The Tears of the Rose by Jeffe Kennedy

Author:Jeffe Kennedy [Kennedy, Jeffe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2014-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

17

As if he sensed my shift in mood, his smile dimmed. Suddenly

I was sorry to have ruined the moment for him. I created a smile, the party one that usually charmed everyone, but it was too late. Besides, he always seemed to see through me. He pulled our hands out and handed me my glove.

“Do you want some time here?”

Ever considerate of me and my hair shirt of grief.

“No.” I stood, pulling on my glove and adjusting my cloak. I couldn’t explain my irrational anger at Hugh. At Andi for first killing him and then making this memorial, as if that changed anything at all. But I could walk away for now. “Let’s move on. Surely the border isn’t far from here.”

It wasn’t. We’d barely gone the distance it would take to cross Ordnung’s great courtyard before the snow, which had been growing thin, melted completely into mud. Ahead, the same tall evergreen trees marched on in their great columns, but beneath, on the forest floor, grass and riotous wildflowers grew in a rampant tapestry of color.

Paradise.

With a breath of wonder, I reached down and plucked a scarlet blossom. It was exotic and fragrant, unlike anything I’d ever seen.

“Princess?”

I looked back, and the White Monk stood an arm’s length away, as if stopped by a wall, his gaze unfocused into the distance.

“Ami!” he called, with greater urgency.

“Right here,” I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. I went to him and the near panic in his face changed to relief. He seemed about to embrace me in a rush of emotion but stopped himself. “Couldn’t you see me?”

“No. It was as if you disappeared. Like you vanished into that blizzard.” He gestured at the summer landscape beyond.

“You see a blizzard there?”

“You don’t?”

“No.” I felt a bit of the happiness that I’d longed for only a few minutes before seep into my limbs, like a draught of good wine, warming and relaxing, diffusing the anger. “I see paradise.”

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