Page 101 of Crown of Roses
“I don’t…” Maeve wanted to speak. She wanted to defend herself. But her tongue was too thick, and the words wouldn’t form.
“Tell me, Maeve. Do you know what happened after the Evernight War? After the dark fae attacked and caused the Four Courts to turn against one another?” Carman paced in a slow circle, ensuring every click of her heels echoed off the stone and reverberated in Maeve’s head. The storm assaulted them, but Carman didn’t falter. She seemed to revel in the malicious weather, marveling in its fury. “Do you know of the plague that ravished Faeven once they finally realized the dark fae were the source of all their problems?”
Maeve dragged herself onto her hands and knees, and stared at the vile woman who was her mother. She spat, and bloodied saliva coated the granite. Rain drops smeared it away in a river of water and blood. She wouldn’t give up. She would never give up for Kells. She would fight, if it meant every bone in her body would break, if it meant she took a thousand blades to the heart. A tremble threatened to take her knees out from under her, but she pulled herself upright and stood before the sorceress. The wind barraged her, gust after stinging gust, and a chill took hold deep in her bones. Her soaked clothing clung to her skin, but she lifted her chin and kept her head held high.
She held her mother’s wicked gaze. “What of it?”
“It was me. It was all me.” Carman threw her arms out, and wind barreled across the balustrade. She tilted her face to the sky, and a maniacal laugh ripped from inside her. Her hair came unbound, whipping around her like gnarled, tangled vines. The rain grew sharper, hammering against them. Drenching them. And the virdis lepatite blared a hideous green. “I invaded Faeven when they were broken, and bloodied, and still collecting their dead from the battlefield of war among their own kind. It was my realm to conquer. To defeat. Ruling Faeven was to be my legacy.”
Maeve’s mind whirred like a clock spinning out of control. Her mother was the plague? Carman was the reason for all of the suffering, for the darkness, and despair? But it was impossible. Such a task would require an unmatched force of strength, and Maeve knew the exact number of soldiers who fought to defend Kells. It was nowhere near the necessary number to overthrow an entire realm…unless she had help. Unless there was a dangerous, more powerful, underlying force offering her assistance.
Carman strode to the center of the human barricade surrounding Maeve. A soldier stepped forward, carrying a small brown bowl in his hands. Every so often, ducking between the stiff shoulders of the armed guards, Maeve caught a glimpse of Saoirse’s silver hair, but she couldn’t see any more than the top of her head. The soldier with the bowl stood beside Carman, his face expressionless, devoid of any emotion. But there was the faintest tick in his jaw. A tell. He was…displeased? Angry?
“Such an odd turn of events.” Carman drew a slim blade from the folds of her cloak. Her cold gaze skimmed the clothbound hilt, admiring it. “All this time, I wanted you dead. And as it turns out, I need to keep you alive.”
A bizarre sensation cut through Maeve, and she wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or afraid.
Carman held her hand over the proffered bowl, the blade placed directly above her palm.“Now, to bring them back.”
Maeve startled. “Bring who back?”
Her mother cut her down with an obsidian gaze loaded with malice. “My sons.”
Sons? She had brothers? Siblings? And not once had Carman ever thought to grace her with such knowledge? Maeve’s gaze sought that of any soldier who would meet her eye, anyone who would confirm such a claim, but not one dared to look in her direction.
Carman gripped the edge of her blade, and with a hiss, she sliced it down the center of her palm. Scarlet blood oozed down her alabaster wrist and dripped into the waiting bowl, mixing with the steadfast drizzle of rain. Thunderclouds tormented the skies, building layer after layer, swallowing the atmosphere like a mass of impending doom. The soldiers banded together, tightening their ranks, ensuring Maeve’s capture. Over the roaring wind, Maeve heard someone yell her name in the distance. She sought a silver-haired girl from beyond the human barricade, but Saoirse was nowhere in sight. Casimir stood along the outer edge with his hands tucked behind his back. She couldn’t see his eyes, they were shrouded beneath the thick fabric of his hood—but she felt them upon her. She knew he watched her every move.
Carman pointed one sharpened nail at Maeve. “Bring the girl.”
