“No! He’s smart! And—and—he’s funny. Like we are. Sarcastic. And he makes the most beautiful little clockwork things and he doesn’t mind when I poke him and read bad poetry to him and he helped me dig my garden—”
“Spare me the catalog of virtues, I beg of you.” Holly lifted her hands. “I haven’t forgiven him for kidnapping you yet, although I see that I may shortly be forced to accept him into the family. Don’t give me that look. At any rate, if he is not stupid, and he had the option not to kidnap various travellers, why would he seize only on someone young and female and able to marry him?”
Bryony blinked a few times.
“Now, being me, I’d say nefarious reasons, but since I don’t think you’re quite so far gone as to be in love with anyone truly evil….well. Marry the monster and be done with it.” She scowled. “If it turns out that he is evil, I retain the right to round up a mob of villagers and have him killed.”
“I suppose that’s fair,” said Bryony weakly. “Am I in love with him? Are you sure?”
Holly gazed into her cider. “I believe I need something stronger.”
“But—”
“You never get to poke him and read bad poetry at him again,” said Holly shortly. “How do you feel?”
A chasm seemed to open up inside Bryony’s chest, and her heart and stomach fell into it.
She stood up so fast that the chair pitched over backward. “I have to go back!”
“Well, obviously.” Holly picked up the chair. “Settle down. Iris needs to know you’re home, and I’ll tell Gont where we’re going—”
Bryony blinked at her.
“You think I’m letting my baby sister—who has obviously addled her brains with mulch and poetry—go haring off by herself again? I don’t think so.”
Bryony felt a grin spread itself unwillingly across her face. “I can’t wait for you to meet him. You’ll say such horrible things to each other. I’m sure you’ll be friends.”
“Right.” Holly picked up their mugs. Bryony rubbed a thumb over her ring and looked down at it fondly.
The tiny leaf was a single notch from the green stone.
“Oh shit,” said Bryony. “Oh shit. Oh—Holly! It’s almost done! I have to go back right now! It’s moving! Shit! I thought I’d have more time!”
Holly said something that would have sent Iris into a dead faint and dropped both mugs. She swept up the butcher knife in her hand, grabbed Bryony around the waist and said “Just had to spend an hour saying hello to the garden, didn’t you? Go!”
The gear tried to move. Bryony shoved her thumb down on it, felt the metal catch on her skin. Over the pinprick of pain, she shouted “IwanttogobacktomyBeastagain!”
The world turned inside out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
If her earlier journey had been vague and feverish, this one was fast and brutal. She would have liked to black out, but that didn’t seem to be an option.
A wind tore at them, a wind that howled like a mad dog, and the light of the cottage went red and bloody, shot with black. Then the cottage was gone—had they been blown through the wall?—and Bryony felt her skin being flayed. The wind was beating her with whips of thorns. Holly was still holding her, but even as she recognized the pressure at her waist, it was torn away, and she was alone with the terrible red wind.
I may arrive at the manor house, but I’m not sure I’ll be in one piece when I do. Oh God, why didn’t the Beast warn me it would feel like this?
Maybe he didn’t know.
This seemed likely. She thought perhaps something was trying to bar her way back to the manor, and one magic was pulling her forward and the other was trying to keep her away.
I suppose if one were dragged backward through a thorn bush, while it was on fire, it would be a little like this.
The wind stopped.
She lay in red-shot darkness. She tried to open her eyes and to her disappointment, they were already open.
Am I…in bed? Really?
Apparently she was. The noxious pink bed-curtains were drawn around her, although the light coming through them was darker and bloodier than she had ever seen. She sat up and pulled one aside.
“I knew you’d come back to me,” said the green-eyed man, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I knew you wouldn’t leave without helping me.”
The shadows cast across his skin were dark, almost purple. When Bryony peered past him to the window, she saw a tangle of leaves and thorns.
“I’m dreaming,” she said. “The windows. I saw that in my dreams. You’re from my dreams, too.”
He smiled. “You are not exactly dreaming. There are great magics breaking loose, and they let me come to you here, close to the waking world.”
He reached out and stroked her shoulder. Bryony realized that she was wearing a thin nightgown and not much else.
Did the wind change my clothes? Where is Holly? Did any of yesterday happen at all, or is this a very long strange dream?
The green-eyed man knelt on the bed beside her, his hands moving slowly down her body. Bryony shuddered convulsively. It felt as if he had touched her in some deep, impossible place, touched her and stroked her intimately. Her body throbbed in response, and the green-eyed man smiled.
Wait—wait—
She had been wanting this for weeks. And yet this had happened before, hadn’t it? He’d touch her and leave her aching, and then there would be only waking and emptiness—
Those were dreams. You know, the same dreams where he yelled at you for talking to the Beast.
She pulled away from him. She needed a minute, just a minute, just one, where he wasn’t touching her with that scalding touch.
“Poor thing,” he murmured. “Afraid? After all the dreams? Even now?”
She didn’t much like being called “poor thing.” She hadn’t liked it before, either.
