The Tears of the Rose (30 page)

I looked around the room. “Where's my daughter?”

Ursula kept her face inscrutable, not a flicker of response, but Dafne looked away and bit her lip.

“Daughter?” Ursula shook her head and pointed at my son.

“You had a boy. Just as Lady Zevondeth said you would. There he is. The next High King.”

“I was supposed to have a daughter. Where is she?”

“Andi was wrong. So much for prophecy.”

“No. That can't be right. Did I have both—a son and a daughter?”

“Ami, I don't understand what you—”

“Tell her.” Dafne's voice didn't sound like her, nearly strident, shredded with emotion. “Tell her now or I will.”

“Tell her what?” Ursula's voice rose, too, and she stood, hand going to the hilt of her resheathed blade.

“The truth about her daughter!” Dafne looked almost unhinged, her face distorted in the candlelight, and I realized she was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“We agreed that—”

“No!” Dafne screeched. “I
never
agreed. Tell her the truth.”

My heart splintering into wild, frenzied pieces while my son suckled happily, a red-gold fuzz of hair gleaming with the candlelight, I looked between them. “One of you tell me. Next words out of your mouth.”

Ursula's shoulders sagged and she sat again. “Ami—” she started, and her voice cracked. She cleared her throat, struggling. It occurred to me that lately she'd been the bearer of all my bad news. “Your daughter was born, yes. Born first, in fact. But she didn't last the night. I'm sorry.”

I swallowed that information, choked it down past that steadfast ball lodged in my throat, hoping it would stay there. The grief, the despair, the sheer soul-shattering unfairness of it all, ground together. And grew beyond control.

It would not stay down.

I pulled my son from my breast and wordlessly handed him to Dafne, who took him and soothed his protests.

The ball sprouted thorns, ripping its way down as it sank into my chest, stabbing hotter, with relentless ferocity. Then it unfurled, like a flower that had been tightly budded all this time, fertilized in grief and despair. It opened, tearing me apart inside, and all those tears I hadn't shed flew in all directions.

I wept like the surf, an endless surge of salt water dashing itself upon the shore. I cried until I had nothing left. Until I was an empty husk.

I cried until I disappeared.

29

S
omething nudged against my breast and I tried to push it away.

I was dead.

Why wouldn't they let me stay dead?

But the something rooted at me with demanding animal cries and then latched onto my nipple with painful determination. I pushed again at it, but my hand was trapped.

“Stop it, Amelia,” came a stern voice.

I opened my eyes to sunshine so bright it hurt. Dafne sat cross-legged on the bed, my wrist pinned under one of her knees as she held a baby to my engorged breast.

No—not just any baby. My son. I blinked at her and everything flooded back, leaking out of my eyes. As if, now that I had started weeping again, I'd never stop.

“I know,” she said, face somber, cinnamon eyes moist. “But your son needs you.
We
need you.”

“Let me up.”

With a dubious look, she moved her knee off my wrist, keeping a hand on the babe, lest I dash him to the floor like some maniacal creature.

I pushed myself up, my mind clearing like the crisp blue sky out the window. Pulling my son close, I found a better position for him. He wrapped a chubby fist in my snarled hair and stared at me with Hugh's summer-blue eyes. Something turned over in my heart.

Maybe I wasn't completely dead.

“How long was I asleep this time?”

Dafne shook her head infinitesimally. “Not that long. It's only midmorning and we . . . last talked in the middle of the night.”

“Where's Marin? And Ursula?”

“Those are longer stories.”

“Tell me everything. I can handle it now,” I added, when she didn't answer right away.

“You were in labor all day and into the night, when the blood loss began to seriously worry Marin.” Dafne got up and poured me some water, handing me a glass. “Which reminds me, you're to drink as much water as you can. You need to replenish, especially when nursing. You were feverish, hallucinating. Talking to people who weren't there. If Ursula could have used her sword on them, I think she would have.” A ghost of a smile dusted her lips, but her eyes were haunted, echoing the harrowing ordeal.

“Finally Marin said that we had no choice but to cut the babe—babes—out, that the alternative was to wait until you had died and that was more dangerous. Ursula threatened to cut
her
throat first and they were arguing when this wildman burst into the room—drenched from the storm and demanding to see you.”

“Ash,” I breathed his name like a prayer. “I thought maybe I dreamed him.”

“It seemed like a dream. Marin and I knew who he was, even without the monk's robe, but Ursula nearly killed him on the spot. Would have, too, if he wasn't so amazingly fast with that blade of his.”

“They fought?”

She nodded, eyes wide. “Until Marin threw a bucket of well water on them and told Ursula he was a friend and possibly the only hope of saving you.”

