Rose Bloom, Rose Bud, Rose Blood | L. R. Lam #3
The scent of roses on the air thickened. A power curled, tightened, and struck like a punch. The guard rose in the air and slammed into the stone wall, his armour rattling.
His gauntleted hand struck out, knocking over a candlestick, the flame hungrily licking at the tapestry. It burned far brighter and quicker than it should have due to the thick magic in the air. Within moments, it’d claimed the rug, another tapestry, and the curtains around the four-poster bed.
The flames grew hotter, until I feared my skin would split.
But my love was on the other side of the fire, backed up against the window.
I knew, somehow, that she was too afraid to use whatever power she’d accessed again.
Unlike me, she’d had no training. Within moments, the blaze might catch on those petals, the long hair, the tulip bell of her skirt, and I couldn’t let it happen.
I took the last of my magic, the metal of the guard’s breastplate crumpled, and he let out a sound I hope I never hear again.
I smelled iron-tanged blood, and I drank the magic up until I was as bloated with it as a leech. I took my quickness to anger, my selfishness, my unruly, thorned vines of dark emotion, and I screamed it out and reached into the fire, the heat searing my hand.
Despite her fear, she reached for me, and the flame snuffed out. Her touch made me want to scream, but I swallowed it down and dragged her towards the door and down the stairs. Despite the pain, I didn’t let her go.
The other guard was still slumped over, but he was dead. I’d taken his life, too.
“They were kind enough, as guards went,” my love said softly, the petals around her face wilting. “Even if they kept me here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t entirely sure I was. There had been no other way, or so I would tell myself.
Dawn was lighting the edge of the horizon, and the meadow lightened to that gray just before the day began.
We both stopped. There, at the edge of the meadow, was a tidy row of gravestones, each with the carving of a flower.
The previous blooms. Some were so old it was impossible to know what type of flower they’d been.
Others, we could make out. An iris. A peony. A daffodil. A dahlia.
“The goddesses were mortal enough to feed the soil,” she said, softly.
“Why does the king want you in the tower?” I asked, carefully. “Has he told you?”
“I haven’t seen him yet. He’s still fighting on the front. I can guess, though, what might happen when he returns.”
I shuddered.
“I had my own crisis of faith,” she said, reaching out to trace one of the carvings on the gravestone.
“Do I even affect the rains? Sometimes, I swear I do. Other times, I wonder if it’s only coincidence.
” She paused and looked up at me, her blue eyes violet in the dawn light.
“No matter what, though, I know I don’t have to be locked up there to do it. ”
The tower was still burning, the smoke rising towards the lightening sky. “We should go,” I said. “We’ve already lingered too long.”
She nodded, her petals fluttering with the movement, and gathered her fine skirts. I held my unburned hand out to her.
“Come, my love,” I said. “He’ll never have you.”
She took it, and hand in hand, we disap peared into the forest. My love cried as we fled through the brightening dawn.
* * *
That night, warm in our tent, the deflowering hurt.
She tore petals from her skin, leaving behind welts, as if she’d been scored with thorns.
They’d leave scars like the burn on her forearm.
I kissed each one, the magic in her blood flowing to me.
I gave it back to heal her wounds. I touched her with my unhurt and my bandaged hand, and the pain didn’t bother me.
The rest of the buds and blooms fell from her.
There would be no solace at home. As much as she yearned to see her parents again, and I would miss my mother, the guards would kill me and take her back.
We also wanted a bigger life, a fuller life.
As we made our journey further away from the tower and the village we’d left behind, petals littered our path.
We feared another girl would wake up soon, flourishing too early, and that if that happened, she, too, would be taken away whether she wished it or not.
That she would feel she’d have no choice, like all those other blooms before her.
We hadn’t heard that clarion call through the realm announcing my love’s successor.
And as we crossed the border to the neighbouring kingdom, raindrops fell on our cheeks.
* * *
Do you have everything?
Good, then that is all that needs to be said.
Let it spread. Let it go to every town where a girl might next wake up with petals on her skin.
Let her know that life can be more than a round room at the top of the tower, locked away for safekeeping.
That life is meant to be full of magic, and others, and laughter, and love. So much love.
But we are going, my rose and I, to follow the sun.