Heath smiles at her, all the wariness and urgency he exuded in the Borderlands now gone from his face. “Welcome to Blackthorn,” he says. “Home of Queen Belcoeur.”
Blackthorn. So she was right, in a way. She did recognize it. The Blackthorns used to hold a great spread of land in the rocky LaMorte Territories. It’s where Queen Malfleur now rules. From there, it is said, the faerie queen can look out across the mountains to her entire kingdom, and can even see, if she squints, the gleaming cupolas of Deluce’s palace, her childhood home, in the distance.
But Aurora and Heath aren’t in the mountains. And this Blackthorn is inhabited not by Malfleur, but by her dead sister—who is not, Aurora reminds herself, dead at all, apparently. She can’t help but wonder if she’s tumbling through a dream.
Then again, she has never dreamed with her lost senses.
“You live here?” Aurora stares at the castle, distress creeping into her lungs.
“Most of us do. Our grandparents, and their parents, were Blackthorn’s staff. But now we’re more like tenants. We live here, and we work here, but we don’t really work for her. We don’t even see her. She doesn’t leave the north turret. For all we know, she subsists by eating the stray moths that find their way through her windows.”
Aurora looks at Heath. She is having a difficult time separating her confusion about him with her overwhelming curiosity—and wariness—about this place. She clears her throat, picturing whittling her words into a knife, one that can cut through the fog. “I need to get home. My sister . . . and the prince . . . and . . .”
“Home,” he repeats, as though the idea were an uncanny one.
“Deluce. The palace. Yes.”
“I’m afraid that may be a bit complicated,” Heath replies. “Come on, evening is approaching. You and I have much to discuss. Very much to discuss.”
“We do?” No one has ever had much to discuss with her, other than Isbe.
But he is already hurrying ahead at a half jog. Aurora follows, then abruptly stumbles, landing hard on her knees with a sharp cry. She has fallen countless times before, but this is different—it takes the breath out of her. Her legs feel wobbly, and one of her ankles throbs.
“Aurora!” Heath runs to her side.
She sees the object in the grass that tripped her: a glass jar, lying in the dusty earth, which looks almost blue in the ebbing light.
The jar is cool and firm in her hands . . . and full of dead fireflies.
She lets it drop back to the ground as Heath helps her up. “Here, lean on me.”
All of the lifting, the touching, the shuffling—hand to shoulder, arm to back—it’s too much. But she has no choice. Her ankle is weak. It is singing a silent song of despair. She can’t listen to it anymore, but the pain won’t go away. It’s constant. She never knew what it really was to be hurt, even a little.
She swallows, and swallows again, trying not to cry, trying not to faint. Other people, she reminds herself, live with a sense of touch. They are not consumed by it. She breathes deeply and tries to distract herself.
“What . . . what was that?” she asks.
“Part of the queen’s enchantment,” he says. “They’re everywhere, these jars. If you tried to collect them all, you’d find still more would crop up, as though naturally occurring.”
Enchantment? Another riddle. He seems full of them, like so many imprisoned insects. Isbe used to collect fireflies too, with Gil when they were kids. She’d bring them back for Aurora, to light the secret passageway between their bedrooms. Aurora used to be disturbed by the way the bugs’ bodies would glow as though aflame, and then go dormant, one by one, until she realized they were suffocating. She always wondered what it would be like to light up from the inside, like some beautiful cry of warning.
They reach a broken wooden fence, then pass through a gate and down a dirt path. The last of the sun streaks the ruined castle in shadow as Heath raps a special knock on the door.
Aurora holds her breath. They are entering the home of the Night Faerie. . . . But it’s a young boy, no more than eight or nine years old, who answers. He’s dressed in a frayed tunic twice his size. He blinks out at them, his little face smudged with dirt. “Heath!” he exclaims with a wide smile.
Heath ruffles the boy’s head. “Flea. Be good and don’t let anyone know we’re here just yet, all right?”
“Too late!” The boy grins as what looks like the rest of his family appears in the doorway—a father, mother, and two older sisters, one carrying a baby boy in her arms, the other with a rounded belly suggesting her own child will come soon. All of them have a gaunt, skeletal appearance, with deep circles beneath their eyes.
“We were expecting you to bring home a deer,” the girl holding the baby says.
“Your family?” Aurora asks him, feeling self-conscious in her now-tattered cloak, which is still likely finer than anything these peasants have ever worn.
“Not exactly,” Heath says, then turns back to them. “This is Aurora. She’s—well, I’ll explain later.”
Aurora notices the wife and husband catch eyes.
“Well, come in, of course,” the wife says quickly. “Dinner’s almost ready.”
“Actually, Greta.” Heath swipes loose hair out of his face. “I’ll have Wren bring Aurora’s dish up to the tower later. I don’t want everyone asking questions.”
The sisters stare at him. “The tower?” the older one asks.
The younger of the two has her mouth crunched quizzically to the left. “And what if we have questions?”
“Trust me,” he answers easily, “I’ve got more questions than you.” He pulls Aurora past them, through a large open hall in which a number of other peasants stop their chores to stare at her, then down a corridor and into a kitchen full of rich scents, where he grabs a bottle of something from one of the side tables. Then he leads her into a back room lit by torches. He hangs up the rope he had been carrying on his back. He helps her down a series of walkways, toward a flight of stairs.
But it’s all happening too fast, and his arm around her is both guiding her and making her dizzy at the same time. “Heath, I can’t stay here,” she manages. It feels good at least to say something firm, something definite. “I have to get back to Deluce. They need me,” she adds. The third prince will be waiting.
He turns to face her, placing a finger on her lips. “I need you.”