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Thornie

SALLIE ROSE

I wake up with a jolt, my head pounding and my mouth dry as sandpaper. Something bitter clings to the back of my throat. The taste is sharp and chemical, as if I’ve swallowed metal. Instinctively, I try to sit up, but the world lurches, throwing me sideways into a wall of polished wood.

Where am I?

Blinking, I look around to find myself inside a carriage. The interior is black on black with ebony walls, floorboards—even the velvet seats are the most midnight of black.

The only reason I can see is because of the sunlight pouring through the sheer black curtains covering the windows.

Wait, windows?

Okay, second question: Where are we going?

I pull back to the sheer but still black curtain to find the suns hanging low on the horizon, a hazy orange ball sinking into a barren, lifeless wasteland.

And, my heart screeched, like my father’s metal trowel scraping against rock. The kingdom of Aralysse was not a wasteland. The opposite, in fact.

Verdant and temperate all year round, thanks to its position at the southernmost tip of the Stone Kingdom Territories, our region has long been considered the breadbasket of the land.

People traveled from all over Lunaterra to visit the gardens my father cultivated with magic passed down from a long-ago Fae ancestor, said to be an Earth Fae from Thyraelis.

So, the sight of the barren landscape of gray leafless trees and cracked, desiccated earth on the other side of the window sends a cold prickle through my chest.

This isn’t home. It isn’t even close. I’ve never seen a place so empty, so desolate.

I scramble to my knees and bang my fists against the top of the carriage as I’ve done dozens of times for Princess Seraphyne, who’s prone to motion sickness when we have to travel far by boat or wheel. “Hello? Is anyone out there? Let me out!”

No response. Just the relentless clatter of hooves and the groan of wooden wheels as the carriage continues to barrel forward.

I reach for the door handle, tugging hard. It doesn’t budge. Locked. From the outside.

“What in the moons…?” My voice cracks, dry and raspy, and my head swims as I try to make sense of what’s happening.

I can’t breathe. Actually, I truly cannot. Something’s constricting me to the point of breathlessness.

I look down to find a new horror.

The dress. The wedding gown I spent months of my life hand-sewing and embroidering for Princess Seraphyne Vael, Crown Daughter of House Vael of Aralysse, Vessel of the Concord Flame, the Stone Bride Sacrifice.

It’s on my body. My shorter and whole lot chubbier body. This dress was meant for our willowy Stone Bride, but I’ve been stuffed, half zipped, and tied into it like some kind of sausage.

Memories crackle in and out. Princess Seraphyne’s month of pouting and complaining and even more demanding because, “I’m the sacrificial lamb being sent to slaughter so that the rest of you can live out your meaningless lives.”

Me trying not to show how happy and excited I was becoming as the days ticked by. But forgetting myself after she threw her dessert on the floor for the crime of “not having enough honey drizzled over the cake.” Then mashed it into the woven carpet with her slippered foot.

Supposedly, I hadn’t started serving as Princess Seraphyne’s handmaiden until I was five years old. But I had no memories of life before I was set in orbit around a planet my kingdom called The Stone Bride.

This would be the last time, I thought to myself.

The last time I’d have to duck one of her plate throws or clean up a mess she made worse on purpose.

Tomorrow I would take over for my father as the palace gardener.

He would finally be allowed to rest, and I would finally have a job I wanted—one of my actual choosing.

I hadn’t even realized I was smiling until she slapped me across the face. “Do you think this is funny. This is my last dessert! My very last dessert!”

I actually felt guilty as I rubbed the sting of the slap away. Yes, Princess Seraphyne could be a deluge of rain on a festival day when she wasn’t getting her way.

But for once, I actually agreed with her.

As dreadful as life as a palace servant—particularly Princess Seraphyne’s handmaid—had been, no amount of money in the world could make me trade places with the beautiful yellow-haired woman, standing before me.

She’d been born the same solar as me, only her birth had been marked for a darker purpose—as the Stone Bride, the princess Aralysse was required to send to the Stone Kingdom every twenty-five solars on her twenty-fifth birthday.

As far as our historical records went, the Stone Bride’s story always ended there.

While other Aralyssean princesses and princes were married off to other human royalty or high-ranking business partners, the Stone Bride Princess disappeared into legend. Sacrificed to preserve our kingdom’s fragile peace with the Stone Fae and never heard from again.

None of us Aralysseans had ever seen a Stone Fae, and thank the moons for that.

The stories were enough to haunt anyone.

