Chapter Text
The sound of war drums woke Darron from his booze soaked slumber, pounding inside his mind until the drumming forced his heart to beat to their rhythm. With a growl he tore away the filthy fur cloak he’d been using as a blanket and marched to the door of his inn room without bothering to dress himself and threw it open.
“What?” He bellowed.
The soldier—Darron’s eyes were still too blurry from sleep to make out many details beyond his bright blue jacket and blood red half caped that marked him a soldier in the queen’s army—leapt back, whether from Darron’s shout, the door being thrown open, or the sudden appearance of a stark naked man three inches from his nose. The soldier’s fist was still poised to knock again, evidently the sound of war drums had come from a half cooked boy-man of a private eager to prove his mettle.
“What is the meaning of waking me up at this damned hour of the morning?” Darron’s question was more gravel than voice.
A man at the back, the gold stitching on his half cape indicating some kind of rank, cleared his throat and Darron realized it was not one soldier outside his door but a small squadron. In his most pompous voice the officer said, “dear sir, we are here to inform you that her most radiant majesty, Queen Aurora Fantasia, requests your presence at the Palace of Bells.” Then, as if realizing the state Darron was in, hastily amended, “at your earliest convenience. Sir.”
Darron wracked his memory for information not soaked in anisette, the liquor mistress of the inn served an especially potent version only watered down with a spoonful of snow; the Palace of Bells was the big one. With all the courtiers scheming and bowing. Where someone would smile at you while plotting your death or disgrace and they all brought their own silverware to the banquets out of fear of poison.
“Tell Queen Fantasia I will not be making myself present at the Palace of Bells, the Palace of Glass, or any other palace she may decide to build.” He started to close the door. “Now if you don’t mind, it’s cold, so I’m going back to bed.”
No sooner had he closed the door than the pounding of knocks came again. Darron yanked it open and, exactly like before, the private jumped back. Darron bent so they were nose-to-nose, “has anyone ever told you how annoying you are?”
The private’s face went white all the way to the roots of his curly blond hair; before he could squeak out a reply the officer started talking again, filling every available inch of the hallway not occupied by soldier flesh with the odious sound of his own voice.
“Her radiance understands the tremendous service you have done Fantasia, and she would not call a Rose Red out of his well-earned retirement without good cause.”
The glare Darron leveled at the officer caused all the soldiers between the two men to part, keeping their eyes warily on the naked, hungover man like he was a wild bear that might attack at any moment. “I am not a Rose Red anymore.”
“Her radiance informed me that a Rose Red never stops being a Rose Red.” If it weren’t for the tremble in the officer’s voice and the white knuckled grip he had on his saber, he might have come across as brave. “You have been ordered to report. If you will not comply,” he broke off to suck in a breath, “we will bring you in by force.”
Darron looked at the dozen armed soldiers in the hallway, then down at his naked body and bare feet. He thought of the tall boots that took forever to lace and the stiff corset he was forced to wear as part of his rose red uniform. Then he thought of the hot baths at the palace and the beautiful servants who would wash your hair and body for you. He considered how warm the soldiers’ blood would be if he cut his way through them, how satisfying the feeling of flesh splitting beneath his fists and teeth would feel after so long. Then he thought about how if Queen Fantasia was willing to track him down all the way to this nameless village in the mountains, she’d either keep sending soldiers or she’d send something worse than him to drag him back to the capitol.
Hiding from the queen was impossible.
“Let me get dressed,” he sighed.
Even with the officer—whose name Darron learned against his will was Major Nils Ilsenger—commandeering fresh reindeer at every inn and pushing the squadron’s way onto every river ferry they could, once to the displeasure of a very angry merchant and her sheep who was so creative with profanity even Darron blushed, it took them nearly two weeks to reach the Palace of Bells. Unfortunately, by day two almost every member of the squadron had gotten over their fear of him, leading to a pack of privates following him around and crowding him at mealtimes like a flock of needy ducklings.
Their leader was the curly haired private Vance, who swiftly forgot that he had more or less been force to knock on Darron’s door and attempted to use that fact as proof of his bravery. He bombarded Darron with questions about being a Rose Red: what they ate, how they trained, where they came from, how many there were, if they really had magic, where they all went. Every day that passed brought Darron closer to throwing Vance off his reindeer in hopes that he’d break his neck.
