The White Rose (17 page)

Raven.

And then she’s there, right there in front of me, and her
skin is healthy and glowing, and she smiles her old smile, full of warmth and mischief, and she speaks without opening her mouth.

You found me
, she whispers in my mind.

I found you
, I reply.

Suddenly I’m being pulled, like a giant vacuum is sucking me up and away from the cliff, away from the statue, and everything is spinning and I grab Raven’s hand and hold on tighter than I’ve ever held on to anything in my life. And then I’m pitching forward and I think it must be into nothingness except I feel something soft against my cheek.

I open my eyes.

The first thing I see is a swath of color. My body has fallen over Raven’s, the quilt on the bed the only thing I can see. For a few seconds, I lie there, aware of the powerful silence in the room and the even more powerful silence inside me. Whatever I experienced isn’t gone—it’s more like it’s waiting for me to catch up. I take a deep breath and the air tastes different.

I sit up.

The first thing I’m aware of is my body—there’s a thrill running through me, a strength coursing in my veins and muscles, but not necessarily physical strength. I feel . . . altered. Heightened.

I look around. The room is a mess, like a twister came through and tore everything off the beds, out of the closets. I’m vaguely aware of the other people—Lucien behind me, Garnet and Ash against the wall by the door, Sil by the window.

Sil. I can feel her presence. It has its own flavor, its own
weight. How had I never noticed it before?

Then I turn and focus on the only person who matters in this moment.

Raven’s face isn’t the face of the healthy, glowing Raven I saw on the cliff. It is sallow and sweaty, and her lips are cracked and dry. Her hair is lank and sticks to her skin in places.

But her eyes are open.

The emotions that rise up inside me are both familiar and unfamiliar, because it’s not just me who is celebrating. There is a new part of me, a new awareness, and I know I will never be without it for the rest of my life.

And from outside, very faintly, I think I hear singing. The pond sings, and the wind, and the trees, and there is so much life around me that for a moment, I’m breathless, captivated by it. Then Raven speaks.

“You found me,” she croaks.

The spell is broken, and I fall forward onto her chest and cry. I know it’s all right, that I should cry, even though I’m so happy. These tears will help her and help me.

“Yes,” I say through my sobs. “I found you.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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S
IL TELLS ME TO COME DOWNSTAIRS.

I make Lucien promise to stay with Raven, who falls asleep almost immediately. I watch the rise and fall of her chest until I’m sure it won’t stop, until I can truly believe she is alive.

Ash and Garnet stay with her, too. They look at me differently now, wide-eyed and wary, confused. I walk silently past them, following Sil, and wonder what it looked like to them, whatever it was that just happened.

I wonder what destroyed the room.

Sil sets a kettle on to boil. I sink into one of the chairs at the dining table. My hands are shaking.

“So,” she says. “Now you know.”

I nod.

“How are you feeling?”

I shake my head. I don’t have an answer to that. It’s like I’m feeling everything all at once, a jumble of emotions mixed with something strange and unfamiliar that doesn’t quite feel human.

“That’s exactly how Azalea looked when it happened to her. Except she didn’t have to bring her friend back from the dead.” Sil scratches her ear. “Never seen anything like that.”

I stare at the grains of wood in the tabletop.

“Did you get turned into a damned mute, girl?”

My head whips up at the word
mute
as the fire under the kettle flares. Sil literally leans back, the fierceness radiating off me in waves. My anger is heat, like the fire—my skin burns.

“Don’t say that to me,” I say. “Ever.”

“All right,” Sil says slowly. “But you need to calm down.”

I can’t calm down. The heat inside me is searing and the more it burns, the higher the flames leap, until the kettle is engulfed in them. I jump up and back away.

“What’s happening?” I say. A potted plant on the windowsill bursts from its ceramic home, its roots crawling across the kitchen floor, its leaves swelling up to twice their normal size. The plant is a worm in the pit of my stomach, growing stronger as the roots slither toward me. I shriek and water explodes out of the faucet in the sink—the fire inside me quenched—but I feel like my skin has melted, slipping around on my bones like it might slide off into a puddle on the floor.

“Out of the house,” Sil commands. “Now!”

I fly through the back door, the roots veering in their course to follow me. I slam the door on them and collapse on the wooden steps of the porch, holding my head in my hands and gasping for breath. I don’t want to touch anything. I’m afraid to look up. I feel like I’m falling down the incinerator shaft again, as if my insides were all mixed up and my stomach had lodged itself in my throat. I grip my neck in my hands, reminding myself that everything is as it should be, skin and bone and muscle. I am whole.

It may be only a minute but it feels like much longer before Sil comes out to join me. She gives me a pat on the back, which hurts more than comforts.

“Don’t worry,” Sil says. “It’s not the first time I’ve had a plant explode or a fire in this house. Not by a mile.”

