The music got faster as Varian led Rosalin to the dance floor. He bowed, she curtsied, and they began to dance.
They passed the windows, and the curtains rippled and billowed, bulging in unnaturally sharp lumps. A shudder ran through me. There was a wall of thorns seething behind those thick curtains, pushing their way in.
The two dancers didn’t seem to notice. They moved around the polished floor, all rustling silk and elegant velvet, as if they were the only two people in the room. Rosalin danced beautifully, and Varian did pretty well for a commoner. He clearly didn’t know any of the steps, but he moved with surety, following the rhythm of the music. There was something oddly familiar about the way he danced, about his light, easy grace.
I knew the steps—I had spent hours every week practicing with a dancing tutor—but though the music thrummed through my bones, I knew it wasn’t meant for me. It was all for Rosalin.
“My lady,” someone said behind me, and I turned. Edwin stood behind my chair, a smear of grease on his cheek. He bowed awkwardly. “May I have this dance?”
My parents drew themselves up in sync and glared at him. Edwin flinched.
I hesitated for only a second. Then I pushed my chair back with a loud scrape.
“You may,” I said.
I didn’t dare look at my parents as I followed Edwin onto the dance floor. When we faced each other, I saw that his cheeks were flaming red.
“I, um,” he said. “I don’t actually know how to dance.”
“Neither does Varian,” I reassured him.
We glanced over at the pair, who were gliding around the room staring rapturously into each other’s eyes. Behind them, another thorn branch squeezed through a crack in the walls, reaching for Rosalin. Varian whirled her away from it.
“Yeah,” Edwin said. “But I think he might have some natural talent. I definitely don’t.”
“Then why,” I said, “did you ask me to dance?”
“Because we need to talk.” He reached for my hands, and we stepped sideways in time with the music.
Well, I stepped in time with the music. Edwin had not been exaggerating: he had zero talent for dancing.
“Ouch,” I said when he stepped on my foot. Then “Urk” as he stepped back when he should have stepped forward, and almost pulled my arm out of its socket.
The music changed tempo, and we turned in a slow circle. Something bumped against my foot, almost making me trip. I looked down to see a thorn branch working its way through a space between the flagstones. My stomach lurched, and I swung us farther away from it.
“What do you need to tell me?” I asked.
Edwin leaned closer, accidentally slamming his forehead into mine. I ignored the thudding pain. Edwin kept his voice low. “The minstrel said…I’m sorry, Briony, but he told me that—”
The music came to an abrupt stop. In the sudden silence, we all heard Rosalin say “Because I love you.”
She and Varian froze. Rosalin blushed so brightly I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, even if she should have been embarrassed, proclaiming herself in love with someone she’d known for only a day.
Then again, it had been an intense day.
The music started up again, but it wasn’t a dance tune this time. It was slow and plaintive, like a half-asleep melody.
The doors to the kitchen swung open and a cart rolled out. Rosalin’s birthday cake teetered on top of it.
There was no one holding the doors open, and there was no one pushing the cart. It moved entirely by itself, past the table where my parents sat with their mouths hanging open, and creaked to a stop beside Rosalin and Varian.
The hole I had gouged in the side of the cake had been covered with frosting. It wasn’t a great patch—the pastry chef was gone, obviously, and whoever had taken on the job had sloppily spread frosting in an uneven clump that didn’t match the delicate whirls and lines on the rest of the cake—but it still looked better than it had in the kitchen.
The silence was absolute. Rosalin stared at the cake, her face white. I looked at the patch where I had ruined the cake and felt my face go red.
Honestly. Would it have been so hard for the fairy to do a better job of fixing that?
Varian grinned. He did it well—his smile looked easy and natural, like he was not at all bothered by a half-ruined birthday cake that moved around on its own. He reached into the cart and pulled out a fork.
“Happy birthday,” he said. With an awkward jab I found familiar—apparently, he was as unused to forks as he was to swords—he scooped up a chunk of frosting-laden cake and held it out to Rosalin. “To new beginnings, and to us.”
Rosalin put one hand over her mouth.
“I—I can’t,” she said. “I want a new beginning with you. I do. But I can’t eat anymore. I’m afraid I might throw up.”
Varian looked stunned. Then he recovered and summoned up a smile—not nearly as convincing this time; it looked like it had been pasted onto his face. “Then allow me,” he said, and took a bite—mainly of frosting. He chewed, swallowed, and tried the smile again. “It is as sweet as you are.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes.
“As sweet,” Varian went on, raising his voice for the rest of the room (not that they hadn’t been hanging on every word until now), “as our lives together will be. Once we vanquish the remnants of this curse and free ourselves of the Thorn—”
He gagged on the word. His eyes went wide.
He fell over sideways, straight as a log. The fork with its remnant