One chilly afternoon, on a day when the snow was still only a light dusting of white on the black gravel that made up most major road in Fantasia, right as Darron was watching his hand reach out to grab the back of Vance’s half cloak and yank, Nils called out to the riding soldiers and Darron, “we’ve arrived!”
The squadron answer the affirmative as an out of synch chorus; the journey had taken them over a month just to find Darron, and they weren’t the only group that had been searching for him. The dozen men and women were cold, tired, homesick, and thoroughly sick of each other.
“That’s no way to answer your commander! Sit up in your saddles and straighten your cloaks, the first thing I want when we arrive is for all of you to visit the baths and scrub before you report to Captain Nalen. I won’t have her thinking you all turned into a bunch of mountain savages in a month and a half under my command.”
When the squadron answered, this time they did so with a vigorous “yes sir!” Aside from Vance, who lagged half a second behind, and Darron who, despite himself, felt a small itch of respect growing for Nils. A lesser man would have ordered his soldiers to remain at work for as long as he was. Nils recognized that there was no need for any of his soldiers to be present at the report to the captain on duty so he could let the squadron unwind while he dealt with more pressing matters.
“You know Nils,” Darron felt like needling the major anyway, since he doubted he’d be allowed to take a bath and unwind. “For an odious little rabbit, you might have a good head on your shoulders.”
Nils only spared a glance at Darron, focused more on keeping his reindeer on the road. This one was a fidgety beast that liked to snort and veer suddenly to the side whenever Nils let his attention slip. “Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should. And here I thought they’d sent you to bring me in because it was a suicide mission and you were disposable. To think Queen Fantasia actually wanted you to succeed.”
Nils tightened his hands on the reins, the waterproof wax on the outside of his thick red and blue wool gloves cracked and flaked slightly. “What could have possibly given you the idea that her radiance wouldn’t want her orders to be followed and for you to be brought back?”
“Well, for starters, she sent thirteen soldiers to bring in a Rose Red.”
“And you think we wouldn’t have been enough to subdue you?”
Darron snorted, “not even close. I went willingly. Remember that.”
“When we met you, you were half asleep, mostly drunk, and fully naked.” A grimace twisted Nils’ thin lips. He had a scar on the corner of his mouth that made all his frowns more severe and gave his few smiles a rakish tilt.
“Thirteen soldiers wouldn’t be enough. Queen Fantasia knows that.”
“If you had resisted we would have fought to the last man standing to take you down.”
“And you all would have died.” While they spoke, they finally reached the edge of the Palace of Bells. When it had first been built, when Queen Fantasia’s great great grandmother moved the seat of Fantasia’s power from the capitol city to the two palaces, it had been nothing more than a keep inside snow white walls taller than two reindeer on their hind legs stacked one on top of the other. The original walls and keep still stood but the palace was greatly expanded both in and outside the walls until it was a city all on its own.
“Don’t underestimate my men or overestimate yourself.” Stone buildings with snow-topped roofs grew denser around the squadron, their walls painted in a rainbow of bright patterns and designs to fight back the gray sky and snow that stole the color from the land.
Darron felt the eyes of the citizens like needles jabbing into his back. A man like him being escorted by the royal army couldn’t look like anything but a criminal after all, and he was a prisoner in all but name.
“Sorry for doubting Vance’s ability to hold a blade by the right end.”
“For the record, I chose every soldier for this mission because of their absolute loyalty to her radiance.” Nils’ voice grew clipped, rising in volume as he spoke. “We’re here to help the kingdom and, unfortunately, that means escorting your sorry pickled body to the palace, where hopefully her radiance will talk sense into you and you’ll turn out to be the hero she’s been hoping for.”
Darron gave a noncommittal grunt. If the kingdom or Queen Fantasia were in danger it made no difference to him. Barring the very stars falling from the sky, he’d find a way to survive.
“How her radiance could possibly place any faith in a man like you is beyond me. What good is a man with no loyalty to his queen? Sir.” He tacked on the barest trace of politeness like swallowing medicine.
“I’ve killed more loyal men than I can count. They die just like criminals and farmers do.”
Nils glared down at his saddle horn, a muscle at the corner of his jaw bulged. “I wish I had your gifts.” He said in a voice filled with venom rather than longing.
The gates to the palace opened before them. Massive doors made of carved wood and silver and iron. As they passed between them Darron sniffed the air. He could smell the magic at work in the Palace of Bells, thick enough he could nearly taste it. Experience taught him no one in the squadron could smell or sense it, they lacked his gifts after all. If he focused long enough he could even tease out the scent of every magical working women into the gates and the walls and the ground itself, even track the ones who cast each spell.