The babe let go of my breast and started fussing at me. I switched him to my other breast, nodding at Dafne to continue.

“Ash made us all leave the room, which Ursula hated and Marin insisted she do. Frankly, I don't know how Marin convinced her. We three waited in the sitting room. He let Marin in, finally, but told us to stay outside. I thought it might kill Ursula. She doesn't wait well.”

“No, she doesn't.”

“Then Marin called us and Ash was out cold on the floor. You were sleeping, but looking as if you might live, and the babies”—her voice caught and she smoothed it—“both babies were squalling up a storm.”

“Both.” I looked down at my boy and he returned my gaze with solemnity, his disgruntlement gone.

“A boy and a girl, one fair-haired, one dark. We cleaned them up and Marin settled them into their cradles. Ursula had some of the footmen carry Ash to a guest room, to rest.”

“Where is Ash now?”

“Still sleeping. We're getting worried.”

“He has to sleep, after healing.” Still, I would have to check on him, when I could face the world again. “What happened then?”

“It was nigh on dawn by then, so Ursula said we'd wait to announce the births until after the sun rose. We were exhausted.” It sounded like an apology. She paused, eyes shadowed as she stared at the memory.

“Tell me.”

“We all fell asleep right here. Marin by the cradles, Ursula in the chair, and me on the floor. When we awoke—it could only have been a few hours—the girl babe had died.” She lifted a shoulder, but a tear rolled down her cheek. “Just died in her sleep.”

“Oh.” Replete, the little boy had fallen asleep. So pink and healthy, with his round, soft cheeks. It didn't seem possible that his twin sister had died, just like that. But then, I hadn't believed Hugh was dead until I saw his corpse. “Did you see her?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tell me how she looked.”

“Like him, only with black hair”—she gestured at the boy sleeping in my arms—“very much the same in size. She seemed just as healthy. But Marin said sometimes babies fail suddenly that way. And the labor was so long and difficult that—”

“No,” I said, losing patience, “how did she look dead?”

“I—” She faltered, as she so rarely did.

“Don't be squeamish. Did she look like she was sleeping, for instance, and only when you touched her you knew, or—”

“She looked as if she'd shriveled,” Ursula said from the doorway. “Like a fruit left too long in the sun, with the water dried away. Is that what you want to hear?”

She seemed more like a blade than ever. Angular, with her edge dulled by fatigue, guilt, and grief. Also, she had that look in her eye, as when she feared I'd throw myself from the cliffs.

I returned her bottomless stare evenly. She imagined that it hurt me to hear it, but she didn't know how little of my heart I had left. “Yes. It is. Thank you. I'd like to be alone now.”

“Ami—”

“I won't do anything rash. Just, please, Essla.” My voice broke over the rising tears. Maybe I had more heart to wound than I'd thought.

She flinched at me using the old pet name. “We'll be back in a little while.”

Dafne took the baby from me and they both left without another word. I stared up at the roses on the canopy, pink promises of life everlasting from Glorianna. It all seemed so wrong. Could this be all? No daughter with the mark. I should have used the doll's head to check the boy. I still could.

Maybe Andi had been wrong and he would be the one. Something of all this needed to make sense.

Feeling surprisingly strong and healthy—no wonder Ash still slept, with that toll of saving my life—I untangled myself from the sheets and made my way to my desk. In the drawer where I kept her, the doll lay.

I hadn't asked Andi what she'd needed, what she'd found. But I needed help now, if only to understand. Maybe I could change the course of things somehow. Hadn't Andi? Altered things for us all and now queen of her destiny. Taking the doll out and smoothing the red-gold floss of her grimy hair, I gently turned her over and picked apart the threads I'd placed there. In the back of my mind, it seemed my mother lingered, her scent blending with the dried-rose-petal stuffing, her own fingers sewing this doll. A last gift to me.

Nothing in there but the rose-petal stuffing. I dug it out gingerly and spread the petals—some whole, some no more than mauve dust—across the glossy wood of the desk. Some, it seemed, were darker than the others. With age or petal variation. Though the rose Dafne had pressed for me, preserved between the plates of glass and sitting on the desk, showed no such darkening. I picked out the darker ones, sliding them together like puzzle pieces.

Blood? Yes, they were stained with it. My mother's blood—it had to be.

Remembering how my blood had unlocked the spill in Zevondeth's chambers, I put all the darker petals into a cup and added cooling tea from the pot that had been left nearby. The dried flakes swirled, rusty red eddying up from their faded pink.

On impulse, before anyone could return to stop me, I drank it. If I didn't die of poisoning, Ursula would kill me.

