The Tears of the Rose (9 page)

“Oh, yes.” Kir looked gravely concerned. “Be wary of those tempting you from Her path, Your Highness. Especially in these turbulent times.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. The dark forces rise up against Glorianna's champions. You have already been tested—far beyond what any fair young damsel should be expected to bear. We grieve with you, Princess. The people of the Twelve Kingdoms feel your pain.”

My heart flooded with emotion to hear this. I wasn't alone. They shared this terrible time with me. It meant everything.

“There are demons lurking among us, however,” Kir broke into my thoughts.

Inadvertently, my gaze flew to the White Monk. He did not raise his bowed head, but he cocked it, ever so slightly. As if he might be laughing at me. How dare he? I was a Princess of the Realm, daughter of the High King, and future Queen of Avonlidgh. Not to mention Glorianna's avatar upon this earth. He should be kissing the hem of my gown.

“Princess Amelia, do you heed my words?”

“Yes.” At least I thought so. Demons and lurking. Sharing my pain. Oh, Hugh.

“They seek to divert you from your holy mission, Your Highness. By telling tales to distract you, so you won't hear Glorianna's voice.”

My breakfast turned over in my stomach. Had I already failed as Glorianna's avatar by listening to Marin's stories?

“As your spiritual guide, I feel I must warn you. I cannot put it strongly enough, Princess Amelia. Whoever is whispering such tales in your ear is turning your mind and heart away from Glorianna and the purity of the path She's laid out for you.”

I wished that Hugh were here. I'd likely spend the rest of my life—however long that might be—wishing for that. He'd know what to do. I chewed my lip against the rising sick. I should have put one of Marin's mints in my pocket. Surely Marin was no demon, seeking to sway me from fulfilling Glorianna's plans for me?

“Who was it, Your Highness?” Kir's voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “At least give me a name, so I can investigate.”

My mind warred with my heart. I turned my eyes to Glorianna's rose window, this the greatest of the three, here in Her stronghold, the High Temple. Surely no harm would come to Marin, should I say so. If she had told me the story in all innocence, then all would be well. If she'd spoken due to some demonic influence, then Kir would help her be free of it.

“My midwife, Marin.” I said it quietly, so none other could overhear.

Kir relaxed and cast a reverent gaze to the heavens, murmuring the standard phrase thanking Glorianna for Her benevolent protection. Instead of echoing it, I found myself watching the White Monk. He wasn't praying, either, but stayed still, a snake coiled in the grass.

“She told me the tale last night. She meant to comfort me.”

Kir's nostrils fluttered, his lips pinched, and he made the sign of Glorianna over my belly. “Glorianna grant us peace,” he murmured. “I shall see to this, Your Highness. You did right to tell me.”

I wanted to feel I did right.

“High Priest Kir!” One of Uorsin's valets approached with urgent footsteps. “The High King calls for your attendance immediately. Your Highness,” he said to me, bowing belatedly, but the naked admiration in his gaze did much to bring up my spirits.

“Of course. At once!” Kir dashed out—with priestly dignity, but with clear excitement—after a flurry of excuses and promises.

I watched after him. He hadn't answered any of my questions. I wasn't even sure what I, as Glorianna's avatar and head of Her mission here in the Twelve Kingdoms, was meant to do to lead us into Annfwn. Besides gestate.

Surely I should be doing something.

“At a loss, Princess?” An amused voice hissed the question in my ear.

8

S
tartled, I turned. Then stepped back. The White Monk stood close enough that I saw his face clearly, despite the shadows of the cowl. His features were harsh but not misshapen. A strong nose with a high bridge dominated his face, sharp lined like his jaw. The spider legs of scars crawled over one cheek, a cicatrix of long-ago pain. As if he carried on his skin all the ugliness of the hurt inside me.

Though a jagged bolt of scar tissue cut through one eyebrow, his eye orbits were clear and open, pristine settings for the unearthly burning green of his gaze.

“What happened to you?” I asked, before I thought.

He smiled. Not nicely, because his upper lip snagged in the movement, making it into a snarl, like a wild beast curling its snout at an unwelcome odor.

“What happened to
you
?” he countered.

“I . . . I don't understand what you mean.”

“Giving up your poor commoner of a midwife so easily. She'll suffer because of your disloyalty. She who sought only to help you.”

I mastered the roiling sickness. “How dare you speak to me so? I know full well the measure of loyalty. Do you?”

“As a matter of fact, no.” He laughed, a dry, whispering sound. “So I recognize its viciously opposite cousin when I see it.”

“I'm the High King's daughter. I'll protect my midwife. No harm shall come to her.”

“Are you sure, Princess?”

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“You asked that before.”

“And you didn't answer.”

“No? Perhaps you're not asking the right question.”

