The Tears of the Rose (22 page)

But morning found me anyway.

Rosy fingers of Glorianna's dawn rippled over the sky, turning it and the lake the perfect pink her priests strove to re-create. I sat up to see better, wincing at the intense ache between my thighs. I'd been wrapped up in the blanket, as securely as if it were a bandage and all my skin abraded.

Ash sat nearby, fully dressed, long arms wrapped around his knees.

And brooding.

“Good morning.” I worked a hand free to tuck my hair behind my ears. It was curling madly, tangled, and no doubt standing out around my head like a bonfire leaping out of control. Out of habit, I looked around for my brush, wherever I'd tossed it last night.

“Looking for this?” Ash's voice sounded more full of rocks than usual. Maybe broken glass mixed in. Pain and regret salted the soil. I sighed for that and held out my hand.

“Yes, thank you.”

He shook his head, more at some thought than at me, but didn't hand it to me. Instead he came to sit behind me and gently worked the snarled mess from under the blanket. I froze, uncertain if he intended what I thought. Tentatively, he drew the brush through it. Far too gently.

“You can do it harder than that,” I teased him and was rewarded by his sharp intake of breath at the reminder of how I'd worked him with my hand. My body warmed at the memory.

“I don't want to hurt you.” He sounded funny. Smelled guilty.

“You've groomed horses, right?” I kept my voice light. “Imagine this is a tail.”

“I never did enjoy getting mule kicked,” he observed wryly, which was better. More, he dug in a bit harder. Still not quite enough.

I held my hand over my shoulder for the brush. “Here, let me.”

“No,” he snapped, and I flinched a little at the frustration in his tone. He drew in and blew out a long and deliberate breath. “I want to do this for you. To make things up to you.”

“Even my hair has been mussed once or twice,” I told him, mild and even. “I survived.”

He tugged harder and I braced myself, being careful not to show any twinge.

“Not that.” The brush snagged, then got wrapped up. He cursed, but his tugging got him nowhere. I turned, working my other arm free of the blanket, and took over. In a few moments, the brush came free and I set to teasing out the rest of the tangles. He watched me, bemused. “How do you do that so easily?”

“Lots and lots of practice. See, you have to start at the ends, this way.”

“Last night you brushed from the top down.

“It wasn't all knotted up then.” I smiled, because he still looked unhappy. “And I didn't know you were watching that closely.”

“I'm always watching you, Ami.” His gaze wandered over me, unwillingly, I thought. “It's as if I can't look away.”

“Should I apologize for that?” I hadn't forgotten how he'd said that he hated wanting me. Like a poison.

His gaze flicked to mine, haunted. “No. I should apologize to you. Once you've . . . tidied yourself—you can bathe in the lake—I'll heal you. I can do that much at least.”

“I don't need healing.” I paused in the brushing, surprised. “My thighs are fine.”

“Not that!” In an excess of impatience, he yanked the blanket down, baring my bosom. “Look at yourself. Look at what I did to you.”

Shocked and rather overwhelmed, I took in the sight of my breasts, blooming with bruises, scraped here and there. On the high, round curve of one, a set of teeth marks showed dark red amid a flowering patch of yellow.

“You look as if a wild animal has been at you.” The bitter roil of disgust poured out of him and into the ground, sour with self-loathing. “You should see the rest.”

“Okay.” I tossed the brush aside and stood, dropping the blanket entirely. He cursed under his breath, but—true to his words—seemed unable to look away. My hips ached and the fiery burn on my thighs turned out to be some sort of rash. I fingered it, finding it was composed of hundreds of tiny scrapes.

“From my beard stubble.” The words grumble out of him. “Go bathe so I can heal the damage I did.”

“I don't want healing. But I will bathe.” Snagging the brush again, I strode naked down to the lake, savoring the feel of my bruised body as I moved.
You look as if a wild animal has been at you.
That's how it felt, too.

I loved it. The new me.

But I let him stew anyway. I hadn't changed
that
much.

21

W
hen I returned, still naked, because I liked the way he stared at me, the scent of his desire percolated up through the rest. He'd packed up our few things and had laid out a shirt and pants for me that had survived his mauling, mainly because I hadn't been wearing them.

His gaze crawled over me, full of the lust I loved from him, threaded through with guilt and anxiety. Enough of that. I tossed back my hair and fisted my hands on my hips.

“Skip the apologies,” I said.

His mouth thinned. “No apology is sufficient, Princess Amelia, I—”

“Glorianna save me!” I burst out, thoroughly annoyed with him, and he gaped at me. Enough that I laughed. As I'd laughed last night, howling at the moon, while he drove his cock into me and neither one of us worried about small things like bruises and being royalty or a convict. “Ash—I don't want your apologies because I'm not sorry. I'm not fragile and I don't want to be treated like some hothouse rose whose petals might crumple. I enjoyed last night and I'm not letting you remove a single bruise or scrape. They're . . . trophies.” Evidence of emotion that showed on my skin finally. Not like those seeping, bleeding wounds inside that no one saw.

