The Thorn Princess: Iron Crown Faerie Tales Book 1 Read online

  The Thorn Princess

  Bekah Harris

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Heir of Iron Hearts sneak peek

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Ivy Hawthorne could feel its eyes on her.

  An old screech owl was common enough in the mountains. What wasn’t so common was the way it watched her, its huge yellow irises round as saucers, its head moving to follow her figure up the path to the dining hall, where breakfast was already underway.

  Ivy had always been good with animals, but sometimes, the way they focused on her was unsettling. Like right now. It was almost seven-thirty. The owl should have been roosting in its nest, settling into sleep for the day.

  She trudged past the tree where it perched, its downy brown and white feathers puffed out against the cold, as the main buildings of the Kingston Academy campus rose up in the distance. The series of towering stone buildings loomed over her like sinister shadows as the near-hidden sun touched a bleak winter sky. Locked away from the rest of the world, the students who attended the historic boarding school were protected in the safe arms of the campus by a tall iron gate that separated the school from the treacherous mountain terrain and wildlife that surrounded it. The spindles were too close together for even a child to slide through, and the fence was too tall, slick, and sharp to climb. Which was just how the parents and administrators wanted it.

  Unless you were a squirrel or bird, there was no going in or out without getting stuck. Or impaled if you managed to climb high enough.

  The morning was still and quiet. The only sounds were the rattling of naked tree branches and the crunching of Ivy’s boots in the frozen snow. On mornings like this, Ivy resented the school uniform requirement at Kingston. The wind tore through the thin black leggings she wore beneath her pleated skirt, as she readjusted her heavy bag that drooped toward the ground.

  The lone owl hooted as Ivy left it behind. Unable to help herself, she turned, stopping to watch it for a moment. Her gaze connected with the owl’s, its wizened expression examining her with a fixation that made her wonder if it could see her future. Or maybe even her past. When she was a little girl, Nan used to tell her stories about birds and other animals that could see into a person’s soul. Nan believed it like gospel, but Ivy had always figured they were just old wives’ tales. Folklore from the superstitious mountains where they lived. But the owl’s penetrating gaze was enough to make her question those beliefs.

  Checking her smartwatch, Ivy shook off the eerie feeling and hustled up the path until she reached the sidewalk, which, mercifully, had been shoveled and salted. She stomped the snow from her boots and rushed up the stairs to the dining hall. When she opened the door, the smell of frying bacon and maple syrup filled her senses, as she absently handed her meal card to Rhoda, the cashier who smiled and said “Good morning,” just like any other day.

  But Ivy’s nerves sloshed in her belly as she approached the dining room. She had dreamed about the dining hall last night. Like any of the places she saw in her dreams, she was wary to enter. Taking a deep breath to calm her irrational anxiety, she stepped into the room and scanned the scattering of round oak-colored tables and chairs.

  Most of her classmates weren’t early risers, so in twenty minutes, they would be scrambling from their beds and rushing to their eight a.m. classes. But Ivy usually woke up early after a night of tossing and turning between restless dreams, which had been the case that morning. The dreams were becoming more frequent lately, just like her animal sightings.

  This morning it had been an owl.

  Yesterday, she had seen a cardinal, which wasn’t altogether strange.

  But the way it had flitted behind her from tree to tree until she had walked inside had been odd. A few minutes later, it had perched in the windowsill of her lit class, peeking inside.

  “There you are!”

  Jules McKinnon, Ivy’s best friend since the early years at Kingston, waved at her from their usual table. She gestured to the untouched plate in front of the empty seat beside her. She had piled on French toast sticks, honey, and apple slices. Ivy’s favorite. Just as her stomach growled, she stopped short, examining Jules. Her textured black pixie was sticking out in all directions this morning, rather than being swept softly to the side.

  Oh, no.

  If Jules had actually made the effort to fix her hair, then she’d been up for more than the ten minutes it took to throw on her uniform, brush her teeth, and walk to the dining hall. Which also probably meant she’d been up for hours and hadn’t been tempted to hit snooze five times. It meant she had been wide awake and obsessing over something.

  Ivy focused, narrowing her eyes in an effort to see Jules’ aura, a fuzzy light that emanated from most people in a variety of colors determined by their emotions. Ivy had possessed the strange ability for as long as she could remember, though it wasn’t something she advertised. Sure enough, Jules’s aura glowed in a dark yellow halo that shone from her head and shoulders. She was worried. Probably about her grades. Ivy learned a long time ago that, as smart as Jules was, she would always freak out over tests, quizzes, grades, and her GPA. All the women in her family had gone on to Hollins University, and Jules was determined to get in, too, even if it caused her to have a nervous breakdown in the process.

  “I thought you were never going to get here. I fell asleep studying last night like a narcoleptic dumbass and am now doomed to fail Crenshaw’s lit quiz this morning. Thank God I woke up at four. Anyway, you’re good at all this poetry crap. Tell me…” She looked down at her notes. “What are the underlying Romantic elements of the Lady of Shallot?”

