The Tears of the Rose

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Ursula pretended to be casually scanning the room but caught my eye with a bit of a raised brow. No, I hadn’t known about this plan. She was the type to be included in strategy discussions, not me. Something I’d have to change, if I wanted to be taken seriously.

  “Princess Amelia came among us as a stranger and has become family. She is Avonlidgh’s daughter, in truth. Our heart-daughter. A princess and wife beyond reproach, she inspires the people of Avonlidgh equally with her grace and loveliness. The child she carries in her womb shall be my heir. Thus does joyful news mitigate the terrible and grave.”

  Uorsin barely hid his astonishment, and I felt more than heard Ursula’s impatient sigh. She’d planned for us to tell our father the news in private. But crafty Old Erich had outmaneuvered us. He’d also added a nod in Ursula’s direction, as if offering her his respect despite Uorsin’s rejection.

  The whispers of surprise rippled around the room, growing in volume until they became shouts and cheers. The third generation of Uorsin’s reign was in sight. At Derodotur’s signal, musicians struck up a triumphant and joyful avalanche of sound while everyone shouted Uorsin’s name.

  All accomplishments belong to the High King.

  When the tumult settled, Uorsin had recovered enough to beam at me with paternal joy. So clever of Derodotur to arrange the distraction. My father pulled me into his arms again, and I held my breath, hoping the embrace would not last so long this time. Fortunately he let me go quickly, but kept me under the drape of his arm. Reasserting his role as my father.

  “If the child is a boy, he shall inherit the throne of the High King!” he declared.

  Behind me, Kir shouted praise to Glorianna. I didn’t dare look at Ursula. Somehow this moment wasn’t as sweet as I’d expected. Erich nodded, seeming to agree, applauding with the others. “Avonlidgh shall be gratified to become the seat of the High King,” Erich shouted, and the Avonlidgh contingent cheered.

  “Mohraya is the seat of the High King. That is how it’s always been.” Uorsin’s powerful voice cut through the cheering. Beside him, Derodotur sidled forward, into the High King’s peripheral vision.

  Erich appeared befuddled. “Always? But you are the first High King. Mohraya has been and continues to be your seat of power. As the patron country of your successor, Avonlidgh will be honored to serve. The High Throne will move to Castle Avonlidgh.”

  Uorsin shrugged Derodotur away. “The only seat of power is here. The child will be born in Castle Ordnung and rule from here—under my hand, until he learns his way.”

  Erich staggered a step, leaning on his valet heavily, appearing devastated. “Avonlidgh must lose yet another heir?” He projected sorrow and horror. “Already our ravaged land must yield up more. Our people slaughtered, slowly starving, and continually preyed upon by bandits the High King’s armies seem to be unable to contain. Has Glorianna turned Her back upon us all?”

  The ambassadors around the room looked angry, and several ladies dabbed at their eyes. Mutterings turned from joyful to unsettled.

  “I fear the worst is true.” The Duranor envoy stepped up beside Erich. “We, too, have suffered from the effects of your war, High King. Even still, escaped Tala prisoners raid our farms, raping our daughters and stealing the bread from the mouths of innocent children. All for a treaty you signed in good faith and declined to honor.”

  Uorsin glowered, clenching his fists. The unclean, meaty smell of his twisted rage thickened.

  “You understand nothing of the situation, Lord Stefan,” Uorsin ground out.

  “Do we not?” Stefan spread his hands to include all the ambassadors. “You promised us peace and prosperity. Instead you’ve brought the Tala down on our heads. Again. And this after years of decline. Every season, the fields yield less, the livestock grow more gaunt. Instead of gaining bounty for us, you’ve carelessly lost one of your daughters. What shall we sacrifice next, High King?”

  Shocked silence fell heavy over the room, followed by the wintery smell of fear and despair.

  Mastering himself, Uorsin took me by the hand and guided me up the steps to the dais with the High King’s throne, my mother’s empty throne, and the three for my sisters and me. He settled me into Ursula’s seat at his right hand with a great show of solicitude. I couldn’t look at her.

