The Forest Bride by Jane Buehler

Author:Jane Buehler [Buehler, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fairytale romance, not violent, romantic fantasy, fairies, fantasy romance, women’s fantasy fiction, fairytale kingdom, romantic folk tales
ISBN: 9780977806843
Google: Md0MzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Jane Buehler
Published: 2020-11-30T13:00:50.329102+00:00

Chapter 16

Rose woke in the night. Someone was crying.

She crept from her bed and followed the noise to the window. Pressing her nose to the glass, she scanned the dark garden. A sob closer to the house revealed Jane on the bench by the door, wearing only her nightgown and hugging herself. Jane’s sobs were punctuated by puffs of breath in the chill air.

Rose hesitated. Did Jane want to be alone? Maybe, but Rose couldn’t just stand there. She wrapped herself in a shawl, took another from the rack, and went out. Jane didn’t move as Rose approached.

Rose wrapped the extra shawl around Jane’s shoulders. Jane looked up, tears glistening on her cheeks in the faint light of the stars.

“I heard you,” was all Rose could think to say.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” Jane said. “I forgot you were downstairs.”

“Is it . . . anything I can do?”

“No. This is where I come when I get overwhelmed by it.”

“How long has it been?” Rose asked as she sat by Jane’s side.

“Almost three winters. I should get over it, but I can’t. I never got to know her, but I miss her every day. And him, though I shouldn’t. I come up with these stories. Maybe he didn’t want to leave me, maybe someone forced him. I make excuses, hoping there’s some explanation, that he’ll fix it and bring her back. I can’t seem to stop hoping.”

Rose couldn’t imagine how Jane must hurt. Would she feel as bad when her memories returned? “Would you like me to stay?”

Jane wiped the tears from her cheeks with a corner of the shawl. “I’ve been out here a while. I’ll go in.”

Back on her pallet, Rose couldn’t sleep. She had remembered something else—children in the woods. She’d seen fairies in the woods, and there had been children waiting on them. Children who looked sad and tired. Children who had been half human, she felt sure of it.

What if those children belonged here?

It seemed impossible, the chance too slim, but the thought went over and over in Rose’s mind. And even if those children weren’t the ones her friends had lost, they didn’t belong to the fairies. Regardless of who their mothers were, those children deserved something better.

All her life, Rose had been dictated to, moved like a chess piece, kept under control. Her mother had tried to fight it by taking her out of the castle and showing her what little of the world she could. But after that trip to the forest, the king had watched more closely. And then her mother had died. That had been the start of Rose’s imprisonment.

She’d been twelve winters at the time she’d decided to pack a basket and visit the villagers, as she’d done with her mother. Her skill at picking locks had already been discovered, and guards had been stationed in her tower, so she sneaked away from Adela as the ladies left the breakfast parlor one morning. She used the servants’ passageways to reach the kitchens, where she found a basket and some jars of jam.

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