So, I build the house of roses. I escape into it, because today, she’s here.
Rosalina looks half made of flowers in my imagination. You’re here because of me, she says.
My mother found out I lied and that I knew of her power all along. Now, like me, Sira knows exactly who Rosalina is.
And she isn’t happy I kept that from her.
The whipping continues, and I feel my feet slipping. It’s worse being held up only by the chains. She sentenced me to two hundred lashes, but Emberlash will keep me here until his arm gives out, or until I give him a scream or a beg. I’ve lost count, and surely there must be no more skin on my back.
I pull Rosalina down on the bed. I imagine kissing her. Because I did kiss her. A stupid, reckless, amazing kiss. A kiss to get me through what was to come. She liked it. I know she did.
My knees buckle and slam to the ground. I’m coughing up blood now. Taunts and shouts breach my barrier. The roses are turning to cursed thorns. They’re dying. Reality crashes in.
Rosalina.
She kissed me in a way that makes me want to rethink everything. Because if Farron succeeds at what I asked him to do, would that shatter what’s between us?
Stars, stars. Every sane part of me hopes so.
And all the other parts pray it doesn’t.
Luckily, there’s no one to listen to my prayers.
There’s only a curtain of petals between me and oblivion. I think I’m choking on blood now. Gods, it’s disgusting.
I don’t pray, but all my hopes are in that princeling.
Fare.
I kind of wish he didn’t hate me.
I would hate me too if I were him.
The roses rot, and Rosalina disappears. I’m left with the post and the manacles, the goblins and this pain. Damn, it hurts. A miserable begging cry waits on my lips, and a green coil rises within me. I don’t know which one’s going to win, only that either way, I lose.
“That’s enough.” A familiar voice cuts through the fragments of my mind. The Nightingale stands before Emberlash.
“The Prince of Thorns hasn’t finished his punishment.” He cracks his neck, looking down at her. The fae man’s nearly three times her size, but she just raises her chin.
How long has she been watching? I don’t understand why she would want it to stop. She should relish in this. I killed her Dreadknights.
“My mother ordered two hundred lashes. You’ve done more, by my count.”
“Only one hundred seventy-five.” He licks his lips. “And the Queen won’t mind him taking a bit more, anyhow.”
I don’t know who’s lying.
The Nightingale puts a hand on her hips, but a few of her prismatic thorns break through the stone. “Perhaps, but if she sides with me, I’m going to request to deliver your punishment myself. Would you like to find out how I’d do it?”
“Can’t give lashes if you can’t take them. You don’t scare me, Princess.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do something so barbaric as the whip,” she trills, the hint of a laugh in her words. More thorns burst from the ground. “I’d wrap my thorns around each of your five appendages, and pull and pull and pull, just to see which one breaks off first.”
“F-five?” Emberlash gulps, gaze flicking down.
The Nightingale steps forward, and the man staggers back. “I bet I know which small, scraggly part of you would snap first. Get out of my sight.”
Emberlash coils his fiery whip and spits on the ground before slinking away.
I want to collapse; I want to fade into oblivion. But I can’t. The hardest part is coming.
There’s the click of a lock. My wrists are raw and cut from the rusted metal. The Nightingale’s gloved hand is on my arm. “Stand if you can,” she hisses at me. “Everyone is watching.”
My voice cracks. “I can’t—”
“Stand.”
I know she’s right, so I do it, vision blurring. Gently, she weaves a thin thorn into my palm, and I squeeze down on it, the sharp bite of pain helping me forget about my aching back for a moment.
They’re all watching, this host of goblins and soldiers. They’ve seen me beaten before, of course, but Sira hasn’t been this upset in a long time. I can’t show them just how badly she’s hurt me.
Casually, I run a hand through my sweat-soaked hair. “Nothing like a session from Emberlash to really get the blood flowing.” I wink, gesturing to the bloody stone. “I’d recommend it anytime you need a boost.”
The faces of the crowd are completely shocked. Awed that I’m standing, awed that I’m speaking. Lastly, I fix them with a glare, a dark look that says: that pain was nothing to me, and if they ever disobeyed, this would be a fraction of what I inflict on them.
“Well, sister dear, shall we take our leave?”
I couldn’t summon briars right now if I tried. She knows it. The Nightingale fixes her own menacing glare on the crowd and prismatic thorns coil around us. Being oddly careful of my back, she drags us under.
The moment we push up through the ground and I recognize my own room, I cry out and collapse. Birdy’s thorns don’t let me fall, encircling my arms and placing me face down on my bed.
I writhe, screaming into my pillow, and try to reach around to touch my searing back.
“Don’t.” Birdy smacks my hand away.
“Is there even any skin left?” Through my blurred vision, I see her grimace, the quirk of her lip. My sister doesn’t often get squeamish.
“Be grateful Mother forbids anyone from laying a hand on your face.” She holds a bottle to my lips. “Drink.”
It could be any one of her concoctions, but I drink anyway. I should feel more worried, figuring the last time I saw her, I annihilated her squadron.
But … that’s not how it is between us.
Swallowing, the world fades away.
When I come back to myself, everything is hazy. My skin still throbs, but it’s settled down to a dull ache. I crane my neck and see Birdy has laid thin ointment-laden strips of fabric across my back. She’s kneeling over her bag of supplies, no longer dressed in her armor, but in a long black tunic and leggings, short hair tied up.
She looks so much younger like this.
“What time is it?” I ask, voice hoarse.
“Just past midnight.” She comes and sits down on the floor by the side of my bed.
Mentally, I work out the timing of it all. “Only a few hours until Ezryn’s trial, then.” It was one of the last things I had learned before I was moved from detainment to the square. The Spring Prince had been witnessed without his helm and was to go on trial.
And, of course, there was the matter of his mate bond.
“You killed my Dreadknights.”
I don’t break her blue gaze. “I thought you’d be sadder about it. Not even a tear? I know you’re able to pull out all manner of emotions at will.”
Her stone face doesn’t crack. “You destroyed them for what? For Keldarion? For those princes you’re obsessed with? Or was it for Rosalina? The Dreadknights were all I had, Cas.”