She stared at the cup of tea on the table in front of her.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
Aunt Fay slid the cup nearer to her. “Do you honestly think so?”
Rose looked at her aunts incredulously.
“How long has it been since you stopped drinking my tea?” Aunt Suzette asked.
“I haven’t—”
Aunt Fay tapped the table. “You put yourself in peril, Rose. Not drinking that tea was a terrible mistake.”
Rose pushed back the chair and it squealed on the floor as she stood up. “I put myself in peril? I did?” She wanted to slap the woman again. “You could have told me the truth! You’re the ones who put me in danger by lying to me and pretending that I was imagining things! I thought something was really wrong with me! I’ve been so confused and so… Don’t you understand how much it hurts to feel that way all the time? But you just kept lying!”
Aunt Suzette looked out the window. When she turned to Rose, she had real fear in her eyes.
“You need to drink that tea, Rose. Drink it right now.”
“And then,” Aunt Fay added, “we’ll tell you the truth. All of it.”
Aunt Suzette sat down in the chair beside her, seemed to contemplate how she might comfort her niece, but then only sighed.
“We’re sorry, Rose,” she said. “We were only trying to protect you.”
Aunt Fay welled up with emotion, then tried to swallow it back. “It’s all we’ve ever done. Perhaps we went about it all wrong, but we only wanted you safe.”
Rose stared at Aunt Fay, shocked by the dampness of her eyes.
“Please,” Aunt Suzette said, sliding the cup closer still. “You start, and we’ll start. And then we’ll decide, the three of us, what’s to be done next.”
Rose stared at the teacup. She took a long breath and then reached out. Her hand shook as she lifted it to her mouth and took a sip.
“All right,” she said, taking another sip of the bitter brew. “Tell me.”
Aunt Suzette began to cry.
“We meant well, Suzette,” Aunt Fay said, touching her sister’s arm. Then she turned to Rose. “I’m not certain how much of your dreams you recall, and without going over every detail I can’t be sure if they were purely memories or some dreaming variation on reality. But at the very least the parts of your dreams that you have shared with us… all of that happened.”
Rose felt her mouth go dry. Her skin prickled with strange heat. It had been one thing to suspect, but to have such blunt confirmation of the impossible shocked her so much she could not even move to set down the teacup. She began to argue that it could not be true, that they could not be witches or fairies or whatever, but more mundane questions surged forward in her mind.
“That can’t be,” she said. “The place in my dreams was some medieval French kingdom. People haven’t lived like that in—”
“A thousand years,” Aunt Fay said, her gaze grim and unwavering. “And Suzette and I have watched over you all that time. Our sister gave up all of her enchantment in order to give her husband a child who could live in a human world, though she knew the risks. We argued with her, but who has ever spoken logic to love and triumphed?”
“I don’t understand,” Rose said.
Aunt Suzette took a shuddery breath, her tears now under control. “She knew she might die, Rose. And she asked for our promise that if she did not survive childbirth, that we would watch over her daughter always. And we have.”
Rose uttered a tiny laugh. “A thousand years? You’re saying my coma—”
“Was not a coma,” Aunt Fay interrupted.
“Drink your tea, darling,” Aunt Suzette said grimly. “It makes it more difficult for her to see you.”
Her. Rose shivered. Maurelle. She wanted to deny all of her aunts’ claims as sheer insanity, but she had always known the dreams were more than dreams. And Maurelle had tried to kill her, just an hour ago, before the crows had attacked.
“The crows…” she said.
“One thing at a time,” Aunt Fay chided her. “Your ‘coma’ was the only protection Suzette and I could devise—”
Rose remembered her dreams. “You couldn’t remove Maurelle’s curse, but you could change it.”
“Yes. And so you slept. We kept you hidden as best we could, until earlier this year when we knew the time was approaching for you to wake. We planned carefully. You would wake in an American hospital in the best facility we could find, with no memory of your old life. When we encountered young women and girls your age we…”
Aunt Fay glanced at her sister, perhaps a bit guiltily.
