Tomorrow she would see him again. Tomorrow she would climb the tower stair and he would be there waiting, a monster no longer. She had changed over the years, though in that respect the curse had been kind—she looked perhaps two-and-thirty, no more. Her skin still pale and fresh; her hair still glossy. But what of Ash? The long punishment must surely have taken a toll on him. He had been forced to endure the unendurable.

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, lifting one gown after another from the chest. They were layered with lavender sprigs; the smell was wholesome and sweet. “It doesn’t matter how you look. Only that you will be free. Only that I can put my arms around you at last, at long last. Only that I can say I love you face-to-face.”

Ah! Here it was. The gown Caisín had made at her special request: a simple style, fashioned in finespun wool dyed willow green, edged with darker ribbon. It was twin to the one young Lily had worn on the day she tried to wade to the island and nearly drowned, and Ash ran down from the tower to save her. The day she first felt his arms around her. In her memory, that day shone bright. It was innocence and first love and summertime. It was joy and awakening. She was not that bright-eyed sixteen-year-old anymore. But she would wear the gown, in honor of that girl and her long-ago dreams.

She draped the garment over the chest, ready for the morning. It was not yet time for the story. Still day, still the endless day. But she climbed to her high window anyway, to gaze out over the trees and listen to the sad voice from the tower. To shape in her mind the words she would speak to him later, as dusk fell on his last day in the Tower of Thorns.

• • •

Once upon a time there was a girl named Lily, who was the apple of her father’s eye . . .

38

Blackthorn

Neither of us slept much that night. Grim’s big, clever hands were busy with his bundle of reeds and his sharp knife, working minor miracles. As for me, my body was protesting after the day’s unusual activity, and my mind was teeming with misgivings, unanswered questions, and—though I didn’t like to admit it even to myself—hideous visions of how this whole thing might go wrong. I must have been crazy ever to agree to it. Two days of training were hardly going to equip me to defeat a monster, even if that monster had once been a man. Any one of Geiléis’s guards would have beaten me in a fight within the count of ten. Five, most likely. And they were men.

We didn’t talk. Not much. I kept the fire going and made a brew or two. Grim sat in the light of two lanterns, narrowing his eyes over the intricate work. Raven, dove, cat, fish, that was what he’d planned. Only when the night had worn on until it was nearly dawn, and I lay on my bed watching him through half-closed eyes, I saw that the last creature was not going to be a fish after all. Unless he was so tired that he had forgotten a fish does not have four legs.