The driveway itself was hip deep in rosebushes. They climbed the vast oak trees, working to strangle them; the oaks bent and scraped with no assistance from the wind, clearly trying to rid themselves of their attackers. I wanted to go to one, to help it fight the climbing roses, but I couldn't sacrifice everything for the sake of one tree. I whispered my sorrow, and received a sense of benediction in return: they—or Maman, conducting what she could of her own battle through the forest—forgave me for the choices I had to make.
I waded into the roses, afraid to give myself up to the plants again. There were too many of them: even breathing in their thick scent made me feel as though I was losing my sense of myself. But I went so slowly on foot, and I dared not ask Maman for help, not inside the palace grounds. In the forest itself, perhaps, but here, Eleanor now reigned, and I couldn't risk Irindala's kingdom for a battle I had claimed as my own. Teeth gritted against the scrape of thorns, I extended my hands. They were swollen with sap and scratches, my blood more gold than red, and they were the only way I could think extend my power: reaching out physically, so that I might reach out with magic as well.
To my shock, the roses parted before me.
I ran forward, relief blinding me to the possibility of a trap until suddenly the roses closed around me again, and Eleanor's floral shape emerged from the thicket. She was taller now than she'd been, and her breath fetid with decay: the weight of the roses themselves were causing them to smear together and rot. Daughter, she cooed again. You have returned to make the bestial prince yours, and thus mine.
"I've come to break your curse." The words, spoken aloud, seemed like the impotent threat of a child. All around me the roses rustled with laughter, clearly no more threatened than they would be by a child.
How, Eleanor wondered. How will you, thornless Amber, break a curse that has held for a century? Even if you could lie with him—and how would that work, she asked, throwing my own words back at me—even if you could, how can you think that I would not simply destroy all of this in retaliation?
"Maybe you will," I admitted. "But maybe you won't be able to. I intend to find out."
Or die trying! Thorn-laden branches lashed at me, scoring mark after mark and drawing blood that ran slow and thick with sap from my skin. You don't understand, Eleanor hissed. The roses that waken your power are mine. The blood that they draw is mine. You tried to freeze me in amber once, little girl. Feel the power of a faery queen!
"Are you?" I could hardly ask the question, my breath stolen from me with each bramble slash. The next time they came at me I flung my hands up, crying for them to stop, and they at least fell away for a moment. More followed, though, and I lacked the strength to stand under the onslaught. But curiosity drove me forward a step, as I tried to see whether her flowery form granted itself a crown. "Are you a faery queen?"
I might have been! Roses were suited to rage, with their flushed colors and heavy petals. A storm of blossoms swirled around Eleanor's unshaping form, as if anger made her lose her grip on herself. Had Irindala not turned against me, I might have ruled her land at her side!
I could not help a brief, sharp laugh. "I know little of faeries, Eleanor, but I think a faery queen, and a queen who is a faery, are not the same thing at all."
I paid for my humor: so many runners slashed toward me at once that I could never block them all. Still, it had been worth it, and I began to feel not just the lashing, but the power of the sap running within me. She had wakened me, I thought; she did not know she empowered me. I forced myself a step forward, a grin stretching my features as she struck at me again and again. I pushed away what I could, but I let as many blows land, the sap rising in me.
And then, very suddenly, I couldn't move at all, and I realized she'd known what she was doing all along, after all. She couldn't stop the blood in my veins; she needed it to be sap, so that my wounds might freeze into resin and harden into amber, as I had done to her before. Letting me struggle forward, gathering the sap in my blood, had given her enough to seize me. And she had had an entire garden of roses to draw from, and the full power of a faery, where I had only my own body and the half-magical blood she had granted me with at birth. Shecould escape my trap, but hers, for me, was deadly. I saw all of that in her inhuman smile, and cursed the stars for my foolishness.
But my blood was was only half of hers. I pulled that thought back, clinging to it. Unless she saturated me even further with the sap, perhaps I could hold on to my mortal aspect long enough to cast off the stiffness that had overtaken my limbs. All at once I stopped struggling, no longer straining to move myself when we both knew I couldn't. I would have collapsed, weeping, had I that much control over my limbs, but the defeat of my posture was enough: her runners withdrew to dance in the air like serpents deciding if they should strike. I gave them no reason to, my breath nothing more than broken sobs.
You see the folly of fighting a faery queen, Eleanor murmured. You are my daughter, my only child with any love for the roses. Let me take you, little Amber. Let me fill you with my spirit, and you will know power unlike any you have ever dreamed of. You will have your Beast, and so shall I.
A shudder ran through me; I hoped it looked like resignation, and not revulsion. My blood, my body, my soul, were mine to command, not my birth mother's, and if sap ran in my veins, then sap, too, was mine to command. It was not to be crystallized inside me, but rather to flow freely, warming my skin as easily as it might bring life to a rosebush. I twitched my toes, simply to see if I could.
I could, and yet that did me no good at all, not unless I could find some way to avoid her fresh attacks; we would be here for months and years with me fighting forward a single step at a time, while my poor abandoned Beast lay far ahead of me.
I had not yet laid in any kind of plan when Pearl came stalking across the brambles on a path of moonlight, a teardrop shield of glowing pearl on one arm and a moon-bright sword in her hand.
Moonlight walked with her like a carpet, spreading across the tops of the brambles to create a shining path that cut past Eleanor and rolled on toward the palace. Her hair swept upward as if drawn to the thin moon, and I swore that her ears, too, had taken on a faery slant not unlike the Beast's. She planted herself in front of me and shouted, "Go!" as thorns lashed toward us both.