The Rose Bride (24 page)

“You wouldn’t harm me,” he declared. “You wouldn’t harm my child. You couldn’t.”

Then he contracted forward with a groan. He began to retch; he gripped his head and moaned low and long. He fell to the grass and onto his side.

His men leaped off their horses and raced toward him. From her vantage point, Rose watched him writhe and groan. A trail of darkness escaped from his mouth, undulating as it rose into the sky.

Ombrine and Desirée reached Jean-Marc. Desirée grabbed his sword. It was too heavy for her; her mother wrapped her hands around Desirée’s and together the two women rushed Rose.

“No!” Jean-Marc yelled from the ground. He forced himself upright and ran for his sword. But he was too far away and the two Severine women had the advantage.

As the tip of the sword touched Rose’s throat, the statue of Artemis moved. Her chin raised, her eyes narrowed, and she pulled on her bowstring. She aimed and let her arrow fly.

It shot through the air like a falling star, like a comet. The assembly fell back, watching as it arched against the sun and plummeted toward the earth.

And though the arrow’s trajectory made it impossible to accomplish, the stone arrow slammed into Desirée’s chest and pierced her heart.

“Maman,”
Desirée whispered as Rose’s features completely disappeared and Desirée’s true face was revealed.

“What is this?” Jean-Marc shouted as he grabbed up his sword and pointed it at the pair.

A shadowed figured hovered behind Ombrine’s shoulder, bent over as if to inspect Desirée’s wound. Ombrine did not see it; nor did she see the large blackbird—Le Noir—perched on its shoulder. The bird lifted its beak to the skies and cawed.

As if summoned, a tremendous flock of large blackbirds burst out of a bank of clouds. Hundreds of them wheeled and shrieked, as they had on the day the Pretender had attacked the coach. But in that case, they had protected Ombrine and Desirée Severine. Now they shot down toward them like more arrows of Artemis.

As Ombrine screamed and flailed her arms, the birds descended on her, catching up her hair, her clothes, her fingers. They clung to Desirée like ravening beasts as well.

Then they rose up, up into the sky, bearing mother and daughter with them. Ombrine struggled, shrieking,
“Au secours! Au secours!”
until they flew so far away that she became a dot and then nothing.

Nothing at all.

Rose stared at the vast sky, feeling sorrow and anger rising from her shoulders and flying away into the heavens with her evil stepmother and stepsister. Perhaps the God of the Shadows had taken a firstborn in payment after all.

She nearly floated into the sky herself. They were
well and truly gone and she was free. She was safe.

For a moment, she was overcome. She had gone through so much, and had endured, come through changed, certainly. And yet she had been on guard for so long that she didn’t know how to let go of her fear. So it tugged at her heart a while longer; then it too, flew away.

“You
are safe now,”
a breeze whispered against Rose’s ear.

Jean-Marc and all the other hunters looked from the sky to her. No one spoke. No one moved. A horse nickered. A dog barked softly.

“You loved boldly and freely in the face of certain death
. Your
love is true and you know
that it
is true. You know love for what it is and what it is not. You are
truly
Best Beloved of the goddess, and I charge you Rose Marchand, to accept nothing less than
true
love
from
one who would walk in the garden with you
. For
while men themselves may be imperfect, they can strive to love perfectly. When one struggles to love in this way, one is a lover worthy of you. Else, you must bid
him adieu.”

Rose bobbed her head. She understood.

“Then I
release you from your enchantment.”

And in that moment, that instant in the sunshine, Rose sent out a thought for the king of the deer and wished him well. She could almost hear his answering nicker, wishing her the same. Then the deer that had been Rose Christine Marchand vanished. Rose the woman stood before Jean-Marc in the black rags she had worn when she’d left the
château
.

“Mademoiselle,”
Jean-Marc breathed, racing
forward and gathering her in his arms. “What magic is this?”

She allowed herself a moment in his embrace, shutting tight her eyes. Then firmly but gently, Rose moved away. No magic then. She was who she was.

“Artemis, I thank you,” she whispered as she knelt before the statue.

Jean-Marc knelt beside her. Then one by one, all the huntsmen bowed before the Goddess of the Hunt and of the Moon, a woman’s goddess.

Rose was given a horse—she refused to ride Ombrine’s—and she guided Desirée’s litter to the wooden bridge. There they found that Claire had given birth to a son, whom she named Laurent. As sister and brother met as humans for the first time, weeping with joy over love’s triumph, mother and babe were put onto the litter.

Reginer rode Rose’s horse, Rose seated behind him with her arms around his waist. She laid her head against his back, unable to staunch her tears of happiness.

As they rode back to the castle, Rose told Reginer everything that had happened since the royal coach wheeled away from the
château
. Jean-Marc kept pace beside them on his magnificent hunting horse. His face was ashen and he remained silent.

They dismounted at the palace, Reginer first, then he lifted Rose down.

“I thank the gods that all has ended happily,” her
half brother said, embracing her tightly and kissing both her tearstained cheeks before he excused himself to be with his wife and new child.

After Rose visited little Laurent and his parents, she bathed and changed into some warm clothes—a deep scarlet velvet gown, one of the many dresses that had been made for Desirée. Her blonde hair was braided and coiled on top of her head, and she was left alone with Jean-Marc in a small private sitting room. Desirée’s scent permeated the room. So did a foul stench of black magic—sulfur, wormwood, and herbs Rose didn’t know.

“All has not yet ended happily for us,” Jean-Marc said as he faced her. He too, had changed his clothes. He wore purple, the royal color. “If I understand you, I married Desirée instead of you. She took your visage in order to deceive me. She convinced me that it was she I loved.”