  “First of all, it’s Shalott,” Ivy said. “Shallots are a type of onion.”

  She dunked a piece of French toast in honey, chewing while Jules went into full-on panic mode.

  “Oh my God, I am so screwed. I thought last year’s phi lit class was awful. But this semester? British Poets? Just kill me! Crenshaw is going to see to it that my four-point-oh is a pleasant dream of the past, achieved and maintained for ten years but snatched away in an undignified attempt to interpret poetry.”

  “Dramatic much?”

  “Not cool, Ivy. Can’t you see I’m desperate? Why couldn’t this be calculus? I get math.”

  “Poetry is mathematical,” Ivy said. “It’s about structure and pattern, rhyme, meter, and rhythm. Anyway, stop freaking out. Just remember that the Romantic philosophies of the day were about…”

  Ivy lost her train of thought. Her stomach cramped and twisted as he walked in. The boy from the dream. She watched him as he moved past her with a confident gait and sat at the fourth table from the coffee bar. Just as she had dreamed. Ivy blinked, sha
king her head. She tried to look away but couldn’t.

  “About…?” Jules glared impatiently until she followed the direction of Ivy’s stare. “Ah. I see you’ve discovered Kingston’s latest flavor of eye candy.”

  The boy was tall and thin, but lean, not skinny. He looked completely out of place in the required gray blazer and khaki pants. With skin the color of porcelain and dark black-blue hair, he looked more like a leather jacket sort of guy than a prep school student. His aura glowed from him in a soft red. Confidence. Strength.

  It took a lot of concentration, but Ivy had been seeing auras since she was a small child. Nan called it “the sight” and had taught her how to read them. Had taught her never to tell anyone that she could see them.

  Just like he had in the dream, the boy was surrounded by a red glow as he sat down. Her dreams always seemed so real, and when she woke, Ivy always had a sense that she had been to a different time or a different reality. But she didn’t often stare down her dreams in the daylight.

  “Details?” Ivy asked, forcing her gaze from him. She tried not to sound as freaked out as she was feeling.

  Jules’s grandfather was on the school’s board of directors, so she always had useful first-hand information about new students.

  “Well, his name is Barrett Forbes, he’s a senior, he’s from, like, Boston or Philadelphia or somewhere up North by way of Scotland. Grampie said he was born there, and based on what I’ve already heard so far, he still has the accent. Anyway, hot accent aside, his GPA is unknown because Grampie can’t tell me that, but I did overhear him say Barrett’s family has ties to old money in Europe or something. Um…he just got here on Friday. Apparently, no stranger to boarding schools. And that’s all I know for now. Easy on the eyes, huh?”

  Ivy couldn’t help but stare. It was odd to get a new student at Kingston after ninth grade. The curriculum was rigorous, and the transfers usually didn’t last long. And with the tuition costs, most people didn’t even bother trying.

  “You said he’s a senior?” Ivy asked.

  “That’s what I hear,” Jules replied. “Gorgeous, isn’t he? I’d love to be whatever’s on that plate right now.”

  Ivy glanced up to see Barrett dipping an apple slice in honey, catching a sugary drip with the tip of his tongue.

  “I’d let him lick honey off of me any old time.”

  “Jules!” Ivy could feel the heat rise to her cheeks, which caused her friend to burst into uncontrollable laughter.

  “Oh, come on, Ivy, you had to be thinking the same thing. You’re just too well-mannered to admit it.”

  Amused at her own shock, as well as Jules’s complete lack of verbal filter, Ivy erupted into nervous giggles herself, finally feeling light enough to take another bite of breakfast. As she was chewing, however, she felt eyes on her, like those of the owl she had felt earlier that morning. When she looked up, Barrett was watching her.

  At least, she thought he was.

  She turned her head to see if there was someone else, but the other tables were empty.

  When she looked back in surprise, he lifted a hand and smiled.

  Her heart fluttered up to her throat, as her dream played out in reality.

  But then, his gaze shifted. Chelsea Douglass breezed past the table, her long red waves drifting behind her like a scarlet curtain. Her aura shone a putrid green color. Jealousy. Possessiveness. She sat down with Barrett. That hadn’t happened in the dream.

  Oh, God, kill me now.

  “Well, that figures,” Jules said. “It’s not enough she’s basically dated every guy at Kingston since freshman year. I mean, I was really hoping this one would be above her skanky perfume and hair toss.”

  “And yet, we live in reality,” Ivy said. She wouldn’t admit it, but she, like Jules, was disappointed in this dark stranger, though he hadn’t really earned it.

  “Oh, please, you’re about a million times prettier than Chelsea,” Jules said. “You just don’t fawn all over everything with a Y chromosome. Her full dating schedule definitely isn’t the work of her sparkling personality.”