“I can’t . . . I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“Oh, that’s plain as day.”

“Maybe you should leave me alone. I don’t want to hurt you.” I don’t know what this new power is, but I feel like it’s dangerous. Like
I’m
dangerous.

Sil chuckles. “You don’t scare me. I know exactly what you’re going through, and I’ve been doing it longer, and if you want to learn how to live without going insane, you are going to have to
listen to me
.”

She shoves a mug of tea into my hands. The steam caresses my face as I grip the mug. It’s nice to have something normal to hold on to.

“How did I do it?” I ask. “How did I save her?”

Now Sil laughs a full-throated belly laugh, slapping her
hand against her thigh.

“How should I know?” she says. “What, you think we’re all the same? Is every tree in the forest out there the same? Every drop of water in the pond? Of course not. Nature made us all different. But you . . .” She whistles through her teeth. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re some sort of healer. Maybe it was a fluke. Or maybe you just love that damned girl so much.”

I sip my tea. It’s chrysanthemum, the kind my mother always made.

“What happened in the room?” I ask. “What did you see?”

“A windstorm,” Sil says. “Like I said, it isn’t the first time things have been broken around here. Four elements, remember. Air. Earth. Water. Fire.”

I think about the flames leaping up from the kettle, how I felt them inside me, like I was on fire. I shudder.

“I didn’t feel like me,” I say. “It was like . . .”

“You give up part of yourself,” she says quietly. “You embody the element. It takes some getting used to.”

“So what do I do now?” I ask.

Sil stands. “Come with me.”

I put down my mug and follow her across the field. Stars dot the night sky. The air is cold on my skin, but it doesn’t penetrate the way it did when I was tied to the birch tree. It’s like the fire is still smoldering inside me.

Sil stops at the edge of the pond and looks up. The stars twinkle. The moon’s light reflects on the pond’s surface. I am so aware of the water, its quiet smoothness. I want to touch it.

“You have the power to connect with every blade of grass in this field, every drop of water, every branch on every tree. They will react to you. But, remember, you do not have power over this force. You are only ever its equal. You must be worthy of that. You give yourself to an element, as it gives itself to you.”

I bend down and place my palm on the pond’s surface.

“You become the water,” Sil says.

Instantly, I sense a connection, like my fingers are fluid, malleable, as if they had become the very water beneath them. The feeling travels up through my arm and into my chest, melting me, molding me—it’s scary and exhilarating at the same time. Waves ripple out from under my palm and I feel myself rippling, too. The wind stirs my hair and tickles the back of my neck. Everything is so peaceful, still, and yet so full of life. A quiet, thrumming power. I am awed by it. It is so much more than any Augury.

“Look down,” Sil says.

I pull away from the pond’s surface and my hand feels solid again. I stand and gaze, awestruck, as a tiny patch of white flowers blossom around my feet. But even as I watch, the petals wave at me, opening and closing, and then brown at the edges. In a few seconds, they have all withered and died, leaving behind no trace of their existence.

“Azalea’s were blue her first time,” Sil says, staring at the spot where my flowers used to be. “Mine were the darkest red I’d ever seen. Like blood.”

“Does that . . . what was that?” My voice is so quiet. I don’t want to disrupt whatever just happened.

She claps a hand on my shoulder. The gesture is jarring
in this moment, even though her grasp isn’t that hard.

“That’s life,” she says.

Then she walks back to the house, leaving me alone. I sit down and press my hand against the grass. Each individual blade feels different to me. Another little white flower sprouts between my fingers, curling and twisting, reaching up toward me, before it inevitably wilts.

Beautiful
, I think. It feels like a sigh, a half-formed, yearning thought. Suddenly, hundreds of white flowers blossom around my hand, wrapping their stems around my knuckles and wrist, their cheery white faces fluttering in the light breeze.

I sit there for a long time, listening to the stars and the pond and the grass and the wind. I have never felt so connected to the world around me. Like I am a very small part of something so large it can’t be comprehended. It makes me feel insignificant and unique at the same time.

It’s odd, but I somehow feel safer out here than I did in the house. In the wide-open space, with water and air and earth free and uncontained, I am calm.

I think of the dirty streets of the Marsh and the filthy air in the Smoke. I remember what Sil said, how the royalty cut up this island and stitched it back together. I see the royalty as a giant spider, ensnaring everything in its web, engorging itself until its body becomes swollen, and still it’s not enough. They will never have enough and it’s time for them to be stopped.

For the first time since this whole thing began, I start to feel like it is possible. Like I might be able to help the way Lucien wants. I feel so connected to it all, so filled with
the power of the elements—maybe I
can
make a hole in their walls, break down the barriers, help unite the circles. I stretch my hand out across the grass and it swells up, growing to reach my fingers. I feel like I am growing, too. The blades tickle my skin.

