“Princess,” he says, going to his knee in front of me. “Forgive me. I failed.”
“You didn’t fail,” I point out. “An enormous thorny rosebush attacked you and I had to run. I shouldn’t have left you.” I glance at Thiago. Bruises darken the side of his face and I’d been so exhausted when he put me in the bath, that I can’t even remember getting out of it. “What happened to your face?”
He gently touches the darkest bruise along his cheekbone. “What do you remember of your mother’s attack?”
Water gushing. Explosions. People screaming in the streets. A shiver runs through me. “That we drove her back.”
He bends to press a kiss to the top of my head. “You drove her back. I was too busy trying to defeat an enormous bramblethine that someone had dropped in the dam. It was punching holes straight through the stone walls.”
Not explosions then. But a bramblethine’s knotted power.
“Someone must have dropped a seed in the dam.” That’s why Mother’s Deathguard had been sent. Not just to attack the city and draw resources away from the dam, but to allow the bramblethine time enough to grow to full size.
I know I shouldn’t be shocked by now at the depths my mother will stoop too, but a hex like that? Bramblethine’s are twisted semi-animate creatures with no will of their own. They’re hexes brought to life. Take a wolf’s heart, knot a twisted string of brambles around it and bind it all together with a rabbit or squirrel’s entrails, until they form a kind of ‘seed’. Curse it and whisper enough hate to it over the years, and the hexes grow in power until you can practically feel the rage emanating off the seed.
Then all you need to do is add water.
They’ll grow several feet in a day, until they’re a monstrous creature that will lash out and kill or destroy anything that comes into close contact with it. They’re difficult to stop, and have ruined entire cities before.
They say there’s a castle in Somnus that is wholly swallowed up by a bramblethine. Originally it was in order to protect a princess cursed to sleep inside, but some stories say that when she woke from her enchanted sleep, the monster wouldn’t let her escape and so she lies there still, only now her sleep is eternal.
“How did you kill it?” Anger brews. There are innocent fae in this city. I blink and water is gushing toward me again, Ayelet’s arms wrapping tight around my waist as she screams—
“Finn found me just as I was trying to burn it alive. He sang it into submission, and then I drove a knife through its rotted heart. Vi. Vi.”
Thiago captures my wrist and I realize thorns are curling up my calf again. They’ve burst through the ancient flagstones of the floor, until I’m standing in an angry thicket of brambles.
“Sorry.” There’s a look in his eye I can’t read. I try to will them to shrink, but they seem to react to my mood, and not my conscious directive.
“We might have to hold future meetings in the Queen’s garden,” Thalia says. “Any chance you can grow roses? Araya used to have the most beautiful garden, but it has fallen into disrepair over the years.”
“I could try, but I don’t think I’m controlling it. They just… sprout.”
“The land reacts when you’re angry,” Thiago muses. He nudges one with his foot, and it strokes his boot. “Thorns, hmm.”
I am not my mother, though it doesn’t escape my attention that she sits on a throne melded of thorns. “Don’t ask me. None of this was planned.”
“Not by you,” he murmurs, then turns his attention back to the others. “Report.”
“The Old Quarter’s a mess,” Thalia replies, hooking one knee over the other, so her slit skirts part and she flashes a healthy sliver of thigh. “I paid the Prince of Shadows a visit, and while he is pleased to see the city above him standing, he’s wondering where he’s supposed to house his people now that the catacombs are flooded. I said I’d assist him with the clean-up efforts.” She shrugs. “I might not be able to sing the sea into a storm anymore, but I can help channel the water to drain away.”
“Hmm.” Thiago’s gaze fades away. “Tell him that if he brings me the heads of the conspirators who let the Queen of Asturia’s assassins into my city, then he may have the Palace of Many Moons.”
The room falls silent.
“I thought you wanted them alive?” I blurt.
“Thi….” Thalia gapes. “That was Araya’s favorite summer residence.”
“And it’s been locked away since she died,” he replies sharply. “It’s not as though I can use it. And Theron’s made quite pointed reference to how he’d like to move up in the world. If he wants the palace then he can have it. All he has to do is bring me those fae, bend the knee and accept the mantle of legitimacy. He proved himself true today.”
I arch a brow. “He did?”
“He saved Eris from the water,” Thiago says. “She doesn’t swim very well.”
“She still hasn’t forgiven him,” Thalia mutters. “Apparently he liked the way her shirt molded to her figure when it was all wet.”
“You’re going to take his assassins under your banner?” Finn blurts. “A legitimate guild?”
“He warned us this was coming. I’d rather have him at my side, than at my back. And he and his people need accommodation.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry.” Thiago squeezes my hand briefly. “You saved the lives of everyone in the Old Quarter.”
“And drowned who knows how many beneath the city?”
It’s a thought that’s been bothering me since I woke.
“Your mother drowned those people,” he points out. “You did your best. Continue.”
I drift away as Thalia reports on healing tents set up in the city, and food refuges. But it’s her hesitation that captures my attention.
“And the rumors?” Thiago says, his voice laced with a soft