“You cannot naysay me. I'll report you to High Priest Kir. No—I shall have you dragged before the High King to answer for yourself.”

He shook his head, clucking his tongue as one might at an errant kitten. “Always running to Daddy. What power of your own do you possess, Princess?”

The way he said my title sounded like an insult, and I wanted to tell him to stop calling me that. Which was ridiculous, of course.

“I have enough power to have you beheaded on the spot. Or cast out of Glorianna's temple and turned out into the countryside with a brand declaring that none shall give you succor. I could ruin you in countless small ways. And you discount my power so glibly.”

He tilted his head and I knew for certain that it meant he laughed at me. The cynical amusement, floating on the sweet scent of ripe grapes, altered the creases in his coarse face, and his eyes sparkled, glints of sunlight on stream water.

“The power to destroy is easily come by. Anyone can destroy.”

“I can create, too.”

He gestured at my belly. “That? Any female who spreads her legs can do that. It takes no special skill or ability. Nature did it for you.”

I gasped, my palm oddly itching to slap him, though such a thing would be scandalously beneath my dignity.

“Are males any different? They cast their seed upon the wind, careless of whether it falls on fertile soil.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

He edged closer, turning so he blocked the chanting priests. “Yes, men are different. They're worse. Women at least must bear the burden of their choices, then are bound to nurture the child, if there's any humanity in them. Men can walk away and leave their carelessly cast seed to take root or die. They leave behind them a trail of uncared-for life.”

I didn't know what to say. Never had I heard someone speak such words.

“This is why Glorianna and Her sisters are the ones who remained, to care for us. The male gods abandoned their mortal charges without a backward glance,” he added.

“There are male gods?”

“Other cultures still worship them. We know better.”

“Have you heard the tale of Glorianna's daughter, then?” Why the question plagued me so, I didn't know.

“I have. Shall I expect you to give me up to the High Priest also?”

I smiled up at him, gazing through my lashes. “Not if you'll tell me what became of her.”

His gaze flickered over my face, not quite with that gleam of hatred, but without admiration. “You wield your beauty like a blunt-force weapon, did you know that?”

I blinked at him, fisting my hands in my skirts so I wouldn't reach up to touch my face, to feel what he saw there that seemed so brutal to him.

“Even when you don't mean to, you manipulate anyone who looks at you with the way you widen your eyes and moisten your lips.” He studied me, as if I were a butterfly on a pin. We'd had a tutor with cases of insects on little displays, that we might learn their names. He'd looked like that, interested and without concern for their small lives.

I wanted to flee. But I didn't want him to know he frightened me.

“Why do you talk to me if you dislike me so?” My voice came out in a whisper, and I bit my lower lip, afraid I'd say more. I hadn't meant to ask that.

He lifted an eyebrow, the one interrupted by the scar that looked a bit like a lightning bolt. “Shall I compose a poem to your perfect pearly teeth and how they worry at the full rose petal of your lip? Perhaps that would make you more comfortable.”

“I never asked for poems.”

“But it's what you know.”

“From what I hear of you, all you know is service to Glorianna, White Monk. Though I notice you're not so silent with me.”

He barked out a bit of a laugh, unpleasant, like the cawing of a raven. “Don't believe everything you're told, Princess. You understand nothing about me.”

“Then you tell me. You evade every question.”

Shaking his head, he pulled the cowl into place, once again shadowing his features. “No—you haven't earned the right to my story. You'd have to do more than flutter your lashes for that.”

Outrage flooded me. “Surely you're not suggesting—”

“Relax, Your Highness. I'm not even remotely interested.”

Ah, that made sense. “I understand many of Glorianna's priests are lovers of other men.”

“You would prefer that explanation, wouldn't you? No, I value my neck more than that. A dalliance with you would hardly be worth it. Even were I attracted.” Those green eyes flicked over me again, with more than a little disdain.

Left with my outrage and nothing to do with it, I cast about for a reply. Every man wanted to bed me, and some women, too. I could read it in them, like the warmth from a fire, even the ones who were too polite to show it. I'd navigated my world by these stars, the desire and admiration. Even the troubadours who sang songs they wrote for me and then retired for the night with some brawny soldier—they coveted me for my beauty, too. As if I were an object of art.

“I believe it's time for me to go,” I finally said.

“Fleeing an uncomfortable conversation? Doesn't speak well of your fortitude.”

“You know nothing about me!” I flung his words back at him and caught, perhaps, a twitch of a smile. “You taunt me and answer none of my questions. Why in Glorianna's name would I stay? You bore me.”

He made a tsking sound. “Ah, Princess. That's not true. You're fascinated, if only by the conversation. Else you would have flounced off long ago.”

“I do not flounce.”

“On the contrary, you have a most practiced and seductive flounce. I imagine it earns all sorts of attention and concessions.”

