Veiled Rose (50 page)

The ring rolled from his grasp and lay upon the stone ground.

“It’s yours,” he whispered. “Take it!”

The fire went.

The terror vanished.

Lionheart lay at the foot of Goldstone Hill, on the edge of the dark forest. He was alone.

Utterly alone.

T
HE SOUND OF CONSTRUCTION
followed Daylily everywhere she went in the Eldest’s House. Without needing to be summoned, workers from all across Southlands had flocked to the home of their king following the Dragon’s departure, desperate for work, equally desperate to see the glory and stability of their sovereign restored. It was a hopeless venture, but it gave them purpose and something on which to focus their minds other than that ever-pressing question:

Will the Dragon return? And when?

Daylily revealed nothing of her thoughts, but deep inside she despised those busy worker folk. As if their industry could ever wipe away the scars the Dragon had left upon the land during those five years of enslavement.

Five years! That thought hurt to contemplate. She’d not sensed the passing of time, at least not in years. She remembered the smoke; she remembered the poison. All too clearly Daylily remembered watching her dreams burn before her eyes time after time. She felt as though she had lived a thousand lifetimes and died a thousand deaths. But five years had escaped, unnoticed.

She remained at the Eldest’s House at first because she was too weak to travel; later because she dared not return to her father’s welcoming arms. When the baron sent messages requiring her presence in Middlecrescent, she used the king’s seal to respond that
Lady Daylily is indispensable to the Eldest at this time
,
etc.
And so far, her father had enough problems of his own, resettling Middlecrescent, to come chasing after his wayward child.

Daylily could hide awhile longer.

She spent much of her time alone. She could not bear the fresh faces of those come to work on the House, so hopeful and so skittish all at once. They all bore some marks of the Dragon’s work but were comparatively unscathed. What did they know of poison? What did they know of darkness? Little to nothing, otherwise they wouldn’t bother to rebuild.

But none of these thoughts showed upon Lady Daylily’s face. She sat at her bedroom window, watching the north road, and said nothing. They’d learn the futility of their actions in the end.

It was by thus quietly watching that Daylily became the first person at the House to spot Lionheart returning up the road.

She knew him instantly, though he was much too far away for her to discern his features. Something in the way he walked reminded her of the gawky boy she had once known. She was on her feet and out the door in a moment. Her movements were deliberate. She did not hasten down the hall or the stairway. Hastening gave one a sense of flight, or pursuit, so she always moved with a precise grace. By the time she reached the outer court, half the household knew of the prince’s return, and a great shout had gone up among the staff, the construction crews, and those who had returned to dwell within their Eldest’s walls.

Only a handful remained silent. These included the Eldest, Sir Foxbrush, and the nobles who had been imprisoned during those five years.

Daylily came to stand on the front steps beside the Eldest and near Sir Foxbrush (who rarely raised his somber gaze from his feet these days, though his hair was always perfectly oiled). The rubble of the Starflower Fountain had been mostly cleared out by now, so the view from the front steps across the courtyard to the gate was unobstructed. She saw the gates swing open, heard the shouts from the wall as guardsmen hailed their shabby prince.

She saw Lionheart walk through.

Not on horseback as he should have been, a triumphant hero returning to his homeland. Like a vagabond he came, shabby in dress and bearing. A beard covered half his face, like a mask.

But he was Lionheart, Prince of Southlands. And he was home.

The crowd grew but stayed back to give him a clear path across the courtyard to the steps where his father waited. Lionheart squared his shoulders as he neared, and Daylily watched his eyes darting about, resting first on the Eldest, then seeking familiar faces among the others gathered there. His gaze rested briefly on her before passing to Foxbrush and on.

Daylily set her mouth. He would not find the one he sought. She wondered if anyone had yet informed the prince of his mother’s death.

The Eldest reached out to his son. Lionheart mounted the stairs, took his father’s hands, and bowed over them.

“Welcome home,” said the Eldest.

“Father,” said Lionheart. His voice was changed, no longer boyish but deep. “I . . . I have ensured that the Dragon will not return to Southlands.”

The Eldest said nothing for a long moment. His face was aged almost beyond recognition after years spent breathing in those poisons. His eyes were faded as well and not too quick at disguising his thoughts. But he smiled a sad smile and took his son in his arms, repeating only, “Welcome home.”

A few hours later, Daylily’s dream came true.

She had retired to the privacy of her chambers when the commotion became too tiresome. The means for celebration were pathetically reduced, and Daylily disliked watching the household desperately trying to behave as though there were some real reason for all this joy. So the prince had returned. Very well. Where was he during those five years when he’d been needed? But they wouldn’t think about that now, would they. No, they’d save that for later, Daylily knew. And later would bring its price.

So she retired to her rooms and told her servant not to light a fire. She avoided fires, no matter how chilly her room might become at night, nor how dark. The smell made her sick. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and sat at the window instead.

Lionheart knocked at her door. She knew it must be he, though how she knew she could not say. Out of habit, she checked to make certain her hair was arranged and let the shawl drop from her shoulders down to her elbows. Then she said, “Come.”

