The night was cool and Briar was free.

She closed her eyes as Phillip worked Samson down the road at a steady walk so as not to risk him rolling his ankle in the dark. The moonless sky showed stars at least, gave the trees on either side of the road casts of blue and onyx, and the air smelled of early summer greenery, tilled earth, and damp leaves.

That alone would have been enough to send Briar reeling out into the radiant ether, just being out of the castle. But Phillip sat behind her, his whole body encasing her as they rode, his arms resting on the curve of her hips, his face bent over her shoulder—

Perhaps it had been a blessing they had not seen each other often these past weeks. It was distressingly hard to think of much other than him when he was around.

Briar remembered how inseparable Frieda and Ben had been once they had admitted their feelings for one another. How their trio would often dissolve into Briar finding reasons to excuse herself before the pressure between the other two snapped right in front of her; how Frieda and Ben would come to performances looking a little more disheveled than usual, and Briar had tried hard—well, maybe not that hard—not to mercilessly torment them.

She completely understood now.

It was actually annoying, this feeling. She had things to do, didn’t her heart realize? She was on her way to Hausach for the first time in months and she should be thinking of what she would say to Frieda and Ben—

That did sober her. Aggressively.

She went rigid against Phillip, and he noted it with the way he shifted closer, his arms tightening until one draped across her waist.

Which only served to reignite those blasted feelings again, and that was how she spent the trip, jerked back and forth between worry about the impending arrival and the excruciating nearness of this man at her back.

Fully exhausting to have feelings.

Infinitely easier to merely sing about them.

Do not break into song, she begged herself, and Samson trotted down the main street of Hausach.

All the buildings save for one were dark, the windows of the tavern glowing softly from the fireplace within. Bodies moved against the windows, laughter and conversation peppered the night, and there was a gentle melody within, a lute being played, a voice ringing out in song.

Briar recognized that lute, that voice, immediately.

Ben.

Phillip halted Samson at a hitching post. He started to slide down first. Briar heaved her leg over and dropped, and Phillip made a shocked noise and leapt down after her, but she was in a panic.

Ben was in there, and that meant Frieda was, too, and Briar’s focus narrowed to those two points.

“Briar?” Phillip quickly tied off Samson, but she was walking already, twisting back to give him a powerless look and then she was off, dragged toward the tavern, her tavern, as if in a dream.

“Briar!”

She hurried up the steps and pushed inside.

Nothing had changed.

If she stood on the threshold and held perfectly still, it had not been several weeks, and nothing had changed.

The same dented, ancient tables were stained by ale and food. The same massive stone fireplace scented the air with woodsmoke and ash. The same crowd of the same farmers, craftsmen, soldiers even, and servers packed the space, the latter expertly scurrying through the room with steins of beer and bowls of whatever goulash the keeper’s wife had made that day.

And there was Ben, in his usual place back by the bar, strumming on his lute and swaying around the room as he sang, eyes sparkling, smile wide on his pale face. His dark hair was held back by a piece of twine, his lean frame making for easy movement.

Briar stood frozen, watching him, and a weight sank in her stomach.

To the room, he would look joyful, and they were clearly buying it; their energy was effusive.

But she knew him. And she knew that smile was stiff, those eyes sunken.

Briar looked down, at the spot where Frieda sat—

It was empty.

Well. Ben first, then.

Briar felt a hand on her back. She twisted to look up at Phillip, thanking the stars above that they didn’t look out of place—him in his simple linen shirt and pants, her in her old kirtle. No one would suspect who she was, who she had become—and no one would suspect him, either.

A cry rang out. “Briar Rose!”

She couldn’t help but smile. It cut across her face so large it ached, sparking tears in her eyes as she saw Rolf, the tavernkeeper, a massive, burly man who had once been a blacksmith and a soldier and still had the frame to prove both.

Ben’s head snapped toward the cry. Briar was yanked out of her excitement by the way his eyes went from Rolf to…her.

Mid-song, Ben didn’t falter. But his face went wide momentarily, the look of a man seeing a ghoul.

He turned his back to her, singing to the other side of the room.

Rolf rounded the bar and wove through the crowd, limping slightly, an injury earned from a brief spurt of conflict between Austria and Bavaria more than a decade ago.