She stared up into his eyes.
They were green, as green as leaves, and now that he was so close, she saw something that she’d never noticed before.
The pupils of his eyes were not black. They were dark burgundy, the color of rose-leaves emerging in spring.
Something clicked inside her head.
She hadn’t told Holly the right things. Holly wasn’t a gardener, and she didn’t have enough information to guess.
“You’re the rose,” said Bryony. “I don’t know how, but you’re the wild rose.”
He laughed out loud, and Bryony pulled back a little farther. There was something not quite right about that laugh.
“Figured it out at last, have you?” he said, reaching out and trailing a finger down her arm. The touch stung like a thorn and made Bryony gasp.
Stop that. Stop that. Dear God, how is this happening? I love plants, but not like that!
It’s magic. It’s some kind of magic. He’s been getting into my dreams and doing this—and I thought it was just a dream, and I let him!
“You’re—how are you the rose?” She sat up, pulling the sheets up to her chest. His eyes gleamed.
“Everything has a spirit, poor little Bryony. Even things that humans don’t notice. Some of us are stronger than others. Some of us do very foolish things, and sell their—I suppose you would say their soul—to others of us.” He grinned. It was the first time that Bryony had seen him grin.
His teeth were very white, but the canines had the flat, hooked shape of rose thorns.
“What have you done to the Beast?”
The rose’s eyes narrowed. “He’s outlived his time. You should stay here with me. We could do so much together, you and I…”
He grabbed her hair. His nails had pale green cuticles.
There were a lot of clues. I just didn’t notice them because hey, it was a dream! Holly was right, I am an idiot.
“Stop touching me,” she growled, even though her skin was burning and she was shaking so hard she thought she might fly apart. “Go away. Stop.”
“Still longing for your Beast?” crooned the rose. “I co
uld look like him, you know. If that’s what you really wanted.”
His shape began to change, to grow into a dark shape with fur the color of a newly unfurled rose leaf. Her room had always smelled of roses but now it was thick and cloying and that was wrong, the Beast should smell like cloves and fur, this wasn’t the Beast, this wasn’t even a dream, this was horrible—
Her knife was gone from her thigh. The only thing left to her was simple human strength, and God knew what use it would be against a monster.
It’s trying to get out, the Beast had said, and she had been too stupid and too slow to figure out what he was talking about.
He was right. She should have come back with fire and an army.
Still, she was here at last, even if it was too little, even if it was far too late.
“You’re not the Beast!” she cried to the rose. “I don’t want anything to do with you! Go away!”
She punched him in the face.
She had been slinging mulch for nearly three years now, and digging holes, and moving compost. Bryony the gardener was much stronger than Bryony the merchant’s daughter would have been.
Even that might not have been much use against the wild rose creature, but she hit him with the hand that had the silver ring on it.
He fell back from the ring, screaming. It left a dark mark across the half-formed face that spread out. She smelled burning leaves. He staggered backwards, off the bed.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was muffled. There was blood oozing between his fingers, but it was the wrong color.
I didn’t hit him that hard, I couldn’t hit someone that hard, it’s the ring, the ring did something, what did it do, is it because it’s silver or the Beast’s or—
At the window he stopped. She heard glass break, and rose canes came through, wrapping around him like a lover. He lifted his ruined face—half human, half Beast, framed in roses, and stared at her with savage green eyes.
“Stupid thing,” he hissed, and was gone.
Bryony stayed in the bed for longer than was probably safe. The rose leaves chattered together at the window, and the room was lit with that dark, bloody light.
Staying in bed is stupid. Bed isn’t safe. You’re just in the habit of thinking that monsters can’t get you as long as you’re in the bed.
No knife. No shoes. Wearing a nightgown. Fighting a wild rose—what? Spirit? Monster? God only knows. No help for it. Have to find the Beast.
I hope Holly’s okay.
“House,” she said out loud, “I’ve never been quite sure what you are. Some of you is pretty clearly bad. But some of you I’ve always liked, and I hope you’re still there.” She closed her eyes. “If you’re there, if there’s anything left of you that’s good, I need your help.”
She gripped the sheets. She had a sense that something was listening. It wasn’t the awful listening silence, but some small, wounded animal presence.
“I need my clothes,” she said. “I will do my very best to help you and the Beast. I need my clothes, and my gloves, and my pruning shears.”
An enchanted rose spirit might not be a gardening problem exactly, but she was a gardener and that was the only set of solutions she knew.
A little breeze sighed. The sheets seemed to settle a little differently.
She opened her eyes and there were her clothes by the foot of the bed. Her gloves lay across them, crossing the gleaming arc of her pruning shears.
No boots.
Well, you couldn’t have everything.
The blankets tried to straighten themselves and fell back, exhausted. Whatever part of House was trying to help her, it seemed to be on its last legs.
She dressed hurriedly under the sheets, not wanting the roses at the window to see her naked. And wow, that would have been quite insane yesterday, wouldn’t it?