Rose hesitated. Then she swept a deep curtsy and said, “With all due respect, Your Majesty, you also deceived yourself. You were never in love with her.”

It was his turn to pause. “I grant you that.”

“You don’t know how to love,” she said frankly. “You know how to need.”

His dark eyes met her deep, starry blue ones. He swallowed hard at the hard truth she spoke. Then he swept a deep bow and said, “Tu
as raison
. I can learn to love. You know that I can. You know me better than anyone on earth. I have told you things I’ve never told
another living sour He sounded almost desperate and she knew he was terrified of being alone again.

Rose put her hand in his and his smile lit up the room. Her heart broke again because she was not his true love. How many times had it been broken?

Not so many that true love couldn’t heal it.

But Artemis was right: True love
alone
could heal it.

Pursing her lips together to force away her tears, she gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

“If you can, then someday you will,” she replied.

Rose turned to the fire and warmed her hands.

If she would turn blind eye to the fact that Jean-Marc didn’t love her as he should—with a strong, giving love, she would be a queen. After all the privations of her life, living such a life held its temptations. But as she gazed into the flames, she heard at last her mother’s wish:

“Let her know that
she is loved with a love that is
true
and will never fade as the rose petal fades. If she knows that, it will be all that she needs in this life. A woman who is loved is the richest woman on earth. Knowing you are loved is the safest of harbors
. True
love never dies. It lives beyond the grave, in the heart of the beloved. If she knows she is loved, she’ll be rich and safe for all her days.”

“What you offer me is not true love,” she finished as she turned around. “And my goddess—and I—decree that I can live with nothing less.”

Why did Rose Marchand look like Princess Lucienne? Perhaps the proper question was, why did Princess Lucienne look like Rose Marchand? What caused the death of a princess, a wound so great that it brought her husband to his knees? What promise did the runes of Zeus foretell when they said that Jean-Marc’s son, Espere, would mend two broken hearts?

After Rose told Jean-Marc that his love was not true, he set out to prove her wrong. He wooed the Rose Bride. He installed her in a sumptuously decorated apartment next to the Marchands. Claire’s seamstresses created a wardrobe fit for an empress.

One day, as she adjusted the hem of one of Rose’s new gowns, Claire said, “I have an older dress, madame, that seems as if it were made for you. I purchased it from a countess, who bought it from a widow. I once tried to offer it to your stepsister, but her mind was fixed on what she did and didn’t want, and so I never brought it to her. May I show it to you?”

“Bien sûr,”
Rose replied.

And of course it was the magnificent pink birthday gown. The layers were tattered here and there,
and in places, the golden embroidery had dulled. But of a piece, it made the other seamstresses gasp, and Roses heart swelled with gratitude that her gown had been returned to her at last. It was like seeing her parents one more time.

“This was my dress,” Rose told her. “My birthday gown:’ As she explained what the dress meant to her and what she had done to lose it, she gazed at it with longing. “I was smaller then. It won’t fit now:”

“I’ll adjust it,” Claire promised.

Jean-Marc continued to press his suit. Rose’s food was the most delectable, her wine, rare and excellent. He showered her with gifts. He serenaded her. He wrote her poetry.

But Rose knew he still didn’t didn’t love her. He was still too deeply hurt by what had happened before their paths had crossed. Perhaps the gods had willed Lucienne to look like her so that the tiny flame inside his soul would take in the air of hope and grow brighter.

And so, while she was kind, she did nothing to return his love—although, of course, she loved him with all her heart. Of a night, she would walk the balcony of her apartment and gaze up at the moon. Sometimes she wanted him so much that she thought of begging Eros, the god of love, to shoot Jean-Marc with an arrow. But the gods had done enough.

A month passed and then a year. Jean-Marc did all he could to buy her heart, hunting the coin as her
father had done. When he came to her rooms, he would find her dandling baby Laurent on her knee. At the first, he would ask a nurse to take the baby so that he might speak with Rose alone. Then one day, as Rose held the little Laurent, the sunshine glowed in the babe’s eyes just so, and Jean-Marc saw how much he resembled his aunt. And he was taken by surprise at the pain in his heart.

I
was a child once
, he thought.
And I lost Marie, my
mother,
the one I loved
.

I had
a child, and he is gone
.

He didn’t realize that he had just brought the deeper wound into the light. The death of his wife was a tragedy, the loss of his mother a terrible blow, but the loss of his child had defined him. Running beneath everything he had become, a dark, secret wound had stunted the growth of his heart. He hadn’t known it. Such things were of the realm of the gods and the softer hearts of women. Or so King Henri had taught his motherless heir.

But he faced his terrible secret: I
failed to bring life to my son. I failed him and I lost
him.

That night, he had a dream.

Marie, queen of the Land Beyond, mother to the infant Crown Prince Jean-Marc, walked in a rose bower. Purple roses grew in waves and rows, curtains and canopies. White roses released fragrance; red, orange, and yellow roses formed tapestries hanging from the trees. In her arms she carried her newborn son, and tears streamed down her cheeks
.

“I will not see your first week,” she told her sleeping child. “I will not be there to calm and soothe and love you. I will not be there to teach you how to love.”

The roses shimmered and scintillated as she glided through the fairy bower. She said, “Our god is Zeus, a god of men’s hearts. He calls them to action. He calls them to fight and to protect. But he doesn’t call them to love.”

Moonlight streamed down from the heavens and Marie stood in the center of a circle of silver. A larger silver circle hung in the air and she raised her son up toward it, bathing him in light.

Artemis, goddess of women, teach
him how
to love. Let that be his journey.”