Briar forced her smile back on as Rolf neared her, arms open, and she pushed herself up on her toes to hug him.

“Where in heaven and hell have you been off to, lass?”

She sank back to her feet. “I—” Oh, what lie would even make sense? She had not planned for this. She’d had dozens of pretend conversations with Frieda and Ben, but none with Rolf or anyone else.

Phillip came up alongside her and extended his hand to Rolf. “Hallo, I’m—”

Rolf grabbed Phillip’s hand and assertively clapped his shoulder, nearly throwing him off his feet, all the while giving Briar a look of impish realization. “You went and got yourself married, Briar Rose?”

Her mouth went dry. Well, it wasn’t far off from the truth. She shrugged and smiled, and the room was warm, but she blushed. “It often happens, I’m told.”

Around them, the crowd was still besotted by Ben’s song, voices overlapping to sing along.

Phillip extricated himself from Rolf and, rubbing his arm, he gave her a bemused smirk.

Rolf bellowed a laugh and clapped Phillip on the shoulder, again, and he staggered, again, and it was nothing short of hilarious to see Phillip’s solid frame soundly manhandled by Rolf.

“I don’t suppose you’ve come back to resume your place here?” Rolf asked, having to nearly shout over the rise in the chorus. “Benedikt could surely use your skill.”

“Unfortunately, no. This is a passing visit. I—”

Rolf had said Benedikt could surely use your skill.

No mention of Frieda.

A strange tightening pulled in Briar’s gut. “Do you know where Frieda is? I was hoping to talk to her.”

Rolf scratched his shorn black hair and gave a frustrated sigh. “She left not long after you did. Thought she’d joined up with you, honestly. Left poor Benedikt to wrangle this crowd on his own.”

Briar stared at Rolf. Willing his words to coalesce.

Frieda had left, too?

Because…because of Briar?

No. She would not have left Ben. They were going to get married. Even without Briar, Frieda had a life here, she had a life and a future—she would not have left.

But Briar once had a life and a future here. And she had left.

“Well, take a seat.” Rolf jerked his head at the room. “I’ll bring you food, eh? And beer?”

He left without waiting for confirmation.

There were a few open booths, and Briar walked stiffly to one and sat so she could see the room. And Ben.

Phillip eased in across from her. His eyes were on her face, studying, and even through the din of the crowd, she heard him ask, “Who is Frieda?”

Who was Frieda?

Briar slumped on the bench.

Frieda was the first person she’d met in Hausach. The two of them had run wild as children, united in orphanhood—Briar with her aunts, Frieda as a ward who stayed with a tumble of children under the care of the church—and in their birthdays, a week apart. The forest was their sanctuary, where they would play out all sorts of games of fairy tale and fantasy, reenacting the stories they heard sung in the tavern. And as they grew, they began singing, making up their own songs, often terribly, and laughing at awful rhymes until they couldn’t breathe. Frieda was the one Briar snuck out to cry to when her aunts tried to cook but only succeeded in burning the spelt Briar had worked hard to buy; Frieda was the one Briar went to when she needed to talk about the world beyond Hausach, how one day, she would leave, and see the empire, and do more.

Frieda never talked like that, about the future. Until Briar realized the brewer’s son could play the lute, and she’d dragged him into their forest song rehearsals, and suddenly, they were a trio. But not a trio—they were Briar, then Ben and Frieda.

But they had been Briar and Frieda first.

“She was my sister” was all Briar could think to say.

Phillip’s brows bent inward. “Where would she have gone?”

Briar shook her head. “I don’t know. She—He’s done. Wait here.”

And she was up, barely hearing Phillip’s startled “Briar—” before she threw herself into the crowd.

Ben was making fast for the door at the rear of the tavern. He didn’t want to see her.

Well, that was really too bad for him.

A tangled knot of concern and anger drove her forward. She missed him, and Frieda, and she understood why they would be upset with her—but she needed them. Her friends. She was drowning in this new life and she needed them.

Briar shoved past a drunk patron and managed to grab Ben’s elbow right in the doorway.

He went rigid. Lute under one arm.

“Please,” Briar said. “I’ll buy you supper.”

He didn’t move.

“And ale, of course—that should have been a given.”

