A Ruin of Roses (Deliciously Dark Fairytales 1)

“If it has any hope of working at all, it’s bound to do something,” Hannon said. “The everlass elixir you make only takes hours to work on Dad.”

“I know, I know.” I heaved a sigh and brushed Nyfain’s hair back from his face. “I guess now we wait and see what our lives will become.”

15

Two hours later, I sat on Sable’s bed covered in bandages, looking at Nyfain as he squirmed and thrashed. His fists clenched and unclenched. His head turned from one side to the other. He groaned, his forehead and back slicked with sweat.

I’d told my family the whole story, from the second I left the house to the second I returned, omitting only a few things. They’d gleaned that Nyfain was important, but they didn’t know he was a prince. They thought he was a noble who had survived and had the fate of the kingdom resting on his shoulders. I hoped they were as gullible as I had been. And while they knew about the castle of nightmares, I obviously hadn’t gone into detail about the nature of those nightmares. The kids were present, after all. But they got the general picture. I was sure Hannon connected the dots, given his knowledge of the demons that infested our village.

When I was finished, Sable asked, “But why is he covered in pain?”

The question took me aback. “Because he thinks he killed his mother and failed in protecting his kingdom.”

“No.” She screwed up her face. “That thing with his mother is just silly. Women don’t die of broken hearts. That’s just something people say to hide the neglect and mistreatment the women actually died of. But you said his momma thought of herself as a rosebush. Well, rosebushes don’t give in to anybody. You can cut the hell out of them, think you killed them, and they grow a new shoot and come back from the dead. Rosebushes die from being stifled and cut off from the things they love, like water and sunshine. I bet it’s the dad’s fault. The dad killed her to bring the son back and then trap him. You tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’ve been reading too many mysteries,” Hannon murmured.

“Better than Dash’s stupid picture novels,” she said, and Dash threw a pillow at her. “Anyway, no, I wasn’t talking about what his father did to him. That’s obvious. I meant, why does he have all the scrapes and stuff all over his body? Is that what warriors always look like?”

More time passed as I watched Nyfain, moving as slowly as cold honey, Sable sleeping on the couch and just him and me in the room. More stirring from the bed. He lay facedown again, and I found myself looking at those thick indents running down his back. At the zigzags slicing through his flesh.

“Why do you really patrol the Forbidden Wood?” I said softly, leaning over to trace one of those wide scars. He shivered and moaned a little, stilling.

I got onto my knees beside the bed, tracing to the bottom of the scar and starting at the top again. He breathed deeply and turned his face my way, his eyes fluttering. It seemed to soothe him for some reason.

“It’s because you’re protecting all of us, isn’t it? That’s your duty.” I surveyed the black lines from the poison, receding from his skin. The crowded everlass was working. If those lines weren’t nearly gone in another hour and a half, I’d give him a tiny bit more of the elixir.

I thought back over the years. Back then, we’d had visitors more violent than the incubi. Those creatures had terrorized the town and killed anyone they could. I remembered the fear and panic. My parents had made us hide under the bed until the threat was gone, just in case they busted into the house. We’d been religious about locking the doors and closing the shutters.

Over time, that threat had diminished, though. I couldn’t remember the last time it had happened.

Now I realized it was because of Nyfain. He’d clearly gone through a steep learning curve, and now he patrolled the wood every night, killing the violent creatures before they could reach the villages.

“The demon king is playing a game with you, right?” I asked, smoothing his tousled hair from his high forehead. “He made it so you couldn’t go into the villages but his creations could. At the start, at least. The game is that you need to find and kill them before they make it into the villages and prey on the people. Your people.”

What a slimy snake. No, calling the demon king a snake was a disservice to snakes.

“I wish I could help you.” I traced his strong jaw and then down the scar along the edge of his full, shapely lips. “I wish I could shift and help you. I know my animal would be all for it.”