The Rose Master (27 page)

August sighed an instant before a lunge of energy nudged me backward.

He turned around. “You were able to reach me, Anne. Very good. You’re learning to control it, even to mold it into gentleness. That’s something I’ve never been able to accomplish. My power is violent, and still unpredictable.”

He fiddled with the stained bandage around his wrist, pulling at the ragged corners.

“Let me see.”

“It’s all right. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Please, August.”

He stepped toward me in silence and brought his wrist up to me, pushing back his sleeve.

“May I undo the bandages?” I asked.

“If you can do it without touching my skin.”

My hands trembled as I neared them to the linen. I unknotted the fabric, my head bent over the task. Unrolling it, I released the stained skin. Without touching August, I inspected the wound. Still a bit raw, but seeming to be sewing itself back together.

I was so focused on the pale canvas of his arm that I didn’t notice the noise until August called my name.

It was the sound of wind caressing feathers, of small, downy chests filled with winter magic floating through the air.

I looked up into a patch of sky that had filled with birds of every sort. Mirror-blue, blood-colored, pupil-black, all of them circling us without a single cry of anger or fear. A harmonious beating of wings. August could not take his eyes off them.

“Birds never come to Rosewood anymore. They sense the darkness that lives here.” He smiled. “You’ve brought the birds back, Anne.”

Happiness rushed through me as I realized I had not forced them down into the hard ground. I hadn’t attempted to immobilize them.

As I watched, they began to land on the branches all around us, until scaled claws gripped every one of them. We turned to leave them in peace, but a strangled cry pierced through the air. I turned toward the sound and gasped as a laugh encircled me.

On the white ground lay a blackbird, ripped apart, its blood spreading through the snow like spilled wine.

August buried it. I couldn’t stand to leave it uncovered like that, for any animal to pick through. After all, the only reason it was dead was because of me.

I couldn’t shake the guilt even as we practiced, my lack of concentration chaffing at August until he threw his arms up in silent frustration and sat down right on the floor. I’d never seen anyone who enjoyed cold stone more than he did.

“Unless you’d like to join that little creature in silent death, I think you’d better pull yourself to attention, Anne.”

I followed his example and sat down close to him. Almost instantly, I began to feel the tug of energy, like fingers plucking at strings woven deep in my body.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I said.

“Do what?”

“This. Help you end all of this. I’m afraid. What if something were to happen, where would I go for help? Would I even be allowed to leave?”

I could feel him turning to look at me as I spoke.

“The wraith can’t prevent a Grounder from leaving. It’s tied to me and to the manor, not to you. If something were to happen to me, you must grab the essentials and run off the grounds, as fast as you can. Forget about everything but getting yourself past the roses’ boundaries.”

“And just leave you to die?”

“Yes. I doubt the creature would kill me. Frighten me, yes, but as I told you, it needs me. You, however, will be in danger if I am incapacitated, so leave me to my fate and get out. Is that clear?” His eyes seemed to drill into me.

“Yes, August.”

“Look at me.”

I raised my face to his.

“Promise me.”

“I promise,” I said without a twitch. I’d always been a good liar.

We were both in better spirits after a filling dinner, although August left half his plate untouched. I didn’t know how he could maintain himself on the little fuel that ran through his veins.

I shooed him away from the kitchen as I prepared his tea, hoping he’d sit and rest a bit, because, in truth, his health still concerned me.

I had just begun to pour the concoction into a cup, smiling in satisfaction as I realized I’d heard August cough less the previous hours, when I heard a trickle of music sliding into the kitchen like a mist of dark notes. I tried to ignore it; I did have things to do, after all. But the music began to fill the kitchen, reminding me of warmth, of grass, of summers in London. I could feel the loosening of muscles as the cold lost some of its power on me. I was putting everything down to follow the music’s trail, when a breath of pure voice surprised me, twined around the piano’s lament.

The music grew as I neared the parlor, edging into the doorway and gazing at a sight that made me smile.

