Its crash echoes in the tomblike chamber. Damn everything to the bottom of the sea and back.

One rolls down my cheek and splashes onto Aurora’s coverlet, staining the embroidered line of dragons in flight. The heartbeat in her wrist slows until it is as faint as it ever was. She’ll wake, and then we can-Īurora’s body abruptly goes slack. I know-I know-that she inhales a deeper breath. The movement beneath her eyelids is more pronounced. And then-her pulse might be beating faster, stronger. The golden liquid slides over her tongue and into her throat. “Please wake up,” I whisper to her, tipping a small amount of elixir past her lips. Day after miserable day of failed attempts to break her curse. Her eyelashes flutter as she dreams, and her lips are slightly parted, as if she might wake up at any moment and end the nightmare of the last months. But her bronze-kissed cheeks still carry their healthy glow. It’s been nearly a year since that terrible night in the black tower when her hand met the spindle. Even after all this time, my heart still flutters at the sight of her. This must be the one.”Īt my touch, the intertwined vines slither apart, revealing the sleeper inside. Callow, my kestrel, warbles from her perch on a nearby stack of books. I take the mortar and a spoon and go to the bed, still encased in bramble. There was that courtier-I forget her name now-she was rumored to be over a hundred years old because of their elixirs.” “You remember how strong those healing Graces were. “I found this book in Willow House,” I say. I flex my fingers, stiff after gripping the pestle for so long, and roll away the tension in my neck. Age of the Rose, 976Ī wispy plume of golden smoke curls up from the mash of ingredients in the mortar, tinged with the honey-sweet scent of Grace blood.

Missive from Prince Elias to the king of Ryna. I saw it rip a man in two with its claws, like something from a nightmare. I heard that Princess Aurora was cursed to sleep or to die, I do not know which is true. My crew and I barely escaped the harbor with our lives. I am waylaid in Cardon, as my ship cannot manage the remainder of the voyage home. | New York : Del Rey, | Series: Malice duology book 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dataĭescription: First edition. Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.ĭel Rey and the Circle colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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