She watched him suck his teeth.

Finally, he gave her a tired, flat look.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “I haven’t eaten yet.”

They made their way back to the booth, Briar having to glance over her shoulder every few seconds to make sure Ben hadn’t changed his mind. But he was there. Then he was here, sliding into the empty bench, so Briar took a seat across from him, hip-to-hip with Phillip.

Ben laid his lute beside him, folded his hands on the table, and stared off into the tavern. Business was winding down, but groups remained, and in moments, Rolf returned with bowls of goulash and steins. Only two, though, not knowing Ben would be here; but Briar pushed hers to Ben.

“Keep it coming,” she said to Rolf. She had money to spare now, didn’t she? She had thought of sending bags of it down to Frieda and Ben, not flinching at stooping to buying their forgiveness; but she hadn’t wanted to insult them, or make them feel as though she was parading it before them.

Though, she didn’t actually have any of that money on her now, and she cut a look at Phillip, who motioned to the coin purse on his waist.

She would never stop being grateful for him.

Briar faced Ben, who was shoveling goulash into his mouth, his eyes already waiting to latch on to hers.

“To what do I owe the presence of our fair princess in this lowly place?” Ben asked around a mouthful of food.

Briar winced and cut a gaze around. No one was within earshot. “I wanted to see you.”

“Hmm.” Ben swallowed. “Well, you’ve seen me. So. Goodbye?”

“Ben.” She wanted to explain. Again. She had said in her letter to them that her aunts had forced her to the castle the day of her sixteenth birthday. Maleficent’s curse had taken hold that very night. And by the time she awoke, and the kingdom was free, she was a princess, she was under near constant watch, and she had no idea how to undo what had happened.

She’d explained everything in the letter she’d sent with the messenger. He knew it, so what would saying it again change?

There was only one other thing she could even think of to say. And it gutted her.

“Where is Frieda?”

Ben’s jaw worked. He dropped the spoon into the now-empty bowl and picked up his lute. “Been great seeing you, Bri, really—”

She leaned across the table and grabbed his arm. “Please. Sit. Please, Ben. What happened?”

“What happened?” he snapped, and Briar had never heard him this way, derisive and hurt. He was the sun, he was buoyancy and joy and jokes, always eager to do something foolish with her while Frieda chastised them for being reckless. “What happened is that I lost the two of you in the same week. What happened is that you two left me, without so much as a farewell.”

When Ben and Frieda had first admitted their feelings to one another, Briar had been insufferable. They had all been about twelve—well, Ben was older—but, looking back, Briar knew she had been an awful pain. She’d picked fights with Frieda, intentionally let secrets slip to embarrass the two of them. She’d been an utter nuisance, and she’d only realized why after about two months of that behavior while Ben and Frieda blushed at each other.

She was jealous.

Not of Ben—she loved Frieda, and she knew of women in Hausach who preferred other women to men, but she had never seen her friend in that way; and not of Frieda—she loved Ben, too, but she imagined being with him would be like trying to put out a fire with a lit torch, flame on flame, until they both burned out.

No, she was jealous of what Ben and Frieda had. Love. Such easy, natural love.

She’d admitted her jealousy to Frieda, finally, after Frieda had exploded at her over another petty slight. At the end of Briar’s childish explanation, Frieda had slapped her upside the head.

You’ll find it one day, too, you nitwit, she’d said with assumed confidence, as though Briar had been afraid the forest would run out of trees.

Frieda and Ben’s relationship shifted from being something Briar envied to being a beacon of what she would one day have.

And now she had it. She had Phillip, and he was every bit as made for her as Ben was for Frieda.

So seeing Ben alone, broken, ripped a jagged, messy hole in Briar’s heart, because she could not, in any reality, imagine what force would compel her to leave Phillip in the same way. So why had Frieda gone? She wouldn’t have. She…she wouldn’t have left. It made no sense.

“Frieda wouldn’t have left you,” Briar said, for lack of any explanation. “She wouldn’t have—”

“Well, she did. And you did, too. So again I say, goodbye.”

He was halfway to standing when he seemed to notice Phillip for the first time.

The tension around Ben vanished, his anger snapping into astonished recognition so roughly that he made a little wheezing noise.

