Free Princess of Thorns by Unknown Page A

offer little comfort. I need to know what Ror is hiding, what secret he’s keeping tucked inside that warrior’s knot of his.
    I decide to get it out of the boy, one way or another, but the hour grows late—insects sing their night songs, and the world beyond the cliff is devoured by darkness—and Ror doesn’t return. I wait as long as I dare, but finally decide he must have become lost and prepare to go hunting for him.
    I’ve just finished fashioning a torch from a thin log and dry moss from the limbs of the pin oaks when I hear him scream.

Chapter Seven

Aurora
    I wake to darkness so complete it swallows my gasp and stuffs it deep into its pockets.
    I lift my head from the stones of the bank and shift my weight on the underwater ledge, stomach lurching. I can’t believe I fell asleep—I’m lucky I didn’t slip into the water and drown—but there’s no other explanation for closing my eyes on a forest filled with moody gray light and opening them to blackness.
    I pull my knees in and cross my arms over my chest beneath the water, feeling my nakedness in a new and uncomfortable way. Ever since those days in Ekeeta’s dungeon, I have loathed the darkness with a passion exceeded only by my hatred of biting beetles, roaches, and anything else black and crawly with crunchy outsides and liquid innards.
    My mother’s fairy blessings have made me nearly fearless, but not even magic can banish my irrational terror of tiny crawling things.
    The thought of chancing upon a Skittery Small electrifies my nerves as I reach out to search for my clothes on the bank. But it’s not a crawly thing racing across my hand that makes me scream, it’s the brush of my fingers against stiff feathers and the guttural hiss that follows.
    I scream and the creature glock-glocks and hisses again, a warning echoed from the rocks all around me. I kick to the center of the pool, heart slamming against my ribs, staring wide-eyed into the night. After a moment, I’m able to make out hunchbacked shadows, denser concentrations of black that pitch back and forth on the rocks, stretching their wings, bobbing their bald heads up and down as they grumble and hiss.
    The vultures. Ekeeta’s vultures. They have to be hers. There’s no other explanation for why the creatures have tracked me down to keep watch on my bath. Normal vultures don’t hunt people—they don’t hunt at all, preferring to scavenge for their meals—and they roost at night. I knew that even before Niklaas reminded me that—
    “They don’t see well in the dark.” The pulse racing in my throat slows.
    If they can’t see me clearly, that means Ekeeta can’t, either. Ekeeta’s magic allows her to see through the eyes of animals, but her spells don’t give the creatures supernatural powers. Theses vultures can’t see or hear any better than an unmagicked vulture, which means they can’t be transmitting a clear picture of my location. There’s still a chance Ekeeta doesn’t know where I am, a chance that Niklaas and I can escape.
    No sooner have I thought his name than I hear him calling mine.
    “Ror!” He sounds panicked. He must have heard me scream. “Ror!”
    “I’m all right!” I swim hard for the bank. Torchlight bobs beyond the rocks. Niklaas will be here in a moment, and I must be dressed when he does.
    “Shoo! Get out of here!” I splash water at the creature closest to my clothes and it hops to the side with a nasty growl. Seizing the opportunity, I haul myself up onto the bank and fumble for my clothes.
    My pants stick and cling to my wet skin, and the vulture I frightened away returns to peck at my legs as I bind my breasts, but by the time Niklaas appears atop the boulder overlooking the pool—sword in one hand, torch in the other, illuminating the vultures surrounding me like beggars at the royal gates—I am pulling my borrowed armor over my linen shirt and reaching for my staff.
    “By the Lands …” Niklaas pauses to take in the alarming