand. For what purpose?”

“To court you.”

Oh. The end would be the same.

“I don’t want you to suffer as I have, to see your light quenched in this endless night.” He adjusted one of the flowers in her crown. “It will cause me more pain than you can imagine to see you go.”

“Go?”

“You will need to return to me for a few hours each night. My power has limits, and this will cost me dearly.”

“You’re saying that we can leave?”

“Yes.”

She clasped his hands and smiled in relief. “Thank you!”

A genuine smile flared on his face. “You understand that, even if you accept my help, you are still no more free than I am.”

Her sisters had to pay for her ignorance and rash actions, but could they accept the help of a sorcerer, in order to get home?

“I understand, but I need to talk with my sisters.”

Any trace of a smile vanished. “Can the Crown Princess of Ituria not make her own decisions? Will you trap your sisters down here forever? Better to present them with a solution at the same time you tell them of the problem, no?”

Mother had said she needed to take care of her own problems.

She gulped. “Very well. I will accept your help.”

His eyes gleamed with pleasure. “I will give you a token that will allow you to visit your home.”

He plucked spiderwebs from the morning glories, and rather than sticking to his gloves, they floated, is if in water. He twisted them, stretching and winding the threads until he held a delicate filament of silver.

Sorcery. Her skin tickled as if the spiders who owned the webs were crawling to inspect his handiwork.

Gently, he coaxed a dewdrop from a silken flower and touched it to the silver strand, where it stuck and twinkled delicately, like a liquid diamond.

“May I?” He held the pendant to her throat.

There was no other option. She swept her hair to the side, and his arms circled her neck to clasp the chain with the watery jewel. She expected it to feel sticky and wet, but it felt as any other pendant, lying cool against her skin.

“There now,” Prince Tharius said, adjusting it at her collarbone. “Your sisters have matching ones, and they are linked to yours. This will keep you safe for me.”

Shrieks sounded from the clearing.

“Lily! What have you done?”

Ivy?

All of the girls dashed along the snaking path, around hedges and topiaries, winding their way to the gazebo. Ivy led them, with Melantha and Mara just behind. The gentlemen had been left under the oaks, and the shadow-people returned to the edge of the clearing.

Ivy bolted into the gazebo and threw herself into Lily’s lap, clawing at the pendant around her sister’s neck. “Take it off!” She sobbed and pulled until Melantha wrestled her into a corner, where she collapsed in a heap of storm-grey skirts.

Lily shook, and her neck stung where the chain had bitten into it.

“What’s going on?” Gwen quieted the girls, squeezing them onto the bench, and then joined Ivy in her nest.

“What
are
these?” Melantha tugged at her pendant, chin tucked down, eyes crossing as she tried to see it. The chain was too short. She gave up and sat next to Mara.

Lily cleared her throat, trying to untangle the words in her head. She twisted her hands in her skirts to hide their trembling.

Prince Tharius had no problem choosing his words. “The pendants are your way home. A gift from a fellow prisoner.”

“Prisoner!” Melantha stood, but Mara tugged her back down, where she landed with a thump and poof of sparkling skirts.

“May I explain?” He addressed Lily, who was squashed against him, a twin on either side of them.

Better that he explain what she wasn’t sure she understood.

He walked to the entrance and turned to face the girls. Wren scooted closer to her.

“I can’t begin to tell you how much pleasure your visit has given me, a captive in this realm of darkness. I’ve never known such light as you have brought with you.” He leaned against a pillar. “Unfortunately, the sorcerer was more devious than I imagined. When you entered the undergarden, you tangled yourselves in the curse that holds me here.”

Other than a few quiet gasps, the girls remained silent. Ivy watched Lily intently.

“The prince has found a way for us to return home during the day.” A small reassurance, if somewhat conditional. “We only need to visit the undergarden for a few hours each night.”

“We have to come back here?” Ruby said.

“Every night?” Wren asked.

“You said you would show us the way out.” Melantha tugged on a portion of her gown that Mara sat on.

“I said I would explain what you need to know.”

“You should have said there was no way out.”

“You would have me lie?” He raised an eyebrow.

She stopped tugging and looked at Lily. “What’s he talking about?”

“There is a way out permanently—for all of us—if I marry him.”

“What!”

“No way!”

“Father would never agree!”

Not since the Dragon Wars had a sorcerer worn a crown. They couldn’t go back to those days.

In the commotion that followed, Prince Tharius was forced out of the gazebo and Lily’s feet got stepped on at least five times. Finally, she joined him and whistled long and loud.

The girls stilled. Not for the first time, she was glad Riva had taught them a great many things Mother didn’t approve of.

“Sit.” Mother
had
taught them how to give orders. At least Ivy was off the floor, cradled in Hazel’s lap.

Lily joined them in the gazebo, standing as Prince Tharius had, against one of the pillars, more for support than as a casual pose. “I have no intention of marrying anyone without Father’s approval.”

The girls hummed murmurs of relief and agreement.

Prince Tharius cleared his throat, staying outside the gazebo, so that Lily had to turn around.

“Yes?”

“Before you formulate a speech for your father, I’m afraid I must remind you again of the sorcerer’s deviousness.” He spoke softly.

She waited for him to continue, tired of feeling stupid regarding this sorcery.

“I am not strong enough to overcome his curse. Some semblance of freedom is possible for you. Perhaps, someday, you will offer more to me. For now, all I ask in return is that you dance with me, talk with me, let me feel human for a few hours each night.”

His eyes were so dark. Truly black, not like Runson’s deep blue.

Or Eben’s brown. Had Eben found the mirror, yet?

“I’m afraid your freedom will be a silent one,” Prince Tharius said.

Silent? Oh. Heat drained from her face and everywhere else. How could anything hold heat in this place? She leaned harder against the pillar, until Gwen came and put an arm around her.

“Speak plainly, please, sir,” Gwen said. “You may be unaccustomed to company, but we are unaccustomed to sorcery and illusions. We are all out of our element here.”

Prince Tharius flinched at Gwen’s bluntness. “Forgive me. I am . . . unaccustomed to company, as you say. I will be as clear as I can.” He stepped up next to the pillar opposite Lily and addressed all of them. “During your hours above ground, you cannot speak of anything below. And you cannot speak of the curse, at all, even here. Nothing.”

That’s what Lily had thought.

“And you, Your Highness, because you are the one most closely linked to my own curse, the one who holds the key to my freedom as well as your own, you should not speak at all.”

That’s what she’d thought, too. She wouldn’t be able to speak to Father, to brainstorm ideas with Eben, to seek help from Yarrow. She was on her own. She sagged, and Gwen guided her to the bench, where she dropped down next to Hazel. Ivy squeezed her hand hard. Lily hung on tightly, the little fingers grounding her to what mattered most in all of this.

Melantha took a breath to speak, a challenging gleam in her eye.

Prince Tharius addressed her first. “No words at all.”

Melantha slumped on the bench and crossed her arms.

“What if we forget?” Azure asked.

Prince Tharius tapped his throat. “Your pendants will remind you. But, your sister carries the heavier burden.”

She didn’t want to ask.

Azure did. “How?”

“The rest of you
cannot
speak of the undergarden, but your sister
should
not.”

Gwen cleared her throat and glared pointedly at him.

“Yes. More plainly.” He addressed Lily. “You hold the power to end this curse. Say you will marry me, anywhere at any time, and it ends. Say anything else, and my help is nullified. You and your sisters must return to me, and stay until you choose the right words.”