Slowly, he sat back down. “You,” he said, eyes wide, face slack.

Phillip shifted on the bench. His chin dipped, as if he were bracing himself, as worry raced across his face, worry that this evening would be another onslaught of fawning over his deeds. And while Briar didn’t understand why he was so resistant to praise he had earned, she grabbed Phillip’s hand under the table.

“You’re—” Ben’s jaw wobbled. “You’re the Pain from Lorraine.”

That snapped Phillip’s head up. “What?”

Briar’s mind faltered. “What did you call—”

She looked at Phillip. Who did not seem at all confused by the name. In fact, he was smiling, a relieved, true smile.

Unexpected pieces connected from months past, and Briar rounded on Ben in an almost hysterical rush.

“He is the Pain from Lorraine?” she squeaked. Then, to Phillip: “You are the Pain from Lorraine?”

Phillip’s cheeks reddened. “I did not choose that name.”

Ben folded himself back onto the bench, gawking between her and Phillip. “How—how do you know him?” To Phillip: “Why are you here? How are you here? Not that you can’t be here. You can be anywhere. But in Hausach? With Briar?”

Briar laughed, a sharp burst that was as surprising as this whole situation.

She had thought she had uncovered all the areas in which Phillip’s and her lives had overlapped, a gentle braid of fate bringing them together even before they’d known who they were to each other. But this was another piece she could add: that Ben had been raving, fawning, and otherwise gushing over the jousting champion known as the Pain from Lorraine for the past year and a half.

All those times she and Frieda had shared eye rolls during Ben’s seemingly endless, incredibly dull jousting stories, he’d been talking about Phillip.

“I saw you,” Ben spluttered, color rising to his cheeks. “I saw you joust, I mean. In Tübingen, last year.”

Phillip’s eyebrows lifted. “You did? That was a good one.”

“No, it was a great one. You unseated Leon the Lion in one lance.”

“Rumors said he’d been drinking, so the win wasn’t entirely—”

“Oh, spare me the humility; you didn’t just win that tournament, you made the reigning champion heel, sit, and beg at your feet.”

Phillip laughed. “I suppose I did.”

“Suppose?” Ben shook his head. “No. No. There’s no supposing anything. You waltzed into that tournament and trounced a jouster twice your age. And the one before that, in Stuttgart?”

“You were at that one, too?”

“Well, no, I wasn’t there, but I heard how you stole the win from the Gelderland Giant—two lances on both sides, the crowd losing their minds, thinking the Giant would take it, and he was a right awful bastard, everyone hated him—and then bam! The final lance, it was poetic the way you dodged his blow and lanced him right in the head. This man is a hero!” he shouted to the tavern. No one reacted. “You’re all in the presence of a god, you uncultured louts!”

Someone mumbled drunkenly, and Ben batted it away dismissively.

“Toads, the lot of them.” He swung back toward Phillip. “Not a single soul in Hausach even knows what a list is.”

“I believe that,” Phillip said. “There are not many I meet even at the castle here who care much for jousting. It isn’t as popular in Austria as it is in Lorraine and farther out.”

“The bane of my every waking moment. Because when we all heard about Prince Phillip’s mighty deeds—yeah, impressive, with the dragon, and so on, great of you and all—that made people care about you. But when I was going on about your streak of wins across the Swabian regionals last summer, did anyone listen?”

“No,” Briar said with a laugh. Because she had been on the receiving end of Ben’s near-delirious rants about the different types of wood used for lances and how the Pain from Lorraine had the best lance heads and she had not cared, not even a little.

But she cared now, about the way Phillip was grinning, and how the tension had gone out of his shoulders, and the fact that he looked more like the man she knew. The man she had danced with in the forest. Carefree and settled and happy.

Ben gestured wildly at Briar. “No! Listen to that derision. No. You have no idea who you’re sitting next to, do you, Bri? The youngest jouster to ever crack a dozen unseated competitors in a single season. Why is he even roughing it with you? Do you have any idea what this man has done in the list? What he’s accomplished?”

She was all-out beaming now. This was the Ben she remembered, too. And if a shared interest in jousting was what it took to bring both these men back to her in some way, then she’d bear it.

