The Tears of the Rose (16 page)

“Have you ever ridden astride before?”

“I know how.” His silence accused me of prevaricating. I blew out a breath. “But I rarely ever did. I always rode sidesaddle because”—I felt so frivolous—“it looked nicer.”

Above the quiet snow crunching of the horse's hooves, I heard a scraping sound and realized the White Monk scratched his bristled chin. “This is the first day of at least three or maybe even four—and that's on the way in. If you ride beyond your ability to recover, then we'll have to wait for you to do so. Might add another day or three, with everyone waiting on you.”

“I'll be fine,” I repeated. “I can do this.”

“I didn't expect grit from you,” he finally said, after a long, thoughtful silence. It may have been the first thing he'd ever said to me that wasn't couched as a taunt. Then he kicked his horse into a trot, becoming one of the many shadows around me. I stewed, knowing he'd gone to tell Graves that the fragile princess couldn't handle the mission—on the first day.

After a few minutes, he returned. “We can't stop here—it's not secure yet—but there's a cabin ahead. Can you make it maybe another hour?”

“Of course. I didn't ask to stop.”

He laughed a little, under his breath. “Glorianna save us all if you do become Queen.”

I didn't dignify that with an answer. Besides, I suddenly wasn't sure I could make it another hour. I felt moisture making my pants stick to the skin along my legs, and the fear seized me that I might be losing the baby. The thought struck through my heart with dreadful worry, and I placed my right hand over my belly, trying to feel for that flutter of life. I wanted to ask Marin how I'd know, but it wasn't safe to stop here. If I was miscarrying, then it had already happened and stopping now would change nothing.

Instead I wrapped myself in silent prayers to Glorianna, beseeching Her to save my child, not to let the babe die. I should offer Her my lifelong service, but wasn't I Her servant already? And I'd promise to be a better person, but I wasn't sure how to do that. All I could think to tell Her was that if my baby died, I wasn't sure how I'd survive it. The thorny ball of unshed tears in my throat grew thick with mucus and misery, edging out all else, until I only chanted
please please please
over and over in the depths of my mind.

“Ami!” The White Monk stood at my stirrup, his hand closed around my booted ankle, shaking it. By his tone, I guessed it wasn't the first time he'd addressed me. I peered blearily at him. We'd stopped, obviously, and he and I were behind a small stable, his horse shuffling beside me.

“Where are we?”

“The cabin I told you about. Graves and his men will bunk inside. You need to stay in the stable, or you'll be recognized.” He sounded apologetic. “Marin is inside making it comfortable. It's not much, but it's warm. Can you dismount?”

“Of course. I told you I'm fine.”

I went to sling my leg over and the rough pants tore against my skin, both sticky and with searing pain. My hip grabbed and I sobbed a little.

“Here, here. Shh.” The White Monk spoke soothingly. “Take it slowly. I'm going to put my hand on your hip to help, okay?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Trust me. Let me lower you. Move slowly and I'll lift you down.”

I did as he coached, creaking my leg over the horse's rump and letting him put his hands on me to lower me to the ground. Only Hugh had ever touched me so intimately, but I was beyond caring in that moment.

“Brace yourself on my shoulders. Can you stand?”

I faced him, pressed up against his body, my arms in a choke hold around his neck. “Of course,” I answered, though I couldn't feel my feet. I let go.

“Whoops!” His breath whuffed out as he caught me before I crumpled to the ground. In another moment he'd lifted me, carrying me against his chest in the strong cradle of his arms. “Fortunately you're only a bit of a thing.”

He kicked open the stable door with his foot, startling Marin, who was spreading blankets on a pile of straw. “She's done in,” he said by way of explanation, kneeling down to lower me to the straw.

“Oh, Marin!” I grabbed her hand and started kind a kind of hiccupping dry weeping that seemed to be all that was left to me. “I've lost the baby!”

“Now, now, Princess, calm yourself. Let's see to you here.”

“I'm . . . I'm all wet down there. And it hurts. I hurt so bad, Marin.”

The White Monk moved away with a cough.

“Don't you go anywhere,” Marin ordered him in a sharp voice. “Bring a brazier of coals closer to the Princess and fetch me another lantern.”

“I should see to the horses,” he protested, but he obeyed, setting the warm brazier near my head and the lantern by my waist.

“The princess is more important.”

“Graves said we're not to use her title—in case we're overheard.”

“Amelia is more important, then. Here, love, let me see to these trousers. Monk, turn your back and hold her hand. The cloth is stuck to her skin and I'm going to have to use my knife to cut it away. This might hurt, sweetling.”