  Tension creased the rims of Derodotur’s eyes, before he smoothed his face into his diplomat’s blandness. Even I understood that Uorsin had transgressed several political lines here in seizing Avonlidgh’s heir from them. It seemed . . . unlike him. That deep anger rumbled through him, and I had to steel myself not to lean away from the greasy smell.

  Instead I focused out over the hall and the assembled people, dividing into various factions, already aligning themselves. Here, too, Glorianna’s window had been replaced. Twice the Tala had shattered Her rose windows—both times seeking Andi. I’d been frightened at the time but had never suspected that it would be that moment when the foundation of the world would shift—and keep shifting.

  I prayed to the goddess for guidance. Surely being Her avatar should come with more certainty about what I should do and say.

  Kir must be right. The Tala had brought the seed of evil to us, and the poison continued to spread. Even my father, who had always been so strong, so certain of his rule and his ability to bring peace to all the lands, seemed uncertain. Unstable. I needed to give him the gift of Glorianna’s confidence and the brilliant future before us.

  Derodotur placed himself in front of us. “It will be months before we know if the child is a boy or a girl. We need not settle this right this moment.”

  “When is the babe due?” That from a voice in the crowd.

  “Yes! Are we even sure it will live?” someone else called out. I kept my eyes on Glorianna’s window. May She protect my child. As Her avatar, surely I deserved that much from Her. Though it hadn’t prompted Her to save my one true love. The grief sucked at what little confidence I had. Was I favored by Glorianna or not?

  Some people shifted in the rear of the hall, a stirring and muttering, and I glimpsed Dafne pushing Marin forward. The woman looked overwhelmed by the grand hall, far more elaborate than anything at Windroven, to be sure.

  “Who are you?” Uorsin demanded. “Why is a commoner approaching my throne?”

  “She is my midwife, High King,” I answered in a quiet tone, not sure where I found the courage. Except that Marin had been kind to me and the way she’d knitted her fingers together bothered me. “I believe she seeks to answer the questions put forth.”

  “Hmph.” He rapped his knuckles impatiently on the arm of his throne. “This is hardly public business.”

  I would have laughed, if such a sound could make it past the knot of tears that clogged my throat. It felt as if all those tender moments between Hugh and me, those shadowed, firelight kisses and touches, had been trotted out for display before all these people. They watched me with avid, hungry faces. No longer a person to them, but a means to an end.

  They’d warned Andi about that—that the Tala wanted her only for her womb. Now it was me. By my own people.

  “High King Uorsin,” Erich said, “these matters concern us all. Avonlidgh awaits these same answers.”

  I hadn’t thought Old Erich could be so stubborn. Despite his stooped profile and white hair, he seemed like a hunting dog on the scent. He would not give up.

  “Speak!” Uorsin demanded, and the midwife braced her shoulders and caught my eye. An apology. How odd that she understood. “Princess Amelia, despite the great emotional blows she has suffered, is healthy and strong. There’s every reason to expect a vital babe, born about a month after Danu’s midsummer feast—as long as Her Highness is careful to remain rested and at peace.”

  “And is the child a boy or girl?” One of Erich’s retainers this time.

  “Only Glorianna knows,” Marin answered. “It’s not for us to guess such things, especially so early on.”

  “The princess was ill on the journey�
��that’s a sign of a boy,” someone said.

  “The witch Salena cursed Uorsin’s get to throw only girls!” another shouted, from the dubious anonymity of the crowd.

  “Glorianna may know, but so do I.” Lady Zevondeth tottered forward from where she’d been sitting in a chair to the side. She leaned heavily on her cane and took Marin’s measure. From the corner of my eye, I caught Ursula stepping forward, then checking herself.

  Lady Zevondeth hitched her way toward me, the gold-wrapped oak cane thumping on the marble tiles, and my skin crawled. Suddenly I didn’t want her to touch me, which made no sense. She’d always been kindly to me. But the acute way her nearly blind, milky eyes shone, the greedy reach of her hand—and the way Ursula deftly inserted herself between us—upset my mind much as my gut had been.

  “Lady Zevondeth,” Ursula greeted her, formally, as if our father hadn’t disgraced her.

  “Your Highness.” Lady Zevondeth dropped a deep curtsy, showing more respect than the situation currently warranted. “How fares Queen Andromeda? I hope she discovered some answers to her questions.”