“You watch me quite closely, then, for a person who hates me.”

“I have my reasons.”

“And they are?”

“Private.”

He hadn't denied hating me, and though I shouldn't care, it pricked me like the thorns on wild roses, small and slim, dug deeply into the skin. Nobody hated me. I was beautiful.

I opened my mouth to announce that I was leaving, recalled I'd said that once already, so turned to go.

“Glorianna's daughter did survive. With her mortal blood, she eventually died, of course. But she lived a very long and full life. Her name was Talifa.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. “I never heard of her.”

He shrugged, his shoulders making sharp points against the robe. “You wouldn't have. She was erased from the official canon of Glorianna's teachings. 'Tis heresy to speak of her.”

“And yet you speak her name in Glorianna's very temple.”

“Heresy according to priests. Once again, I notice that Glorianna does not strike me down.”

“That's the second time you've said such a thing. You must be quite confident.”

His teeth flashed in the depths of the cowl. Not really a smile. “Or driven to other extremes. You pay close attention to my words, for a person who hates me.”

“I never said I hated you.”

“You did, actually—but without realizing it.”

I rubbed a finger between my brows, smoothing away the frown. “How do you know of this Talifa, then?”

“Because she is the mother of the White Monks order.”

“Oh.” I felt a bit deflated. Some part of me felt attached to her, as if she might have a special meaning for me. Likely it was only that the story had tugged at my heart, the way Glorianna had sought out knowledge so She could cherish and raise Her mortal child. When I was little, before I knew better, I sometimes grew angry at my mother for dying. I'd childishly thought that if she'd been more careful, she could have lived and been my mother for real.

After I grew up, I understood that she hadn't been able to help dying. Women often died in childbirth. Still, every once in a while, a slice of that remembered anger welled up in me.

“Talifa lives on in your blood, Princess.” The White Monk said it with what I would have called gentleness from a less callous man.

That caught me short, the knot of tears in my throat cramping in fierce response.

“How can that be?”

“Because she became the Queen of the Tala—the people named for her—as your mother was after her. You are not only Glorianna's avatar, as all seem to wish you to believe. You are Her descendant.”

My gaze flew up to the rose window. Glorianna's descendant? Though I'd been compared to the goddess, even called a goddess from time to time, it had never occurred to me to see myself that way. I carried divine blood, and the thought made me giddy. And overwhelmed.

“I am no goddess.” I found myself fluttering.

He laughed, raven voiced, threading his hands inside his sleeves, as if he restrained himself from something. “No, Princess, you are no goddess. Not even close.”

Insulted rage followed that, and my face heated, the skin of my cheeks stretching with the pressure. Bastard to tease me and lead me on, then expose me as fishing for praise. I didn't understand myself anymore. I seemed to be tossed on a stormy sea of emotion, riding the wave of one only to crash into the nadir of the next.

“Did I make you angry?” He murmured the words, taunting. “What will you do now?”

“What I do or do not do is none of your concern! Why do you follow me about, only to express your disdain? I want to do right by my people, my child, my goddess, and, most of all, by Hugh's memory!” The pain spiked with his name and the realization that, in all this torturous conversation, I hadn't thought of him once. My words ended on a near screech, the songbird's scream of pain to his harsh corvid's call. The background chanting stumbled, losing its cadence, then sputtered into silence.

My breath pushed in and out, hoarse and unpretty in the sudden quiet. The knot of grief that lodged at the base of my throat swelled and groaned with urgency, turning into a spinning sphere.

I didn't even care who witnessed it. Even this horrible priest who seemed to delight in tormenting me. I wanted the tears gone, to release this dreadful lock that kept me confined.

But no.

The pressure grew, until I staggered a little with it. Then one of his hands cupped my elbow, decorously over my sleeve, barely touching, but still grounding me. His other hovered near my cheek, as if he might cup it. And I would turn my face into his hand, taking comfort in the caress. His gaze burned into mine, fierce in that craggy face I could see again clearly, he was so close.

“Have you wept?” He asked the question no one else had, seeing more than anyone else could.

I shook my head. “I can't.”

He nodded, as if that made perfect sense. “Sometimes the grief is too large.”

“Yes.”

He opened his mouth to say something more, his eyes softer than I'd ever seen them, pooling with some kind of compassion. Then he firmed his lips, so the scar whitened, and he stepped away, releasing my elbow and shattering the moment so thoroughly I wondered if we'd shared anything or if I'd imagined it.

“I shall not keep you longer.” His tone was formal, as was the bow that followed.

Once again, I turned to leave, swimming through the confusion that darkened my mind, more than half expecting him to call me back again. But he didn't, so I straightened my spine and moved slowly—not that I had ever flounced in my life—from the cool rose-tinted shadows of the temple, out into the bright, white-stone light of Ordnung.