What’s wrong what’s wrong what’s wrong?Nonna bayed.
Tiger tiger tiger!Kismet shouted, bolting away.
With the cacophony in his head and Rose out of her mind in his arms, Sebastien did as he hadn’t done outside of class andsilenced the three animals. He also firmly halted Kismet, keeping the horse from running too far, then concentrated on Rose, terrified as he’d never seen her.
“Rose, Rose darling, my queen… shhh. Calm down. It’s all right.” He held her tightly, to contain her flailing arms and hopefully quiet her panic. Why couldn’t he have the ability to calm a person like he could the animals? That would be useful.
“Please don’t make me go back in there,” she begged him. “I can’t I can’t I can’t.”
Her wild chanting reminded him of the hounds in their panic. She wasn’t in her right mind at all and he worried greatly that the Dream had eroded her sanity. “My rose,” he said, holding her close and pressing kisses to her temples, now sweating from her throes. “It’s fine. You don’t have to go in there. I promise.”
She finally stopped fighting him, sniffling through tears as she looked up at him. Had he ever seen Rose cry? He didn’t think so. She was always so contained, so in control. Moved, he used his thumbs to wipe the tears from her cheeks and she gazed up at him with hopeful adoration. “I don’t?” she asked.
“Never, if you don’t want to,” he reassured her. “We’ll leave this place.” Though he wondered how she’d come to be inside the cottage. Time enough to hear the story later, once she was safe and warm and fed. And less crazed.
“You’ll take me away?” she asked, face lighting with joy. “Truly?”
“Yes.” His heart squeezed at her expression, turning over in his chest. For the first time, he felt he truly understood her, that connection he’d always hoped for winding between them. Maybe lovecouldgrow between them. He’d certainly never felt this way before. Almost giddy.
Love you,Nina said, almost wistfully.
Love you!Nonna bayed with skull-splitting enthusiasm.
He shushed them kindly, releasing the three animals from his magical grip, now that everyone had calmed down. Rose seemed to become aware of Nina and Nonna’s presence just then, buthis hope that she was coming back to her normal self crumbled when she squealed, “And who is this?”
She crouched, allowing the two hounds to climb all over her, to lick her face and even her lips, which Rose never tolerated. “What are their names?”
“Nina and Nonna,” he told her haltingly, pointing to each. They said with brain-addled people it was best to go along with their world, so he’d do his best until she regained her senses. “And you remember Kismet,” he added hopefully, mentally calling the horse over.
“Of course I remember seeing you,” she said after a beat of hesitation, rising to caress the gelding’s soft muzzle. “Such a great big steed, so noble and handsome.”
I like her,Kismet said.
Love her!Nina agreed.
Love her!Nonna added with an audible yelp, jumping at Rose’s skirts so she laughed and rubbed the hound’s ears, too.
Rose looked at him, the happy smile lingering to make her radiantly lovely, even in her dishevelment. “And… your name—may I know it?”
His hope crashed nearly into despair. How could she not remember him? Especially as she seemed to both know him and not. The moment they met rushed back to him, how she’d asked for his name and he’d refused at first. And then how he’d teased her in the library, telling her that knowing a name and receiving a name as a gift were two entirely different things. Maybe this could be the gift anew, a heartfelt offering to a new beginning between them.
“Sebastien,” he told her, part of him still hopeful that she’d remember.
“Sebastien,” she echoed. “I like it that you call me Rose.”
She didn’t even know her own name. It was clear he couldn’t do anything but take her with him. Perhaps a healer could helpher. “So,” he said, “do you want to go to HASP—or will you come to Castle Vega with me?”
“Your castle,” she echoed in excited wonder.
He laughed, unable to help it, it was all so absurd. He’d wanted exactly this, but not like this. Still, he had hope everything would be fine. Rose was strong and her mind would clear. “Yes, my castle. Where I am a prince and you’ll be my princess. I don’t know what happened to your clothes, your jewels, but I’ll provide you with a dozen gowns and a maid to do your hair.”
“I would love that, but…” She looked around, squinting in suspicion at the trees, scanning the canopy for something. “Are you sure this isn’t the Dream?”
“It’s no dream,” he promised, though it felt like one to him, too. Standing there in those snowy woods, the black columns of trees repeating to a kind of infinity, the hush of being the only people for leagues around, the dogs and Kismet silently observing—it felt dreamlike, not quite of the waking world. And he hadn’t been the one lost to the Dream, however temporarily.
Whatever the Dream had done to Rose, it had stripped her of that caustic armor that sometimes burned too harshly. But she’d also become more fully and sincerely herself, artlessly happy and affectionate, at ease in her own skin as she’d never been before. Maybe it was as in the tales, when the hero emerged from a terrible trial changed, but for the better. She was no longer the woman raised from childhood to be one of the most formidable sorceresses in the known world. He admired that Rose greatly, but this Rose… She was her purest self. And she needed him. He would not fail her.
“Come,” he told her, giving her a kiss, loving how eagerly and without reserve she met him, eyes glowing, lips soft and warm, her body supple as she inclined against him. “Let’s get you someplace warm. Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of you.”
