Page 7 of Blood & Roses

Something about all of this didn’t sit right, but Rowan was still giving me a pointed look, waiting for a response.

“Fine,” I sighed, bracing myself for what was to come next and starting to think this job was far more hassle than it would be worth. “In that case, it’s time for you to meet the rest of the Nightshade sisters.”

“You want us to do what?” Sera asked, her tone both disbelieving and sarcastic as she took in Rowan with something only inches away from a sneer.

We were seated in the tiny living room, all five of us squeezing onto the small sofa while Rowan sat on the lone armchair across from us. Lena, Mora and I were squashed together on the cushions while Calli and Sera perched on the arms as if ready for battle.

“Die, it sounds like,” Calli grumbled, looking just as skeptical as the sassier of my twin younger sisters.

“Hush,” Lena chastised, her position of authority in our sisterly hierarchy second only to mine. “Let us at least hear him out.”

She gave Rowan an encouraging nod and smile, her night-dark hair falling like a silken waterfall over her shoulder. I’d seen that smile melt many a heart, but Rowan only looked at me with something akin to panic. I replied with a sweet smile of my own. Let him handle my sisters himself since he didn’t think we were ‘fearsome’ enough.

He cleared his throat, looking around at the semi-circle of Nightshade sisters who had gathered around him, sitting before the hearth in our tiny living room. Lis was missing, and Ella, of course, and we felt diminished without them.

Rowan coughed again. “I wantIsoldeto kill the Elandorean Queen. Not all of you. I just need her.”

Something about the way he said this sent a bolt of heat zipping through me, and I squashed the feeling. It had been a long timesince a handsome man or male had paid me any attention, but this clearly wasn’t the time.

“Hiring any of our sisters is like hiring all of us,” Lena said gently, looking around at our smaller-than-usual group. “We are a team.”

“And we’re not letting you hire her for a fool’s errand,” Sera added firmly, crossing her arms. “You’ll get her killed.”

“Why exactly do you want the queen dead?” Mora asked softly, watching Rowan’s every breath as if she could see into his head. It’s possible that she could. Her magic was memoryweaving, and she had become unnervingly good at slipping into someone’s mind completely unnoticed. Her eyes widened, the answer supplied by him unwittingly. “To save your brother. You think the queen cursed him.”

Statements, not questions.

I knew all of this already, of course, but Mora liked her information to come from the source.

“What the…hey!” Rowan snapped, scowling at Mora. “You’re the memory sister. Stay out of my mind.”

“Shield better, then,” she said with a shrug. “She sent her guards after him to kill him and retrieve his heart. Offered a hefty reward, too. Rowan’s been trailing him for weeks and fighting them off.”

“Rowan already told me this much,” I said, smirking at Rowan, who was frowning in a way that told me he was bolstering his mental shields. Having grown up with Mora, this was secondnature to the rest of us, but strangers always underestimated the mildest-mannered of my sisters. “But he won’t tell me why.”

“Does it have anything to do with the murder?” Sera asked, looking excited by the idea of being embroiled in scandal. “Of the king and prince?”

I nodded in approval at the question, giving Sera a smile.

“I couldn’t see anything else before he tossed me out,” Mora cut in, looking annoyed that Rowan’s whole mind had not been splayed open for her. She grinned a little wickedly. “He thinks you’re very pretty though, Izzy. He thinks—”

“Thank you,” shouted Rowan, interrupting Mora as his face flushed slightly pink under his tanned skin. I was fairly certain I was also blushing, but I tried to look mildly surprised, rather than embarrassed as he turned back to me. “And it doesn’t matterwhythe queen cursed him. As you deliberate, my brother is being hunted.”

“We promised no more crime,” Mora said gently.

Sera scoffed. I knew she hated this edict, but she would follow it for our sister.

“Orson’s notourmate,” Sera countered haughtily, somehow looking down her nose at us all, despite the fact that we were all taller than her. Shealsodisliked the ban on crime. “Let Lis handle him.”

“Normally I’d agree,” said Lena gently, patting Calli’s knee as if she were still a little girl rather than a grown female of twenty-oneyears. “But Orson will be our brother, and we promised him we’d retire. We promised Lis, too.”

“From crime,” I agreed, musing over the problem at hand. “But not from helping people.”

“Abetting a murderer is a crime,” Sera argued, scowling at Rowan.

“He’s not a murderer,” Rowan scowled right back. “I swear it on my life.”

Suspicion about the stag’s identity took a deeper root in me, but conjecture would get us nowhere. I turned back to Rowan, an idea coalescing. “What if we helped free your brother from this curse instead?” I offered. “Between all of us, we have enough magical skill to figure out what’s wrong with him, and possibly undo it.”