  That hit me like a spark from the fireplace. Andi was a queen now. That is, if we acknowledged the sovereignty of the Tala and Rayfe’s claim as king. How odd that Andi and I might both be queens and Ursula forever a princess.

  “What questions?” Uorsin growled, and Zevondeth beamed at him, unafraid.

  “I cannot answer that, Your Highness.”

  “You can if I command it.” His tone held menace, but it seemed to roll off her.

  “Not if you’ve previously commanded us all never to speak of it in this court.” She grinned, showing a few missing teeth. Horrible. Especially when she turned it on me. “I need only to touch your hand, Princess Amelia. Remember—I was there when you came into this world. I meant you no harm then or now.”

  “Do it,” Uorsin ordered, likely to both of us.

  Ursula gave way but rested her hand on her sword hilt. Bizarrely, it comforted me, the way she stuck by my side even still. As if she would cut down Lady Zevondeth in the midst of court. Really she shouldn’t be wearing her sword with that dress—the lines were all wrong—but no one short of Uorsin could make Ursula take off her sword.

  Thus all the jokes about her sword being Ursula’s only lover. Not looking in Zevondeth’s black gaps, I held out my hand and gazed up at Glorianna’s window, praying to Her for strength. I wished that if Glorianna was whispering Her will to me, She’d speak more loudly. Though I’d claimed to have visions of Glorianna—mostly when I was younger—I’d never gotten a real message from Her. Part of me felt fragile, like that brittle glass about to be smashed. She offered me none of Her strength now.

  Zevondeth’s hand grasped mine, tight enough that the palsy that shook her spread up my arm. Hopefully it was from age, not disease. I imagined my skin shriveling like hers, my eyes turning into white marbles. The rose window seemed to mock me with Glorianna’s silence, and I scanned the sea of faces avidly watching the spectacle.

  My gaze snagged on an apple-green stare. The White Monk, with his face hidden by his monk’s cowl, but somehow that color penetrated the shadows, laying me open with his hatred and scorn.

  “It is a boy,” Zevondeth declared. And, oddly, she winked at me.

  Rather than looking devastated by the news, Ursula furrowed her brow in confusion. Why she’d believed Andi could predict the future, I didn’t know.

  I was getting tired of this.

  “Then my grandson shall be born here, at the seat of my power,” Uorsin declared. “Princess Amelia shall stay by my side, where she belongs.” He took my hand and held it, strangely making me feel more captured than cherished.

  “And what of Avonlidgh and justice, High King?” Erich demanded. Several angry voices joined in, forming a chorus of unrest. “Are we to remain a defeated people, continually plagued by our enemy?”

  “We are at peace with the Tala,” Derodotur spoke firmly. “The alliance of the royal houses is intact and all treaties hold. There is no defeat.”

  “Then my son gave his life for a treaty that did not change?” Erich made it sound absurd. “I find it hard to believe, High King Uorsin—and remember that I was there when you sacked Aerron and gave no quarter to your enemy—that you would accept this so calmly.”

  The regal ambassador from Aerron, of an age to have been there also, inclined her head, a bitter line to her mouth.

  “You were also there when I took Castle Avonlidgh, weren’t you, Erich?” Uorsin’s tone held deadly threat. “You fought me and failed then. Do you care to pit yourself against me a second time, now that I have all the might of the eleven other kingdoms behind me?”

  Erich made a show of looking around the court room, which had fallen mostly silent, save a few whispers here and there, to better hear every word of this exchange. Then Old Erich’s gaze fell on my mother’s empty throne. “It seems to me that you lack certain . . . assistance you enjoyed then. How will you keep what you hold, with Salena gone and the Tala in possession of the heir to her power?”

  6

  The great hall reverberated with the hush of utter shock and apprehension. No one dared move, lest they draw Uorsin’s mighty rage upon themselves.

  Old Erich—not so stooped, icy-blue eyes glittering with challenge—faced the High King without fear. Did he have a death wish? Had Hugh’s loss so unbalanced him?

  “ ’Tis treason to speak those names in this noble hall,” Uorsin replied, as if musing over a riddle. “What game do you play with me, my old enemy? Surely you don’t believe this bear has lost his teeth.”