The shears she slid into the loop at her waist. She pulled on the gloves.
It’s a rose. A big rose. You’ll never chop it all down with hand tools. You could burn it out, maybe, but you’ll take House out with it.
Would that be such a bad thing?
She’d hate to kill the good with the bad, but if that was what was required to reach the Beast…
Getting out of bed was hard. The darkness under the bed seemed huge. She had gone seventeen years knowing that there was a monster there, waiting to grab her, and if that was true of the gentle, dusty shadows under her own bad at home, what horrors would be lurking under this bed, in this bloody, rust-colored light?
“I don’t have time for this,” she growled. “The Beast needs me.” She swung her feet out and put them on the floor.
She made one step towards the door when something reached out from under the bed and grabbed her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
All the times that Bryony had imagined something reaching out from under the bed and latching onto her ankles, she had never actually imagined what happened next.
If she had given it any thought at all, it would be to assume that she would die neatly and immediately of heart failure, and that would be the end of it.
But she did not die. Her heart gave a panicky squeeze and she fell flat on her face, but she did not die. Her pulse galloped and her ankles exploded with pain as something stabbed into them—but she still did not die.
She grabbed for the carpet and the edge of the nightstand and looked over her shoulder.
Oh God, oh God, it’ll be hands with claws, big long claws, big huge scaly hands—
It was rose stems.
Two long whips had wrapped around her ankles, like a climbing rose clawing its way up a fence. Thorns sank deeply into her skin. They dragged at her, pulling her backward—not under the bed, but toward the window, she thought.
Terrified, furious, and in a great deal of pain, she nevertheless began to laugh.
“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no, you don’t get to do that. Not to me.”
She let go of the carpet and grabbed the shears off her belt. They fit into her hand the way that her knife never had.
Much more useful for this sort of thing anyway.
She reached down and cut through the first stem.
The rose keened—there was no other word for it—and the cut end whipped around like a snake. It made a high hurting sound and the leaves in the window rustled and thrashed.
Wherever the green-eyed man was, she hoped that had hurt him, too.
She sawed through the other stem. This one was tougher and stringier and twisted under the blade. Blood trickled down over her feet.
When I finally get out of here, if I make it to the staircase, I’m gonna slip on my own blood and crack my skull open on the marble. Hopefully Holly will get to the Beast in time.
She pried the thorny ends out of her skin and staggered to her feet. Once cut, the roses lay dead and innocent in her hands.
She stalked to the door.
It didn’t want to open at first. She hammered on it with the handles of the shears and snapped “House! Open the damn door!”
Whether the part of the house that was still her friend responded, or whether it was the threat of the shears (and what was she going to do to an entire house with them, anyway? Cut it off at the root cellar?) the door creaked open.
She stepped out into a hallway. It wasn’t the one that it should be. There were windows lining this one, and no staircase or landing in sight. Through the windows streamed that bloody fractured light, lying in red bars across the floor.
Bryony exhaled.
“Beast?” she called. “Beast, where are you? Are you in here?”
There was no reply. Wherever the Beast was, either he couldn’t hear her, or couldn’t come.
She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that it was the latter. What had he said, so long ago?
If you have need of me at any time, you have only to call my name. If it is within my power to come to you, I will.
She had called him. He had not come. Therefore, wherever the Bea
st was in this wretched place, it was not within his power to come to her.
Therefore, I will go to him.
The hallway beckoned. She walked toward the first window. It was covered in branches and roses, with the red light shining through them.
I could break it out and climb out. I could probably hack back some of the roses. Would that help? Is he going to be outside?
Bryony eyed the thicket of roses grimly. I’m on the second floor, or something like it. Perhaps I should go back to my own window and chop through that. Then I could get into the courtyard, at least.
When she turned, her door was no longer behind her. The corridor went in both directions.
“Playing tricks on me, rose?” she asked grimly. “Very well.” She strode forward, her feet burning and stabbing with each step.
At the second window, she glanced to the side, but this one was bound even more thickly. So was the third.
She hurried on, flicking her gaze sideways to the windows, hurrying as fast as her bloodied feet would carry her. If the light faded (and surely it was sunset by now) then she would be running through a dark hallway.
At the fifth or sixth or seventh window, something changed.
Bryony snapped her head around so quickly that a muscle in her neck twinged, because there was someone in the window.
It was a human.
Had been a human.
She had no idea how long it had been there. The skin looked parched and mummified. It wore the rags of servant’s livery, but they had been torn apart by a thicket of rose canes bursting out of its chest. Its mouth hung open, and more rose stems grew from it, forcing it into a silent scream.
There was almost nothing in her stomach, but she staggered two steps and threw up until she was empty of even the memory of food.
That’s it. That’s it. I don’t know if it’s real or not, I don’t know what’s going on, but if I get home and get out of this, I’m going to rip every goddamn rose bush in the garden out by the roots and burn them.
She crawled forward on her hands and knees, trying not to look up, but of course at the next window she did look up, and there were two bodies, bound together by the wicked embrace of the roses.
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