“Violet?”

I whip around. Ash is walking toward me. The wind picks up.

“I wanted to make sure you’re all right,” he says. He stops and looks down. “Whoa.”

A trail of white flowers light up the ground. They swarm around his feet, growing over his shoes.

“Is that you?”

I nod.

“What is it?”

“It’s life,” I murmur. The flowers wither around him. “How is Raven?”

“Still sleeping.” Ash sits beside me. “What you did back there . . . it was incredible. A little terrifying, but incredible.”

“I think I might be able to help,” I say. “I might be able to do what Lucien wants. I think . . . I think I could break down rock and stone. I think I could make this whole pond turn into a tidal wave if I wanted, or coax the wind into a tornado. So maybe I
can
carve out holes in the walls that separate this city.”

Ash smiles my favorite smile and slips his hand in mine. “Well, if whatever went on in that room is any indication, I’d say you can. I think you can do anything you put your mind to.”

“What happened?” I ask. “What did it look like, to you?”

“You went very still,” Ash says. “I called your name, and Lucien did, too, but your face . . . it was like you weren’t there anymore. Your eyes were closed and you were so still. And then this wind started, slow at first, but soon it was throwing things around the room. I thought it was going to break the windows. Sil shouted at us not to touch you. You weren’t affected by it at all, like you couldn’t feel it or hear us. But your expression . . . you were so calm and yet . . . strong. That’s the only way I can describe it.” He hesitates. “What was it like for you?”

I’m frightened by the idea that I caused something so violent without being aware of it. And I don’t want to share the cliff with Ash, not yet. It feels too private. But I want to give him some kind of answer.

“I saw the ocean,” I whisper.

There is a heavy pause. I can sense his disbelief. I keep my eyes trained on the pond.

“What was it like?” he finally asks.

“Endless,” I say.

We sit in silence for a minute. Though it isn’t really silence. I can hear the grass growing and the water rippling and the air breathing.

“Do you think,” Ash says hesitantly, “that what you did for Raven . . . could you do that for someone else?”

We both know who he’s talking about.

“I don’t think it works like that,” I say.

I don’t mention the fact that we couldn’t get to Cinder now, even if we wanted to.

“No,” Ash says. “I suppose not.”

The wind blows a lock of hair into his eyes. He shakes it away.

“I wish there was more I could do,” he says. “I wish I was more useful. Four years in a companion house and all I’ve learned is how to seduce women. There isn’t much value in that.”

“You have plenty of value,” I say.

“Do I? All my life I’ve only been worth what someone was willing to pay for me.”

“I never paid for you,” I say. “And you are beyond priceless to me.”

Ash cups my neck with his hand and pull in me for a kiss. His lips feel magnificent—soft and warm and full of life. I could devour him. I want to feel his skin on my skin again. I want to feel all of him in this new body, with these new senses. He pulls back, as another wave of white flowers swells up around us and dies.

“You’re not bleeding,” he says, running his finger down the length of my nose. “Not like you did at the incinerator.”

I rub the base of my skull. “No,” I say. “And the headaches are gone, too. This is what I’m
supposed
to do. It’s the four elements, Sil says—I’m connected to them, somehow. I’m not controlling them, or forcing them, or twisting them to something else.” I think about the fiery kettle. “They scare me, though. There’s so much power in them. And we never knew. I don’t even think the
royalty
knows.” I sigh. “I should probably go back inside. I want to be with Raven.”

Ash tightens his grip on my hand. “Sil is cooking,” he says. “She suggested that you stay out here for that. Actually, she suggested that you stay out here all night. Apparently, you can do a fair bit of damage in your sleep. Or, I guess Azalea did.”

“Oh.”

“Raven will be fine,” he says. “Garnet and Lucien are with her.”

“Right.”

“Violet,” he says, his fingers brushing my cheek. “I’m staying out here with you.”

“Oh no, Ash, you don’t have to . . . I mean . . . you probably shouldn’t. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I know you’re alone in this thing, that I can’t possibly understand what you’re going through. But I can be here with you. For you. That, at least, I am capable of. So here I am.” He shoots me a sidelong glance. “Please don’t set me on fire in the middle of the night.”

“That’s not funny,” I say.

Ash rolls his eyes. “Sil told me you can’t create anything, only affect what’s already there. So unless you’re planning on sleeping with some matches and a can of kerosene, I think I’m safe.” He kisses my temple. “I’ll go get some blankets and pillows.”

I grab his arm and hold him back. “No,” I say. “Stay here with me for a while longer.”

Ash inclines his head and settles back by my side. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me against his chest. I breathe him in and feel his heartbeat, strong and
steady under my cheek, his life and my life and the life of everything around us intertwined in this moment.