Her husband, the prince, brings her flowers, always, when he comes back from the wars. Beautiful small bouquets, blossoms delicate and expiring at the warm summer air, even at the touch of her hand. Her hands are small and white and very very light, and she always takes care to warm them over the fire first when she returns from her morning walk, and they are everything that hands should be, everyone agrees. The flowers threaten to wilt in her cool palms. She will turn sixteen tomorrow, and she will wear them loose in her hair tonight.

Her husband's hands are curiously red and viciously scratched. He frowns at her inquiring eyes, but she cannot look away. Blood, it is blood, isn't it? Blood like the red blossoms that grow in the eyes of her father, the king, when she asks him a question that he does not answer. What is that, she murmurs in her soft, her perfectly soft voice, tilting her chin in her hands, feeling the skin melt beneath her fingers. What injury have you done to yourself?

Thorns, princess, he says, short, buckling and snapping the gauntlets at his wrists. You wouldn't understand. She nods, because that is true, and lowers her head; she did not mean to make him angry. She knows it must be hard to be patient with someone as imbecilic as her. Oh, she knows that is what they are calling her. She knows that the kitchen maids and the footmen and even her own ladies titter at her in the hallways and their eyes speak a language that even her husband will not translate. At least they cannot laugh at her hands.

Thorns. The word makes her toes curl in her slippers, like a word in a secret tongue, like baby talk long forgotten, like the sorcery and sin all her father the king's proclamations warn of of late. She slips on her long white gloves, paler even than her skin, and gives her arm to her lord. She hopes she has not forgotten how to dance.