Page 33 of Blood & Roses

A sweet, cloying scent hit me as we shuffled through the gates and into the palace grounds. Roses sprouted from the snowy ground, blood-red and blooming unnaturally in the endless winter. They felt wrong, rotten somehow. I reached for my mother’s necklace with the hand that wasn’t keeping the prince asleep.

I had asked my father once, when Mother was pregnant with the twins, why he had given her the rose pendant. He told me it was because he saw her and came to life like a bud in the spring.

These roses made a mockery of that sentiment.

Two more guards opened the huge glass doors before us, and Rowan entered the palace, Sera and I slipping in unseen beside him.

She gave me a final nod as she took off down the hall, invisible to everyone else as she went in search of the mirror. Tristan had given her directions before I’d put him under, and I prayed she could destroy the thing before we faced the wrath of the ensorcelled guards.

The glass hallway came to an end before another set of glass doors, frosted white like the rest of the palace. It was almost likestone, now that I was able to examine it up close, not transparent as I had thought. The doors opened silently to a throne room I couldn’t make out with Rowan’s bulk before me.

“What is this?” came a lilting, lovely voice from the far end of the room. “A gift for me?”

“My Queen,” said Rowan, dipping his head as he couldn’t kneel with Tristan’s weight. The Queen didn’t seem to notice me at all, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief that Sera’s illusion would hold as I studied the Queen of Elandor.

Amira was beautiful. Stunning. Most full-elven females were, of course, but she was far lovelier than most, golden hair flowing around her shoulders like sunlight, her black mourning gown somehow elegant and tragic on her slim frame.

“Finally, one of my hunters returns,” she crooned in that lovely, deadly voice. “And did you succeed?”

“Pray tell me where to lay the body, My Queen,” Rowan replied, sounding as cold as she did, “and I will show you.”

Amira snapped her fingers as we approached her throne, made from the same frosted glass as the rest of the castle. Several guards emerged carrying what looked to be a huge glass table between them.

Not a table, I realized as they placed it at her feet, but a coffin.

I shuddered, not only because we would now be expected to place Tristan’s body in that thing, but that the queen had a glass coffin built to display him like some conquered prize.

Rowan moved forward wordlessly, placing Tristan’s body in the glass coffin. I was careful to keep my hand on his wrist, my magic holding his heartbeat at bay, alive but barely beating. Keeping Tristan asleep as a willing participant was not nearly as difficult as fighting him in stag form, but I was already beginning to tire from the drain on my magic. I begged it to hold out a little longer.

The guards who had brought the coffin retreated to the throne. Four guards, all with the same vacant eyes as the hunters, prepared to defend their queen to the death, whether they wanted to or not. I prayed Sera would destroy the mirror quickly.

Rowan looked to where he thought I was, two inches or so off, and brushed a surreptitious hand against me in a silent reminder to stay close to the coffin and out of anyone’s path. Being invisible didn’t stop me from being solid, unfortunately, and I moved closer, careful not to disturb the blankets and give away my position.

The queen rose, her smile a slash of red delight as Rowan unwrapped the blanket to display his brother’s face, pale and bloodless as if he were truly dead.

“How tragic,” the queen crooned, looking at her stepson with a false frown that would have fooled no one. She placed her pale hands to his tan throat, feeling for a pulse. I stiffened, hoping she missed the infrequent beats. “How?”

“An arrow to the heart, My Queen,” Rowan said, standing tall and stiff as the queen nodded, satisfied that Tristan was truly dead.

She was a fool for not looking further. Sera had wanted to use her magic on him to create a false death blow and disguise his heartbeat, but Tristan had refused vehemently. So violently, in fact, that I was afraid he might hyperventilate in panic. I had suggested the alternative, which he had been far more willing to endure despite the risks. If the Queen had examined further, she would have found no wound.

I kept him under even as she moved toward Rowan, afraid a too-deep breath would give him away.

Amira looked at Rowan, studying his frame and his firm jaw, and while I saw no recognition there, I did see desire. My stomach turned at that look, and I knew somehow that she would have forced him to her bed if he hadn’t already been planning to play the part.

“And what shall I give you as a reward, my loyal hunter?” Amira asked, lifting a hand to stroke a finger down Rowan’s broad chest. I shook with rage at the possessiveness of that touch, at the fact that Rowan’s own father had never acknowledged him enough that the queen might know him, but I suppressed it. It worked to our advantage, after all. “What is your name?”

“Rowan, My Queen,” Rowan said, still playing the cold, ensorcelled hunter. “And I ask only what you offered.”

“My heart?” she said coyly, almost girlishly. “King Rowandoessound well. You’d make a fine husband if you were not only half-elven.” She glanced at his ears, then lay her palm flat against his chest as she stepped closer.

I clenched my free hand into a fist. He wasmine. My—well, I didn’t know exactly what he was to me. But she was looking at him in a way that made my blood boil, and the fact that his half-elven blood was an obstacle didn’t make me seethe less. For a moment, I wished we had decided to go the blunt, dagger-throwing route instead of Sera’s more subtle plan.

The possessiveness was silly. Absurd. But it was there, raging and boiling unbidden in my bones. And I was done trying to fight it.

I reached down and pulled a dagger from its sheath at my hip as silently as I could.

“A kiss then,” Rowan said, looking down into the face of the queen with cold desire, borne of magic rather than true feeling.