He was still shaggy with that wretched beard, though he’d changed into finer clothing. Ill-fitting clothing, to be sure. He’d outgrown all his own and there had been no time yet to fit him for others. But at least he was no longer dressed in the colorless sacking in which he’d arrived.

“Hullo, Daylily,” he said. He carried a candle, for dusk was settling in. The light cast strange shadows on his face.

“Good evening, Lionheart,” she said. She wondered briefly how she looked to him. The dragon poison had taken its toll upon her, leaving her thin and hollow cheeked. Her former beauty might never be reclaimed. She hoped the candlelight was gracious to her.

Not that it mattered. She knew that her dream was about to come true, and she dreaded the moment. After watching it burn and die so many times, the prospect of fulfillment was almost unbearable.

“Daylily, I was wondering,” Lionheart said, shuffling his feet. For just that instant, her heart went out to him again. He looked so like the awkward Leo she once had known. Leo, who couldn’t play a game of chess to save his life.

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“I was wondering if . . . well, after all this . . . and I understand if you’d rather not.” It was strange to hear that boyish stammering when his voice had grown so deep.

“What is it, Leo?” she asked.

The use of his childhood name brought his head up, and he smiled. The smile vanished quickly, but it had been there, a ghost of his former self. Daylily wondered at the amount of dragon poison she saw in his face. After all, Lionheart had been away; he had not suffered enslavement during those five years. Why should he bear the marks?

“Tell me what you want,” she said.

He closed his eyes and drew a breath as though stung. When he looked at her again, there was a sharpness like thorns in his expression. But he said, “Daylily, will you marry me?”

So she would be the Eldest’s wife after all. She would fulfill her father’s expectations and Plan. She would prove herself in the eyes of Middlecrescent, in the eyes of the entire nation. Daylily had succeeded, as she set out to, in winning the heart and devotion of the crown prince.

“Yes,” she said.

Lionheart stepped forward, leaned over, and kissed her, just once, before he backed away. She looked up at him, her eyes like a ghost's in the candlelight.

“Thank you,” he said, turning to go. But he paused in her doorway and looked back.

“Daylily?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering . . . do you know what became of Rose Red? The goat girl, remember?”

Daylily did not break his gaze. The candlelight reflected like opal fire in the depths of her eyes.

At last she said, “She disappeared.”

“She promised that she’d come back and watch over my parents and those imprisoned here,” Lionheart said. “Do you know if she did?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Do you know . . . did she survive?”

Daylily got to her feet and paced across the room. Fury suddenly thickened her voice to a menacing whisper. “She’s not dead, Lionheart. She fled after the Dragon left. She lost that veil of hers, and we all saw her true face, and she fled. I don’t know where she went. Followed the Dragon, perhaps? They were quite friendly, I’m given to understand. Last I saw her, she was very much alive and very much running for her life because she is no longer welcome in this land.”

Lionheart’s face hardened into stone. Daylily stood there, hissing up at him like an angry cat, her loveliness twisted so that he almost could not recognize her. His betrothed. Of all the damages he’d yet seen wreaked upon his homeland, somehow this was the worst.

“I think I know where she’d go,” he said. He put a hand on Daylily’s shoulder, gently but firmly. “And I’m going to fetch her back.”

Daylily shook him off. But her normal calm had returned, falling over her features in a disguise. “Of course you are, Leo,” she said. “Of course you are.”

Lionheart left her. He did not see her sink to her knees. He did not see her weep. No one did. And when she finished, Daylily vowed it would never happen again.

She had her dream. And it was dust and ashes.

S
O IT WAS THAT
L
IONHEART,
within a few weeks of his return to Southlands, found himself once more climbing the mountainside above Hill House.

What a relief it was to have left his retinue behind and to once more be alone. During his long journey from Parumvir back to his homeland, he had many times wished so desperately for company. Anything to distract his mind from those memories of fire, of ice, of the Brother and Sister.

But once back in Southlands, Lionheart found that company was almost unbearable to him. Perhaps he imagined it, perhaps he did not . . . but everywhere he went, he thought he heard whispers behind his back.

“Did he face the Dragon?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did he defeat him? Are we saved?”

“Shhhh!”

For now, they treated him as a hero returned. And there was so much work to be done, so much lost that would take years of labor to reclaim! They would have to trust their prince, to work alongside him, for the sake of his father, for the memory of his dead mother, for the renewing of the kingdom.

But today, he had other business to attend. Solitary business.

Bloodbiter’s Wrath was much smaller and more flimsy than Lionheart remembered. But the beanpole felt right in his hand as he passed through the garden gate and on up the beaten path. He met no one on the way to the sapling tied with a red scarf. The sapling had grown since last he’d passed this direction. It was beginning to show signs of what it might be as a mature tree. But though its color had faded to a near-camouflaged brown, the scarf was still tied to the same branch. And the deer trail still twisted into the forest beyond.

Lionheart made the plunge. The air was so clean up here, smelling of dirt and roots and old leaves . . . hardly a trace of dragon smoke. Lionheart drew long breaths and felt once more the thrill of the hunt. Though, of course, this hunt was different from the first. For one thing, he knew what it was he hunted. And he knew, with a good measure of confidence, where he would find his quarry.