“I'm only sorry,” I continued in the face of his silence, “that I fell asleep so early.

“You flat passed out, Ami.” He was back to angry. Far better than that oily guilt.

“Mmm, yes. And slept harder than I have . . .” Since I heard Hugh had died. “In forever. I don't mind that. But I wanted to try my mouth on your cock and find out how that feels, too.”

He made a choking sound and rubbed his forehead.

“What? Am I not supposed to use the words now?”

“It's not that.” A muscle in his jaw clenched and he seemed to be grinding his teeth. “Why don't you put your clothes on?”

“Why? Am I so ugly that you can't bear to look upon me?”

“It's not that.” He stared over my shoulder, at the lake or nothing at all. I tossed my hair over my shoulder, and sure enough, his gaze dragged unwillingly to my breasts and down the rest of my body. I sauntered toward him and he took a step back, holding up his palms, as if to ward me off. “Stay away, Ami. Get dressed.”

I kissed the center of one palm and he yanked it away as if I'd burned him. Taking advantage, I slipped close and began unfastening the buttons of his shirt. More than one way to get inside a man's guard. If this was indeed my weapon, I planned to learn to wield it well.

“Stop that.” He gripped my wrists, holding them tight in place. But it lacked the force of his usual demands. And the smoky scent of his desire thickened.

Deliberately I pressed against him, testing, my naked belly brushing against the upthrust line of his cock straining against his pants. “It won't take that long, will it?” I looked up at him through my lashes, swaying against him. “You feel ready to me.”

He groaned, casting his gaze up to the sky. “This was the worst mistake I ever made. If I could take back what happened last night, I would.”

Cold washed through me, a blizzard taking all the sweet warmth of our combined desire with it, leaving the air sterile, without life.

“Ah.” Shame found me, and I was embarrassed to be naked. “Good to know that, Monk.”

I pulled away, but he held me, grip strong on my wrists. The emotions bleeding out of him tasted muddy, swirling with doubt, longing, self-hatred, jealousy, and an under-riding current of helplessness that made the ground shift like sand beneath me.

“It's not what you think.” He searched my face, the scars deepening on his. “I didn't mean what I said.”

“You meant it, all right.” I said it with all the flat coolness he'd used to deflate me with those words the day before. And it worked equally well on him. He relaxed his hold and let me slip away. “I'll get dressed and we can go.”

“Ami . . .”

I yanked on the pants and buttoned up the shirt, then tightly braided my hair and tied it off with a strip of the torn silk. It suited my mood, to have it out of my way. Gathering my things, I cast one long look at the beautiful place. No longer sure how I felt about anything at all, I nevertheless appreciated that Andi had offered me this sanctuary. It no longer seemed so impossible that my daughter would want to come here. Maybe I would come with her.

As if in answer, a bit of life turned inside me, a little starburst of someone else there. I laid my hand over my belly and turned my gaze farther west.

“Thank you, Andi,” I whispered. I almost told her that I would return. Or that I might. In the end, I left it at that, trusting that she heard me.

I flicked a glance at the White Monk, who stood nearby, fists clenched around the straps of the pack he wore. He'd retreated behind that implacable and stern mask, eyes like cloudy glass.

“I'm ready to go,” I said and headed into the larger world.

This time I bundled up again before crossing the border, but winter still hit me with an unexpected blow. Without pausing, the White Monk clomped through the snow, breaking a trail for me. When we passed the altar for Hugh, the flower as verdant as Annfwn itself, I drew Glorianna's circle in the air and spoke the benediction for the dead. My body ached in delicious ways from being with another man, and yet I felt no guilt.

I almost thought Hugh would approve of the woman I was becoming. The one he never had a chance to get to know. And I would never know what kind of man he would have become. That was the greatest tragedy.

“Do you want to stop, Princess?” the White Monk inquired, formal and solicitous of his charge.

“No. You may proceed.”

He'd drawn the double cowl deep over his face, so I felt the glitter of apple green more than saw it. He didn't much appreciate me turning the distance on him.

Still, this would be better. We could not be together as lovers outside of that bubble of paradise, no more than Hugh's forget-me-not could survive more than a moment outside the magic dome. Even if I built a hothouse to hide ourselves away in, the glass would eventually shatter and we'd be exposed to the cruel elements of our world.

No. The High King's daughter and the future Queen of Avonlidgh could not associate with an escaped convict and Tala part-blood. We both knew it. For the first time I felt the bite of duty. This was what came of claiming my own power—responsibility. Our reality wasn't something I could pout or tantrum away.

Ash would be better off returning to Annfwn—his true desire, regardless—and making a life for himself there. I would keep his secrets. For myself, I would forge ahead, playing my role in the fate of Annfwn and the Twelve Kingdoms. It wasn't the happily ever after I'd envisioned when Hugh and I wed, but it could be a good life. An important one.

And maybe I would find other men to enjoy.

