The Cursed Rose, page 30
Cinzel climbed onto the bed, squeezing himself against Red’s legs, and then lay back down, eyes fixed on his unmoving human. Shane just dared the Witch of the Azure Drop to have anything to say about that. But the woman was silent. They all were, watching the figure in the bed. Half a dozen men and women in the same blue robes had drifted to stand around them, a silent vigil, and Shane wondered if they were all thinking what she was thinking—that every breath might be Red’s very last one.
A thousand memories of Red flashed before her eyes—Red humming happily as she stroked Cinzel’s fur, Red stomping down on Shane’s toe, Red’s eyes flashing as they argued, Red standing in the rain, soaked to the bone, telling Shane she didn’t get to give up. Red looking up at her through those lashes in the dark—the feel of Red’s love, Red’s kiss on her lips. Shane couldn’t lose her.
“Try again.” Shane ground her teeth together, searching the faces of the Witches of the Azure Drop, her hands balled into fists. “Whatever you did before, try it again! She’s not done—we’re not done, and she’s not giving up.”
The Witches exchanged weary glances, looking to the older Witch with the shining silver tear. Her dark eyes never left Shane’s face.
“Our magic is nearly exhausted,” the woman told her, sweeping one hand toward the infirmary. “We cannot create life energy from nothing.”
“Then take mine!” Shane begged them. Red could have her pounding head, her aching wounds, her bruised body, and her raw hands. She didn’t have much left, but Red could have it—all of it.
The Witch still looked uncertain, her lips pursed.
“She’s one of us,” a familiar voice broke in. Perrin pushed through the crowd. He was covered in his own swath of bandages, but his eyes were steady as he stepped to Shane’s side. “She’s descended from one of our own. Red carries the name Assora—and the blood of the Snake Witch. If you won’t do it for us, do it for her.”
The Witches traded shocked whispers. The Paper Witch’s mouth fell open, one of the few times Shane had ever seen him truly surprised. So there were a few things he didn’t know. His expression turned wistful as he looked down at Red.
“Perhaps this is a sign, Nezira,” he said quietly, turning to the gray-haired Witch. “The descendants of all the Great Witches are gathered here. Three women known for achieving the impossible.” He laid a hand on Shane’s shoulder. “I also offer my life to save Red’s.”
“Count me in,” Perrin added with a smile.
Nezira bowed her head. “I make no promises. But we will try.”
The Witches inched closer. Their blue robes rustled as they formed a circle, linking their arms until Shane and Red were inside an unbroken river of silver veins. The tattoos shimmered as magic raced through them, like a great river of power flowing from one Witch to the next.
Shane had never actually felt magic before, but she could feel it now—a tingle on her skin like she was standing in an icy winter glade in Steelwight, every breath shivering with frost, the whole world silent.
The young Witch who’d been caring for Captain Hane stepped forward, shimmering with magic, and the Paper Witch inclined his head so she could press her hand to his cheek. He sagged the second she touched him, her tattoos pulsing with the silver glow as he added his energy to the spell. Perrin held out his hand to a tall boy with green eyes. Then all of that magic was in Nezira, her brown eyes warm as she reached out and laid one glittering hand on Red’s shoulder. Shane watched as the magic flowed into Red, shimmering under her skin.
“Call to her,” Nezira ordered.
Shane scooted as close as she could get, twining her fingers into those tousled curls.
“You have to wake up, Red,” she whispered. “That future you wanted so badly, it’s right here. I’m right here. You’ve always been so stubborn . . . Don’t tell me this is the one thing you’re giving up on.” Tears streamed down her face as she pressed her forehead to Red’s.
Cinzel licked Red’s still hand. Suddenly, her fingers twitched.
“Yes, yes!” Shane shouted.
Nezira pulled her hand back, her face cracking into a smile.
Red’s soft brown eyes blinking open was the most beautiful thing Shane had ever seen. She wrapped Red up in her arms and pressed their lips together, not caring one bit that a dozen Witches were watching. Perrin laughed and clapped the Paper Witch’s shoulder. Shane would be laughing, too, but she was too busy kissing Red.
