Chapter 7
Seven
Rose
Rose didn't know what the king had planned for her, but she knew it wasn't good. Gone was her pretty room, even if it had aged from all the time that she'd been in it. Gone were her dresses, and all the lovely sheets that had been comfortable.
They'd taken her out of that room. Shuffled her far away from the four walls that might not have been safe but at least were familiar. They took her to a simple room that looked almost small enough to be a closet. There was only a cot here. The same kind of cot she had slept in as a child.
The sheet on top of it was threadbare and scratchy. But she still wrapped it around her body because they hadn't given her anything else to put on. Nude, freezing, she sat shivering on top of the cot and waited for what would happen next.
Desperately, she tried to call out to Rhydian in her head.
Save me, she thought to him. Let me come back to you.
But she didn't go anywhere. She stayed in that room by herself for hours. Or perhaps it was days. She didn't know. Rose stared at the door until it opened.
A woman walked through it, although she wasn't someone that Rose recognized. This wasn't a priestess. She was just a regular maid with her eyes on the floor as she skittered toward Rose and held out a robe for her to put on. "The king has requested you wear this."
"Why?"
The woman didn't respond. Almost as though she was afraid to have any sort of conversation with Rose, which could only mean that she was trapped here too.
So she took the robe, but then whispered very quietly, "If you know a way out of here, I will help us both escape. Together, we could manage. We can get out of here."
"What is your magic?" the maid whispered, as though that would make a difference.
Rose shook her head. "I have none."
It was a lie. But her magic was entirely useless.
She could disappear into her mind, certainly.
She could create worlds in her own head and not remember a thing of what happened here.
But that was all she could do. Rose's magic was impractical, unless she wanted to be a doll for the rest of her life.
The maid shook her head. "You're on your own, then. I won't risk my own safety for someone with no magic."
And then she left.
Helplessness threatened to swell over Rose’s head, a tidal wave of disappointment that she feared she could never control. Rose had known it would be hard to get out of here. She'd tried for years before giving up and devoting herself to learning with Rhydian.
But even now, it was hard to imagine just how stuck she really was. She still had that spark of hope in her chest that burned brightly. It would never let her sink into despair. Not yet, at least.
So she put on the robe. It was an ephemeral piece of clothing, stunning and light as she drew it over her shoulders.
Entirely see-through, it showed her body off to all who would look at her.
Not that she minded. Rose had never cared if someone stared at her.
Even before the time when her body had been passed from man to man, she had wanted people to look at her.
How na?ve she had been. If only she could go back in time and tell her younger self that such vanity would end her life as she knew it.
Rose stood in the center of the room, waiting for someone to collect her.
She didn't have to wait long. The door burst open as though the guard was hoping he would catch her changing.
He certainly looked disappointed that she was clothed, although his eyes still lingered on her bare arms and the shape of her body revealed beneath the robe.
"Come on then," he hissed. "We're already late."
A part of her wanted to quip at him. Whose fault was that? If they were late, and it had nothing to do with her getting ready. She'd taken maybe a few minutes getting this robe on.
Wherever this rebellion came from, it felt good to indulge the thoughts.
She imagined herself walloping him over the head with a nearby vase as she followed him out into the hall.
The decorations were utilitarian at best, clearly a servant’s area, not something that any royal would ever see. Not a single window in sight.
Rose didn't even know how long it had been since she'd seen the sun. Years, certainly. Perhaps a startling amount of them that she hadn't bothered to count.
The halls were strange. They moved in a serpentine pattern, graceful arcs intermingling with each other. It was worse than any labyrinth she could have imagined. This place was a rat’s nest of hallways that all merged and mingled and then split away from each other.
Truly, unlike anything she could have imagined. Then the guard stopped in front of a doorway and grabbed a bag that was hanging on the handle.
"Turn around," he said gruffly.
This new part of her, the angry part that wanted to fight, wanted to tell him to go fuck himself.
She didn't know what the bag was for, but what did it matter?
This life wasn't worth living, anyway. If he would just hit her, get angry at her, smack her around a bit, then she could disappear from this realm and do whatever she was told to do here.
He must have seen the thoughts reflected on her face because he growled out, "Don't even think about fighting. I've been informed not to hurt you, but I can still make this unpleasant for both of us."
How he was going to do that without hurting her, she had no idea. But so many years of training made her turn around and give him her back.
The bag came down over her head. Just as she’d feared it would.
He grabbed her arm roughly, shoving her down a corridor where they did not want her to see the end.
Rose's world narrowed to her other senses.
The sharp feeling of his hand gripping her arm.
The strange sensation of a cold wind trailing down her spine.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their footsteps and her breath until a cacophony of sound suddenly burst around her.
A crowd. A massive crowd of people, all talking and murmuring with each other. She'd heard such dulcet tones before when she was still living with the priestesses, but never since she'd been here. These were the sounds of a calm crowd, not of the people she might have expected.
Was the king selling her? Perhaps. She could imagine that he would want to get one final use out of her, but she couldn't imagine why he would need more money. So that must not be it.
At least until all the sounds stopped. The king’s voice boomed, and silence descended upon the crowd.
"Friends! Family. You have all gathered here today for quite the spectacle. I promised you something new, did I not?"
Cheers rose, and Rose flinched into the guard. He clearly did not like that, because he grunted and shoved her away from him. It jerked her arm so hard she swore it popped out of the socket for a moment. The pain shocked her into silence as the king spoke again.
"For years we have watched my warriors fight.
They have given us show after show. They have proven themselves worthy in so many ways.
The ones who are still alive, at least." He chuckled, as though that was a funny joke, when it wasn't at all.
People were dying. "Now, I want to give them a gift.
A gift unimaginable to them, I'm certain.
They have not seen softness or kindness in many years. But now, I give them—"
There was a long pause, and then a sudden blast of light. The guard had whipped the bag off her head.
She tried to lift her arm to shield her face from it, but the guard held onto her tightly, forcing her to look into the sun where it was revealed from a hole in the ceiling above her head.
Swaths of red fabric hung down from the ceiling as well, creating a river of blood that hung over her head.
And then there were the stands. Countless of them.
Far above her head, because the walls that held them up were at least fifteen feet taller than she was.
No one was climbing out of the pit she stood in with the guard.
And it was a pit. The ground was just packed earth, a circle of earth that was smeared with dark smudges. She was alone with the guard and hundreds of eyes staring down at her.
Who even were these people?
She stared back at them, noting all the faces that were vaguely familiar but so much older than when she’d known them.
There were priestesses up there, she realized.
Quite a few of them must have been girls she had been in school with, but she couldn't remember a single one of them.
All of those faces, all those people she had once loved, they were all gone.
Only one face had stayed in her memory, and that was only because it was like looking in a mirror.
"Astrid," she croaked, as though saying the name might call her sister out from behind a person.
But she wasn't there. Astrid hadn't found her in countless years, and she wasn't going to find her now.
The priestesses were likely handpicked from those who wouldn't know who she was, and people who wouldn't recognize her.
There was no one here who could help her. No matter how much she begged.
She didn’t want to be here. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to end well for her. So instead, she turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth of its rays that she might never see again.
"This woman!" The king continued, gesturing with a hand at Rose as though she was nothing more than property.
"The priestess you see before you is a feral creature who has defied my orders far too many times.
But her beauty has yet to fade, and my warriors are hungry.
Tonight, I will give the winner a gift of beauty! "
A gift of...
Oh. Right. Her.