“We borrowed from them,” Aunt Suzette continued for her. She smiled gently. “You needed to know how to speak English and, without your own memories, you needed at least a basic understanding of the life of a teenage girl in the modern world. We distilled that for you, so that this life would not be so shocking. So you could function.”
“But how?” Rose asked, brows knitted in confusion.
“I hope we’ll have the time to teach you,” Aunt Suzette said. “There are far too few of us left in this world and it’s high time we learned if you’ve inherited any of your mother’s glamour.”
“But you said she gave up her—”
“Yes,” Aunt Fay said, giving her sister a hard look. “She gave up her glamour but that did not change what she was. You have your father’s blood, Rose, but your mother’s as well. Or do you think that just any ordinary girl can sleep a thousand years? Cursed or not, anyone else would be dust by now. And, of course, you have all the charms of our kind. There’s a light in you that most people will be enchanted by, but which will make others—those with a darkness in them—uneasy.”
Aunt Suzette smiled. “Your voice is one of those charms. It was a gift from Aunt Fay and me.”
Rose felt cheated somehow. What did this mean? Her singing voice wasn’t her own? Were her friends only her friends because of her charms?
“So you’re saying I have, what, magic?” Rose asked, the word feeling so strange on her lips.
“Certain glamours, absolutely,” Aunt Suzette said. “But there isn’t time now to explore what you may be capable of.”
Aunt Fay sighed. “Please, just listen.”
“Can you at least tell me why?” Rose pleaded. “Why did Maurelle hate me? Why is she called the Black Heart?”
Her aunts both glanced at the window as though afraid merely speaking their sister’s name would summon her. Then Aunt Fay gestured to Aunt Suzette, an unusual show of deference.
“Maurelle was the oldest of us,” Aunt Suzette said, her eyes going distant, as though she saw into a past to which she wished she could return. “We weren’t born in the Feywood, you understand. But the place of our birth can’t be reached by any road. Couldn’t, even then. Some paths, if you walked them properly and knew the very moment to step sideways, well, they might take you there. Not now, though. Now there is no way to go back.”
“Faerie,” Rose said.
Aunt Fay smiled sadly. “If you like.”
Rose sipped her tea, scowling at the taste but persuaded now that it was for her own good.
“Sometimes our people slipped into human places, and found spots where glamour seemed as strong here as it had been at home,” Aunt Suzette said. “They explored for the reasons people always do, drawn by fascination or running from something. The four of us came with our mother to the Feywood, but she died soon after and so we sisters were left to fend for ourselves. We were welcomed by the duke who lived in the castle, a kind man who did not fear enchantments.”
“Your father,” Aunt Fay said.
“But my father was a king,” Rose replied, hearing how absurd the words sounded, having difficulty even now accepting that any of this was real. But her throat stung where Maurelle had punctured her skin, and that reality could not be escaped.
“No,” Aunt Suzette said, her kind eyes gleaming. “He liked to think of himself that way, and
he called you his princess. He ruled a small duchy called Rigaud—”
“And the duke loved your mother,” Aunt Fay added. She paused, her gaze darkening. “But he loved Maurelle first.”
Rose spilled tea on her shirt. “What?”
“They never married and she would not sacrifice her glamour to bear him a child who could pass for human,” Aunt Suzette said. “But she did bear him a child. A son.”
“God, my brain hurts,” Rose said, downing what was left of her tea and setting the cup on the table. She took a deep breath. “You’re saying I have a brother.”
“Somewhere,” Aunt Fay replied. “If he’s still alive. His name is Etienne.”
Aunt Suzette got up and went to the window, growing jittery and impatient. She looked out at the street and then glanced up, as though fearing an attack from above. A chill ran through Rose.