“A loyal dog like you would only get killed protecting your master.” He muttered under his breath.
The palace walls held several buildings, and the main building at the center of it all was the largest by far. No longer a fat square building, it had grown into a towering, crystalline structure of towers, the five largest of which held silver bells that rang each hour and gave the palace its name. The palace was almost too beautiful too be real, the snow and icicles that dripped off the eaves and roofs only adding to the beauty. It reminded Darron of a frozen waterfall he had seen once, the icicles frozen into tiers that still appeared to be falling. With the waterfall, light shone through the ice and turned it a vivid shade of blue, and with the palace, the paint on the stones was that same blue, though in the dark corners it darkened to smoky purple and brightened to nearly white where the sun lingered. Hundreds of glass windows sparkled like gems in the sun, reflecting its light directly into Darron’s eyes so he was forced to look away as he approached.
While the rest of the squad made their way to a multi-story building painted in bands of royal blue and blood red, Nils escorted Darron in stony silence to a side entrance of the palace’s central keep. There, they were separated by two couplets of guards wearing bright pink tunics and emerald green forearm length gloves with flared cuffs. The tunics were slit at the waist into strips of fabric the width of Darron’s hand that fluttered as they walked, providing glimpses of the chain shirts they wore beneath; a subtle reminder not to cause trouble in the palace.
They escorted Darron through the narrow servant’s hallways that wove around and between nearly every room in the palace so the servants could appear and reappear like smoke. The mazelike combination of servant’s hallways and main hallways also served the dual purpose that anyone unfamiliar with the palace’s layout would get hopelessly turned around and lost in a matter of moments. A lost maid or noble would be swiftly found and escorted where they needed to be by a helpful passing servant, while an assassin or invading army would be penned in and trapped.
Darron felt no need to strike up a conversation with his escort. His head had been spinning since before he’d even set foot inside the palace, the back of his neck prickled at the feeling of being watched, and his thoughts jumped from idea to idea, only alighting on one for a moment before moving on, an autonomic protection against mind reading spells until he had a moment to rebuild the one’s he’d had before. The scent of magic that started at the gates only grew thicker the deeper into the palace he went. He breathed in deeply through his nose and let the air hiss slowly out through his teeth, trying to acclimate himself to the indescribable, unknowable, yet unforgettable stink of magic.
The guards stopped suddenly in front of a plain pine door and one gave three firm knocks, paused for a moment, then knocked three times again before opening it.
Inside was a small yet luxurious sitting room with navy blue curtains made of thick velvet and embroidered white roses draped over the walls to make the space feel small and closed in.
“Wait in here.” The guard shut the door before Darron could respond.
The room was so small that the few pieces of furniture, an overstuffed butterscotch couch that threatened to swallow him the moment he sat on it and a square table with flakes of silver wrapped around the legs to make them look like flower buds, filled the space and made it nearly impossible for Darron to turn without knocking something over. He pulled back the curtains and found a second door opposite the one he came in from, this one stained a golden color and carved with abstract swirls. This door was obviously intended for courtiers who wanted to be seen spending private time with someone. Darron grimaced, those kinds of gossip games were exactly why he’d been avoiding the palace; yet after less than thirty minutes he was right in the thick of it.
He let the curtain fall back and returned to the table. The top was formed of interlocking blue and yellow circles arranged in the shape of a six-pointed star. Was it some kind of game? Or merely meaningless palace decoration from a furniture maker showing off their ability to make perfect circles? His fingers found a hidden catch on the side of the table and the top flipped up. Inside the table were three velvet lined boxes filled with twenty white, flat-bottomed glass beads, twenty identical black beads, and a handful of ten-sided dice carved from purple gemstones. Also in the table, as if thrown haphazardly, was a small oval mirror. The room was nearly pitch black but Darron’s eyes were sharp enough to make out his own reflection.