August had pulled off the white cloth that had covered the large, black piano, and he was sitting at its bench, almost completely bent over its keys. His voice was not the strongest I’d ever heard—it was tremulous like a flower in a sudden rain shower—but it was clear.

He sang on, in Italian, from what I could tell with my limited ear, never lifting his eyes off the keys before him. I yearned to get close and yet, I hated to break the crystalline moment of peace the room cradled.

His voice lifted in flight, and my feet began to move toward him, as if they had their own thoughts on the matter. I felt an irresistible current passing through me, leading me on to what my future was holding.

August still did not look up as I stood near the crook of the piano, attempting not to mar its fluid surface with my touch. He sang on, his voice wrapping around me, its feathery caress soft, light.

The silence was so vast when he finished, that I dared not utter a single compliment. I stood where I was, tension wrapped tightly around me.

Many moments passed. And then August rose from the bench with such decision, he frightened my heart into a gallop. He came to stand before me, only a sliver of air separating our bodies. I couldn’t look up into his face, for fear, for shame, for a hunger that twisted and boiled in my stomach. Our energies brushed against each other in a painful tangle.

I saw August’s hand lift from his side and come close to my face. His skin never touched mine, never touched my hair, and yet I felt the warm caress nonetheless, like a silken flame that yearned to burn everything near it. I closed my eyes with an intake of breath, feeling his other hand close to my right arm, my gown’s fabric shimmering as his fingers hovered above it, and trailed down to my hand.

I opened my fingers with unconscious yearning. I could almost feel his thin ones wrapping around mine, clutching at them in aching panic.

When I thought I couldn’t stand the tension anymore, it stopped. As my heart slowed down and my blood cooled like tea, I opened my eyes.

August had disappeared.

He paced through most of the night. I could hear him like a distant drum as I came in and out of a crackling layer of sleep.

An itching worry slept next to me. We were still missing the crucial piece, and I had a feeling things were about to escalate.

A most accurate premonition.

TWENTY-
five

August’s voice was as cold as the stones around us as he passed me a sheet of paper etched with strange words. I took it with trembling hands, eyes fixed on anything that wasn’t the man in front of me.

“You need to learn this. You are ready, so we will attempt what we’ve discussed tomorrow. We need to be prepared for the second we know the master’s name. The wraith will give you no time when that moment comes. It will destroy you to save itself.” He pointed at the black words. “This is a banishing chant, one I’ve come across in my studies, and the one that is the strongest for destroying this particular creature. I have divided the chant, since it’s usually performed by only one person. You will say these words here, and I will say the ones at the bottom. This blank space here, in my part, is where the blasted name goes.”

I flinched at his tone. “I thought magic was written in those strange symbols.” I indicated the tiles beneath us.

“These words are the symbols written phonetically. I could hardly expect you to learn a new language in a day. We’ll read them through together a few times, mainly to show you were the accents go, and then you must learn them. Memorize them.”

We stood there, as awkward as was humanly possible, and read through the knotted words. He corrected my clumsy attempts, picking apart the tangled consonants until the vowels shone through with resonant clarity.

When I was able to run through my whole part without faults, August sighed.

“Good. Now, I want you to forget everything else today. I don’t want to see a single dust rag in your hands, just this piece of paper. You need to know this well enough to chant it when faced with any atrocity the wraith will create for us. These words need to roll off your tongue, full of power and without a single stammer, or we’re both lost. Do you understand?”

He looked up at me fully for the first time that morning. His eyes were dark, an almost velvet brown. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

“I understand.”

“All right.” He turned around and headed back up the stairs in silence.

I found I was swimming in a deep pit of disappointment, which made me realize I had actually been expecting something to change between us. I hated feeling the twist of nerves in my stomach, a warm acid that swelled whenever August approached. It had come into existence with such subtlety, such quiet steps, I hadn’t noticed how strong its grip on me was until this very moment.