The Tears of the Rose (19 page)

“And this is what you journeyed here for? To tell me these things?”

It seemed stupid, put that way.

Well, and I wanted to see if I could cross into Annfwn. I didn't expect to run into you.
Couldn't say that.

“Annfwn will always be here for you, Ami. For you and your blood. This is your legacy, too. You and your daughter.”

Her and the “daughter” thing. I couldn't answer, grinding my teeth over the desire to tell her to keep her trumped-up prophecies, generosity, and our mother's legacy. That I didn't want it.
Oh, but I did . . .

“But you”—she studied the White Monk again—“you should not have been able to cross.”

He slid the hand up my back to rest on my shoulder. “Princess Amelia's ability brought me over with her.”

“No.” Andi sounded very sure of herself, imperious. “It doesn't work that way.”

“I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but that's what happened.” The White Monk spoke the respectful words, as he did with me, but he didn't mean them any more than he did with me. Was he such an outlaw that he kneeled to no one?

She narrowed her eyes, looking through him. “You're Tala part-blood. Not enough to cross on your own, but enough that Ami's blood could add to yours, to bring you over.”

“My father—he was Tala and always seeking a way to return. He'd been separated from his warrior brethren during the Great War, making his way west. Then he met my mother. He stayed with her, but she said he never forgot Annfwn.”

“Where was this?”

“In Nebeltfens—about as far from Annfwn as you can get and still be in the Twelve.”

“Did he find his way back?”

Grief flowed through the air, redolent of stagnant anger. “No. The village priest accused him of being a demon, and they . . . burned him alive.”

The horror of it choked me. I reached out to touch his arm, but he yanked it away, wanting none of my comfort. Andi, though, his gaze was glued to her, telling
her
what he wouldn't tell me in all those times we spoke.

“How old were you?” Andi sounded genuinely sorrowful for him.

“Thirteen. I tried to save him, but . . .”

“You could not.”

“No. No one could, least of all a skinny half-breed boy terrified they'd turn on him next.” Bitterness now. Self-hatred. The ground grew boggy with the swampy scent of it.

“So you came instead. Since he never could.”

“Yes. I've tried before, but I could never cross on my own.”

That startled me. He'd acted as if he'd never seen the border before. He'd played me. Probably all of it, taunting and teasing me, the healing and the touching, even that kiss—all to get me to do what he really wanted. My nails dug into my palms painfully.

Andi seemed to fall into deep thought. “I shall have to discuss the implications of this with Rayfe.”

“Must be nice to have a husband who's alive to talk to.” The snipe escaped me, and I regretted it. I seemed to be trapped in the role of petulant baby sister, sounding like she'd taken my toy instead of the center of my world. Instead I wanted to be Ursula, swinging my sword to kill them both.

Andi sighed. “You say you're not ready to hear this, Ami, but I'm going to say it. I'll say it as many times as it needs to be said.” She held out her hands, palms up. “I made so many choices to try to save others during that horrible time, and I ended up destroying the life of a good man who wanted only to protect me and irreversibly damaging one of the people I love most in the world, depriving my niece of a father. I cannot make it up to you. All I can offer is my remorse. I will regret what happened until the end of my days and likely beyond. I rue it, now and forever. I offer you my apology, Amelia, from the bottom of my heart and soul and mind.”

Something glittered in the air around us, as if something magical had occurred. But I felt no different. This changed nothing. They were words. Nothing more.

“I don't forgive you.”

“I don't ask for it. I don't seek pardon for my actions. They are done and I cannot take them back.”

“You could return to Ordnung and face justice for your actions. That would show true remorse for your sins. And your betrayal of your family and your kingdom.”

“I can't.” She said it in the tone of someone who'd weighed that very thing and made a hard decision. “That might be the easier path for me, but I have people depending on me. I can't speak of it to you, but I must stay in Annfwn. This is all I can offer, paltry as it is.”

“It's not enough.”

“No. Nothing ever will be.”

“And yet you seek to take more from me.”

Andi was already shaking her head before I finished. “Not take. Give. You could be happy here. Ami—I wish you could see it. Annfwn is like . . . no other place.”

I gestured to the summery forest. “I see it. Okay, it's warm when it shouldn't be, but it will be the same at Ordnung or Windroven come summer. So far I'm unimpressed by this so-called paradise.”