I owed the White Monk that much. If my power lay there, then I would apply myself to the study of it. If Glorianna was the goddess of love, then perhaps she was also the goddess of sex. I could take as many lovers as I wished and none would gainsay me. As long as they were no threat to the thrones, I could dally with anyone. Girls, too, as some of my ladies amused themselves that way.

Perhaps I'd lost my chance at true love, but I could have happiness, thick on the ground or not.

The descent went quickly, especially as we walked without speaking, each absorbed in our own thoughts. I sensed the staymachs moving through the foliage, but their flitting shadows no longer frightened me. The White Monk was frankly brooding, judging by the taint he left in the footsteps I followed in. The farther we got from Annfwn, however, the less I sensed his feelings. Maybe a whiff in the air now and then, but barely in the earth at all after a while, as if the soil outside Annfwn lacked something, like desert sand that held no water.

It troubled me, this sensation that the very ground of the Twelve Kingdoms was somehow failing. Was this why the crops and livestock were doing poorly? Maybe our answer lay not in conquering Annfwn for Glorianna, but in restoring some kind of vital magic to the rest of the Twelve Kingdoms. I started to send a prayer to Glorianna for guidance and paused in midthought. Maybe she had already guided me and I needed to listen better.

When we reached the bottom of the narrow trail, where it widened again and our troop of guards had ridden three abreast so easily, the White Monk still stalked ahead of me, stiff gaited and seething. Needing to answer the call of nature, I ducked off the trail and went behind a bush. I didn't tarry overlong, but before I caught up with him, he was charging up the trail, blade drawn, cowl thrown back and eyes bright with panic.

His relief washed over me like the breeze off the mirrored lake in Annfwn, then crackled and crumbled into the ash he was named for under the heat of his rage.

“I understand,” he gritted out. “You seek your revenge by toying with me. By testing me. Well played, Your Highness.”

“Why in Glorianna's name would I want revenge?” I replied, honestly dumfounded. “I had to pee.”

He winced, making me smile. Okay, maybe that had been playing him a bit. But it was fun, too.

“I apologize,” he ground out, “for hurting your feelings. I—”

“You didn't.” I cut him off right there. “I'm fine. It's too bad you regret what happened, but I don't.”

Sheathing his blade, he refused to look at me.
Like staring into the sun.
I rolled my eyes, and the memory of Andi doing that so many times, and being elbowed by Ursula for it, hit me with fond nostalgia. In that moment, I knew I didn't hate her anymore. Maybe I'd never really managed to. It felt good. As if a heavy burden had been lifted.

“Are you laughing at me?” He sounded astonished, a draft of wounded male pride wafting low to the ground.

“You know, I never thought I'd be in the position to say this to someone else, but not everything is about you.”

His jaw worked as he chewed over that. Finally he inclined his head. “Your point, Highness.”

“What will be my prize?” I asked archly.

“I believe, since we failed to set terms, that the lady decides.” He gave me a short bow and waited.

“Tell me about how you learned to heal, why you went to prison, and how you got the scars on your face.”

He stilled. A deer about to flee into the forest. “A severe price—and three things, not one.”

“Tell me they're not connected and I'll trim it to one.”

A huff of that soundless laugh. “Adding to your armory of secrets to use against me, then.”

“Ash.” I laid a hand on his chest, his heart booming underneath my touch, the hunted animal showing in his eyes. “I want to understand you. That's all.”

He laid his hand over mine and quirked his mouth, not quite a smile with the scar pulling it sideways, then stepped back and pulled the cowl deep around his face, as if to keep me from seeing him. “As you wish, Princess. But we should keep going.”

I fell into step beside him.

“You heard me tell part of the story—my father burned to death by the priest of Glorianna.”

I shivered, not from the cold. “Yes. I'm sorry. I didn't know they had the latitude to do that.”

“Latitude?” His breath puffed out in a cloud. “By whose charge? The High King declared that the Tala don't exist; therefore, we could not be spoken of by anyone with allegiance to his government. Even if we can find our way to Annfwn, we can't cross without a certain mysterious percentage of blood—unless we're lucky enough to have assistance.

“So, thanks to Salena, we were scattered across the Twelve Kingdoms, fighting her war, and then left to interbreed with and hide ourselves among the mossbacks.”

“Mossbacks?”

He turned his head and gave me his twist of a smile. “Non-Tala—because you can't shape-shift.”

“Can you shape-shift?” Such a thing had never occurred to me, despite everything.

“No. Not all Tala can.”

“Then it's hardly a fair thing to call us,” I pointed out.

“You can take it up with the committee.”

“Okay, fine. Keep going.”

“As for the latitude you speak of, High Priest Kir has long cultivated a belief among Glorianna's chapels and priests that there are demons cloaked like wolves among sheep. Priests who rout them out and send proof of a kill are richly rewarded.”

My mouth was dry, my lips cold. “What kind of proof?”

“Blood.”

“How does Kir tell Tala blood from another's?”

“Something I also want to know.”

“Which is why you insinuated yourself into his company?”