“Etienne was a beautiful child, but not by human standards,” Aunt Fay went on. “Your father felt betrayed because Maurelle had not warned him. He believed she had only wanted a child, and perhaps there was some truth to that. Now she wanted him to marry her and declare her son would one day be duke of Rigaud, but he refused and banished her from his castle, forbade her from leaving the Feywood. But the worst was yet to come. She nursed Etienne on her bitterness, but he had a kind spirit, so that by the time he grew to manhood he could not bear to be in her company any longer. He left the wood and never returned. His fate is a mystery to us.”
An image swam into Rose’s mind, herself a little girl, a dark figure sitting at the end of her bed, speaking softly. Small horns and sharp teeth. Skin like hard leather. Eyes glittering gold.
“He came to see me,” she whispered. “Before he left.”
“Etienne?” Aunt Fay asked, obviously surprised.
Rose nodded. “I remember, I think. A little, anyway. He said he loved me.”
“He was a good boy,” Aunt Fay said. “I only wish I knew what became of him. But that is a mystery for another day, if we live to see it.”
Aunt Suzette turned away from the window. “We never knew if Maurelle’s heart was truly broken or if her hatred came from the injury to her pride, but she changed afterward. Darkness can come upon us, Rose—those of our blood—in a way that alters us forever. Hatred is like poison in us.”
“When the duke fell in love with your mother and they married, and then she became pregnant, Maurelle’s heart grew blacker than ever,” Aunt Fay said. “And when your mother died, her hatred fell upon you as well. Though I think she wanted your death mostly for the anguish it would cause your father.
“While we were celebrating your birth, our sister cast an insidious glamour upon you, so that on your wedding night, when you made love with your husband, you would die in his arms in the very moment you surrendered your virginity.”
It all began to coalesce in Rose’s mind, now, dreams mixing with newly surfacing memories and the things her aunts were telling her. She ran her hands through her still-damp hair, eyes widening as she stared at them.
“You didn’t really change her curse,” she said. “You just added one of your own.”
Aunt Suzette glanced away.
“That’s not—” Aunt Fay began to protest.
“I overheard part of your conversation with my father. I remember now. And I dreamed about it. But you lied to him, too. You cursed me so that when I kissed my husband, I would sleep! For a thousand years! I… I married the son of my father’s enemy—”
“The count of Roussillon,” Aunt Suzette said.
“But Maurelle’s curse is still on me,” Rose went on, looking from one woman to the other, hoping they would contradict her.
“We’re not actually sure,” Aunt Fay admitted. “You might only have been married for a single day, but the man who was your husband died many centuries ago. The curse might be broken simply by virtue of his death, depending on precisely how Maurelle worded it.”
“And if it isn’t broken?”
“Glamours fade. It’s possible you would become very ill, but survive.”
Rose felt like throwing up. “And this is why you’ve been such lunatics about me not having sex?”
Aunt Fay nodded.
“But Maurelle’s ‘death curse,’ or whatever, was supposed to kill me if I had sex with my husband. What if I have sex with someone who isn’t my husband?”
“It’s difficult to be certain,” Aunt Fay admitted. “Again, it depends entirely upon the words used to curse you. It might be tied to the loss of your virginity, or to the first time you have sex with someone you truly love. But we simply cannot take chances.”
“Understand, Rose,” Aunt Suzette said, glancing again out the window. “We have heard only whispers of Maurelle for ages, so we couldn’t be certain she would come for you. But we thought if we came to America, so far from home, and put you in school like an ordinary girl…”
She shuddered.
“But how did you hide me from her to begin with?” Rose asked.
“The night of your wedding, once you fell asleep, we stole you away,” Aunt Suzette explained. “Your father pretended that you had died, and it wasn’t difficult for him. Asleep or dead, he knew he would never see you again either way. But he knew that someday you would live, and he suffered his own heartbreak so that he could make sure of that.”
Rose could picture him now, that weary smile, the gray beard that she had always tugged on to tease him. Tears welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
Aunt Suzette came to her and touched her shoulder, began to brush her hair from her eyes. “By the time we brought you to America, it had been more than two hundred years since even a mention of Maurelle had come to our attention. We didn’t know if she was still alive, or if she had somehow found her way home to our birthplace.”