  Ivy tried not to laugh, but Jules was just being honest. Ivy tried to be nice to everyone, but Chelsea was pretty vicious. It was probably an act of stereotyping to label Chelsea Douglass as a mean girl, but that’s exactly what she was. She’d been looking through Ivy since their first year at K.A., which was fine by Ivy. Most girls weren’t so lucky. Ivy liked to tell herself that Chelsea, like any well-developed villain, had some kind of sympathetic past that made her the mega beast she was, but by all appearances, she seemed to have it all. But it probably wasn’t fair to say so. Though Ivy had lived under the same roof as Chelsea since she was eight years old, she didn’t really know much about her. But she had witnessed her acts of cruelty enough to know she should stay out of her way.

  “It’s official. This morning hates me,” Jules said. “Class is in ten, and I’m going to bomb this quiz. And why? Because we were obsessing over a boy who inevitably goes for Chelsea Douglass. So not worth the distraction.”

  “You’re going to do fine on this quiz,” Ivy said to her. “But you already know that.”

  “Well, there’s no point in delaying the inevitable. Let’s get this over with.”

  She swung her bag over her shoulder and grabbed their plates. Ivy stood to follow her, but paused, forcing herself not to look back. She had that feeling again. Like someone or something was watching her.

  Goosebumps pebbled on her skin. Her heart pounded. But she kept walking, pushing away the memory of the dream she’d had. The one in which Barrett Forbes had fought to protect her. The one in which he had bled for his efforts.

  If the first part had come true, would it play out to the end?

  Chapter Two

  Barrett Forbes couldn’t believe he had finally found her.

  He’d been searching so long, he had started to think he’d been tasked with the impossible. He’d enrolled at every boarding school from Georgia to North Carolina since his commission, and Kingston Academy was his final attempt at recovering her before moving on to Tennessee and Virginia. He’d been there three days, scouring the campus, scanning the dining room, and eavesdropping on conversations. But he hadn’t detected anything all weekend. So on the off chance she might be a morning person, he’d come to breakfast, and there she sat, talking in a low voice with another girl.

  She looked exactly how he’d expected, exactly like her mother. She had skin as white as the winter snow and hair the color of sun kissed ice, so blonde it was nearly silver. When she glanced up at him, her friend still whispering to her, he met eyes as green as precious stones. Jewel colored, just as he had expected, given her lineage. Smiling, he raised his hand and waved. She watched him with an intense sort of curiosity. But it was fear, rather than the typical lust he encountered from most women, that dominated her emotions.

  Why would she be afraid of me?

  Suddenly, his view of her was cut short by a tall redhead who had stopped right in his line of vision. He shifted in his seat, trying to see around her, but the girl moved again, breaking his connection. The heavy odor of too much perfume mingled with the musky scent of lust and engulfed him in a putrid cloud that reeked of desperation. A jolt of dark energy rose up inside him. He breathed silently through his nose, controlling the exhale. Controlling the rage the girl’s interruption had caused.

  “So you’re Barrett Forbes,” the girl said. It wasn’t a question. She knew who he was and wanted him to be impressed that she knew.

  “Bear,” he said, trying to control the agitation in his voice.

  “Oh, my God, I love your accent!”

  Bear fought the urge to roll his eyes. What was it with American girls and “Scottish” accents? She was looking at him like she was imagining what he wore beneath the kilt she had probably fabricated in her imagination. If she only knew what his accent really made him. It certainly wasn’t Scottish, though Scotland had likely acquired the famous brogue and their Gaelic
language from his ancestors.

  “I’m Chelsea Douglass. Mind if I sit?”

  Bear absently gestured to the chair beside him, hoping if she would sit down, he could see her again. But once Chelsea settled in next to him, the girl he’d been seeking for two years was walking away. She paused, her spine straightening, before once again moving on.

  Can she sense me, as well?

  “You know, if you need any help finding your classes or whatever, I’d be more than happy to help. I know everything that goes on here. So, if you have any questions…”

  Bear raised his brows. She did offer…

  “Who was that girl sitting at the table in front of us? The blonde one.”

  She sighed, smiling as he spoke—probably his accent. But then, as if she had just realized something distasteful, the girl scrunched her nose.

  “Ivy?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

  The girl, Chelsea, snorted. “Short? Long stringy hair? Skin the color of an albino in February?”

  Bear stared her down, unamused by her description. Jealousy poured from her in a sour wave that mingled with her designer perfume. He was tempted to afflict her with some sort of pox or boils for speaking of the girl, of Ivy, in such a manner.

  “Her name is Ivy Hawthorne,” Chelsea said. “She’s known for being nice. And quiet. For always having her nose in a book. I mean, we’ve gone to school together forever, and I’ve barely heard her say, like, two words outside of answering questions when the teacher calls on her. I don’t hang out with her.”