Violet Made of Thorns (Violet Made of Thorns #1)(2)
And now that Cyrus has returned, my reputation will only get worse.
The din outside rises and falls with cheers. I barely need to glance at the window to know the royal caravan is inside the city. The court has been scheming over Cyrus’s homecoming practically since he left. King Emilius has grown more sickly, and Cyrus is expected to ascend to the throne before the end of the year. The time to make an attempt for his favor is now.
My teeth grind. That goes for me, too.
* * *
Seven years ago, Sighted Mistress Felicita—stars guide her soul—uttered her final prophecy:
“The land will bloom red with blood and roses and war. The prince—his heart will be damnation or salvation. His choice may save us all. His bride—it is up to her! A curse, a curse, accursed curse—gods, be wary—”
And that was all before she died. A maidservant who attended her sickbed claims the Seer’s mouth was frozen wide, her fist clenched by her neck, as if she had been fighting against someone in order to speak. Even in death, they couldn’t uncurl her body.
The kingdom plunged into paranoia. Was Felicita heralding the end of Auveny? The end of the world? Why was Prince Cyrus the catalyst? I became the new Seer after her death, but I was just a child then, a waif play-acting in silk, confused as everyone else. I never dreamed of what Felicita described.
My lack of answers didn’t endear me to anyone.
We sought aid from Seers serving in neighboring lands and warned them in turn, but even they couldn’t sense any coming omens. The grandmotherly Seer of Balica had us consider that perhaps—if Felicita wasn’t simply fever-mad—it meant that whatever she saw was far in the future. We had time to prepare.
And so, with every new season, every gala, every visiting dignitary, the kingdom has held its breath, hoping for Cyrus to fall in love. Felicita’s prophecy was clear enough here: the future rests in the prince’s heart, his choice, his bride.
In seven years, Cyrus hasn’t chosen anyone. A sinister prophecy on his shoulders and he’s decided to be picky.
But he can only stall for so long.
I head to the palace to witness the results of his tour myself. It’s a short walk, thanks to the bridge connecting my tower’s entrance to the north end of the palace grounds. Without it, I’d have to trek down two hundred stairs to the tower’s base, sitting far below on the banks of the river Julep. The Seer’s Tower is a gnarled relic of the Fairywood that once covered the continent—grown, not built, so it was never crafted for practicality.
Tales say that one of the first Seers drew the walls out of the ground and raised them high so that she could live among the stars. Feats like that used to be common, supposedly, when the Fairywood was wide, nations were few, and the land seeped magic. I might not have believed it if I didn’t sometimes dream of long-past threads—of times when trees were taller than mountains and canopies were lit with fairies and we humans weren’t the cleverest creatures wandering the forests.
Today, the Seer’s Tower is simply out of place. It juts into the sky like a fang, a trunk of petrified vines rising from the riverbanks, stark green against the developed city. A breeze tangles through my robes as I cross the bridge away from it. The views of the Sun Capital disappear behind the marble berth of the palace and its gold-tipped spires. I pass through a set of gates, and the gardens unfold before me: a patchwork of neat flowerbeds, carved fountains, and ornamental trees.
On the way, I receive a few greetings: a quick bow or curtsy, along with a murmur of “Sighted Mistress”—others know that I don’t care for formalities. Stealing down a narrow caretaker’s trail on tiptoes, between the hedge maze and a row of newly trimmed begonias, I arrive at one of the palace’s back entrances with only a bit of dirt on my slippers.
Inside, every room and hallway is filled with chatter. A frown stitches itself across my face; I’m troubled by what I overhear. What I don’t overhear.
I ascend the staircase to the royal living quarters and the conversations fade away. The guards outside Cyrus’s rooms look uneasy as I approach, but they don’t stop me.
I throw open the double doors to his bedroom.
“Do not let her in—Violet, leave.”
My eyes land on Cyrus by his wardrobe. The prince is dressed, mostly. And—ugh—handsomer than before.
Cyrus Lidine of Auveny is cut from the cloth of storybook dreams: dashing, well-read, witty if he deigns to speak to you, and beautiful even without fairy glamours. He could make a sack look fashionable, and his smile is responsible for more fainting spells than the summer heat.
Now at the wane of his nineteenth year, he’s filled out his height, muscle smoothing out the angles of his adolescence, his clothes no longer pinching at junctures, since he’s done growing. Color has returned to his cheeks, once porcelain-pale after a bout of childhood illness. He’s shed his boyishness with a fresh cut of his copper hair.
But some things never change, including the disdainful gaze he levels at me as I do not leave. These months apart haven’t tempered the loathing between us.
A lifetime apart wouldn’t.
“You can’t come barging in here—” Cyrus starts.
“And yet I just did,” I murmur, glancing around the room. I’m the only other person here, which is a problem. The bed is unrumpled. His bath seems empty. I saw no retinue downstairs, no court ladies huddled around some latest addition to Sun Capital society. So it begs the question: “Where is she?”