“So you wanted to keep hiding me,” Rose said.
“The wards on your windows,” Aunt Fay said. “The herbs in your tea. We wanted you to have a new life, but we couldn’t leave you unprotected.”
An idea formed. “The crows,” Rose said. “They were watching me all along. I wasn’t just being paranoid.”
“They were, yes,” Aunt Fay said. “But now you need to talk to us, Rose. You weren’t drinking your tea. What else have you hidden from us? What happened today? Your chorus instructor said your friends thought you had been attacked, and then you didn’t answer your phone and the crows were confounded, somehow. A glamour, I think. They lost track of you.”
“We were so afraid,” Aunt Suzette said.
Aunt Fay leaned toward her, gaze intense. “Where were you, Rose?”
She stared at the empty teacup on the table for a few seconds and then she exhaled loudly. Without looking up, Rose began to talk. She told them all of it, everything she had lied about, everything she had hidden. Chloe’s birthday party. Seeing Maurelle on Newbury Street, and then again on the T. Studying with Jared, the things they’d done, and the things they had almost done. Aunt Suzette had gone deathly pale during Rose’s recounting of her time alone with Jared, and Rose understood why. Sleeping Beauty or not, it hadn’t been the prick of a spindle she needed to fear.
“I’ve kissed him, but nothing more,” she said. “Nothing dangerous.”
“Rose—” Aunt Fay began, but Rose silenced her with a look.
“No. You don’t get to yell at me. You could have told me all of this any time, but you thought protecting me meant keeping me in the dark. I thought I might be crazy, do you know that?”
“We didn’t know what else to do,” Aunt Suzette said.
Rose sighed. “All right. I’m trying to understand this. Obviously the spell you two put on me worked, but it’s done now. I kissed Jared, and it didn’t put me to sleep.”
“It worked as it was intended to,” Aunt Fay said. “It won’t affect you now. But Maurelle’s curse… we just don’t know.”
The answers did not satisfy her, but she believed that her aunts knew nothing more. Frightened and confused, she to
ld them about Courtney’s attack in the bathroom after chorus, still shaken as she explained the girl’s vanishing.
Aunt Suzette sank back into her chair as though deflating. She turned to stare at her sister.
“Fay, we’ve been such fools.”
Aunt Fay rubbed a hand over her eyes and then nodded. “It’s all right, though. Rose is here. She’s still safe.”
“For how long?” Aunt Suzette asked.
“What do you mean?” Rose asked. “What happened to Courtney?”
“That wasn’t Courtney,” Aunt Fay said, shaking her head. “I’ve no idea where she is, but that thing was a construct. A wood spirit, probably.”
Rose frowned. “Like…” What was her name? Violet eyes. Silver wings. “Like Rielle, you mean?”
“Not a sprite. A spirit,” Aunt Suzette said. “Maurelle has been unable to get close to you, so she’s had spies watching you.”
“Or trying to influence her,” Aunt Fay said, then turned to study Rose closely. “Courtney frightened you. Terrorized you. It might have been meant to push you into the arms of this boy, Jared.”
Her aunts glanced at each other, dark suspicion forming in their eyes.
“If he’s really a boy,” Aunt Fay said.
“That’s crazy,” Rose said.
“Is it?” Aunt Suzette asked.
Rose dropped her gaze. She wasn’t sure. Jared wanted her, she knew that. But wasn’t that natural? Did it make him some kind of monster that he wanted to have sex with her? She had been the one to initiate things between them today, but he had been upset when she had put a stop to it. Maybe they were right.
“No,” she said. “I don’t… if you met him, you’d know. He’s just Jared. He hasn’t tried to make me do anything.”
Both aunts hesitated, but then Aunt Fay nodded reluctantly.
“All right. Just understand what this means. Unless we can kill Maurelle, or escape her somehow, you can’t trust anyone.”
“So what are we going to do?” Rose asked. “Run?”
“If we can think of a way to prevent her from following, then yes, we’ll run,” Aunt Fay said.
When Rose Wakes Page 19