Page 32 of Twin Crowns

“No!” she cried, heaving. “I don’t want this! Let me go!”

Shen dropped his arms and stepped away from her.

Rose staggered backward. “I would never, I could never...”

“Kill a witch?” Shen’s smile was blinding in the dark. “That’s what I thought.”

Rose felt as if she might faint all over again. Carefully, she laid the dagger down and pulled herself up and out of the hot spring. She wrapped herself in her cloak and gazed down at Shen. “Would you have really let me kill you?”

“If you hadwantedme dead, you could have done it,” he said as hehopped out after her. He grabbed the dagger, dangling it by the tip. “This blade would have gone straight into my heart.”

Rose was silent, then. The bandit had placed his life in her hands. With a blade pressed to his chest, he had looked past everything she stood for as a Valhart, who hated witches more than anything. Rose would rather rip her hands off than use them to harm him. To harm anyone. And somehow he had known that before she did. He hadn’t seen the princess; he had seen the healer.

She thought of how naturally the craft had come to her just now, howrightit had felt when she healed Shen. There was no fear—only purpose and the spark of something that felt very much like joy. It was too late to go back. Rose had felt the awakening of her magic like a flare inside her, and no matter how hard she tried, she knew she would never forget it.

“I had a feeling you didn’t really want me dead,” said Shen. “Lucky thing I’m always right.” Then he smirked. “Speaking of wanting. You must havereallywanted to heal me. With any of the five crafts, desire is the most important part.”

A sudden flash of heat crawled up Rose’s neck. All the kind thoughts she had been having about him evaporated. “I am engaged! I should have stabbed you when I had the chance, youarrogant, insufferable—”

He raised his hands. “I didn’t mean you wantedme. I meant you wanted tohealme.”

“I wasn’t eventhinking.” Rose plucked her nightgown from the rocks and shook the sand off it. “I just wanted the blood to stop. It was making me sick!”

“You must have a whole lot of natural power in you to have healedme so quickly,” Shen went on, undeterred. He let out a low whistle. “Just imagine what you could do with a little training.”

Rose ducked behind a cactus and slipped her nightgown over her head. “I’d rather not.”

When Shen didn’t answer her, she peeked her head around the cactus. He was already dressed and sitting atop the horse. He really was lightning fast. “Did you know all this time? That I was one of them?”

“I wondered if you might be an enchanter. Like—” He stopped abruptly.

“Like my mother?”

“Yes,” he said after a beat. “Like your mother.”

“The Kingsbreath had me tested for her craft when I was a child,” said Rose in a quiet voice. “Repeatedly.”

Shen’s frown was sharp and sudden. “Tested?How?”

A shiver passed through Rose. All those hours spent crawling through the dirt in the gardens on her hands and knees. Willem Rathborne pushing her face into the muck under every new moon, studying her for even the barest flicker of reaction—of magic. When that didn’t work, he would pack the dirt between her chubby little fingers, closing her fists with his until her fingernails cracked, while the palace guards looked the other way. “It will be over soon, Rose, darling,” he would murmur, stroking her hair as she sobbed.“It hurts me just as much as it hurts you.”

Each time, when it was over, Willem would let her plant a rose. One for every test she passed. One for every day she proved she was a Valhart.

“I’m prouder of you now than I’ve ever been, Rose.” He would pull her close then and press a kiss into the crown of her head, and Rose would close her eyes and thank the Great Protector for the blood in her veins.That she was not an enchanter like her mother.“You are the jewel of my heart.”

By the time she was twelve, she had a rose garden. And Willem Rathborne never pressed her face to the dirt again.

“Rose?” called Shen. “How did he test you?”

“Thoroughly.” Rose fastened her cloak and stepped out from behind the cactus. “That’s all you need to know.”

Shen was silent, then. Unsettled. “And if youhadinherited her magic? Then what would he have done?”

“Does it matter?” said Rose, because the truth was, she didn’t know. She had always been too frightened to let herself imagine it.

“He’s your guardian. The way he treats you matters.”

“Sometimes his fear takes over him. It changes him, and he can’t help it,” said Rose defensively. She thought of how addled Willem had become in recent months. He was always looking over his shoulder and jumping at his shadow on the walls. Something was eating away at him, and there was nothing Rose could do to stop it.

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