  “Don’t I?” Erich returned calmly. “I see no bites taken out of our enemy. Instead my people and yours lick their wounds this winter. We looked to the High King for the protection he promised, and what did we receive? Nothing. Only war with demons who seek to destroy us. You promised us bounty greater than Annfwn’s, and what do we see? The borders to paradise locked against us and our people starving at the gates. You made a vassal kingdom of noble Avonlidgh. You’ve made a cripple of her. Which kingdom is next, I wonder?”

  More of the other kings had ranged themselves behind Erich, rebellion in their faces. This was what Andi had seen. People fighting over her. Death and destruction. All those burned-out farms we’d seen. There would be more of that. Uorsin’s peace would fail. The White Monk caught my eye, pulling the cowl back a bit, so the bright light of the marble hall illuminated the twisting shadows of scars on his face. His eerie gaze seemed to carry a message.

  Peace is an expensive commodity.

  “What do you mean, the borders of Annfwn are closed to us? What superstitious nonsense is this?” This from the Aerron ambassador.

  Old Erich fixed her with a sharp eye. “Not superstition, Lady Laurenne. Her Majesty and the High King’s heir, Princess Ursula herself, confirmed the truth of this.”

  I nearly groaned aloud and even caught Ursula rolling her eyes up in a grimace, a rare break in her composure. She was spared a reply—to any of the shouted questions—by the sheer cacophony of the response. Even Derodotur seemed at a loss to control the situation.

  I stood, and everyone gaped at me, their demands for information falling into a confused jumble of murmurs. I was tired and suddenly starving. Having no idea what I should say next, I quickly descended the steps, so as not to be taller than Uorsin for longer than necessary, compounding my already unforgiveable breach of etiquette. To make up for it—though, judging by the astonished insult contorting Uorsin’s face, nothing could—I sank into a deep and respectful curtsy. “Forgive me, Father. I know you’ll think me weak, and indeed my frail woman’s body begs for rest at this moment, lest I endanger my child, but I must honor my vow to my late husband.”

  Once I could have worked up pretty tears to sway him, but no. I’d never wept out of true sorrow in my life, and now that I had reason, I couldn’t. Instead I gazed up at my King and father with wide eyes. The color of pansies, he’d always said.

 
“I took a vow and I mean to keep it. Please don’t be angry, but I fell in love with Hugh because I knew he was the only man”—my voice broke suddenly—“the only one who came close to your honor and integrity in my estimation. Hugh would have wanted his son born at Windroven, like his fathers before him. I cannot fail his memory.”

  Uorsin visibly softened and gestured at me to rise. Erich assisted me himself, blue gaze assessing me. I wasn’t sure if I’d helped or hindered whatever game he played—or which I should try to do. If only Glorianna would speak to me! I felt truly ill and pressed a hand to my lips. Might as well make it clear to all. “I fear for my child. For this babe who will be the hope of lasting peace in the Twelve Kingdoms, if I can’t be at Windroven, near the poor, entombed body of Prince Hugh, who was the best of us all. Glorianna keep him.”

  High Priest Kir echoed my prayer, stepping forward to sketch Glorianna’s circle in the air. “Let us all pray,” he intoned, “for the passing of Prince Hugh and his reception into Glorianna’s loving arms.”

  Even Uorsin bowed his head then, murmuring along with the prayer. He seemed genuinely grieved, and I wondered what to believe. Still, he emerged from the moment with a different look about him. No less angry, but more his usual kingly self. Perhaps my invocation of Glorianna had enabled Her to reach out to him, to soothe his destructive rage. He nodded at me, as if answering my thought.

  “You have always been loyal and selfless, my Amelia. Fine, then—have the babe at Windroven, but then he shall come here, to be raised by me and to rule as High King from this throne. I have decided. Go rest yourself and the burden you carry. King Erich, attend me in my study and we shall discuss this in private.”

  I did not mind at all being essentially sent to my rooms. Ursula fell into step beside me, but I ignored her. We didn’t speak until we reached the rooms I’d been assigned. My childhood chambers had been refurbished after my wedding. Still I’d expected to return to the rooms I’d shared with Hugh those fateful few nights we’d stayed until the Tala attacked.