“Oh, I have some idea of his accomplishments, outside the list, at least,” she said. “He’s my betrothed.”

Ben stared at her. Stared like she’d said she could conjure diamonds from thin air.

“You are engaged,” he stated awestruck. “To the Pain from Lorraine.”

“Which part of that is surprising?”

“Both. Equally. You could have come in with the emperor himself and it’d be less unexpected. Strike me down, Bri—he is why you left? In that whole letter you had that messenger read, you never once thought to mention that you absconded with him?”

“I thought you would have heard who the princess was engaged to. Or had been engaged to, her whole life, apparently. And I didn’t realize until now that he was your jousting idol.”

Ben’s face froze in an expression of realization.

Then he cupped his hands over his mouth and rubbed his face, hard.

“I did. I knew who you were engaged to. Everyone knew. But I didn’t—It was you. Of course it was.” He smacked a hand to his forehead. “It didn’t connect that his betrothed was you now. None of it…none of it felt like you.”

“I know,” she said, her voice softer. “You have no idea.”

His eyes lifted to hers. He looked at Phillip again, back at her, and splayed his hands flat on the table.

“It is possible,” he started, eyes down, “that I have been too quick to judge your new life, Bri.”

She fought a smile. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Terrible business, all that, um, nonsense about accusing you of lying and—I forgive you.”

“Do you?”

“Having a remarkable change of heart, suddenly.”

“I can’t help but feel this is coming from a place of wanting access to my future husband.” She waited until Ben looked up at her. “But I am glad to be forgiven, selfish reasons or no. Though”—she licked her lips, all her anxiety about coming here rearing up again—“I do not know how I can make you realize how sorry I am. I never would have chosen to leave like that. I never would have chosen to leave at all. And as for Frieda, I don’t…”

Ben shook his head. His levity dipped, and silence stretched between them, as he looked at Phillip in discomfort.

“I don’t want to talk about Frieda.”

Phillip coughed into his fist. “I can give you two a moment, if you need.”

“No!” Ben jolted and rocked the table. “No. It’s fine. You don’t have to, um—It’s fine. We’re done. We’re all right now, aren’t we, Bri?”

Hardly. Mostly. Her chest still ached, but alongside that ache, she felt like herself again in a way she had not managed to find in months.

She reached out and took Ben’s hand. He squeezed her fingers and released her to take the new bowls of goulash a server brought, tearing into the food without pretense.

But he peeked up at her, his brow furrowing. “You’ll head back to the castle, I imagine?”

Briar took a bite from her own bowl of goulash now. It was tasteless, and not because of Rolf’s wife’s cooking, but because yes, she would have to go back. When could she get down here again?

She nodded. And they ate in silence for a long moment, until Briar felt Phillip’s eyes on her.

She looked up at him, and he was studying her, then Ben.

“Ben,” he said. “How would you like to be a squire?”

Ben’s whole body went stiff, arched over his goulash, his eyes going to saucers.

Those wide eyes slid up to Briar. “Is he joking?”

Briar grinned at Phillip. “I don’t think so.”

“It is an honest offer.” Phillip smiled. “I am well within my right to train up a squire, I just have never found anyone of interest. But, if you’d be willing, you’d make a fine one. Perhaps even a knight someday—”

Ben dropped his spoon with a clatter and cupped one hand over his mouth, elbow on the table, looking at Phillip the way someone might try to look at the sun, squinting and in pain.

“It is exceptionally cruel of you gentry to tease us lowly folks in such a way.”

“This is no joke.” Phillip picked up his stein of ale. “Think on it. Come to the castle if you’re interested. I’ll have space made in the barracks for you, and we can begin.”

Ben was fully sputtering. Coughing, clearing his throat, taking a drink of ale only to cough again, and he only barely managed to pull himself together enough to nod at the table.

“All right,” he said, head twitching. “Yes. Of course. All right, I’ll…think on it.”

Phillip nodded. “I hope you do.”

He set down his stein and faced Briar, and she couldn’t contain her smile, hating that they were in public, that she could not throw her arms around him.

If she could not come back to Hausach, Phillip had found a way to bring Hausach to her. Because Ben would agree—he had older brothers who were set to take on their family’s brewing, and he was a talented musician, but his dreams had always laid in what Phillip had offered.

