Page 2 of Stolen Thorn Bride

“Because”—Kasia prayed for patience—“no matter how much you might wish differently, you are not actually a pirate.” Not in the strictest sense of the term, perhaps. But not for lack of motivation or inspiration. “And also, that was just a story.” A story Kasia wished fervently the blacksmith hadn’t decided to entertain her siblings with. “Real pirates would never use fire—it would burn down their ship, and then where would they be?” She leaned in close to Ellery and narrowed her eyes. “Drowned, that’s where. With fishes nibbling on their hair and seaweed growing between their toes.” She tried to look as though she knew what she was talking about.

Ellery subjected her sister to the “why must you ruin all my fun” eye roll. “You don’tknowthat,” she protested, then shoved her nose in the air. “But very well. I will make him be a mage instead. Then I can lock him up in a dungeon forever. And even if he tells me what he did with my horse, I will nevereverlet him out.”

“Ellery.” Kasia crouched down to look her little sister in the eye, suppressing the twinge of fear that always accompanied such conversations. “We do not talk that way about mages.”

“But why not?” Ellery clearly needed to take out her ire on someone, and in her present mood, anyone at all would do. “Papa says they’re evil.”

Papa says.

Kasia sighed and tweaked Ellery’s curly brown pigtails. Crooked, like everything else in the house, but when did she have time to set them straight? Her own wavy, pale blonde hair hadn’t been washed in days.

“Mages are just people, Ell. And Papa has to say that because he’s in the army, and the king doesn’t like mages. But we know there are kind and lovely mages, like Gianessa.”

Ellery stared back, unblinking. “How do you know she’s kind? Maybe she steals children. Maybe she turns people into goats.”

Kasia certainly knew a few people who might be improved by spending time as a goat.

“Gianessa does not turn people into anything,” she replied emphatically, unwilling to share her thoughts with a sister who would twist them beyond recognition and then announce them to the entire world at the first possible opportunity. “Besides, she is my employer, and I like her. She’s also the reason you have food on the table, so perhaps you should consider being nicer in the future.”

Ellery flounced away in a huff, muttering under her breath. No doubt the child was preparing some other gruesome fate for whoever she found to have stolen her toy horse. Which, in the end, would prove to have been merely lost, because Ell had a tendency to flit from one thing to another and forget where she’d left it. Much like their mother…

An unfair thought, Kasia reminded herself, as she picked up her bucket and headed to the well behind their tiny house.

Just outside the back door, in the almost equally tiny garden plot, seven-year-old Liam looked up from the dirt with his usual angelic smile.

“I found a sprout, Kasi! And a worm!”

Sometimes she worried about Liam. He was unfailingly kind, peaceful, and never seemed to get into trouble. In fact, he would probably come in from rolling in the garden without the smallest speck of dirt on his clothes. Liam was as calm as his sister was tempestuous, and between the two of them, Kasia felt as though she was never quite certain which way was up.

“Must be nearly time for planting,” Kasia told him, with a smile that didn’t go past her lips. And itwastime, she knew. Spring was at the door, which meant even more chores she didn’t have time for. But she would have to make time, somehow. Ellery and Liam were too young to be much help, and fourteen-year-old Rordyn already worked far too many hours at the apothecary.

So it was up to her. Just as it had been since she was thirteen…

But there was no use dwelling on that. No use wishing Papa had gotten himself released from the army when Mama left them. He’d been too grieved, too lost in his pain to manage the chaos left in her wake, so he’d retreated to the only thing he knew.

Which meant he was away at Hanselm for most of the year, training other Garimoran soldiers against the possibility of war.

Kasia certainly hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But she’d heard rumors that King Melger was swelling the ranks of his armies, preparing for who knew what. An invasion?

It was more than she had time to think about. More than she could spend the energy to be afraid of. There were far too many other fears much closer to hand, and besides, she had washing up to do and then a job to get to. A job where she would spend her day hoping fervently that Ellery and Liam could manage not to burn the house down in her absence.

* * *

Kasia’s homesat at the end of a lane not far outside the village of Merivale, which consisted of a few dozen houses clustered around a town square. Her walk to work took her past the blacksmith and the apothecary, plus a stable, an inn, and a mostly empty shop where general goods were sold whenever they were available. In the far northwest corner of Garimore, towns were few and far between, so those folks hardy enough to live there had learned to make do without much in the way of luxuries.

Once Kasia passed the stable, Gianessa’s cottage was only a brisk fifteen-minute walk down the rutted dirt road that led north out of the village. Sometimes she jogged to make it go faster, or, on days like today, she dragged her feet a bit, because those moments were the only peace she was allowed.

True, it would make her life simpler if her employer lived closer to the village, but Kasia could understand why she’d chosen to distance herself—in Garimore, mages slept with one eye open, if they slept at all.

Granted, Gianessa wasn’t much of a mage. She lived alone in her cottage, making remedies and doing whatever she could to aid her neighbors with her small magics. They, in turn, shunned her officially, because that was what Garimore required.

But when their children were sick, or they found themselves afraid of something? They showed up at her door, shamefaced and unwilling to look anyone in the eye.

The injustice of it infuriated Kasia, but Gianessa would always just chuckle under her breath in that absent way she had and go on about her business.

Kasia, too, came in for her share of shunning since she started keeping the older woman’s garden and feeding her animals. Even Rordyn frowned disparagingly when Gianessa’s name came up, but then, he frowned at everything. He also knew perfectly well that they couldn’t survive on the pittance he was paid to sweep up and run errands for the apothecary. In many ways, it was only Gianessa’s generosity that kept them afloat, and Kasia was grateful for it.

Her walk ended beneath the eaves of the forest, where the mage’s cottage sprawled beneath a stand of giant oaks. It was a nonsensical, rambling sort of house—with eight rooms, four doors, round windows, and crooked chimneys—and Kasia loved it. Or perhaps she mostly loved Gianessa, who was given to muttering inapplicable advice, singeing the ends of her hair, and frequently forgetting to eat. She was absentminded but kind, and she accepted Kasia without question. Even thanked her whenever she remembered to do so, because while the mage woman’s kindness permitted Kasia and her family to eat, it was Kasia’s efforts that prevented Gianessa from going hungry as well. She kept Gianessa’s garden and her animals healthy and thriving, which aided the mage in more ways than one.

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