As Shane pulled back, Perrin threw himself onto the cot and wrapped his lanky arms around both of them, and Cinzel, too, and suddenly it was a group hug with a wolf in the middle of it, Red gaping in surprise while Shane just threw her head back laughing. Cinzel was bunting Red and slobbering all over Perrin’s face, crooning his happy song, and for once, Shane didn’t need Red to tell her what he was saying. She and Cinzel were thinking the exact same thing.
“Welcome home, Red,” Shane whispered. And then kissed her again, just because she could.
Epilogue: Part One
Briar Rose
briar rose sat in the window of the high white tower that had been his prison for a hundred years, his arms slung over his knees. Camellia’s roses still covered the sill beside him, and he was careful not to catch the sleeves of his newly tailored silver-and-blue coat on the tiny thorns. He didn’t remember what had happened to his old coat, but it was shredded—it barely qualified as a rag at this point. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. He’d had it mended with a smattering of darker blue patches and left it hanging in the closet of his old bedroom, right next to Sage’s, in the castle of Andar, now free from its curse.
Everything Camellia had promised him had come true. This tower was filled with memories of her. Briar closed his eyes, letting a thousand images of his sister wash over him. The smile on her face as she tickled him mercilessly. The shriek of her laughter as she and Briar were pelted with snow after he foolishly challenged the Snake Witch and the Dream Witch to a snowball fight. The warmth of her arms tight around him as she promised he would be saved from the Spindle Witch’s curse. Against all odds, Camellia had managed to keep that promise.
A light breeze ruffled Briar’s hair as he looked out over the castle grounds. On that first day, when all of Andar had woken from its hundred-year nightmare, it had been to a bleak view of raging winds and black wastelands. But in the weeks since, all of the dust had blown away, revealing new shoots of grass and green plants rising from the ashes. The impenetrable Forest of Thorns had crumbled to nothing.
Now this window looked out on a line of ancient willow trees sweeping over the river, their skeletal trunks slowly healing, their branches rippling with a cloud of soft white blossoms. Blue and purple bellflowers sprouted from the dark earth at their roots, and Briar could hear birds calling in the branches. It would be many years before Andar was restored completely, but everything was still there, sleeping just under the surface.
Laughing voices pulled his attention to the base of the tower. Briar leaned out. A group of people was moving through the castle gardens below. Some planted rose cuttings and sachets of seeds along the wall, while others ambled beside the riverbank, clearing away dead bracken and hanging the willow boughs with a thousand tiny bells—Aurora’s bells. A young Witch in the robes of the Order of the Rising Rain walked among them, twirling a stream of water in her hand like a sparkling ribbon.
Briar recognized the girl—he’d passed her sleeping form many times as he walked the castle in his dreams—but the others were strangers. He wondered if they were from Everlynd or if these were the new arrivals from hidden enclaves and villages to the north and south, where some of Andar’s people had escaped the curse. More were coming every day, some all the way from the neighboring kingdom of Darfell. As he stared out this bleak window for a hundred lonely years, Briar had never imagined that so much of Andar had survived.
The Witch girl slipped on a patch of mud, the thick stream of water gushing over one of the workers. She slapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her laughter as the man spluttered, wiping a sopping sleeve across his face. Briar laughed, too, but he ducked out of the window before they could spot him.
As he dropped to the floor, a sharp pain bit into his side. Briar winced. Under the coat, he had a strange blue-black bruise right over his ribs, crescent-shaped, like he’d been struck by something small and metal.
Briar pressed his fingers gingerly to the spot. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was hiding it from his brother and the castle healers, except that it seemed like a clue—proof of whatever he’d forgotten.
No one was willing to tell him anything, but Briar knew something had happened to him—something bad. The first few days after he woke, all of his limbs felt stiff and painful, his whole body sore like he’d been trampled under a horse. And then there was his magic.
Briar lifted his hand. Tiny white sparks crackled on his fingertips, but they fizzled out almost immediately. He could no longer feel that great shining well of magic inside him. He wasn’t sure if that was because he’d almost died or because of what he had become.
