A sob behind him, very soft, but enough to break his heart. He clenched his fists and forced himself not to turn.
“I thought,” she said, “you hated me then.”
“No!” he said quickly. “How could you think that?”
“When you saw the monster, you were so angry.”
Lionheart drew a long breath, choosing his words carefully before he spoke them. The memory of that night was too painful . . . all the more so now, after he’d faced the Dragon.
“Rosie,” he said softly, “let me tell you why I was angry.”
Another sob. Was her voice fading? Was she leaving him? He turned a desperate glance Beana’s way, but the goat only gave him a sour glare and continued chewing her cud.
Then Rose Red spoke. “Because I’d misled you. Because I hadn’t told you what I was. I hadn’t told you that . . . that I was the monster.”
Dropping Bloodbiter’s Wrath, he turned around quickly and took her hand. For a moment, Lionheart stared into her unveiled eyes, and he thought for sure that he would end up on his back with his breath knocked out of him, never to see her again.
But she didn’t move. She stood still, and neither of them breathed, each one taking in the other’s appearance. She saw Lionheart’s beard, that masking disguise. She saw the heaviness under his eyes, the lingering poison deep inside, and all the regret.
And he saw the goblin.
Wide, white-moon eyes, so enormous as to be horrible, set in a craggy rock of a face. Her scalp was bare save for a few sorry strands of coarse hair. Her upper lip, such as it was, twisted to reveal jutting teeth, some stumpy, some sharp. Her nose was flat to her face with wide, slitted nostrils. Her ears were huge, almost batlike. She was tiny and scrawny, but the hand Lionheart held could smash boulders without a thought.
But she didn’t smash Lionheart.
Tears welled up in the huge eyes that were made to see in the depths of mines. They splashed down the crags of her cheeks.
Lionheart took the claw of her hand in both of his and squeezed gently. “No,” he whispered. “That wasn’t it at all. I already knew what you were . . . or, at least, I suspected. I wasn’t the brightest of lads, but I wasn’t a total fool. Not then. No, when I caught that glimpse of you reflected in the water, I wasn’t surprised, wasn’t even scared.
“I was angry because I saw myself.”
He bowed his head, unable to meet her searching gaze. “Just for a moment,” he said, “I saw my real face. And I realized that the mountain monster wasn’t any one person, any one beast. It was me. It was Foxbrush. It was Leanbear and Redbird, all the people of the village who were so terrified. Because all that terror that they fixed upon you, all that hatred . . . it was really only what was coming from inside of them.
“And my desire to hunt the monster, to kill it . . . that was because I knew, in my heart, that I was nothing but a coward. I am and always have been my own monster. My own worst enemy.”
His voice broke. He dropped Rose Red’s hand and covered his face.
You did what you had to do, whispered the Lady.
“Her heart for your life,” said the memory of the Dragon. “It is the only way.”
“Rose Red,” Lionheart said, not even certain if she still stood before him, she was so silent. “Rose Red, I never fought the Dragon. I . . . I gave him what he wanted, and I fled. I haven’t told anyone. As far as they know, I faced him after he left, faced him and killed him. I didn’t. I made a bargain with him instead. Yes, I saved Southlands; the Dragon won’t return. But I . . . never fought the monster.”
To his surprise, he felt two spindly arms wrap around him. With a deep breath of relief, he hugged her back, and they stood there, prince and goblin, beside the quiet stream with only a goat for audience.
“It’s all right, Leo,” Rose Red said. “You’re still my good, kind master. No matter what happens, I will serve you.”
“Will you?” Lionheart asked, still holding her. “Even after what I did?”
“There ain’t nothin’ you can do that will turn me from you.”
“It’s been an adventure, to be sure,” said the prince. His voice was heavy, burdened. “All this mess of ours, I mean. And there is yet so much to be done. I can’t promise this will be a happy story, Rosie.”
“Maybe it will have a happy ending,” said she. “When everything’s complete and come full circle. This part ain’t so nice, but maybe somethin’ good will come of it?” She gulped and stepped back to look up at the prince, for the moment forgetting what she was, not caring as his gaze moved across her face. “Remember, you have to read all the legends together to know for sure, and we don’t know them all yet. There may be a story out there somewhere to make this one happy.”
Leo nodded, and there was a trace of a smile behind his beard. “I’d like to know that story someday.”
Rose Red turned away then. For no matter how deep or how sincerely she felt, there were some feelings not right for a servant to express to her master.