She didn’t even have time to fight back. Two soldiers grabbed her, clamped down on her shoulders and pinned her arms to her sides, restricting her. She struggled against them, but their fingers only sank further into her skin, clenching and digging, tightening their grip. Carman snatched her wrist and pried open Maeve’s clenched fingers one by one.
“What are you doing?” She watched in horror as Carman cut the blade into the flesh of her hand. Maeve yelped as the serrated edge ripped through her skin like it was tanned leather.
“What I should’ve done years ago. Best to move quickly before the fae blood closes your wound.” She squeezed and Maeve’s blood dripped from the tips of her fingers into the bowl. In one swift movement, Carman ripped the virdis lepatite from her cloak and dropped it into the swirling red mixture. The concoction of blood and dark magic gurgled. It bubbled, foamed, and hissed. “Set the bowl down quickly, you fool!”
The soldier holding it immediately lowered it to the ground, placing it right in front of Carman. He backed away, stumbling for a position within the ranks that was furthest from the spewing bowl. The guards who held her dragged her away from Carman, tugged her to the other side of the circle. The fear among them was palpable. No one seemed to know her intent, but her onyx gaze was now rimmed in red, and tears of blood were streaking down her pale cheeks, only to be washed away by the rain.
“Blood of my blood, life of my life. Bring back the darkness, the pain, and the strife.” Carman lifted her voice and started reciting the verses of a spell. “Blood of my blood, sons of my soul. Take from me, whatever the toll.”
At those words, her hair turned snowy white, streaked with messy threads of gray. Her shoulders hunched forward as the years of her life slipped away. She withered before them all, becoming a shell of her former self. Bulging black veins marred her arms and crawled up her neck. Wrinkles scoured her face, settling around her eyes, hollowing her cheekbones. Within seconds, Carman was no longer an eternally youthful sorceress, but a haggard old crow. Near her feet, shadows rose up from the blood bowl, large and imposing masses that gradually took shape. The shape of three men. All of them possessed midnight hair, so dark it was nearly blue, and obsidian eyes like their mother. They were clothed in the shadows of night. Their bodies jerked and spasmed to life, their anguished cries ripped through the storm, and a frightening alarm sounded in the back of Maeve’s mind.
She’d seen these men before. These brothers. She’d seen the harrowing darkness that shrouded their every move. The destruction they left in their wake. The trail of death behind them. Darkness. Destruction. Death. These men were in the paintings in the castle’s library. Their demolition of worlds, their massacre of lives, was forever entombed and displayed as a reminder of the terror they brought upon Faeven under Carman’s rule. For her, it was an oath. A promise of her selfish vengeance.
Saoirse shouldered her way through the blockade of soldiers, her sword drawn. But then her gaze landed on the three males swirling up like shadows before them. Her blue eyes widened, and her mouth fell open in shock. Maeve stumbled back into the guards restraining her. One of them faltered, and loosened his grip. The other sucked in a sharp breath, muttering a stream of foul words and prayers to the goddess for mercy. It seemed as though none of them knew what Carman had planned. No one, save for Casimir.
He stood off to the side. Unbothered. Untroubled. As though spirits were brought back from the dead every day.
“Balor. Tethra. Dian.” Carman’s papery lips stretched into a smile, cracked and bleeding. “Blood of my blood, behold the magic for thee. Rise now and breathe, pledge your lives unto me.”
The brothers took full form now. They towered over every soldier, even Casimir, and black, bulging veins protruded from their bodies. Their eyes were cold and empty, bereft of emotion or feeling. Only one of them drifted forward toward Carman, and his feet never touched the ground. It was as though he was caught between two worlds, that of the living and of the dead. Restless. Frightening and furious all at once.
“No.” The one named Dian spoke first, and his gravelly voice was coarser then the rugged Cliffs of Morrigan.
Carman’s smile thinned, and she craned her neck forward. “What did you say?”
“I said no.” Dian’s vast frame overcrowded her, and the sorceress shrank back. “We will not pledge our lives to you. We did so once before, and look where it got us.”
The other two brothers, Balor and Tethra, growled their assent.