Briar had only been given the barest details of the final battle, but there was one thing no one could keep from him. When the hero of Andar broke the curse, Briar had not been waiting for her as the sleeping prince. He had lost himself to dark magic and turned into a monster, one who served the Spindle Witch.
Sage had told him not to think about it. Briar had tried to forget it—but how could he forget it when he didn’t remember it in the first place? His mind was a jumble of images he didn’t understand.
He looked over at the little vanity. The oval mirror was hidden by folds of gauze, one of the torn curtains from the canopy bed. Briar had covered it himself the first time he came up here to think, because for just one second, when he glanced into the glass, he swore he was looking into red eyes framed by curling white horns.
It was a memory, he was positive. One he might be better off not knowing—even it if meant never remembering her, either.
Briar pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. There was a person at the center of all his splintered memories: a girl with dark hair and arresting hazel-green eyes. He had woken in her arms in the library, and he didn’t think he’d ever forget that first glimpse of her: the desperate look on her face, the tears that had glittered like glass on her cheeks. Briar had always known he’d fall in love with the hero of Andar—it was destiny, as strong and sure as any love in the old fairy tales Camellia used to read him. But now he barely knew her, this girl, his savior—Filore.
They’d only brushed past each other since that first moment in the library, Briar whisked away by his brother and the Witches while Filore stayed with her companions. The closest they’d come was three days ago, when he found her working alongside a handful of castle staff cleaning up the library. From the upper balcony, he’d watched as she picked up a fallen book, cradling it lovingly and smoothing her fingers down the bent pages.
That was the first time Briar had a flash of memory—an image of Filore up a ladder in another library, with a soft coat and a smudge of ink on her face, smiling so brightly that just remembering it took his breath away.
Since then, flashes of her just kept coming, to the point that Briar thought he must be losing his mind. He knew this girl—knew her well. Maybe even loved her. Camellia’s spell might have led him to his destiny, but he couldn’t even remember.
The bells were ringing in the castle spire. Briar dropped his hands from his eyes and straightened his rich blue coat, tucking the white silk blouse carefully into his belt and dusting off his dark pants. His hair was still faintly damp from his bath. Soaking in the lavish tub, he had gotten one of his clearest memories yet: the silhouette of the girl behind a canvas screen, lifting her palm to him. There was something hesitant about the gesture, something that felt important. He’d wanted to take that hand so much he found himself reaching out through the steam, closing his fingers around empty air.
Footsteps on the tower stairs shook him out of it. “Prince Briar Rose,” called a soft voice, followed by the much more insistent, “Briar, you up here?”
The door swung open, revealing his brother Sage. At his back stood a soft-spoken man who had introduced himself as the Paper Witch.
“You know, there is no fashionably late to your own party,” Sage said, raising an eyebrow. Briar still wasn’t quite used to seeing his brother up and around instead of slumped lifeless in his throne. It made him grin every time.
“You didn’t have to come all the way up here just to get me,” Briar said.
“If you’re insinuating it’s too many stairs, I’ll remind you I’m not that old,” Sage said. His voice was stern, but Briar recognized the edge of a smirk pulling at his lips.
“You are a hundred and twenty-eight,” Briar pointed out, smiling back. “I admittedly ditched most of my history lessons, but I’m fairly sure that makes you the oldest king Andar’s ever had.” There was a name at the tip of his tongue, but he tripped over it. Filore. He wasn’t sure why he thought she’d know. Or why his body jerked toward the door like he couldn’t wait to run and ask her.
“Well, in that case, I’m looking forward to the rest of my two-hundred-year reign,” Sage joked.
Sage still wore his outfit from that morning’s ceremony, when the steward of Everlynd had formally returned the golden ruling scepter to the king. Briar had stood beside his brother on the dais in the great courtyard, looking out at the cheering crowd and the restored statues of the Great Witches smiling down on them. A heavy blue mantle swept from Sage’s shoulders over his intricately embroidered tunic, and a golden crown sparkling with sapphires sat on his brow. It suited him—far better than the golden circlet he waved in one hand suited Briar.
