King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“No?” she asks. “You object? You’d like to offer a proposal? Your father is my guardian. You should go and discuss the matter with him.”

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. None of the others made me this way. Not Serra leading me astray as a child almost, not Sally bought and paid for, nor Renar’s serving maids, ladies-at-court, bored wives of nobles, comely peasant girls, not the ones on the road that the Brothers took and shared, none of them.

“I want you,” I say. The words are hard, they have awkward shapes, they leave my mouth clumsy and ill-formed.

“How romantic,” she says. Her scorn withers me. “You like me because I’m pleasing to your eye.”

“You please more than my eye, lady,” I say.

“Would you kill Sareth?” she asks. For a moment I think she’s asking me to do it. Then I remember she’s not like me.

“Maybe…does she please my father?” I don’t say does he love her; he has never loved. And I don’t lie. If it would hurt my father to lose her, then yes, maybe.

“No. I don’t think anything pleases Olidan. I can’t even imagine what would. Though he did laugh that day when you killed Galen,” she says.

“I might kill Sareth in case you’re wrong or trying to protect her,” I say. I don’t know why I can’t lie to her. “But you’re probably telling the truth. My father has found little in this world that doesn’t disappoint him.”

She steps towards me and although she’s coming closer her eyes get more distant. I can smell her scent, lilacs and white musk.

“You hit me, Jorg,” she says.

“You were going to stab me.”

“You hit me with my mother’s vase.” Her voice is dreamy. “And broke it.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. And the strange truth is that I am.

“I wasn’t made to be this way.” She’s reaching for something hidden in the folds of her riding dress, under fawn suede. “I wasn’t meant to be the prize princes compete for, or the container to grow their babies in. Damn that. Would you want to be a token? Or made just to grow babies and raise children?”

“I’m not a woman,” I say. It’s just my lips filling the pause while the questions, or rather the new images they paint of her, bounce around my mind.

I see her pull the knife from her skirts. A long blade like those for slotting through chinks in armour when you have your foe pinned, only not so sturdy. This one would break if the man twisted and might not reach the heart. I’m not supposed to see it. I’m supposed to be watching her eyes, her mouth, the heave of her breasts, and I am, but often I see more than I’m supposed to.

“Can’t I want something more?” she asks.

“Wanting is free.” I can’t stop watching her. My glance touches the knife only now and then. Her eyes don’t see me. I don’t think she knows what her hands are doing, the right gripping a hilt, the left on her belly, clawed like she wants to tear her way in.

“Do I have to be a monster? Do I have to be a new Queen of Red to—”

I catch her wrist as she drives the knife at me. She is stronger than I imagined. We both look down at my hand, dark on her white wrist, and the thin blade quivering with its point an inch from my groin.

“A low blow.” I twist her arm but she drops the knife before I make her.

“What?” She stares at her hand and mine, mouth open.

“You’re making a habit of trying to stab me,” I say. The bitterness rises in me. I taste it.

“I killed our child, Jorg.” Her laugh is too high, too wild. “I killed it. I swallowed a sour pill from Saraem Wic. She lives here.” Katherine whips her head around, unfocused, as if expecting to see the crone among the trees.

I know of Saraem Wic. I’ve seen her gather her herbs and fungi. I crept to her hut once, almost close enough to look in, but I didn’t want to go closer. It smelled of burned dog. “What are you talking about?” I ask. She looks beautiful. She curses being a woman but here I am forgetting even the knife on the ground, the knife she almost buried in me, forgetting it because of the curve of her neck, the tremble of her lips. Want makes fools of men.

“You hit me and then you took me. You put your seed in me.” She spits. It misses my face but drips in my hair and wets my ear. “And I drove it out. With a sour pill and a paste that burned.”

She grins and I can see the hatred now. She sees me clear for once, head down, hair framing her, eyes dark. She shows her teeth. She dares me.

I remember her lying there in the sapphire pool of her dress. Senseless. The voice from the briar, maybe mine, maybe Corion’s, or something of both, told me to kill her. My father would give that advice. The hardest line. Want makes fools of men. But I didn’t kill her. The voice told me to rape her too. To just take her. But I only touched her hair. What I wanted couldn’t be taken.

“Nothing to say, Jorg?” She spits again. This time it’s in my face. I blink. Warm spittle cools on my cheek. She wants me angry. She doesn’t care what I might do. “I bled your baby out. Before he was even big enough to see.”

And I don’t know what to say. What words would serve? I wouldn’t believe me. I have to believe my memory—things have been taken from it in the past, but never added—but who else would give Jorg of Ancrath the benefit of the doubt? Not me.

I fold Katherine’s arm up behind her and walk her through the graveyard, back the way I came. There are white marks where my fingers touched her skin. Did I grip her that hard? Imagination has put my hands on her many times, but this feels as though I’ve broken something precious and I’m carrying the pieces, knowing they can’t be reassembled.

“You’re going to do it again?” The anger has leaked from her. She sounds confused.

“No,” I say.

We walk on. Brambles catch at her dress. Her riding boots leave heel marks a blind man could follow. “I’ve left my horse tied,” she says. This isn’t the Katherine I left on the floor that day. That Katherine was sharp, clever; this one is dazed, as though just waking.

“I’m going to marry the Prince of Arrow,” she says, twisting to look at me over her shoulder.

“I thought you didn’t want to be a prize,” I say.

She looks away. “We can’t always have what we want.”

I need her. I wonder if I can have what I need.

We walk in silence until Red Kent steps out of the undergrowth before us. My sword is strapped over his shoulder. “King Jorg.” He nods. “My lady.”

“Take her to Sir Makin,” I say. I let her arm go.

Kent gestures for Katherine to lead the way along the trail he’s been guarding. “No kind of harm is to come to her, Kent. Watch Row and Rike particularly. Tell them you’ve my permission to cut from them any part that touches her. And move camp. We’ve left a trail from there to here.” I walk away.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

I stop and turn, wiping her spit from my cheek. “Who found you?”

“What?”

“Who found you after I hit you?” I ask. “A man was with you when you recovered your senses.”