The White Monk did as she said, wrapping his big hands around one of mine. He still had on his winter cloak, but he'd pushed aside the hood along with the monk's cowl, the white a snowy lining against the dark wool. His unsettling gaze focused on mine, and he smiled his lopsided smile.

“You're an idiot, you know.”

“Graves is the idiot,” Marin muttered. “Risking the P—Amelia this way. I'm practically stove up from that ride and I've been on horses all my life.”

I hissed when she peeled the sticky cloth away from my skin, my flesh going with it by the feel.

“Blisters,” she pronounced. “The babe is fine. You wore your poor skin raw.”

Thank Glorianna.
I sent Her a fervent prayer of gratitude. “How bad is it?” the White Monk asked, gaze never leaving mine. He squeezed my hand.

“Bad enough. She's chafed from ankle to crotch. Worst part is where she sat on the saddle. Looks as if she rubbed blisters, popped 'em, and rubbed more.”

I gasped when warm water touched my skin, fiercely stinging, then soothing. The White Monk let go with one hand to smooth my hair from my forehead, the look in his face strangely admiring, even affectionate.

“More than one man would be in tears by now. You're some woman, Ami.”

“It's not me.”

“What isn't?”

“I'd be crying like a baby if I could. I told you—I can't.”

“Ah, that's right. You will.”

“No. I think that part of me died with Hugh,” I surprised myself by telling him. “I'm only half a person, scarred and lame and messed up like you, only you can't tell it by looking at me.”

Too late I realized how that sounded—and Marin clucked reprovingly—but the White Monk only cocked his head and regarded me seriously. “You're not crippled,” he said. “Not like me. Yes, you'll always carry some of that grief, but you're not scarred. Your wounds are fresh, still open and bleeding freely. The scars happen later and only if you don't heal right. You have far too much vivaciousness and vitality not to heal right. Too much life.”

It might have been the first time anyone had given me a compliment that wasn't about my looks. I wasn't sure what to say. But he saved me from answering.

“You'll live to weep again someday, Ami. The grief will lessen its horrible grip and you'll know it has when the tears return. That's when you'll feel you're a human being again and not some distorted monster.”

“How . . . how do you understand so much?”

He smiled ruefully, the scar yanking his lip to the side. “That's how I felt. How I still feel some days.”

“But you said it would pass.”

“For you, it will.”

“Why not for you?” I insisted, strangely committed to wanting him happy all of a sudden.

“For some of us it's too late. The scar tissue is too thick. It's covered over and corrupted even our souls—we'll never be whole again.” He let go my hand. “I'll go take care of the horses.”

15

M
arin didn't say anything, only worked on spreading on a healing cream that felt like paradise, then wrapping my thighs with soft bandages.

“I didn't mean to be cruel to him,” I told her, feeling I needed to explain. “I was really trying not to.”

“Sometimes it's not about you,” she said, more than a little terse. The she blew out a breath and patted the outside of my leg. “It's a difficult lesson to learn, but often how people behave is all about their own wounds and has nothing to do with what you do or don't say.”

“Oh.” I turned that over, but my mind was muddy with exhaustion. “I'm so glad the baby is okay. Maybe this mission was a bad idea.”

“I can't speak my mind without doubting my king, but this venture could have benefited from better planning.” She sniffed and wiped her nose, which was red from the cold. When she said “my king,” I knew she meant Erich and not Uorsin.

“Well, we were already here—the way was so close.” And I'd wanted to go. Had pushed for it. Glorianna willed it, but I wasn't going to say that to Marin, especially as she seemed less angry with me finally.

“I suppose that's true, but there's no never mind. You can't possibly ride again tomorrow. There won't be a mission now.”

That woke me up. “I'll be fine in the morning,” I insisted.

She gave me an incredulous look. “Shall I unwrap these bandages and show you how your poor legs look? I'd tear into you for being such a fool if I didn't know you did this partly because of what I said to you, to prove yourself to us. You're blistered as badly as someone burned in a fire. The disruption of the tissue goes deep. We'll be fighting infection as it is.”

I'd never really been hurt before, so I didn't realize how bad it was. She'd said the White Monk's scars came from burns. “Will it leave scars?” I levered myself up to see, but my slim thighs were wrapped in the bandages, the white of the cotton nearly the same as my skin. Strangely, I kind of hoped there would be a mark, an unexpected longing for some sort of permanence.

