Brambles: A Thorn Short Story, Intisar Khanani [popular ebook readers .txt] 📗

this reminder that I am not alone, that there are allies and friends around me, whether I can see them or not, from this kindly wind to the boy who helped me up at the foot of the stairs.

“I hope we will meet again,” I say, wiping my cheeks. The wind only rustles around me again. It has no words to answer, but it flutters along beside me as I make my way out of the woods, and leaves me only as I near the gates.

I whisper a goodbye after it, certain it understands, and hurry to the stables. It’s foolish, perhaps, for it’s the first place my brother will come when he returns. But I must ask someone, and there is the young woman who generally looks after my horse. Redna is her name.

“Please,” I say as she steps out of an empty stall, a pitchfork in her hands. “Do you know where the girl is—the one whom Valka blamed yesterday?”

Redna is tall and tanned, her brown hair always braided back, and her plain features usually smiling. Now, though, she studies me silently, then shakes her head. “Can’t say, Highness.”

“I just—I wanted to make sure she was safe.”

Redna’s brows rise, and then she smiles. “She is, Highness. We all put in to give her some money, and she left before the sun set yesterday. Can’t say where she went, though I’m sure someone knows. No good letting that information out, if you know what I mean.”

I do. I wouldn’t want my brother to be able to track her down either. “I’m glad, then,” I say.

Redna reaches out and gently plucks a leaf from my hair. “You’d best go on, Highness.”

I blink at her, taken aback by the care in her actions coupled with the dismissal in her words.

She gestures with the leaf toward the back of the stables. “That way to the kitchens. If your brother comes in behind you, it’s best not to be here.”

“The kitchens?” I repeat.

“You’ll be hungry,” Redna says, letting the leaf fall and turning once more to the stall. “And I don’t know that I’ve heard of your brother stopping into the kitchens of his own accord.”

She’s right. That is the realm of servants, and my brother would never deign to set foot there. But I cannot imagine it will be a place for me, either.

“Go on,” Redna says, flapping her hand at me.

I mumble my thanks and take her advice, following the servants’ path from the back of the stables around the hall to the kitchen. It’s a noisy, warm place, filled with conversation that dies at the sight of me.

“Highness?” a woman asks, tall and well-built, her work dress patched but sturdy, her front dusted with flour. “Can I help you?”

I glance around. The remaining servants all watch me in return. Perhaps she is the head cook. I have never met her before.

“I wondered if I—well, I’m a little hungry.”

“I can have some food sent up to your room for you,” the cook says, her tone uncertain.

“I—yes, but . . .” But my brother will easily find me there. “I wondered if I could just stay here for a few minutes? By the fire, perhaps?”

The cook looks at me with dawning comprehension, but there is no pity in that look. Instead, her eyes sharpen and she says, her voice steely, “You’ll always be welcome to warm yourself here, princess. Dara, set a stool there for Her Highness and get her some fresh bread rolls and a pat of butter.”

“Thank you,” I say, but the cook just waves a hand at me, not unlike Redna, and turns back to her work.

I perch on the stool that the girl, Dara, moves near the fire for me, and accept with gratitude the plate of bread and butter she delivers. Around me, the kitchen staff fall back into the rhythm of their work, and after a time, as I finish my first roll and begin on my second, the conversation starts up again.

I lean against the warm stones behind me, resting my head as I watch the servants preparing the midday meal. Dara catches my eye and flashes me a smile before returning to her chopping. Cook brandishes a large wooden spoon at another girl who, apparently, should know better what size pieces to chop an onion into.

When I turn to set my plate down, I find another one has been placed there, a single slice of honey cake set upon it. A special treat, one that no doubt the queen might have had set aside for herself. I look up again, but everyone is busy, leaving me to wonder at their kindness.

I pick up the plate with a sense of hope. There are consequences to silence and consequences to speaking. I do not regret speaking up to defend the serving girl, or stopping Valka before she could finish walking the path from prank to murder, though every action has its consequences.

But, as I sit with my honey cake in the warmth of the hall kitchen, I know that my mother was wrong. I may have fallen, fallen from my family and, no doubt, from the court’s favor—but I am far from alone.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed meeting Alyrra, and will check out her novel-length story in Thorn, a retelling of the Grimm’s “The Goose Girl,” that picks up three years after this tale ends.

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A princess with two futures. A destiny all her own.

Between her cruel family and the contempt she faces at court, Princess Alyrra has always longed to escape the confines of her royal life. But when she’s betrothed to the powerful prince Kestrin, Alyrra embarks on a journey to his land with little hope for a better future.

When a