Supposedly, they were savage creatures with monstrous wings and razor-sharp teeth that dripped with the blood of their victims. The stuff of nightmares, and the last thing you saw before they ripped out your throat and razed your city to the ground.

According to the old tales, one encounter with the creatures had been enough to cow our first ruler of Aralysse into striking a deal. He promised them not only bounties from our lands, but also the tribute of a princess every twenty-five solars in exchange for peace.

And now, it was Seraphyne’s turn. Tomorrow I’d finally be free, but she would be on her way to who knew how long a life of untold suffering.

“I’m sorry,” I told her sincerely. Not for the cake, which had the same amount of honey it always did. But for her life that would ruthlessly be cut short, so that the rest of us could continue to live ours in tranquility and peace.

Seraphyne sniffed at my apology, then burst into tears. “I know I’ve been groomed to be the Stone Bride all my life, but I can’t. I just can’t!”

I wasn’t sure what to do. Usually her temper tantrums were something to quietly wait out in a corner, making myself as small as I could. Not something born out of valid reasons.

“I’ll go fetch another piece of cake,” I offered. “Whatever you like, I’m sure Cook Lettie will make it for you special.”

“No! Don’t leave me, Thornie!”

Thornie... That was the nickname she chose for me after my father showed her the flower I’d been partially named after—and warned her about the pricks beneath its soft petals.

Princess Seraphyne grabbed onto my arm when I tried to head for the door. “Could you… could you hold me? Just until I fall asleep?”

“Hold you?” I blinked at her. “Before your bath? Wouldn’t you rather?—”

“Forget the bath!” she’d cried, cutting me off.

Then there was no more requesting. Seraphyne grabbed my arm and shoved me backwards. Suddenly, I found myself lying on top of the luxurious bed I made every day, soft as a cloud and covered in silk sheets

“Stay there!’ she commanded, taking off her silk dinner gown and tossing it to the floor as if her father hadn’t sent a boat all the way to the Capital City to purchase her wardrobe of fine dresses while the rest of us wore clothes we made ourselves from the natural fibers we grew in the fields surrounding our lesser kingdom.

“But…”

Thinking of everything I had to do to prepare for her handoff to the escort the Stone Fae King would be sending, I tried to get up, struggling to find purchase in the cloud she called a bed.

“I said, stay put .” Princess Seraphyne climbed into bed with me, and the next thing I knew, my arm was forcibly wrapped around her slender waist. “Just hold me.”

“Wouldn’t you rather…” I trailed off and glanced toward the door, thinking of the sentry I’d seen coming out of her room on a number of occasions when I came back early from errands.

“…have someone else comfort you?” was the most delicate way I could bring up her maybe wanting to enjoy one more round of horizontal fun before she got sacrificed to a savage monster who may or may not literally eat her for dinner, according to kingdom gossip.

“No, it has to be you!” She answered in the same petulant tone she used when she got out in the suns’ light and realized the hue of her slippers didn’t quite match her dress. “You’re my best friend, Thornie! It has to be you!”

I am? I thought, but didn’t dare to say out loud.

Then the door opened…and…and…

It has to be you.

Those were the last words I remember Princess Seraphyne saying before I woke up here—in this midnight-black carriage—instead of on the mat below the foot of her canopy bed, as I had every other morning I could recall.

Wearing the white gown I’d carefully steamed and hung in preparation for her departure. Princess Seraphyne’s departure to the Stone Kingdom’s mountain wastelands.

But Princess Seraphyne isn’t wearing the gown.

I am.

And outside the window, a cold black mountain range looms on the far horizon, glittering beneath the setting suns. Like a monster in waiting.

No.

My heart pounds harder.

She wouldn’t have...

I glance around the carriage, searching for answers—for proof that this is all some horrible mistake. That’s when I see the flash of white: a folded piece of parchment tucked into the velvet-black seat opposite me.

I pick it up. The paper smells faintly of lavender, Princess Seraphyne’s signature scent.

And I recognize the handwriting before I even begin to read—elegant cursive that makes my heart ache.

After I was conscripted into handmaiden service, my mother became Princess Seraphyne’s—and by extension, my—tutor so she could be closer to me.

She died when I was seventeen. But before her untimely passing, she badgered the princess and me to practice our handwriting for hours, even though we all knew I’d never need it once I became the palace gardener—and Seraphyne, destined to become the Stone Bride, wouldn’t need such graces past the age of twenty-five.

Yes, Princess Seraphyne wrote this letter. To me.

And the first line makes my stomach drop:

Thornie, don’t be mad.