She smiled, laughing at my ignorance. “This is but the gateway. A sort of . . . buffer zone. Come with me, if only for a day. There is so much more. People dream their entire lives of having what Annfwn offers. It could be yours, too. And your daughter's.”

“I'm not interested.”

The White Monk brushed his hand over my back again, and I glanced at him. His face showed that longing he'd had before, that desperate hope. He wanted to see it. More than he wanted anything else in the world. It ran bright and strong in him.
Well, welcome to longing for what you can't have.
He hadn't cared for my feelings. I didn't care for his.

“We have people waiting for us. People depend on me, too. We must return.”

Andi inclined her head but seemed saddened. Then she held out a hand to the White Monk. “And you? I regret that you could not cross without Ami, but the fact that you could cross at all means you belong here. You are welcome to stay. Perhaps find your father's family, as I found my mother's.”

18

I
stepped away from him. Away from the surging, fierce, and triumphant joy that saturated the ground, firming and steadying it. All this time he'd dogged me just to get this. And now he'd walk away without a backward glance, leaving me as they all did. Who cared about stupid, pretty little Ami?

Then the joy dimmed. He looked at me, but I refused to meet his gaze.

“Thank you, Queen Andromeda. What you offer is all I ever wanted. But I must go with the Princess. I could not abandon her.”

“Sure you could,” I said in a bright tone.
After all, everyone else does.
“I don't need you.”

“Regardless, I will stay with you.”

I finally spun on him. “I can walk down a hill by myself.”

“Are you sure?” He mocked me. “You weren't so great at riding a horse.”

A funny sound—Andi snorting with laughter—interrupted my furious rebuttal. For the first time, I recognized the old Andi in that odd, unattractive laugh of hers. Our nurse had despaired of ever getting her over it and simply urged her never to laugh at court functions. She pointed a finger at me even as she covered her nose and mouth with the other hand.

“What?” I demanded, further enraged that she was laughing at me, yet again.

“You've met your match, Miss Ami.” She tried to stop laughing and snorted again. “I never thought I'd see the day.”

“Hugh was my perfect match! My one true love. He”—I flung a hand at the White Monk—“is a low-life former convict, without royal blood, who means nothing to me.”

He froze, face going impassive, eyes congealing in that apple-green hatred. “Just so,” he agreed in a cold tone. The ground had frozen and he bowed formally to me. “I shall await you on the other side of the border, Your Highness. I presume I can exit on my own, Queen Andromeda?”

Andi nodded. “Yes. Easier for me to do that way. If you ever wish to return, do this. Test the border and wait. I'll remember you and send someone to bring you over. We'll figure out a way to manage this. Also—if you meet other part-bloods or stranded warriors who cannot cross, tell them we're working on bringing them home, too. My solemn promise as Queen of Annfwn.”

Others? So there were other Tala out in the Twelve Kingdoms. Did Kir know?

The White Monk took a few steps, then knelt at her feet, bowing his head. “Thank you, my queen.” He spoke with a heartfelt reverence that burned in my gut. How I hated them both.

“This is a traitorous conversation,” I declared.

They both looked at me as if they'd forgotten I was there.

“Do you believe High King Uorsin wishes there to be Tala hiding among the people of the Twelve Kingdoms?” Andi asked me in a reasonable tone.

“Of course not. He's issued an edict that they be killed on sight.” I bit down on my words, realizing suddenly that the law applied to the White Monk, too. He was twice dead—for escaping prison and for his dirtied blood. He rose from his ridiculous obeisance, bowed to Andi, and strode back for our crossing place in rigid, angry strides. I refused to watch him go.

“And you?” Andi turned on me. “Ursula?”

It took me a moment to understand what she meant. “We are not Tala.”

“You're as much as the White Monk is—more so, actually. Same as I am.”

“I am
not
like you. You're the one who bears the mark. Ursula and I escaped the taint.”

She laced her fingers together. “It doesn't work that way. The mark only means that I have our mother's magic. Please listen to this, Ami—you will breed true, because our mother's blood was so strong, and for other reasons I can't tell you. Your daughter also bears the mark.”

