Rosemary and Rue

“There isn’t one,” I said, and raised the cup to my lips.

The blood was hot and coppery on my tongue. I almost gagged, but then the taste of it was gone, replaced by the crimson haze of someone else’s memories.

The first memories that came were flavored with the sweet, sharp taste of pennyroyal filtered through a screen of gold. An alleyway, just before dawn; my own face as seen through someone else’s eyes, my hair blown wild with running, my expression tired and all but permanently wounded. So she’s back again, said Tybalt’s voice, soft in my mind’s ears. Lost and gone for so long, and now she’s come back to us, now she’s come back to me . . .

That wasn’t the memory I needed. I forced myself back into my body and took another gulp of Lily’s “tea,” riding the blood down, past those half-golden memories and into something darker, and far less familiar.

The memories that rose this time were bitter gray beneath the red, and they tasted like hawthorn and ashes. Rowan and thorn preserve me, but I’d found what I was looking for.

... it would be an easy job, very easy, not much to do: follow the changeling, catch her, learn everything she knows, and kill her, and the pay would be more than worth it. Maybe I could even keep her alive for just a little longer than I have to, have a little fun . . .

Swallowing bile, I took another mouthful. The mix of blood and Undine water burned my lips, but I didn’t care; I needed to go deeper, to what was waiting underneath. One way or another, I needed to know. The blood almost masked the taste of roses as I held my breath, clinging to the memory of my own body to keep myself from going completely under.

The air was smoky, filled with the blare of music. Stupid junk the kids were listening to these days . . . “Hey, I do this, you pay me, right? No matter what gets broke in the process.”

Devin turned. Slimy bastard. No honor among thieves; I know better’n to trust him, but the money’s so good. “Just bring me the box and proof she’s dead for real this time, not just lost in some pond somewhere,” he said. His smile was bitter; his eyes were empty.

Behind my own growing horror, I saw those eyes and understood that this was really happening. I worked for Devin. I was his flunky and his lover, and I knew what that look meant. When he looked like that, somebody was getting written off as a loss; somebody was already dead. And this time, it was me.

Devin was still speaking, voice getting more distant as my grasp on the spell faltered: “The Winterrose has managed to trick me before. Toby’s a little fool, but she’s Amandine’s daughter. I can’t trust her not to ruin this for me.”

Denial ceased to be an option—and so did breathing as Evening’s curse slammed down without warning, knocking me deeper into the memories of the assassin Devin set on my trail. The memory of Evening’s death and my transformation became tangled in the curse, along with the sudden bitter addition of the night I followed my mother’s people into Faerie. The weight of that memory alone was enough to force me farther down until I was drowning in a rosy mist.

There were three deaths waiting for me: I could have my choice of suffocation, iron, or gunfire, and any of them could carry me home, stop my heart, and end the pain. All I had to do was stop fighting. I could write myself out of the play, just like Ophelia before me; it could be over. Maybe I could’ve kept fighting temptation if the curse hadn’t decided to start playing dirty . . . but like the Luidaeg said, it was a beautiful piece of work, and it had been strengthened past its original purpose by my own foolishness.