I had the library. I had my horse, Anavel, and an entire forest to ride through.
“I… was friends with some of the border lords’ daughters,” I admit. “Those my mother kept as hostages, who strained at the shackles of being bound to the castle. We’d ride. We’d hunt. Anything to get out of Hawthorne Castle.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“So does heading into the wilderness for a month-long ‘walk in the snow.’”
We share a look.
“Is it loneliness to enjoy your own company? Or is it lonelier to be among enemies who spend their entire days plotting to tear you down or whispering behind their hands at you?” I sigh. “I like it better here.” A glance up at the castle turrets reveals the familiar sandstone towers. “I think that was the hardest part of not knowing who Thiago was to me or why my mother had sent me to him as tribute. My first few months in Evernight felt like my life in Hawthorne Castle all over again. I knew there was something you were all keeping from me, I just didn’t know what.”
“He had to keep you away from the castle, Princess. Her spell threatened to melt your brains out of your ears if it broke before you were ready to face the truth, and too many people knew your secret.”
“I know. I don’t blame him for that.” I look down at the arrow in my hands. “I’m just grateful that I don’t have to play that game anymore. I’ve never truly had a home before. Evernight is everything I’ve ever wanted, and yet, with my mother marching her armies north, it feels like she can take everything away from me.”
Finn looks away. “Stop it. Or you’re going to make me shed a tear, and that isn’t very manly, Princess.”
“One thing that I’m learning is that it isn’t weak to admit to uncertainty. And if you keep calling me Princess, I’m going to come up with some terrible nickname for you and then I’m going to tell everyone in the castle about it.”
“Too late,” he says as he heads toward the target to fetch our arrows.
“What was it?”
“Oh no,” he calls. “I’m not going to remind you.”
Three days later, Eris is still trapped in dreams.
Thalia spends most of her time trying to ferret out the guild plot, what with Elms Day fast approaching. Otherwise she’s at Eris’s side, trying to break the curse that binds her to sleep. Every day her eyelashes will flutter, or her fingers will twitch, but it feels like some net keeps dragging her back.
The only laughter the day brings is when Finn arrives to take over the night watch. He doesn’t want to leave Eris in the dark, and I’m glad someone is due to sit with her. Though he threatens to kiss her a half dozen times if she doesn’t wake, until both Thalia and I are exchanging glances across the bed.
“It’s meant to be true love’s kiss,” Thalia tells him sweetly, “and I think—unless there’s something you haven’t been telling us, Finn—that you’re not on the shortlist.”
“Hardly,” he says with a careless smile. “Eris might desire my heart in a box if I irritate her enough, but at her feet? I don’t think so. Besides, I don’t have a hundred horses to spare, and I know who wins that battle if we both draw swords.”
“That’s so sweet of you,” Thalia tells him. “You’re acting quite the gallant this past week, Finn. It almost makes me wonder—”
“Gallant?” The smile on his face dies, and his eyes are practically glacial as he glares at her. “Me?”
“All this joking about kissing her,” she continues in a completely innocent tone, “and protecting her honor. Next thing we know, you’ll be composing sonnets.”
“I swear to the gods….” He pushes to his feet, grumbling under his breath. “Just for that, you can have the night watch as well as this afternoon.”
“I was only joking,” she calls as he strides toward the door.
“I wasn’t!”
After that afternoon, he doesn’t threaten to kiss her again.
“I think I struck a nerve,” Thalia muses the next morning while we watch him sparring in the yard through Eris’s chamber window.
I think she struck more than that.
But our smiles last only a few seconds.
“Wake up, E,” Thalia says, squeezing Eris’s hand. “Please wake up.”
It’s beginning to wear on all of us, I think.
To see her like this—struck down and motionless, with only her fingers twitching occasionally—makes me feel sick.
“Get some rest,” I tell Thalia. “You’ve been hovering by her side day and night since we returned. I’ll watch over her for the night.”
Thalia sighs. “I can’t afford to rest. You heard what the Prince of Shadows said about Elms Day. So far none of my little spies have heard anything. And without Eris we’re severely undermanned. Elms Day is only five days away and I have nothing.”
“Can you get in contact with the Prince of Shadows?”
Thalia arches a brow. “We don’t hire assassins, Vi. Tolerating them when there’s no proof of actual murder isn’t the same thing as hiring them.”
“Then tell Theron that we want these conspirators alive. And offer to pay him double if he can get them to talk.”
“Everything’s turning to shit,” I tell Eris later that night as I sit at her bedside. “I wasn’t foolish enough to think my mother would merely accede to this marriage once we broke the curse. She lives and breathes vengeance, after all, but I was so focused on Thiago—on saving him—that I didn’t think about the true cost of what I was doing.”
Eris remains still.
There’s a woven web hanging above her bed—a six-pointed star threaded with iron beads—in order to keep Queen Maren out of the room should she attempt to reach for Eris again, but so far, not a single bead has broken.
“I keep waiting for my mother’s next strike. Elms Day means something, and I don’t like not knowing who is involved.” Pushing to my feet I pace to the window.
