The Fatal Rose by Sarah Bryant

Author:Sarah Bryant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, fantasy, love story, young adult, historical, teen, fairy tale, ya, new adult
Publisher: Evernight Teen

Chapter Fourteen

Florian led Ren out of the rose garden and into the meadow beyond, Bête following in a meandering path, nose to the ground as she wandered off after one scent or another. Rather than turn downhill toward the stream, Florian turned upward. They climbed until the grass and wildflowers gave way to a stand of rustling aspens, and Florian pushed inside it. Twenty yards in, the trees thinned again to reveal a small clearing.

A small clearing full of headstones.

Florian stopped at the edge of the trees, but Ren continued on, looking at each stone in turn. There were seventeen in all, some with single names carved into them, some with nothing. Their meaning was clear, but he still needed to hear Florian say it in order to believe it.

“These people all found this place?” he asked, looking back at the other boy.

“Yes,” Florian answered. He stood leaning against a tree trunk at the edge of the clearing, as if he didn’t dare move closer.

“And they died here.”

“Yes.” His voice dissolved into the murmur of leaves, but he held Ren’s gaze.

“How?” Ren asked, slowly walking back toward Florian through the wildflower-spangled grass.

Florian shut his eyes, bowed his head. “You know the answer to that.”

“You killed them,” Ren said, his voice sounding strange to him, thick and faraway.

“That is how one pays a blood debt.”

Ren stood very still, gazing at him. Of course, Ren had been right. He had known the truth as soon as Florian told him the other outsiders had all picked roses, just as he knew now that he ought to be horrified. He knew he should desire to run from this terrible place and the person who had made it. But he knew it only perfunctorily, cerebrally, as the answer to an equation, while his heart knew something quite different.

He couldn’t help a bitter smile as he recalled the words of the roses in the dream. He had thought that, with the kiss, he’d understood, that they had been warning him not to dismiss Florian or judge his beauty by the appearance of his curse. Now he realized that they had pleaded with him for something far more profound than that: not just to see past what was physically monstrous, but also to think carefully before judging him for what appeared to be monstrous actions. And once again, he found that he couldn’t hate Florian for any of it, because in this, as in all the rest, he’d had no choice.

He stood, waiting for Florian to look at him.

When he finally did, two tears spilled down his ashen cheeks. “Say it, Ren,” he said softly.

“Say what?”

“That I’m a monster.”

“I told you not to tell me what to think!”

“How can you possibly think anything else?”

“Because you spared my mother.”

Florian choked out a laugh as if he were expelling something poisonous. “And do you think I did that out of the goodness of my heart?”

Ren considered the question carefully, and then he answered, “Yes.”

“You are a fool, then,” Florian growled.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.