The Rose Bride by Nancy Holder Read Free Book Online Page A

meat is fresh and succulent.”
    Rose never ate venison. Artemis favored deer and she was Rose’s patroness. Instead Rose took a sip of wine. Her hand trembled around the stem of her goblet.
    “Look at her, skin and bones,” Desirée sneered. “She eats so little she can barely lift her cup:” She picked up her goblet.“And they are very nice cups:”
    “All the more for us,” Ombrine said. She slid a glance at Rose. ‘Although with her so thin it will be harder to get her married.”
    “Eat, sister,” Desirée sang. “Eat, eat, eat:”
    Beneath the table, Rose squeezed her left hand into a fist. Her nails drew blood as they dug into her palm. Ombrine and Desirée bewildered her. Their tragedy could explain their greed but not their cruelty. They knew nothing of love, only of loss. She tried to have pity on them.
    “The cups are cunning, but these plates are ugly,” Desirée announced. At first I thought they were lovely, but they’re awfully garish, aren’t they I think we should finish what that thief Valmont started.”
    “You may be right,” Ombrine declared. “They’d fetch a pretty penny. Honestly, Rose, your mother had terrible taste.”
    Their hearts were so hardened by their tragedy that they could find no soft spot for someone who had suffered just as much—if not more, for Rose had lost both mother and father.
    I
pray I will never be so hard-hearted
, she thought, glancing down at the blood in her palm.
    “You are loved
.
    “You are loved
.
    “You are loved,”
said the roses in the bower.
    Rose lay among them as the statue of the goddess stood watch. It was the night before her fourteenth birthday. In the morning, it would be one year since her mother’s death. Almost six months since the death of her father. At moonrise, Rose and Elise had furtively burned incense before her parents’ sarcophagi. Weeping, they held each other, a little family of two.
    As they passed Ombrine’s door, they heard chanting. Rose looked questioningly at Elise. “Perhaps she is celebrating,” Elise muttered as she led Rose into her own room. She trailed her fingers down Rose’s cheek. “Have a care for the morrow, my girl. She’ll cast a shadow on your birthday. Of that I have no doubt.”
    Rose shuddered. She thought to ask Elise to sleep with her, but her nurse snored dreadfully. She crawled into her bed alone and thought of her mother, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
    After Elise fell asleep, Rose crept to the garden. Ombrine had ordered her to stay out of it—especially at night—and promised severe punishment if she disobeyed.
    But it was in this garden she had last seen her mother and had heard the joyous news that her father was coming home.
    “You are loved,”
the roses whispered.
    “I
was
loved,” she said brokenly. “But now they’re gone:’ She began to cry again.
    Moonlight gleamed around Rose like her mother’s sheltering arms and, after a time, she fell into a deep, heavy sleep.
    And in that sleep, a glowing hand cupped a shimmering white mouth pressed against her ear.
    A voice whispered,
‘Alas, daughter of she who made the wish, you still must walk through the shadows until you see the light. Once you learn the lesson, two broken hearts shall mend.”
    Rose slumbered and didn’t hear the voice.
    But her heart heard it.
    “You are loved,”
the roses whispered as Rose woke with a start.
    Above the statue of Artemis, dawn streaked the sky with washes of lavender and pink. Rose boltedupright with a moan. She’d fallen asleep in the garden and Ombrine would have her head.
    A deer had been drinking at the stream. Startled, it darted into the bracken.
    Rose touched her cheeks. Her fingertips came back muddy. She hurried to the stream and examined her reflection. Her nose and forehead were filthy too.
    “Oh, Artemis, please protect me now,” she murmured as she gathered up her skirts. “She’ll be so angry:”
    She raced out of the rose garden, past the two statues of deer,