“You don’t want me to awaken her, do you? You all want me to be alone forever! You’re just like my father, never letting me have anyone for my very own. I’ve had no one, do you understand? For years he kept me shut up here. Like a caged beast. Alone. So tell me,” he spits, pressing the blade tip against my throat to punctuate each word. “Did you do this?”
A familiar storm rises within me, the thundercloud of truth and lies rumbling in my chest. I don’t even think twice. The lie passes hot and easy off my lips.
“No.”
He examines me warily. I say it again.
“No, my lord, I don’t know what you’re talking about. If the tailor’s son escaped, it was thanks to his own wits and a sad lack of security in your prison.”
I wait on pins and needles for the familiar pricking, the thrust of a splinter breaking ground through my skin. It doesn’t come, at least not until Laszlo has cursed me soundly and dismissed the anxious guard. Then, just as my pulse begins to slow, a sliver of wood the size of his knife blade rips its way out through my neck, and neither my cry of pain nor the splinter escape Laszlo’s notice.
“I knew it!” he says, both furious and triumphant, pointing at the splinter. “You are exactly what I thought you were. Wooden to the core. This proves it! Was it your lying lips that prompted that? Ha!” He begins to laugh, gleefully. “It’s better than I imagined! Inside you are just the same as they are!” he says, gesturing to our wooden audience. “You truly are a girl made of nothing, and you are a liar of the worst sort!”
“And what sort is that?” I ask, yanking the splinter from my neck. The pain is stifling, a burn that takes my breath away. I grip the splinter between my fingers, registering the feel of the sharpest end against my thumb. For the first time in my human life, I’m grateful for my strange curse. Of all my splinters, this one may prove worthy of a greater purpose.
“The sort whose own lies destroy them. This will be your end, apprentice. Now that I have proof of what you truly are, we must find a place to keep you on display. Perhaps in the gallery, hanging with the others? After this, I can’t have you running about, creating more like yourself. My bride must be the only one.”
Blood pulses from my neck, hot and angry.
“Now,” he says, dragging me by the collar to where the princess waits under the blue moon, “I don’t care where that worthless tailor’s son is, or what grand plan you’ve constructed to thwart me, you will speak those words and awaken my bride, or something much sharper than a splinter shall pierce your throat. Begin,” he growls.
With a voice that scarcely sounds like my own, I slowly speak aloud the words my father taught me, the words of the old tree woman from many blue moons before my time.
“Bitter moon and solemn blue,
blood of earth and sap and dew,
wake a second life anew.”
While I say the words, Laszlo makes a great show of slicing the skin of his hand, reaching out with two fingers to sloppily paint a bright smudge across the princess’s heart.
But with blood already on my hands, I get there quicker.
I smear crimson across her bust before he can reach her. I cringe at the stain spreading on her exquisite gown, but it can’t be helped. Laszlo shrieks, horrified. I wait, pressing those same fingers back against my neck to stop the bleeding. I wait for the magic to unravel. For him to try and take my head off with his knife. For something, anything to happen.
The Margrave yowls at me in panic and we both look frantically to the sky. The moon is still blue as ever, waiting expectantly among the stars. Nothing stirs.
“It didn’t work because it’s your disgusting blood!” he sneers, furiously smearing his own on top of mine. “Say the words again!” Laszlo commands. Once again, I repeat the precious words, though each one tastes more bitter on my tongue.
Still, nothing. The princess lies on her bed of boughs, appearing the same: lovely and wooden.
The Margrave glares at me with a vehemence I’ve not yet seen. No longer am I just a tool for his use. I am clearly his enemy.
“This is all your fault! You’ve destroyed everything, you wooden wench, and you did it on purpose! I will take every pitiful tool you own and have you tortured with them in the Keep. We’ll see if you can outlast your father down there! Will a puppet girl fare better than a puppetmaster? Maybe that will be too slow. I should have a burn pile made ready for you!”
He grabs me, shaking me by the shoulders so hard that my teeth catch on my tongue. His knife nicks my arm as I strain and struggle to maneuver the hand clutching my deadly splinter closer to his throat. Entangled in a mad, twisted embrace, we hear a new voice, strong and musical, interject into the fray.
“Do you dare to dishonor the blue moon?”
CHAPTER 28
WE STOP, INSTINCTIVELY OBEYING THE VOICE. LIKE A warrior queen raised from the dead, the princess’s bloodied dress and high-coiled hair quickly betray her identity. Prima’s back is ramrod-straight, her curving chin proud, her skin the same creamy color of raw halsa. Her eyes flash green in the moon’s light, like moss aflame. Something about her makes me feel the way I did around the old tree woman—not fearful, but not exactly at ease, either. This is