My hand covered my belly. “I carry a son. I have no daughter.”

She tilted her head in that uncanny way again, looking into me somehow. “Your daughter bears the mark. She grows strong, already full of magic.”

“Nonsense.”

“Have you noticed anything unusual?”

“Like barfing my brains out every morning or if someone boils fish?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I'm sorry. That must be awful.”

“Save your sympathy.” I felt brittle. I'd wanted her with me, to say exactly that, and now here she was. Who knew it would be so hard to keep hating her?

Taking one of the long skeins of her glossy hair, she thoughtfully wound it around her fingers. “I mean more—do you sense things you never did before? Maybe heightened perceptions in some way?”

“I saw . . . things. In the woods. On the way here.”

“Staymachs,” she answered in an absent tone. “They won't hurt you.”

“They hurt the soldiers escorting me. Killed them and the horses.”

Her dark brows winged up. “Oh! Oh, no—not unless the men resisted too fiercely. And never the horses. They were all likely relocated.”

“What?” How was that possible without us seeing?

“Taken somewhere else.”

“I know what ‘relocated' means.”

“Sorry—it's a new program. We've been retraining the staymachs to lead interlopers away instead of killing them outright, whenever possible. But they always would have let the horses free. The Tala love horses.” She smiled, a secret, loving curve of her mouth, and I recalled what Ursula had said, about Rayfe rescuing Andi's mare. How had he done that?

“I don't see how that's physically possible. We were right down the hill and didn't see them.”

“Oh, well.” She looked chagrined and waved her hands in the air. “Magic. It takes some getting used to.”

“I've seen staymachs, at the Battle of Ordnung, remember? They're not very big.”

“They change shape,” she assured me, as if promising the sky was really blue.

An awkward silence fell between us, as we both acknowledged what a strange conversation this was. The great, unbridgeable distance between us. “Do you?” I asked into the space. “Change shape?”

“Yes, Ami, I do.” She looked very grave. “That's part of what the mark means. Your daughter will be able to shape-shift, too. That's why you have to bring her here, before she becomes a woman. I might not be able to help her after that. It very well could mean life or death for her.”

“You survived.”

“I was lucky.”

She looked bleak, and those years came back to me. Awkward, invisible Andi. My daughter would never be that way. She'd take after me and I would teach her what I knew. Except there would be no daughter; I was having a son. I mentally shook myself for falling into Andi's witchy wiles.

“More than that”—Andi drifted closer, the sunlight clearly streaming through her image, her gray eyes turbulent—“if she never learns, she'll be forever a shadow of who she could become, half a person.”

For some of us it's too late—we'll never be whole again.
I shivered. “Like the White Monk.” I murmured it to myself, but Andi nodded, sympathy for the man she'd barely met stark on her face.

“Maybe if he'd come to us as a young man, the shamans could have helped him. Now it's too late. He can never be whole.”

“He's perfectly vital and strong,” I snapped without thinking.

“You don't know him.”

“Forgive me—I was speaking more in a metaphorical sense. I meant no offense to your lover.”

My face flooded hot, guilt and shame pounding at the inside of my skin. “He is
not
my lover, Andi! What kind of person do you think I am?”

She regarded me with clear, wise eyes. “I think you're a young, flesh-and-blood woman with her entire life ahead of her. Happiness is not thick on the ground—gather it when you may.”

Thick on the ground—curious that she put it that way. “Sometimes. . .” I hesitated over the words. “I mean, since I've been pregnant, I've been feeling emotions. My midwife says that's part of it, but . . . it's as if emotions have a smell. Or I feel them, under my feet. I realize that sounds like I'm being silly and I'm just—”

“It's not silly,” Andi interrupted my building babble. “The gift comes from your daughter, and it's a powerful ability. Even our mother did not possess such a talent. I'm so happy your daughter will have that as her legacy.”

“Once she's born, I'll lose it?”

“I don't know. Most likely. I'm sorry.”

I shrugged, trying to act as if it didn't bother me at all. “Why should I have anything? Our mother left nothing else for me.”

“Did Ursula tell you about the dolls?”

My laugh came out as a bitter snort, not unlike Andi's, but without the comedy. “Oh, yes. How about that? Zevondeth had mine, only it's missing a head. Too bad for me.”

