Roses and Rot (38 page)

It was the last night of April. Tomorrow would be May, and tomorrow would be the tithe. I opened all the windows in my room and
let the night in. I drew a long breath, gathering the wet, green scent of spring, jasmine rising through the air like holy smoke.

My email notification pinged. Beth.

She had read the file I had given her, and had been impressed enough to send it to her agent, who would like very much to speak with me at my earliest possible convenience.

My heart butterflied in my chest, and I felt a grin stretch itself across my face. I read it again, to make sure the words were still the same.

They were.

Beth apologized for doing this without my permission, but she had wanted me to know that I had options. That there were things I would be leaving behind.

I read it one more time, then closed the email without replying. Part of me wished I hadn’t read it. Hadn’t known that particular piece of what I might be losing, this first part of everything I ever wanted.

I turned off my computer and picked up my pen. I had an idea for a new book, one about what happened after “ever after,” and I wanted to get the first pieces of it on paper. It was important that I do that now, that I treat the night as no different than any other. To not think it was possible that tomorrow night I would be far away from this room, and this desk, and a life of writing.

To not think that I might be even further from Marin, downstairs in her room, than I was now. I had to try, one last time, to talk to her.

Downstairs, a knock at the door. I stepped out to see who it was, so late.

“Hello, Marin. I know you said you’d come by when you were ready, but I wanted to help you with your things.” Janet’s voice.

“Marin?” I called down from the landing.

“Your sister is going to stay with me tonight. I thought it might be nice if she had someone, someone like a mother, who could be there for her, and help her prepare for tomorrow.”

“Marin, wait!” I started down the stairs, and they shifted beneath my feet, tripping me up. I fell.

Picking myself up off of the floor, I saw Marin sling a bag over her shoulder. “Thanks, Janet. I’m ready to go.”

“I’m sure you are, dear.”

And then they were gone.

This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far. There are stories where you must wear out your iron shoes to right a wrong, where children are baked into pies, where jealousy cuts off hands and cuts out hearts.

We forget, because the stories end with those ritual words—happily ever after—all the darkness, all the pain, all the effort that comes before. People say they want a fairy tale life, but what they really want is the part that happens off the page, after the oven has been escaped, after the clock strikes midnight. They want the part that doesn’t come with glass slippers still stained with a stepsister’s blood, or a lover blinded by an angry mother’s thorns.

If you live through a fairy tale, you don’t make it through unscathed or unchanged. Hands of silver may be beautiful, but they don’t replace the hands of flesh and bone that were severed. The hazel tree may speak with your mother’s voice, but her bones are still buried beneath its roots. The dead are not always returned, and roses do not always bloom from graves.

Not every princess climbs out of her coffin.

Happily ever after is the dropping of a curtain, a signal for applause. It is not a guarantee, and it always has a price.

I tried to sleep. I needed the rest, needed whatever strength and advantages I could give myself. Exhaustion wasn’t one of those things.

But when I closed my eyes, I saw Marin galloping away on a bone-white horse, saw myself opening a door, three or four years from now, to see Gavin, stone-hearted, telling me she was dead. I heard my mother’s voice, telling Marin that I had always been jealous, that I didn’t want her to succeed.

I turned my shirt inside out and stuffed a sprig of rowan in my pocket.

I walked all over the campus. Through the artists’ studios. There were lights in some even now, in the smallest hours of the morning. Someone played the cello, sobbing and deep.

Through the mentors’ houses. Only a few lights on there. Beth and Janet were the only ones here who had served as tithes, I thought. I wondered if they were awake, waiting for this year’s ritual, or if they slept, secure and comfortable now that their service was done, that they couldn’t go back. Or if Janet sat with Marin, and wished that tomorrow’s white horse would be for her instead, that there was a door left to open her way to Faerie again.

I kept going, past the rose garden, still in riotous bloom. Across the Commons, so still and quiet, like the whole of Melete had silenced its clocks, was holding its breath. Then to the banks of the Mourning River, held there by bridge after bridge, arching from one side to the next.

And one bridge that didn’t, one bridge that stopped in midair. I walked up and across, until the stones ended, until I stood on the precipice.

I looked over, into the still-dark forest where Faerie was. I stood, until I could look unflinchingly at it, until my heart did not gallop like a horse, until my breath did not rush like the water beneath me.

“I will not let you have her,” I said.

