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.
