Keeper of Thorns

Lydie keeps the Thornwood: nine generations of sleepers, each one held in perfect rest, each one hedged and protected and never thanked. When a prince arrives demanding his sister back, Lydie's refusal wakes something worse — the sister pulls three other sleepers with her, and the cascade will not stop unless someone sleeps on purpose. Amory volunteers. He is the only man in the kingdom who can. Every night costs him a memory. Every dawn Lydie brings him back, and every dawn he comes back with less of himself. On the ninth night he asks her not to wake him. She has one answer, and it is no. Not because she is cruel. Because she is finally, after nine generations, learning to want something of her own.