All around me, laughter. It was the only thing I heard as I walked home.

A ticking clock, counting down. Time, always and ever the enemy. Time, that turns a dancer’s grace into mere mortality. Time, that stretched the bridge between sisters until it snapped. Time, the drumbeat mark of a prison sentence.

One more day. Seven years. Forever.

The tithe was tonight.

The rising sun scattered color across the sky, painting the low clouds in sherbet shades. Birds sang. Everything was green and new. Everything I saw told me to stay. To surround myself in the beauty. I could have everything I wanted on my own. A writing career. Days full of sunrises and glory.

The air smelled of roses, and the walls were covered in a kaleidoscope of butterflies, glowing reds and oranges, and that bright, impossible blue. Their wings folding and unfolding in time with some great heartbeat. Open, close. Open, close.

And then they flew, hundreds of multicolored stars, searching for brighter skies. I reached—

“Imogen!” Ariel’s voice, and hands that shoved me back, hard. I crashed to the ground.

“You were about to take a header down the stairs. What the hell?”

“I saw—” I shook my head. “Nothing true.”

“Was it them? Of course it was them.” She answered her own question, looking around as if she expected the Fae to slither out
of corners and shadows. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they did. “They’re fuckers. I get the feeling that Gavin is literally the only one who plays by their rules, much good it does him.

“So when do we go kick their asses?”

“You’re coming with me?”

She grinned, fierce and bright. “You can’t even walk down stairs on your own, so yes, I’m coming with you.”

I hugged her tight, as if she were my sister. “Thank you.”

There wasn’t a dress code for the evening, or if there was one, no one had bothered to put it on my invite. I wasn’t even supposed to be there, unless it was to wail and wave as Marin rode over the bridge and away from me.

But this was the Fae, and appearances were their own kind of magic. They had wanted me, once, and so I dressed to remind them of that. In a silver dress, beaded like armour. In a black velvet cape, lined in silk as green as a forest. In a rose ring that clung to my finger as if it had been made for me.

In a necklace, the leaf of a tree, made by one they had embraced.

I stood on my bed and plucked a star from the ceiling. One that Marin had given me. I tucked it in my bra, a talisman. A reminder.

Then, because glass slippers would have been a bitch to run in, I laced on a pair of boots, and went down to Ariel’s room.

She looked me up and down. “Yeah, okay. That actually makes sense. Ready?”

No. “Yes.”

The Fae were waiting.

Stepping out of the house was flinging myself into a wall of naked want. So much emotion pulling at me. A gaping maw of
desire so terrible I went to my knees before it. The Fae, welcoming the tithe.

“Right. Okay. That’s how it’s going to be then.” Ariel pulled me to my feet, and I clung to her like a drunk.

Walking was stumbling, slow and graceless. It wasn’t simply want that saturated the air. Time seeded itself in my eyes like grit. The hair on my neck rose as I heard the echoes of hoofbeats close behind, urging me to run, to find a place of safety. Not here, not here.

The ground, the universe itself disappearing beneath my feet, ice beneath my skin, as I danced with a partner whose eyes were as black and as far as forever.

Ariel’s hand slid from mine. I fell backward. Easier to stay here. Marin wanted to go. I should respect her choice and let her.

A hand cracked across my face. I blinked. Swore.

Ariel, in front of me, hand raised. “Imogen. Pay fucking attention. Do not let go of me again. You turned into a zombie for a second there, and we are running out of time. It’s almost sunset. We have to go.”

“Thanks.” I held on, didn’t let go again. Stumbling and half-stunned, Ariel dragging me, we made it to the banks of the Mourning. To the assembled crowd. Faces I recognized mixed in with those that weren’t human.

“I still want to punch her,” Ariel said, looking at Janet. She stood close to a group of Fae, who paid no more attention to her than if she had been a tree.

“Me too,” I said. Easier to stand on my own feet, to focus, now that we were here. A respite only temporary, I was sure.

Other fellows there, too, ones who had been at the selection, some wearing their hourglasses. Hoping, maybe, for one last chance,
still thinking this was the easy way to success. Their chains were fastened again. I hadn’t worn mine since.

The light fell, the sky darkened. My heart beat like the ticking of a clock. My head was full of voices, telling me to leave, telling me I would fail. That I would die. That Marin would. That her last thought would be that I hated her, that I wanted what was hers.