“Not if I can help it,” Marin declared, as if I'd questioned her abilities. She handed me some tea that had been steeping and covered me with several blankets. “Drink this and sleep. We'll make decisions tomorrow.”

Come morning, I was not fine. I lay there, sweating with fever, while Marin and the White Monk argued over me.

“Graves says we cannot stay here!” the White Monk insisted, all semblance of the diffident priest gone. “The family already wonders who slept in the stable. Amelia will be discovered and that will go very badly for us all.”

“Not so badly as the Prin—Amelia losing the child or her own life!” Marin snapped, nearly nose to nose with him. Her broad figure would have eclipsed his, had he not been so much taller, bending over to skewer her with that apple-green gaze.

“She's not safe either way. Better to go.”

“Go where? We should take her down to Ordnung.”

“And say what? ‘Oops, look who we found in the forest. Sorry'?”

“Does it even matter?” Marin gestured to me under my pile of blankets. “Look at her! We have no choice.”

He did look at me, a muscle in his scarred cheek jumping with anger. Then his gaze softened and he dropped down beside me, once again smoothing my hair from my forehead. “Here we are, debating this as if you're not even here. What do you say, brave girl?”

I didn't feel brave at the moment. In fact, facing my father's rage at my disobedience was the last thing I felt up to doing. Had Andi felt this way? All of a sudden, I understood how she did it. Not kill Hugh, but defy our father. It's not always a huge decision, like you wake up one day and know what you must do. Instead it kind of happens by accident, because you're just fumbling along, trying to do the best thing.

“I don't want to go back,” I told him. “I'm so sorry I screwed this up, but I want to complete my mission. I need to do this.”

He nodded. Was that approval in his eyes—and why did it matter to me what he thought? It mattered, though, that he'd asked for, and apparently would abide by, my decision.

“Well, you can't, missy,” Marin said. “You can't sit on a horse and we have no other way to carry you through the snow.

“I can help her.”

At first I thought the White Monk meant that he would carry me, as he'd done the night before, but that would be impossible, even as strong as he was.

“How?” Marin oozed cynicism.

“Leave us for a bit.”

“Absolutely not.” She folded her arms over her substantial bosom. “I cannot possibly leave Amelia alone with you, even if you are a priest of Glorianna.”

Neither of us spoke the rest—that he'd likely lied about that. Glorianna's church didn't accept escaped prisoners.

“Do you worry I'll impregnate her with my bastard seed?” he tossed at her with impatience.

“That's not the point.”

He ignored her and spoke only to me. “Do you trust me, Ami?”

I searched those odd eyes. They were the bright spot in his angular, corrugated face. As with the lighthouses on the craggy coast near Windroven, beacons cutting through the storms and fog. I shouldn't trust him, this criminal who'd lied about who he was—probably for this very reason, to insinuate himself into my company. It seemed clear that had been his agenda all along. What remained obscure was why.

And yet, he'd been bare-hearted honest with me in a way no one else ever had. He never fawned over me or praised my beauty. Sometimes I thought those flashes of hatred were because of how I looked or acted—but they were sincere, gut reactions.

I did trust him.

“If I agree, will we go on to Annfwn?”

The scar across his lip tugged and twitched up into his half smile. “Yes. Yes, we absolutely will.”

“Then yes.”

“I don't like this,” Marin grumped.

“You don't have to, old woman,” the White Monk said over his shoulder. “Go away. You can stand outside the door, in case she cries rape.”

“Why can't I stay? I won't be in the way.”

He just stood and regarded her. I had a sense of the implacable stare-down he gave her because the stalwart Marin shook her head in disgust and left, grabbing her cloak and muttering about how she should never have left home. The White Monk moved a heavy grain bucket in front of the door and returned to me.

“What are you going to do?” I ventured, my fingers curling into the blankets up under my chin. It did unsettle me, to be alone with him. Really, the only man I'd ever been alone with before was Hugh.

The White Monk raised his eyebrows, punctuating the expression with a sardonic twist of his lips. “Magic.”

I remembered how my blood had unsealed, then resealed the tile. “Okay,” I answered, which wasn't what he expected.

“I'm going to have to raise your skirts and undo the bandages.” He regarded me steadily, waiting for me to object. But I'd figured as much when I agreed.

“Help me sit up, then. I want to see.”

He did, mounding a blanket behind me so I leaned comfortably against the stable wall. I kept the blankets over my lap and pulled up the hem of the nightgown I'd changed into. The White Monk averted his gaze while I bunched the cloth and some of the blanket over my crotch, for what little modesty I could salvage. Fortunately my flesh there only felt bruised and sore. The worst damage was where my thighs had rubbed against the saddle, the coarse cloth of my borrowed pants acting as sandpaper between, from the rounds just above my knees up to the fullest swells before where my legs hollowed out again to meet the pelvis.

