A Red-Rose Chain

“I don’t know them all that intimately,” I protested. “I have to think about it to start getting details like that.” Tasting Evening’s blood had probably also helped, but I didn’t need to bring that up. It wasn’t something I was proud of.

“Still, that should be more than sufficient detail to let me find the roses in question,” said Ceres. I gave her a blank look, and she smiled. “All the world’s roses are brought to Portland. Didn’t you know? We have a thing the mortals call a ‘test garden,’ where the new cultivars are coaxed to open for the sun and show their secrets clearly as a morning breeze. They grow the new, but they treasure also the old—and there are roses none of them can explain, roses that seem to have arisen naturally around the corners of their carefully planned plots, their delicately designed gardens. My siblings and I, we have played at curators in a great museum, coaxing long-past roses from our bodies and planting them where they have the chance to flourish.”

It took me a moment to realize what she was saying. Finally, I ventured, “So you’re saying my old red rose might be growing somewhere in the gardens?”

“I would stake my eye on it.”

The phrase was unnerving, and not just because of who her father was. Some of the old pureblood oaths involved staking an eye, a hand, even a heart—and when the oaths were broken, it was generally expected that the person who made them would actually give up those body parts. There’s a reason swearing on the physical has fallen out of favor, replaced by the cleaner, safer swearing on the abstract. “Okay,” I said. “What good would that do us?”

“If Ceres can find the right kind of rose—the kind of rose you say this Eira woman’s magic smelled like—then I can use that, and I can figure out the counterformula for elf-shot.” Walther put down his last cookie, leaning forward. There was an unfamiliar intensity in his eyes. “I can do it. I can wake them up.”

I blinked before looking to Tybalt, only to find that he was blinking, too, looking as nonplussed as I was. Elf-shot was . . . elf-shot wasn’t supposed to be forever. It was the holding pattern of the fae world, the injury that took enemies out of the fight for a long time without actually breaking the Law and killing them. It wasn’t something that could be undone by one alchemist with access to the proper rose garden. That wasn’t possible.

But then, when has Faerie ever settled for the possible? “I’ll do my best to make sure you have the right rose, but I can’t promise anything,” I said, looking back to Walther. “This isn’t something I’ve done before.”

“Narrow it down to ten and I can take it from there,” he said. “I—”

The cottage door slammed open, and Marlis stormed into the room, half-drawing her sword. “Get away from my aunt!” she shouted.

Well, hell. And things had been going so well.





TWELVE




“MARLIS, DEAR HEART, PLEASE don’t threaten my guests: it’s neither proper nor polite, and I raised you better than that,” said Ceres. She picked up her tea and took a dainty sip, as if to emphasize how calm she was. She wasn’t being attacked: she was having some people over for tea. I admired her serenity, even as I tried to decide whether she’d be pissed off if I hit Marlis with a teapot. I didn’t have any better weapons at hand, except for Tybalt, and I didn’t want to kill the girl.

“They shouldn’t be here,” snarled Marlis, glaring daggers at the rest of us. “They’re here on the King’s sufferance, and that sufferance does not extend to troubling you!”