Page 2 of Once Upon a Forbidden Desire

Usually, the curse means I simply stay inside the grounds until dawn has safely passed. But sometimes, I wake early and can’t settle until I’ve pushed both my luck and the walls of my cage as far as they’ll go.

The first day of the Thrice-Held Ball was such an occasion. I spent the pre-dawn hours in the wilds of the Golden Wood beyond Bloodthorn Manor, beating my mood into the earth with each footstep. Today, I would have to help my stepsisters prepare for a ball that I was forbidden to attend and be reminded of all the ways in which I was lacking.

I wasn’t angry, I told myself sternly, squashing the rebellious feeling down. The ball would probably be deadly dull anyway. Even if I loved dancing. It wasn’t my stepsisters’ fault. I was grateful for what I had, for food and shelter and family that cared for me, in their way. Some of them, at least. Many couldn’t boast so much. I had no right to yearn for more. I stomped as I made each point. Healthful morning exercise and all that.

With only a few minutes to spare before dawn, I turned back toward the boundary. A whirr of dark wings caught my attention. The bird followed my path, flitting from tree to tree beside me. A tui, iridescent blue-black feathers sparkling in the pre-dawn, its crisp white throat tuft bobbing. They were common in the Golden Wood, though I’d heard that hadn’t been the case before King Tawhiri’s rule. The Wood changes to reflect its ruler, they say.

Other birds called in the still air, but the tui didn’t join them with its distinctive song. It moved instead with odd deliberateness, approaching the same garden wall as me tree-by-tree in careful stages, until?—

“No!” I gasped, too late. The tui landed on the deceptively smooth-barked tree that marked Bloodthorn Manor’s entrance, and all the tree’s thorns sprang from their retracted sheaths. The tui squawked and took flight—or tried to. The branches had already closed around it, forming an ever-tightening cage, long cruel thorns turning inward toward their prey.

I sprinted the distance to the bloodthorn and slammed my hand against the trunk. The thorns retracted around my hand just in time, forming a palm-shaped hollow. “Stop!”

The tree shuddered, and I could feel its reluctance to obey, the desire for blood that its maker had impressed upon it.

“I am a daughter of the house, and you may not hurt me! Stop!” I cried again.

With a final shiver, the thorns stopped tightening, but they didn’t retract. I peered up through interlaced thorns and branches. The bird huddled in a cage of thorns, trapped, but at least none had yet penetrated its flesh. The dark eyes of the tui met mine.

“Let it go,” I told the tree.

The tree ignored me.

I shouted at the tree for a bit, and it pretended not to hear me. The bloodthorn only barely respected the authority I’d claimed over it. It wasn’t going to do anything more, and I knew as soon as I removed my hand from the trunk, the tree would leap back into action. It was hungry; the local wildlife had long since learnt to give it a wide berth.

Dawn was nearly upon me, and I could feel the tether in my chest beginning to grow tight. But if I left the tree to cross the bounds, it would kill the bird before I could make it back.

“Fool bird,” I grumbled up at the tui, tucking my skirts up in a way that would outrage my stepmother’s sense of propriety and starting to unlace my boots. I kept a palm against the trunk the entire time.

I climbed, the tether in my chest growing tighter, hotter. It was slow going, the thorns retracting sullenly as I reached for each handhold, as if the tree were making a point of being as unhelpful as possible. It was Lord Bloodthorn’s creation, and it was just as resentful of me as he was. But oaths bind fae and their magic, and the tree could not harm those who belonged to the manor, no matter how much it might want to in my case.

When I reached the branch that held the tui at its far end, I thought the tree might give in, but no, it continued to make me fight for every inch. Obstinate bloody thing.

“Hang on,” I told the bird.

I scarcely see what else I could be doing at this moment.

I nearly fell off the branch. The voice had sounded in my head, deep and resonant, prickling with sarcasm. A magic-touched creature, then. They weren’t so uncommon in Faerie, though I would have thought a wyrling would have more sense than to alight on a bloodthorn.

“A bit of gratefulness wouldn’t go astray, since I’m rescuing you,” I said as I eased my body along the branch.

A very slow rescue, I might note.

“Any more helpful comments before I leave the tree to eat you?”

The tui said nothing. The branch grew thin as I neared his thorny cage, trembling under my weight, and the stinging in my chest had become a burning, a line of fire spreading out from my heart. Tears filled my eyes as the first rays of dawn lapped over the garden wall.

Even when I reached out to touch the thorny cage, the tree reacted sluggishly, so that I had to wrap my hand around each thorn and force the tree to withdraw them one by one. By the time I’d forced a big enough gap, I was panting and weeping, my limbs shaking with pain, but at last it was done. The tui darted free.

As soon as the tui took flight, the bloodthorn relaxed, all its thorns smoothing out. I dropped to the soft earth, my knees threatening to give out, and stumbled across the bounds in blind agony to collapse in the meadow. The pain slowly ebbed, and I gasped myself back to awareness.

A beak filled my field of vision. What ails you, my lady?

I yelped and sat up. The tui flew out of the way to perch on a nearby tree stump.

You are human, aren’t you?

“Well spotted. Also, you’re welcome for the rescue.” My arms and bare feet were dirty and scratched. I got up stiffly and stomped back over the boundary to my boots. I couldn’t help tensing as I did so, even knowing the curse wouldn’t reactivate until tomorrow’s dawn.

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