He knelt between my spread legs and my face grew hot. He touched me with impersonal fingers, though, unwrapping the bandages with gentle care, commenting that we'd want to reuse them, to give me some protection. The innermost layer came away wet with yellow fluid and spots of blood.

“Dear Glorianna,” I whispered at the sight of it. My flesh looked like a raw side of meat, the skin ragged at the edges. Even I didn't understand how I'd kept riding.

“Pain is funny that way.” The White Monk finished unwrapping the other leg. “After a while, you don't feel it. Especially once you've decided you can't do anything to stop it.”

I wanted to ask if he spoke from experience, but of course he did.

“This might sting, quite a bit. You can't cry out. Do you want something to bite down on?”

“Can I try to see if I can do without?”

He shook his head, laughing a little under his breath. “Of course you want to try. I thought I'd gotten this pretty, pampered princess and she turns out to be a badger in disguise.”

Oddly this pleased me, though I knew it shouldn't. Badgers were well-known for their irascible tempers and fierce claws. He flexed his fingers, rubbed his hands together, and laid his hand over the weeping corroded expanse of my inner thigh.

It did hurt, and I clamped my teeth together over my cry of pain. His gaze flicked up to my face, assessed, then returned to focus on my wounds. Heat flowed from him to me, little lightning bolts of fire pricking my skin and making my leg jump. I couldn't hold it still, and with his free hand, he clamped down on my calf, pinning my splayed-open leg to the floor.

I understood he needed to do that, but something about the way he knelt between my spread thighs, holding me open for him, reminded me of those intimate dark nights with Hugh. My woman's parts heated, all wrong in this moment, but I found myself pulsing with longing to be touched again. Touched the way Hugh had touched me, what I'd never have again.

The White Monk's gaze returned to my face, a thread of something dark beneath, and I wondered if he sensed how I felt. The thrilling vibrations of the magic ran up and down my leg, coiling deep into my sex. I had to restrain a moan.

At least the pain was gone.

I stared at him, our eyes locked, and I shuddered under his hands. His lips parted and I thought he might kiss me.

“Other side,” he said.

Bemused, I looked down at my leg. The skin looked pink and tender but was whole again.

“Praise Glorianna,” I breathed.

“Glorianna has nothing to do with this. Healing is not Her provenance.”

“All things under the sun are Glorianna's provenance,” I reminded him.

He laughed that under-the-breath chuckle. “We are not under the sun, are we?”

Well, only because we were inside. “Who, then?” I challenged him, gasping a little as he arranged my still-injured thigh to his liking, pinning my knee down in advance this time and sending a surge of longing through my intimate folds, hidden away from sight.

He took a breath, seeming to need to calm himself. Then he looked at me, and that current of
something
ran stronger, pulsing through him. “Her dark sister, Moranu,” he answered—her name sounding like a prayer—and put his hot hand on my wound.

I threw back my head, straining not to make a sound. The pain spiraled through the desire until I couldn't tell them apart. I came undone under his touch, my breath coming hard and fast. When he took his hand away, I managed to focus on his face. Sweat rolled in beads down his face, tracking sideways over one scar. He panted, too, as if he'd run a race. The skin on that leg gleamed pristine again, if terribly pink.

“How does it feel?” he asked, gaze riveted on my thighs.

“It doesn't hurt.”

“Good. It will be tender still, but that's the best we can do.” Cutting away the fouled part of the bandages, he rewrapped my thighs and I concentrated on not squirming. A hungry, dark part of me wanted to press my sex against his hand, as an animal would, wanting only in the moment, thinking nothing of the future or what was right or appropriate. I hoped he wasn't aware of it. Then a thought occurred to me.

“Is this why you had Marin leave?”

“I didn't want her to see exactly what I'd do, yes.” He didn't look at me. “Surely you know how the folk of the Twelve Kingdoms feel about magic.”

“I mean—you knew how I'd react.”

His eyes found mine. They looked like molten glass. “You're never quite what I expect, Ami.”

He set to work on the other bandage, the unspoken words uncomfortable between us.

“I didn't expect it, either,” I confessed to him, unwilling to leave it unsaid. “But then I—no other man has been so close to me, down there, this way.”

I sensed more than saw that he raised his eyebrows. “Don't tell me you're a virgin. Even Glorianna doesn't work that way.”