“The Roses are unaccustomed to strangers,” I said. “Your arrival will cause quite a stir. But know this: If you set your sights on any of my Roses, I’ll banish you from the premises, and your team too.”
“Ah. Farrin has told you the tales of my many conquests.”
“Some of them, anyway. Enough for me to be on my guard around you.”
Gareth looked away, rubbing the back of his head. His smile faded, and when he looked back at me, his gaze was earnest.
“This assignment is important to me,” he said quietly, “as is my work and what it could mean for all of us. I won’t ruin it. You have my word.”
He wouldn’t soften me with those pretty green eyes of his. “Good. Life at Rosewarren is hard enough without piling heartbreak on top of all our other battles.”
“I meant what I said at the ball, Lady Mara. I know you don’t think very much of me, but I’d like to do whatever I can to change that.”
“So you can study me? Or to ensure that your team gets the best cuts of meat at dinner?”
Gareth shrugged and gave me a small smile. “So we can be friends. It’s nice to talk to someone who understands what it feels like to be…not entirely understood.”
That shook me, though I wasn’t certain why. Maybe because it was the most sincere I’d ever seen him. Maybe because I was tired and missing my sisters so much it hurt.
I turned away before he could read my face. He deserved a better response than that, but at the moment I couldn’t give him one.
“When we get to Rosewarren,” I said over my shoulder, “please stop calling me Lady. There are no ladies at the priory. There are only Roses.”
***
I was flying beside the Warden.
I was flying besidethe Warden.
Not ten minutes after I’d arrived at Rosewarren with Gareth and his team, the breach bells had rung. I’d reached the training yards at the same time as the other summoned Roses, all of our bodies halfway through their transformations—limbs lengthening, nails becoming talons, feathers sprouting along our unfolding wings. Cira’s golden eyes had been eager as always. Brigid, though, had shot me a bewildered look.
I’d soon understood why.
The Warden had been waiting for us in the yard, already in her avian form—an owl, black and gleaming. At the sight of her, I’d stopped short. Freyda, just behind me, had landed on my shoulder and plucked restlessly at my hair.
But there had been no time for questions. The Warden had barked orders at us and launched herself into the air. We’d followed at once, the instincts of our training stronger than our confusion, and now I was flying beside her, en route to the human village of Sablemire in the northern Mistlands. Hostiles had been sighted. The village had called for aid.
It was an unremarkable mission. Such things happened every dayin these times of war. And yet this time the Warden was with us, leading our squadron.
The Wardenneverflew with us on missions, nor did we expect her to. She was the Warden, not a general. It was up to the squadron captains, like me, to lead the Roses into battle.
I couldn’t make sense of it, but I didn’t try to for long. The Warden was remarkable, beautiful, her flight smooth and sharp. My nape prickled at her nearness. The entire squadron seemed reverent in her presence—no idle chatter, our formation flawless. Even our familiars were quiet, and Freyda flew closer to me than usual, as if sensing the moment’s import.
Suddenly the Warden pointed with one taloned hand at the village on the horizon, from which smoke rose like storm clouds. She was so close to me that her black feathers brushed against my brown and gray ones, silk against silk. I shivered. I wasgiddy. I thought nothing of my sisters or of Gareth or of the little burning girls from Graystone.
I was a Rose about to dive into battle alongside the Warden, and that was all I knew.
“There,” she said quietly. In the cocoon of her magic—the magic that bound us to her and her to us—I could hear her easily.
I saw it too—the village of Sablemire, one of the smallest and most remote ones in the northern Mistlands. It was a town for people who didn’t much like other people. Sleepy, forgettable, isolated. Not even Oldens had touched it yet.
Until today.
“Separate and dispatch,” the Warden said, reminding us of our orders. Not that any of us needed reminding. My skin itched with battle hunger, and I knew my squadron would feel the same.
“Two furiants,” Cira said quietly, her voice carrying to all of us. She had the sharpest eyes of everyone except for me. “A figment, I think. It looks like a human man with a shimmer around him. Twoshifters, a family of griffins. Wood nymphs? Possibly a siren. Gods, she’s gorgeous.”
“Maybe we’ll spare her, at least,” said Caralind.