Did Phillip realize what an immense thing he had done for her friend?

Phillip smiled at her and winked, and Briar’s whole body went to liquid.

Ben grabbed his lute. “This calls for a celebration.”

Briar looked around the room. Only three people remained, two dead drunk, slumped over tables, the third nearly there.

“For what audience?”

Ben strummed a chord. “For us. For you, the prodigal daughter returning. For the Pain from Lorraine, for merely existing.”

Briar laughed. She laughed and she felt weightless, and then Phillip leaned in, his shoulder brushing hers.

“I did want to hear you sing,” he whispered to her. “That song, what was it—‘Sir Knight’?”

A blush arched down across her chest. “I would rather one day sing a song about the Pain from Lorraine.”

He groaned and his head slumped, resting on her shoulder for a beat, before he rolled away. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to make you forget that rather absurd nickname?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Damn.”

Ben stood from the booth, fingers moving steadily over the strings.

Briar relented and stood with him, and to the nearly empty tavern, they sang “O Good Sir Knight.”

No crowd to feed off.

No Frieda, her clear, gentle voice backing up Briar’s.

But it was renewing to sing here again. To have Ben egging her on. Quickly they were dancing around the room, and Phillip was beaming watching them, clapping along, and Rolf and his wife came out to see. She sang a song about a great knight and his glorious gallantry, and here she was now, engaged to such a man, living such a gallant life.

It was not a life she had ever asked for, though. She sang tales of these deeds; she had never wanted to live them. Because it wasn’t merely glory that came with great deeds, it was responsibility, too, and as she and Phillip took their leave, she remembered the armoire of expensive dresses she had, and the box of gold and jewels, and how Rolf had been saving up to fix the roof, and one of Ben’s brothers was prone to coughing fits—

Briar leaned into Phillip before they left the booth. “Can you leave your money purse? I will refill it when we return to the castle.”

Phillip’s eyebrows went up. “Of course. With Rolf, or…?”

She took the money from him—handfuls of gold that he had just had on his belt, like it was nothing, when it was enough to pay for the roof repair three times over—and split it into two piles.

She snuck one behind the bar, where Rolf would find it.

The rest she kept in the bag and forced into Ben’s hand, closing his fist around it as he turned for the door.

“Come to the castle,” she told him. Begged him.

He settled the lute on his back and kept his hand around the money, eyes going momentarily starry at the feel of how much coin she’d given him.

“This is all-out bribery now, Bri.”

“You are not above it. Neither am I.” Frieda was. Frieda had been their moral compass, their voice of reason, the clear line between right and wrong.

“Ah, Briar Rose is not. But what of Princess Aurora?” Ben smirked.

Briar’s heart twisted. The shadow of Princess Aurora lurked around her, like at any moment, that girl would launch out of the darkness and take her over and Briar Rose would be well and truly disintegrated.

“I’m still me,” she said. To him, to that lurking shadow, to any other forces that sought to snuff her out.

Ben nodded. He pocketed the money and stood there for a moment before he rolled his eyes and held his arms out.

She dove into him, a crashing, tight hug, and he gripped her just as strongly.

He peeled back and looked sheepishly at Phillip, who leaned against the doorframe, arms folded.

“Prince,” he said in farewell.

Phillip smirked. “Phillip.”

Ben looked liable to start babbling again, but he nodded. “Phillip.” A slow whistle, and he pushed out the door with a parting “This was not how I saw my night unfolding.”

Then he was gone, though Briar hoped not for long.

Phillip fell into step with her as they left the tavern, too.

“I can’t tell you what you have done in offering Ben a position with you,” she said to him. Concern grabbed her. “You did not have to, though, if you’d rather not have a squire—”

Phillip waved it off. “I would not have offered out of pity. I like him; I do think he has potential. He has a certain levity to him. He reminds me of you.”

“Are you saying you want to make me your squire?”

“Well, I was trying to ask it delicately.”

She laughed. It sobered, though, and heat in her chest built.

“I will pay you back for the money you left as well,” she promised again.

“Briar, truly. What I did tonight is not piling into a debt. Is that not our duty, to provide for these people?”

It cut into her. “Yes. It is, isn’t it? And I have done nothing these two months.”

