She put one foot on the cobblestones.
“Rosalin!”
“You don’t understand.” She stared straight ahead, her jaw quivering. “The fairy queen dwells in these woods. We’ve taken her by surprise, and that’s the only reason we stand a chance. We have to cut our way out now.”
“He won’t be able to do it, Rosalin!”
“He can. He can.”
“For you, I can do anything,” Varian called. It would have sounded better if he hadn’t choked on a breath while saying it.
He swung the sword again, more slowly. Sweat spotted the back of his shirt. Branches fell.
I looked at Edwin, then dashed forward and followed my sister.
Now we were past the cobblestones, and the ground beneath Varian’s feet was dirt. The roots of the thorn trees coiled up from the dank earth; the trunks had grown winding around each other, forming an impenetrable wall. There was no way Varian could cut through that….
But he sliced the sword into one of the trunks. It bit deep and stuck, and then several trees crumpled as one, as if that shallow cut had been a fatal blow. A shower of dust and ashes fell to the forest floor.
Behind those stood more trees, thicker and darker. Branches curved over and around each other, gnarled and twisted and studded with sharp, wicked gray thorns.
Varian swung the sword again and the trees fell before him, and my heart leapt with hope. Maybe he could do it. He might not be a prince, but he was a hero. He was going to get us out.
“I don’t think you have to swing so high,” Edwin said, coming up beside me.
Varian wiped sweat out of his eyes, then swung again, lower this time. It clearly took less strength, and it worked just as well.
A hand closed around mine: Rosalin’s.
“Come on,” she said.
“Are we just going to leave on our own?” Edwin demanded. “What if the Thornwood closes up behind us?”
“We’ll come back for the others,” Rosalin said. “We’ll cut our way through if we have to.”
It sounded reasonable.
Edwin coughed skeptically. Shame washed over me. Why should we get to escape first? Were we really going to leave everyone behind, even temporarily?
“Why don’t we go get them now?” I said. “Mother and Father can order all the men who are left to help with the cutting. They can take turns with the sword.”
Rosalin’s response was to pull me farther down the path. Varian swung the sword again and slashed through another mess of thorns.
“Rosalin!” I dug my heels into the dirt and yanked my arm free. “Don’t be so—”
Behind us, Edwin screamed.
The ground around Edwin exploded, clumps of dirt flying as barbed vines broke through the earth. One wrapped itself around his ankle. He reached down to yank it off, and another snapped around his wrist.
“Edwin!” I headed for him. A branch shot up in front of me, its thorns lengthening as it grew.
I tried to jump back but couldn’t. A green vine had erupted from the earth and snaked around my shin. I pulled my leg frantically, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Varian!” Rosalin screamed, and I turned to see that a thick thorny branch had wrapped around her waist. She grabbed it and tugged, then cried out and let go, blood dripping from her hands.
Varian swore and strode toward her, ripping the bandages off his left hand. Branches erupted around his feet, but none of them touched him. He pressed the edge of the sword carefully against the branch holding Rosalin, and it fell away from her in two dead pieces.
“Let’s go!” he said, taking her hand. There was something new in his voice, a tremor I hadn’t heard before. “Run, Rosalin!”
Rosalin pulled free. “No! Cut Briony loose!”
By now, the thorn branches were waist high and getting thicker. Varian swung his sword at a stand of them and came for me. A branch snaked around my other ankle.
Varian cut down one of the branches that had grabbed me—and a bit of my skin in the process, not that I was complaining. He turned and used the other edge of the blade to hack off the branch holding my other ankle.
Rosalin screamed again. A branch had managed to twine itself in her hair and was yanking her head backward. Meanwhile, Edwin had been pulled to the ground, and a thorny branch was crawling up his arm and over his shoulder.
“Help Edwin!” I shouted at Varian, and rushed to Rosalin, grabbing her hair and trying to pull it away from the thorns. She screamed bloody murder. I felt something bite into my ankle and dodged away from it, bringing a fistful of Rosalin’s silky hair with me. She shrieked again: the thorns were still entwined in her hair.
“Hold her hair out straight!” Varian cried. “I’ll cut it off!”
He had, of course, ignored my instructions and come for Rosalin. I looked past him. Edwin had been pulled down into a sobbing crouch; he was now nothing but a lump so covered with dark branches that in a few minutes, I wouldn’t be able to see him at all.
I’m sorry, I thought. I’m so sorry. He had been right. We shouldn’t have tried this on our own.
I looked up at the sky, the same way I had that morning hundreds of years ago. I could still see the tower rising high above the thorns.
And there, on the windowsill, a winged figure watched us.
“Fairy Godmother!” I shouted. “Help us!”
The figure didn’t move.
“Briony!” Varian roared. “Hold out Rosalin’s hair!”
I grabbed her hair and pulled it back. Varian’s sword sliced right through it, leaving me holding a lank handful of limp strands with thorns still writhing through them. One thorn stabbed my palm, and I dropped the hair hastily.
Several vines erupted from the ground at once and pounced on the hair. Within seconds, they had sliced the black strands to shreds. As they shot upward, broken tendrils of my sister’s locks fluttered from their thorns.
Rosalin clutched my hand. Her face was twisted with
