Page 34 of Immortal Rose

Foxcourt sent me a sharp look of warning. I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood.

“I will find the conspirator and root them out,” Foxcourt said. The cold force of his words sent an involuntary shudder through me.

The King roughly cleared his throat, the sound painful. “Glenmoor and his police will see to any further questioning of the staff. You, my boy, have always been better suited for unscrupulous tasks.”

If I hadn’t glanced at Foxcourt, I would have missed the nearly imperceptible tightening of his lips, the tensing of his arms that made me think he’d curled his hands into fists behind his back.

The Duke of Glenmoor. Foxcourt’s half brother. I carefully stowed the observation away to examine again later, returning to the true matter at hand.

“If this is not the poisoned perfume in question,” I began, setting the flacon down on the bedside table, “what is it?”

The King peered up at me the way one would regard a small, muttonheaded child. “Immortal Rose.”

I let out a shocked laugh—but I was the only one. The faces around me were deathly, irrevocably serious.

“As in the old fairy story?” I clarified. “About Queen Titania?”

“The very same,” Foxcourt drawled. “There is a thread of truth in every legend that keeps it alive.”

“What about that story could possibly be true?” I challenged. “That King Augustine’s wife was a fairy after all? That she was saved from an adder’s bite by breathing in the scent of a golden rose that had been born from a drop of Venia’s blood?”

As I said the words, that strange dream came over me again, of the golden figure in the garden. The flower was said to have been the goddess’s final gift before the ancient fairy gods had receded with the coming of the new faith.

“While Queen Titania was not a fairy, she was restored by a perfume your ancestor created, named after one of Venia’s many epithets, the Immortal Rose,” Eleanor said. “I believe that’s where your family name was derived from, was it not? The myth of Venia being born amid the roses in the garden of the gods.”

My mind took in the information layer by layer, the way I would unravel the scent trail of a perfume.

Eleanor gestured toward the flacon again. “The bottle has been kept in the Rosebourne archive for centuries, and in that time, the last of the perfume has dried out—”

“And become fucking useless!” the King interjected, sending a spray of dark blood and spittle over his blankets.

“I’m sure you understand,” Eleanor said, ignoring the outburst, “that if the poison is magic in nature, the cure can only be the same. William Rosebourne believed it was within his power to re-create Immortal Rose, and given—”

“The man was blown to high heaven with hellfire,” the King groused.

“—his untimely demise,” Eleanor continued, “the task now falls upon you. I believe Foxcourt has outlined the terms of our proposed arrangement?”

Arrangement. I fought the urge to glare at the monument to arrogance beside me. What a way to debone the reality to ensure it went down smoothly.

“Yes,” I said. “I am to create this perfume and will receive a full pardon for my efforts. Should I refuse, I will be returned to Fairgate.”

Would I, though? Having seen the King in this state, knowing a dark truth being kept from all but those closest to him, would I be allowed to live to tell of it?

Yes, I realized. I would be allowed to live because I would not be allowed to refuse them. There was not a single doubt in my mind that Foxcourt would do whatever necessary to apply the correct amount of pressure needed to break me. However strong my will was, he’d already shown his to be an equal match.

I could not say no, but every coin had another side, and when I flipped this one, a second truth was revealed: for all the King’s power, his stores of treasure, his great many palaces, I had the one thing he could not simply take or demand, as his forefathers had taken everything else.

Refusing him would amount to treason, and there was only one end for traitors. But how had Foxcourt so eloquently put it at Fairgate? Neither of us will get what we desire.

I had nurtured my hatred of William Rosebourne over the years, all but luxuriating in it. It fed itself on every memory of Mama’s gray face the morning of her death. Each time the old scars on my back pulled uncomfortably. On those days I had been hungry and cold, and watched innocent neighbors waste away and die of fever, never knowing there might be perfumes to restore their health.

I had gone to sleep at night imagining how I would take my time carving the heart from Rosebourne’s chest, how his blood would no doubt smell of rotted roses. How I would make a cut for each year he’d denied Mama what was rightfully hers and for what he had made me—a baseborn child who was the only remnant of an ancient family with a unique gift.

The man was already dead, but there was another way to take back what was owed. A way that would give me everything I had ever desired: independence, justice for Mama, security.

But I would pay for it, perhaps more than I’d ever willingly give otherwise. A perfume that could heal a body of festering, poison, and venom would take its toll on me, in health or in years of my life. It was a devil’s bargain to be sure, but everything had a cost.

Everything.