“No, you have merely been recovering from a curse, from your life being overturned, from everything you thought to be true actually being a lie. But, yes, that is nothing.”

Briar gave him a sardonic grin that did not hold long. “What I meant was that I have everything I need for the first time in my life—I haven’t been hungry in weeks, I don’t have to think about money anymore. And what have I done to spread that relief? Meanwhile, the king lavishes ever more expensive gifts on me.”

They reached Samson, the quiet of the sleeping village wrapping around them in a protective shield much like the candlelight had in the kitchen, a haven in which anything could happen or be said and it would stay safe.

“He feels guilty,” Phillip said. “Your father. That’s why he’s showering you with things.”

“He should feel guilty.” It came out of her on a snap.

The king wasn’t to blame for what had happened to her.

Maleficent was.

But she could not help but hate the king a little, too. For sending her away, then expecting her to come back rejoicing as though she had any ties to him or the queen beyond the fact that they were her rulers, as though he hadn’t ripped her away from a life he’d let her create in ignorance.

Phillip’s words hooked her, though, and Briar frowned at him as he worked Samson’s reins free.

“Is that what tonight was about?” she asked, lungs tightening. “You feel guilty as well?”

The light was heavily dim, stars only, but dawn was beginning to toy with the horizon. She could see him in a haze of rising navy blue as he shifted to face her, and she was fixated on the way his throat worked, the muscles contracting.

“It is now my sole task to make you happy.” His voice was a whisper. “We have not had a moment to speak about our wedding, and I—You should know. I need you to know that what happens between us next week is not a simple thing for me.”

“Phillip—”

“Wait. Please. If I don’t say this all at once, it will choke me.”

She pinched her mouth shut. They were a hand’s width apart. And in that drop of silence, she felt every inch of that space, the air between them vanishing.

“I fell in love with you,” he started, and her heart hammered, hammered in her chest. “Not Aurora, not even Briar—but you, your joy and your dreams and your laughter in the woods. The fact that you ended up being Aurora anyway solidified that this is fate. You and me. If it is magic manipulating us yet again, then this is one coercion I accept with open arms. I know everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve lost and been given anew, but I want you to know that I am going into this marriage fully and clearly. I am yours, yours, whoever you choose to be, Briar or Aurora or someone new. There is no iteration of you that I will not fall in love with, and I hope you can see me as something solid to lean on when all else is in question.”

She stood there, staring up at him, her skin too constricted, too sensitive, that heart of hers inexhaustible.

A dozen ballads came to mind. Lyrics about unrestrained love that would put words to the tumult of things she was feeling, slippery, dancing feelings that surged and twisted and shook through her body. But nothing was good enough, nothing was expansive enough to explain to him how much that meant. How, yes, he was the one thing that had remained constant. How she had fallen in love with him, too, every version of him, Sir Knight and prince and kind, honorable, virtuous man.

She stepped into him, and his breath hitched, his eyes all gone to pupil with the darkness and the way she reached up with shaking fingers. She took his jaw in her palms and brought him down to her, and he bent willingly, in amazement, it seemed, the dream state bleeding into their veins so they could have been asleep, they could have been many things, but they were here, and that was a collision.

His lips parted, and hers did, too.

For a moment, she held her mouth under his. His exhalation tasted of ale and spices and warmth.

That memory reared, a satin awakening, and he was trembling now like he’d been then, but this time, his hands came down around her waist and molded her hips to his, and it steadied them both.

He held her, mouth opening a little wider, making his posture a question, letting her take what she wanted, an offering and a surrender.

She arched up against his chest and kissed him.

It wasn’t gentle.

She didn’t want gentle.

She wanted to make up for the weeks of not touching him, and so she locked her fingers around the base of his neck and drove into him hard and ravening and breathless, tongue and teeth and an embarrassing noise of need.

The force of her seemed to briefly stun him, a half-strangled mewl in his throat, but then he met her there and rode the motion and returned it.

He kissed her like he could kiss the past out of her, or maybe the present; he kissed her like he was trying to create something new.

And Briar created it with him, that foundation she had been looking for, the solid ground amid the rubble that had taken over both their lives.

Home. That was the foundation. That was him. Home.