I sat in the chair and prayed to Glorianna to appear, as I'd fancied She had when I was a girl.

Instead of the goddess, however, with her pink rays of light and tumbling roses, another woman took shape from the sunlight coming in the windows. Long, dark hair flowed around her like a cape, glinting with deep red reflections of the firelight. I thought she was Andi for a moment, her eyes the same stormy gray, but she was different. Older, more careworn.

“Mother?”

“An echo of her, yes. I am more of a message. A letter, if you will, that only you, my baby Amelia, can read. This is a little piece of myself that I carved away and left behind, once I knew I wouldn't be able to live to see you grow. That might be my greatest regret—and I have many—that you might not remember me at all.”

“I remember,” I said through my tears. “I always said I didn't, but I do. And I . . . saw you sometimes. I thought you were Glorianna.”

My mother laughed, and in it were shades of both Ursula and Andi. “I don't think Glorianna would claim me. You did well to find the vial I left for you. I hope your sisters found theirs, as well.”

I shook my head. “Andi found something. I had only bloodstained rose petals.”

“You must help them find their own vials. There are things they need to know.”

“Andi said it helped her, somehow, in Annfwn.”

She sighed and closed her eyes as if in prayer. “I am so thankful she is there. I worried for her.”

That stung. “Well, she's fine. I'm the one who's had a tragic life. You can't know.”

She smiled then, with so much love it made me ache. “Ah, my lovely baby girl. You were born at dawn, you know, with all of the new day's perfect beauty and potential. Filled with love for the world. You have always been the most blessed.”

“I don't feel blessed. First you died, then my husband, and now . . . I'm all alone.” Except for my son. He would have to be enough.

“But you are,” she insisted. “I planned to take all of you to Annfwn, but you carry the magic inside you. As will your daughter. You two, at least, will never know the pain of being closed away from paradise. That is your gift—one of unparalleled value.”

“She died.” I started weeping again, if I'd even stopped, and my mother drew close. She placed a ghostly hand over my heart, a cool shiver running through me at the touch.

“Weep not. Your daughter will live, twin to her brother. Look for the trick.”

“What trick?”

“Childbirth nearly killed me, too. Every time.” She spoke in a gentle voice that I would have found soothing in other circumstances. “I would never have wished this on you, if we didn't need these children so very much. The girl and the boy, to bring balance and knit the kingdoms. I had hoped that my third daughter could have her own life. But Ursula came first—I couldn't foresee how she'd be until much later—and then, once Andi was old enough for me to see her fate, I knew what your path would be.

“Both of your children will live. I want you to remember that, because it's important. Do you understand me? Look for the trick.”

“No. Ursula wouldn't lie about that. Spare me your empty promises.”

“They're not empty. Bleak at times, perhaps, but always real. You have the twin gifts of life and love. Use them. See through the trick.” She flickered, became more transparent. Much as Andi's image had. “Good-bye, Amelia. Know that I love you, that part of me is always with you.”

“Me, too,” I told her. “I think of you, all the time. I always will. I wish you didn't have to go.”

“I must. I already have.” She smiled, and love warmed her gaze. “Trust in your heart, for it has no limits. You will always have love to give. You have always had mine. Know that I'm proud of you, my daughter of dawn's promise, my rising sun.”

She faded completely and Ursula stood in her place, very like our mother, in a honed way. She frowned at me and I wondered if she'd heard me talking aloud. “You should be in bed.”

“I feel fine, thank you.”
Thanks to Ash.
And hopeful again, thanks to my mother.

Ursula was scowling at the debris littered across the desk. “Why did you tear the doll apart again?”

“Andi was right. There was a message, from Mother. I talked to her, Essla. Just now. She loves us. You need to find your doll.”

“Okay, sure.” She nodded and gave me a gentle smile. Indulging the crazy girl. Oh, well, she'd find it when she needed to, no doubt.

“I have a question for you—are you sure my daughter died?”

She sighed and looked down. “Please don't do this.”

“It's important. How sure are you that was her?”

“What in Danu are you getting at, Ami? Of course it was her. I'm sorry for it, but your daughter died. I couldn't do a thing.” She flexed her empty hands, staring at them. Not reaching for her sword hilt for once. Because none of her fighting skills had saved my daughter.

“You buried her?”

She nodded, shortly. “With her father. I thought—” Her steely eyes shone with tears. “I thought you'd want them to be together.”

“And no one else knows—you kept it secret?” I stood and went into the bedroom, trusting that she'd follow, if only to keep an eye on me.

“I thought it best to keep it quiet. Let the people celebrate the boy's birth and not mourn what they never knew they lost. Of course, you can always announce her birth and death still if you—what are you doing?”