“Oh, Ami . . .” Her face crumpled, and she wrung her hands together. “That can't be right. Are you sure?”

“That my doll doesn't have a head? Yes—that kind of detail is kind of hard to miss. Stop feeling sorry for me. I've been fine without it.”

“That can't be right,” she repeated to herself. “It must be somewhere. She wouldn't have—”

“Well, she did. She was waiting for something to be sent and she died before it arrived. Story of my life.” I couldn't match Ursula's hard demeanor, but I carried off the not-caring attitude pretty well.

“Sent? Sent from Annfwn?” Andi's face cleared. “Of course! I wonder what happened? I'll look for it. I'll find it and send it to you. But you might not need it.”

“A headless doll isn't much of a thing.”

“What I needed was inside the body. Look there. But I'll also see what I can find among her things here.”

That rankled. “Don't bother. It's not important.”

“But it is.” That in her big-sister tone. “You'll need it in the days ahead. If not you, then your daughter will.”

“I'm not having a daughter!” I was sick of this game. “Zevondeth says the babe is a boy and the High King has declared him as his heir.”

Andi positively faded at that news, her face whitening under the golden tan, trees visible through her image. “What? That's terrible news! How is Ursula?” She twisted her fingers together in that weaving motion, her gaze focused on something only she could see. “Moranu curse Uorsin and his cruel ways.”

“He's not cruel,” I protested. “My son will be High King. That will be a fitting legacy for Hugh.”

Her attention returned to me. “I would ask what's happened to you, but I suppose I know. Still, you never used to be mean. Of the three of us, you were the most loving, and now—”

“Maybe I'm growing up. It's a hard world. As you said, happiness is not thick on the ground. I'll stop distressing you with my presence.”

“Come back anytime.” She said it to my back as I walked away.

“My love goes with you, Sister, always.”

I snatched up my things and stalked back over the border, where the White Monk sat by a small campfire, warming himself, naked blade on the snow at his side, waiting for me.

His head snapped up as I emerged, and the cold hit me like a fist of ice. Stupid not to get re-dressed before crossing, except that the dramatic exit was worth it. The White Monk didn't comment when I stalked up to the fire and hastily layered up again. Nor did he say anything—or move—when I finished and stood there expectantly.

“Well?” I finally prompted. “I'm ready. Let's go.”

He cast an eye at the sky overhead. The snowflakes fell thick and heavy from the darkening clouds. “It's almost nightfall, there's no moon, and the weather is treacherous. It would be suicide to descend tonight.” He'd returned to his formal, neutral mode. No warmth about him. None of that smoky sense of desire that so intoxicated me.

It had been so sunny in Annfwn, I'd forgotten. As if the eternal summer made even the sunlight last longer, though it seemed to be early evening in both places. Here, that time meant winter dark.

“But we don't have blankets to sleep in. Or any shelter.”

“True. We'll freeze to death if we stay here.”

“So we die either way?”

“Well, there is one warm place to spend the night.” The White Monk raised his brows at me.

Of course. “So this is your plan to get me to take you back into Annfwn. Clever.”

He didn't respond. He didn't need to, as it had been foolish of me to say. He could have stayed in the first place.

“Fine.” Torture that I'd have to let him carry me again. “But I forbid you from any touch other than necessary, understand?”

He scattered the burning branches with a stick, scuffing snow over the embers with his boots, scarred mouth in a grimace. “Believe me,
Princess
, I'm not the least tempted to touch you in any way.”

“Good.” I waited for him to finish, the cold still in my bones.

“You might have mentioned this plan before I got all these winter clothes on again.”

“I didn't want to overstep my bounds, Princess. Seeing as how I'm just a low-life former convict and not fit to be in your exalted presence.” He sheathed the blade with a snap that made me jump. Only then did I smell his anger. Like hot blood splashed on the snow beneath my feet. But a rage so old it had frozen over, a scar tissue of ice. He scooped me up without meeting my eyes, staring into the distance and the blizzard that went on forever for him. With perfect faith, he strode without faltering, straight into the paradise long denied him.

And that I denied him still.

He could come back, though. Once he'd delivered me to safety, Andi would let him in and he could be rid of me and the rest of the Twelve Kingdoms. Good riddance.