Thornwood by Leah Cypess (read after .txt) 📕

I guess to an outsider, it did make sense. I wished Rosalin were here, instead of waiting demurely in her room with her ladies. I could have exchanged wry glances with her.

The royal wizard was an extremely impressive man, if by “impressive” you meant tall. He was highly educated, having graduated from a snooty school that taught sports you could only play using magic. And he was very powerful, which meant he often spent days locked up in his workroom, emerging only to tell us that he had been battling wild magic and just barely managed to save the world from destruction. Then he would tell us that something we had been doing—like using my great-grandfather’s invisibility cloak or taking visiting nobles to the unicorn grove—was upsetting the delicate balance of magic in the world and needed to be stopped immediately lest the universe collapse around us.

In my entire life, the only spells I’d seen him perform were the ones that had created fireworks on my and Rosalin’s birthdays. And when Rosalin had asked if the fireworks for her twelfth birthday could be gold and silver instead of multicolored like they usually were, he’d said that one had to consider all the consequences before altering long-standing tradition. Then he’d told our parents that we were meddling with dangerous magic and putting the world in jeopardy, and we both had to skip dessert for a week.

To get even with him, Rosalin and I had stolen his hat—a classic magician’s hat, long, pointed, and covered with blue stars—and painted it orange. He’d announced that the fairies had done it, as a warning that his spells were getting too powerful for their liking.

He had also been the one to tell my father that if we banished all spinning wheels from the kingdom, we could outwit the fairies and prevent the curse from taking effect.

“Wait,” I said. “The royal wizard isn’t—”

I might as well not have spoken. My parents were already halfway to the door. My mother turned and smiled at us brightly. She was still breathing rapidly, but her voice was steady.

“We will be back shortly,” she said. “Have some pastries!”

Edwin pressed himself against the door to let them pass. As soon as they were gone, I turned to Varian.

You’re jumping to conclusions, Edwin had said when I’d shared my suspicions about the prince. Well, I hoped Edwin was right, because Varian was now our only option.

“Okay,” I said. “Here’s my plan.”

“Um,” Varian said. “I think your parents are…are taking care of it? If there’s a royal wizard…”

“Does he have a magic sword?” I said. “No. But we do.”

“We do?” Varian looked at me warily. “There’s another one?”

“Sure. There are two magic swords. They’re very common in this part of the world.”

Edwin coughed hard in my direction.

All right, fine. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to be sarcastic to the guy we were depending on to save us. “We found your sword, Prince Varian,” I said. “We know you hid it.”

Varian’s face turned beet red.

“I don’t care,” I went on. “As long as you help us now, I don’t care why you did it. The important thing is, you have a sword that can cut through the Thornwood, and you’ve succeeded in making your way through once. We need you to cut us out of the Thornwood.”

“Just us?” Varian said.

“Of course not just us! We’ll get everyone out. Or cut the Thornwood down and set the whole castle free.” I leaned forward. “Once we’re out, our subjects will help us.”

“What subjects?” Varian said.

“You said there’s a whole village right at the border.”

Varian coughed. “Er. Once the Thornwood comes down, you’ll no longer be a princess. You realize that, don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know. It’s been a while. You don’t exactly have a kingdom anymore.”

He said it like it was obvious. And it was, now that I thought about it. The people of our kingdom couldn’t have gone a hundred years without anyone to run things. New rulers must have stepped in while we slept. They probably wouldn’t be willing to step out just because we had woken up.

“That’s all right,” I said after a moment. “You’re a prince. So once you marry my sister, we’ll all be part of a royal family.”

Varian made a strangled sound.

“Oh, come on. You risked your life to save her. Let’s not pretend you’re not going to marry her.”

Varian scraped a flake of pastry from the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know anything about her.”

“Didn’t you spend the entire morning talking to her?”

“Yes.” His eyes softened. “And she is a marvel. I never dreamed she would be so wonderful. But…”

“She is wonderful,” I said sharply. “So why wouldn’t you want to marry her?”

“Briony,” Edwin said. “Maybe this isn’t the best time—”

“No, I want an answer.” No way was Varian going to wake Rosalin up just to break her heart. I would not let it happen. “Is that why you hid the sword? So you could cut your way out and abandon her?”

Edwin edged into the room. “Briony, that’s not really fair.”

I knew it wasn’t. But Varian was looking wild-eyed and panicked, so I also knew I had caught him in a lie—even if I didn’t know exactly what the lie was. All I could do was keep lobbing accusations to see what made him flinch. “Or did you not want us to look at the sword too closely and realize how valuable it is?”

Varian shook his head. His lips were white.

I tried to come up with another accusation. It was surprisingly difficult. Why had he hidden the sword? It had to have something to do with the Thornwood. If he could use it to cut us free—

I blinked.

“You can’t use it,” I said. “Can you?”

All the color drained from Varian’s face.

“Briony?” Edwin said. “What are you—”

“You can’t wield a sword,” I said. “You don’t know how. That’s what you didn’t want us to see.”

Varian drew in his breath.