Page 85 of A Reign of Roses
Somewhere amid the tears I could just make out Griffin’sout-of-breath voice beside Kane, as if he’d come hurtling into the great hall amid the commotion. “Holy Gods above. Is that—”
“She was alive,” Kane murmured. “All along, she was alive.”
The winter sun was nearblinding when I awoke. Brighter, as it reflected off heaps of fresh, clean snow. It sliced through the curtains into Kane’s room and directly onto my face, pulling my eyes open. I pointed my toes and let my knuckles brush against the smooth headboard.
Home.I was home.
I stretched again. All my muscles protested. Every single one.
From fighting, from healing, from Kane.
I grounded myself in the memories of last night. How, after Kane and I had eaten an entire pork roast and two full loaves of cloverbread with everyone and, over many glasses of birchwine, had shared our stories—both the gruesome and the hopeful—he had brought me upstairs. And when I’d complained I couldn’t bathe because my limbs were too tired and my belly too full, he’d carried me into the bath. He’d washed my hair with the most delicious lilac and lemongrass soap, and then my entire body after that, kneading and rubbing every inch of me from my sore shoulders to the slick ache between my legs until I squirmed and sobbed with pleasure.
He’d brought me to bed and we’d made love again. Slower, more careful, less hurried. Less twined around the leftover thorns of suffering for so long without each other.
I’d still cried during. And after. And then blubbered to Kane that I was sorry for ruining everything and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. And that I wasn’t pregnant, or hormonal, or tired—although, in fairness, Iwasactually that last one.
He’d raised a single brow and asked me why in the world I’d felt the need to explain myself. Clearly he hadn’t grown up as a teenage girl with an younger brother and one male friend—
But Kane had only laughed and pulled me close and assured me that it might take some time until we felt like ourselves again. And even though he was right and I knew it, I still wanted that time to speed by as quickly as possible. I was eager to get my old life back, even just for a little, before we went to war.
This firm mattress, Kane’s simple dark sheets, and his warm sleeping body beside me were at least the first pillars of that old life I could grasp on to: a reminder that I was here and I was safe and this was real.
Even my toes, prodding into the slumbering body of Acorn at the foot of our bed, brought a smile to my cheeks. I sat up on my elbows to peer at his odd little goblin face and wiry, feathered owl wings. Some dream of his resulted in a snort that sent my heart racing, and I brought the covers up around me in reflex.
All right, so I was still getting used to the strix, but everything else—everything else was a relief.
Kane’s muscular back rippled with his own snores, the lucky bastard hidden completely in shadow while I had taken the brunt of the harsh dawn light. I rolled over, hoping to chase the last thread of sleep before it evaporated from my grasp completely.
I’d need all the rest I could get—we likely had only another day here, two at the most, before we had to leave for Rose. Find a way to convince Ethera, somehow, and then…The thought that followed was like tripping down a flight of stairs.
We’d have to go back.
Back to Lumera. Back to Solaris.
Back to that Stones-forsaken, muggy, marble-filled, bloodred-and-ink-black palace. Like a dreadful bruise.
Nausea seized my stomach and I sat up with enough force to wake Acorn and produce a shriek from him. As soon as his half-opened beady little eyes realized it was only me, he yawned and returned to his sleep.
But I was suddenly far too awake to lie in bed another minute.
I found my leathers in Kane’s closet, alongside my prized, well-worn copy ofEvendell Flora; the black silk gown I’d been wearing when we’d been trapped in a wine cellar together; and the blue dress he bought me in Crag’s Hollow. Some part of my still-healing heart ripped back open at the realization that he’d not disposed of any of my things in all the weeks he’d thought I was dead.
He’d kept it all. Artifacts of his love.
I changed silently, careful not to disturb either of my sleeping, winged boys, and found my way through the drowsy morning halls of Shadowhold. Down the grand staircase—that, too, festooned with wreaths of holly and little linked pinecones—and out into the barracks. Past the colorful tents that filled the front walls of the keep, now doused in lovely new snow. Past the gates, which creaked open for me as if I were some kind of royalty—guards in their shining obsidian armor and helmets shaped like eerie skulls waving pleasantly at me and wishing me a nice day. After lifting my arches against the trunk of a tree to stretch, I set off into the Shadow Woods at a brisk, jolting pace.
And I was not afraid.
There was nothing in these woods I couldn’t face. No creature, no beast, no animal. I had survived beatings, loss, torture, Fae mercenaries, harvesting, confinement, impalement, explosions—
I hadsurvived.
It was no indication of a flawless future, of course. Beth herself, a seer who had yet to be wrong, had told me point-blank that I woulddie. I knew in my bones, even after I’d survived so much, that it was true.
But I didn’t brave so many horrors, defeat so much evil, suffer so deeply, to give up whatever joy I was left with. I was grateful for my life. Not the potential of it, or the purpose it served. Not for what I hoped one day, if every single miracle came true, itcouldbe. But for how it looked today.
I rounded a bare beech tree and the two mighty stags that grazed below it—soft brown fur speckled with white spots, nuzzling each other in the dappled wintry sunlight—breath funneling pleasantly in and out of my tired lungs, glittering white snow at my feet.