“You forgot this,” Sage said.
“Right.” Briar reached out hesitantly, but he didn’t take it.
Sage stepped over to the vanity, throwing aside the cloth like it was nothing. Briar’s heart lurched as the last layer of gauze was swept away, but only his own reflection stared back at him, blue eyes in a smooth face. He was pale, certainly—he’d gone a hundred years without sunlight—but not bone white. He was just Briar.
Sage settled the circlet on his head. “There,” he said. “Now you look the part.”
He squeezed Briar’s shoulder as they stood together in front of the mirror, their reflection framed by Camellia’s brilliant roses. Then Sage turned and headed for the door.
“I’ve got a few more things to take care of. Why don’t you escort your great-grandnephew to the party?”
The Witch in the silver-and-white robes inclined his head as the king passed, then moved to Briar. “Your Highness,” he said, the little bell in his hair tinkling like a laugh.
It was hard to offer his arm to a stranger who reminded him so much of Camellia. Worse, the Paper Witch was one of the people from Briar’s missing memories. Those blue eyes watched him expectantly, as if waiting for something, though Briar had no idea what.
Arm in arm, they moved down the tower stairs and headed for the grand ballroom. Briar could barely believe it was the same castle. The once-empty halls rang with chatter and laughter and raised voices. Men in soldiers’ tunics hustled by with heaping armfuls of bedding. The great entrance hall was filled with cots for all the new arrivals, and a group of children chased each other up the spiraling stairs, shouting joyfully as they replayed the battle for Andar. Briar took a corner too fast and nearly smacked into a tall woman with a cloud of dark hair who had been given the position of Captain of the Guard.
Even in his earliest memories, the castle had never been so full of people—or of hope. He even thought he’d seen a wolf padding through the halls the day before, its white tail twitching cheerfully.
Out the window, he caught a glimpse of the secret garden of the Rose Witches. The white marble of the memorial tree shone in the sunlight, painfully bare—but he could see the green wisps of rose vines curling around the trunk again, a few bright red buds just beginning to peek open. Briar looked at the man on his arm. The Paper Witch had been declared the new head of the Order of the Divine Rose, and there was no one Briar would rather the position went to than Camellia’s great-grandson.
The Paper Witch caught Briar’s gaze. “Have you remembered anything yet?” he asked.
Briar shifted uncomfortably. “Not really. Just flashes.” He shook away the thought of the creature in the mirror. “Maybe it’s better that way.”
They had nearly reached the door to the ballroom. The Paper Witch paused, covering Briar’s hand with his own. “You should not fear your memories, Briar Rose.” He looked suddenly older, his smile melancholy. “Your actions at the end were not your own. Not all of us can say the same of the choices we made. Many regrettable things were done in the service of breaking the curse—but every one of them brought us to this moment, and I would like to think that is reason enough to forgive ourselves.”
He had stopped them right at the top of the stairs. Through the doorway, the great ballroom shone like a painting—the tables gleaming, the blue pennants rippling, and the dance floor whirling with laughing couples, their voices ringing under the high ceiling studded with dazzling chandeliers. Dark oak columns framed a view of the wide balcony, all the doors thrown open to let in the dreamy blue twilight.
The Paper Witch smiled Camellia’s knowing smile. “This victory would not have been possible without you, too. Don’t forget that.”
Briar shook his head. “You have a lot of Camellia in you,” he told the man, as they were announced at the door. “And I mean that as a compliment.”
The Paper Witch tipped his head, his crystal earring glittering. “I can imagine no greater praise.”
They moved down into the crowd. The tables were filled with a hastily pulled-together feast—platters of ripe plums and figs and pomegranates salvaged from the gardens of Everlynd, baskets of golden bread from the fields to the south, and jars of candied honey and nuts that had survived a hundred years in the castle storehouses. There was even some dark wine that had been sent by the duchy on the border of Darfell, the casks stamped with the seal of Bellicia. More supply wagons were rolling in every day. The hodgepodge of summer fruits and vegetables and simple pies was hardly typical fare for a royal gathering, but nobody seemed to mind.
