Page 73 of Thief of Roses
The roses.The roses kept time of his sentence and his window of opportunity to fulfill the unnamed requirements the Magic mentioned.His sentence had been coupled with the means of his release, his torment entwined with his hope.
“You want me to — Oh, Baró, I cannot!”She turned to him.“How can I destroy the only chance you have of leaving?”She had already taken so much of his time away, first by accident and then by his suggestion.
“It matters not that I did not harm that Rivan girl.I still committed other sins.And now I am more selfish than ever.To be with you, I would let the rest of the world burn.”He bit his lower lip.“As I lack the power to do that, I want it to end.Please.I want to age again.”
Rivani’s throat tightened as she fought back tears.
“I do not want to change anymore.Please, Rivani,” he pleaded.“Please have mercy on me.”
If her actions spared him, saved him from further torment even if it condemned him to the prison of his existence, then she would help him.She hefted the shears and began cutting, half-expecting the roses to lash out at her in fury and make a last-ditch effort to survive comparable to the malice of the Magic.
No backlash came.The roses fell from their stems like ordinary roses, landing in the grass beneath the bush, looking almost pitiable, never betraying their import.Maybe that too was cruel, that something so integral to Baró’s life could be destroyed without any fanfare or protest.Rivani, in having mercy, was merciless, even as silent tears flowed down her face as she performed the last great favor she could do for Baró.
“Is cutting them enough?”She asked when no other remained.
“Yes,” Baró told her, descending the balcony steps to join her.“It is enough.It is over.At long last.”
Rivani dropped the shears as if they had turned into snakes in her hands and threw her arms around Baró’s neck, knowing she had just done something dreadful.She tried not to give into more violent weeping.With her own two hands, she had made it final that he would never be with her.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped out between weepy hiccups.“I never found the way to help you leave.”
“You made this place a home, something I never had before.”
“I failed you.”
“Never,” he whispered, putting his arms around her.“You saved me.Thank you.”He let her weep on him.“Make beautiful things from the roses and remember me.”
Their parting shouldhave been filled with pledges and foolish promises, empty hopes, affectionate words, but there were few words at all exchanged.Instead, Rivani spoke to the horse to soothe it as a way to not feel all the distress of their parting, and Baró let her as a way not to feel all the grief he could not express.Exchanged kisses partnered with fierce and impassioned embraces served as their goodbyes and then Baró stepped back from thevyardinto let Rivani mount and leave.
Baró watched her go as she broke the line of trees and left the confines of his forest, his heart hoping he would see her turn around and choose to stay, or say something comforting.She never looked back.He might have commended her on her strength if his despair did not strip him of his rationality.He wanted to bay like a wolf separated from its pack, rage like a storm, destroy everything around him to release the misery and fury of a pain so deep and encompassing that nothing would ever ease it.His dry eyes burned, but he kept silent lest Rivani hear him.She had to go.
When the breeze picked up around him and stirred the fur at the nape of his neck, he shivered.
“She saydeth not that she loved me,”he said.He may not have been able to say it to Rivani but he still longed to hear the words from her.
If she had, she would have been lying.
“Nay,”he told the Magic who could no longer hurt him.“Love exysteth bytween us, juste a litel.”He sighed.“But not enough.”
You failed, She said.
“Y did not expect to gayn so muche from suche a faylure.”
You were never going to succeed.
“Y knowe,”he whispered.“She mayest not be meant for mankynd, but Y was not meant for love.Styll yt wolde have byen nyce to have byen told once yn my lyfe — evene yf yt wolde have byen a lye.”
His throat closed over and he fell into silence.The breeze drifted by and abandoned him to his solitude.He did not stir.He stayed there for hours, keeping silent vigil.He could not face his loneliness back at the keep.
He was the one who had said goodbye, who had made her say goodbye, who had dictated the year and a day and had held to it because if she stayed, it would do neither of them any good.In the end, they would both be unhappy and resentful, damaged and struggling to make it work.Sometimes, maybe love wasn’t enough.It would not have been enough to sustain them through a future trapped here.But just because he held firm and made her go, his heart was not immune from throwing a tantrum.And if he could have cried, he would have wept oceans.Instead, after hours of silence and stoicism, he bellowed like a mortally wounded creature.He howled until he was hoarse.He whimpered and whined like a pup.
He embedded his remaining claws in the skin of his shoulders as he clutched his crossed arms to his chest, heedless that he bled from new wounds.He wished he could feel the pain of it, wished it bothered him, wished she were there to chide him for his foolishness and put boarberry salve on his injuries and kiss him.He wished he could feel anything but the unbearable pain of her absence.He half-wished that the hollow ache of his arms had never disappeared, that he had never known what it was like to have it filled, that he would forever be ignorant of that sensation because knowing the absence of it hurt so much more.He would never hold her again in his arms and he would never again know the comfort or gentleness of her touch.His best friend, his lover, his love...She was gone.Gone.And he would never see her again.
He sobered eventually, disgusted with his weakness and useless despair.He dragged himself back to the fortress, into the keep, where he broke down again, retreating to the room they shared as lovers.He curled up in the blankets and the furs that still smelled like her, that smelled like their coupling, that made him ache all the more with the knowledge that she would not be returning.He would never be her beast again or her Fir’Darl or her Baró.He would never see her smile again, never run his fingers through her hair again, never have her hand to hold, never share another story.
His life was over.Not the paltry pathetic existence that limped on in his solitude, but the life of promise she offered.He wished his heart would burst.He wished he could die.His future measured against the bliss of the last year offered only emptiness.He gathered the blankets and furs in his arms and crushed them to his chest, wishing they were not just blankets and furs, wishing she had remained in his arms and her departure just a fevered nightmare.
“Y love thee,”he told her at long last, now that he was alone, now that he could say it without the Magic hearing, now that he would never destroy what she loved in him.“Y love thee, Sahtiya.Y love thee and thou wilt never knowe how much.”
