Chapter 13 ROSE #2
His gaze darkened, heavy with a truth he could barely speak. “Because Grimbalt was never just a troll. He was Alarion. The wizard who cursed me.”
I froze. My hands went slack on his chest. “Alarion…”
Slowly, I turned my head.
The broken body lay crumpled where Derrick had crushed him; the filthy rags and stunted limbs were already unraveling.
Before my eyes, the twisted form stretched and smoothed, the wiry beard receded, the gnarled hands straightened into long, elegant fingers.
What remained was a man, tall, broad-shouldered, terribly handsome even in death.
His hair fell like pale gold silk across the stones. His mouth was soft, almost princely.
And his eyes—oh God.
They were open, staring sightless into the gray sky. Crystal blue, clear as spring ice. Broken. Dead.
But I knew them.
The same blue as Snow’s.
The same blue as mine.
My heart slammed hard enough to hurt. “Oh my God…” My voice cracked, thin and strangled. “The eyes. They’re… they’re the same.”
I swayed in Derrick’s arms, every part of me was splitting apart, the world tilted beneath my feet as the truth clawed its way back in. Alarion. The wizard. The monster.
My father.
How could Derrick love me if he knew it was my father who cursed him and his family?
"Derrick," I choked out.
Derrick's brows knitted in confusion. "His eyes."
He looked from Alarion to me. "How can that be?"
"Oh, Derrick," I gathered all my courage, even though my heart felt like it was breaking again; this time, I knew it would be forever.
Nothing would ever mend it after Derrick knew the truth and left me.
There would be no hope. And how could he not?
I was the daughter of a monster. A monster who had been about to kill me. Had he known who I was? Did it matter?
“Rose, Rose…” His arms tightened around me, alarmed, anchoring me upright when my knees threatened to buckle. His voice was hoarse with fear. “What’s wrong? My love. Talk to me.”
Tears blurred my vision. “He’s my father.” The words ripped from me like a confession, raw and shaking. “Alarion. The wizard who cursed you. The monster you killed. His blood runs in me. Don’t you see? I’m tainted. I should have known—I should have felt it. How can you love me now?”
Derrick flinched, flinched as if I’d lashed him with a whip.
For a wild second, I thought he would shove me away, or worse, that his face would go blank with disgust, and I’d see the same revulsion in him that I felt for myself.
I braced for it. I was ready for it. I deserved it, I thought.
But all his expression did was break open, exposing something even worse, a devastation like a storm-torn field.
And then, in a single heartbeat, he pulled me closer. Tighter.
His hand cupped my cheek. His palm was rough and cracked, but warmer than any fire. He tipped my head and looked at me, looked so hard I thought he meant to burn the hatred right out of me.
“My Rose…” His thumb caught the tear that trembled down my face, gentle as dawn. “You are nothing of him. Do you hear me?”
He waited, but I had no words. The world had gone hollow. I thought, if I could claw open my skin and scrape out the tainted blood, I would. If I could walk into a river and let it suck out my marrow, I’d never step out again.
A sob cracked my chest. “But—” I tried to shake my head, and his hand stilled me.
“I said, you are nothing of him.” Derrick’s voice was fierce, and I finally understood why the wolves had always cowered from the sight of him.
He could be pure fury if it meant defending someone he loved.
“Whatever he was—whatever he did—you are not his shadow. You are the light that banished him. Do you understand?”
I squirmed, desperate for some way to contradict him. I wanted to argue, to prove that I was right and he was wrong, that I was ruined, spoiled, irredeemably cursed. But when I tried to speak, the only thing that came out was a pitiful whimper. “The blood—”
His eyes turned molten. “Listen to me, Rose. Blood does not make you. Choice does. And you chose love. You chose kindness. You chose me. That is all that matters. Not fate, not chance, not curses. Only what you hold on to when everything else is stripped from you. And you have always, always chosen to be good.”
My heart battered my ribs. I sagged against him. “You don’t understand. I feel it. It’s inside me. What if one day—”
He kissed my brow, hard and quick. “Then I will be here to catch you. To remind you who you are, even if you forget. Especially then.” His hand trembled where it held my face. “You’re mine, Rose Red. Always. No wizard’s blood could change that.”
For a moment, I wanted to scream at him, to force him to see me as I was, to punish him for loving a thing so foul.
But then I saw the way he looked at me, with a hunger and a reverence that cut through all the layers of self-hatred.
I realized he was right. I had never met my father.
Not really. He had no part in my life. I was nothing like him.
In wonderment, I looked at Derrick, marveling at his seeing it so clearly while I was still trying to wipe away the cobwebs in my mind that were trying to screw up my brain with self-doubt.
Somewhere in the woods, a wind shrieked.
It sounded like the cry of the broken world, mourning something lost. The trees groaned.
I pressed my face into the crook of his neck and wept, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t loosen his grip.
He held me as if I were the thing keeping him upright, not the other way around.
Gradually, the worst of the shaking passed.
My chest ached, but the pain had become something dull and manageable.
Like a wound that had begun, at last, to clot.
Derrick didn’t speak again, didn’t move, just traced circles on my back with his thumb and breathed with me until our hearts fell into the same rhythm.