Page 8 of A Reign of Roses
“And if I raised your lover from the soil, brushed her off and made her new, and gave you the full Fae blood that you seek? If I said neither of you had to die, then what would you do?” The White Crow’s teeth flashed in the fading light, breath swirling in a room now icy cold. I hadn’t realized my bones were chattering.
“Would you still take your new skin,” he continued when Iremained silent, “reborn as full-blooded just as the prophecy required, and slay your father? Knowing you were fated to die, as she once was?Knowingyou could have lived a near eternity beside her? Would you still sacrifice yourself for the good of the realm?”
No.
If the Gods were that cruel, and somehow this wily, wicked sorcerer could turn me full-blooded Faeandresurrect Arwen…Then, no, I wouldn’t leave her side ever again. There was no use lying to myself. Pretending to be some selfless man I wasn’t, and could never be.
“A great disappointment.”
The breath shot from my lungs. “I didn’t say—”
Another swipe of that wrinkled hand and the old, nameless tavern of Vorst transformed.
When the spots cleared from my vision, my hands were braced on a rich maple dining table. Clean, polished,sparklingin gentle candlelight. The room glowed with dozens of the waxy, lit pillars.
Not a tavern anymore, but a bachelor’s den: plush periwinkle settees, layers of mismatched cream rugs, exotic bottles of wine, and crystal decanters filled with spirit. Wood and leather and the smoky, spiced aroma of incense.
I hadn’t even noticed how earsplitting the endless howl of wind whistling through the mighty trees had been until it was gone. Until that roar was replaced by indulgent silence.
And that veil of frigid cold—gone. Instead, a light, warm breeze rustled loose curtains. It felt like honey in my lungs. Despite the elevation and season here in Vorst, Len’s magic had doused the entire hideaway in temperate air.
And still, my blood chilled as my mind stuttered to a halt.
Not magic.
And before me…not Len. Or, still Len, but perhaps as he’d looked thirty years ago. Virile, wise, angular. The kind of man you’d trust with your life, but perhaps not your woman.
Len, the White Crow…whoever he was, was no mere sorcerer.
“Whatareyou?”
2
Arwen
I screamed like a banshee,squirming and wrenching away from my guards, not bothering to contain a single ounce of my rabid, roiling fury.
Not even because it hurt. It didn’t, so much. Not anymore.
After all these weeks, having my lighte harvested was more of a violation, more mentally distressing than it was painful.
“Hold still.” Maddox grunted, his silver armor rippling with his taut muscles. “You’re not making this any easier.”
Thatwas why I screamed.
“Good,” I spat at the blockheaded kingsguard and his insufferable square jaw. I kicked my legs haphazardly and got Wyn in the kneecap.
“Ow,” he groaned, soft dark hair falling in front of his baby face.
“That wouldn’t happen if you knelt like I did,” Maddox hissed at his underling from his low position, holding me to the chair. Then, under his breath, “Feeble in more ways than one.”
“Let me go,” I demanded. “Both of you sniveling, subservient—”
Octavia cut me off. “How greatly I despise that voice.”
I could have said the same for the sorceress presently scraping the lighte from my veins. Somewhere between the first time she’d harvested me, when I’d sobbed like a little girl, and the fifteenth—the day I successfully spat in her eye—I’d decided Octavia reminded me of an aging female python. An apex predator whose scales had begun to lose their shine but who was determined to prove her power, the scope of her viciousness, to anyone who cared to listen. Sometimes even more fervently to those who didn’t.
She also spoke with the same viper-like hiss. “Imagine if I justsnatched it.”