Darron’s reflection in the mirror caught his eye and wouldn’t let go. He fixated on his face. What little could be seen behind his bushy black beard and wild hair tangled with knots that hung down to his shoulders. He had a square jaw and a nose that had been broken one too many times to be called regal. His eyes were buried in dark circles from late nights and fitful sleep when he could manage to get it. In the dark room his eyes weren’t the dull, greyish black they normally were, instead they glowed as if lit from within by blue-green fire. The mirror was too small to show him the rest of his body, but he only needed to look down for that. Darron knew he was a man gone soft; his muscles suffocated beneath gut and flab. Dressed in rags and animal furs so crusty Darron couldn’t tell if he or his clothes smelled worse. How could he ever consider himself a Rose Red? How could he meet her radiance in this state? She would take one look at him and realize what a mistake it was to call him here and throw him out with the trash where he belonged.
“Interested in playing a game?” A soft, familiar voice broke him out of his spiraling thoughts. Standing in the servant’s doorway, holding a small lantern that painted a golden glow across her fair skin and made her black eyes sparkle like stars were trapped inside them, stood her radiant majesty, Queen Aurora Fantasia.
Darron sucked in a deep breath, trying to fight the sudden tightness in his chest. She looked identical to the last time he’d seen her, only the cut of her dress and the style of her hair—now braided and sculpted into a bun on the crown of her head—had changed. But it was still the same shade of raven wing black. Her lips were still full and plump and carmine red.
For a moment Darron stood perfectly still, lost in the sight of her radiance. Then his heart flipped over and started beating again and he realized just how long he’d been staring at her in silence.
“Your radiance,” he placed one hand on his chest, he could feel his heart pounding to break free, and swept into a low bow until his spine was parallel to the floor, his free hand flourishing dramatically.
“There is no need to stand on such ceremony Darron. We’re old friends, aren’t we?” Her radiance spread her skirts and dipped a graceful curtsy. “Besides, your manners give you away, that style of bowing is completely out of fashion. If you bowed like that to anyone but me they’d think you were mocking them.”
“All the better then. If the courtiers think I don’t respect them, maybe they’ll order you to send me away.
Her radiance laughed and approached the table. She closed the top and set the lantern down. Darron smelled the flare of magic just before she waved her hand over the lantern and whispered something that caused the light to grow brighter until the small sitting room was as bright as the outdoors.
“Nice work, your radiance.”
Her plump lips pursed and her voice took on a slightly petulant tone. “Call me Aurora or not at all. Unless you want me to call you Rose Red?”
Darron suppressed a shudder. “No thank you.”
“Then what’s my name?”
Darron’s tongue felt as thick an uncooperative as an eel in his mouth but he managed to choke out, “Aurora.”
“Very good.” Aurora swept her skirts under her and sat on the overstuffed couch, failing, perhaps through some hidden magic unique to queens—or just Aurora—Darron couldn’t detect, to sink into its depths. “Take a seat Darron, we have a lot to discuss.”
Much less gracefully than Aurora had, Darron sat at the end of the couch, as far as he could get from Aurora in the center, planting his feet to avoid being consumed by the couch. It felt dangerous to get too close to her right now. “Well? What was so important you had to pull me out of retirement?
“If you can call drinking yourself into an early grave retirement.” There was a sharpness in Aurora’s voice.
“Hey now, you’re the one who set us all loose, remember? How can you be complaining now about how I chose to spend my freedom?”
“That doesn’t mean I wanted to see you like this!” She gestured as if to encompass all of Darron’s stink and grime; or perhaps she meant the bone deep tiredness that weighed him down and made dragging himself through the motions of living more exhausting with each passing day.
“If you have a problem with this—with me—you shouldn’t have called for me. My brain may be pickled but I can still count. I was the thirteenth Rose Red. That leaves twelve ahead of me and seven behind me. One of them can be your hero or whatever it is that you need. Call up Number One, he’d love it. Better yet, call Number Two, she was the real leader of us.” Darron sprang to his feet, ready to charge out of the room.
“I can’t do that.” Aurora’s voice was soft. She bowed her head toward her hands, folding in on herself. “They’re all dead.”
Darron sank down on the couch. “What?”
“My Rose Reds. They’re all dead. All except you.” Slowly she lifted her head to meet his gaze, her eyes burning in the light of the lantern, embers in coals.
“How did they—how could they all die?” His mind struggled to reconcile the Rose Reds he knew with the idea of corpses; cold, stiff bodies wrapped in white cloth and burned with basil and rosemary and smoky resin. “I just saw them.”
“I thought you said you could count.” Aurora’s jab lacked any knuckle to it. “The last time you saw the Rose Reds was after my coronation.”
“Exactly!” Looking at Aurora now he could easily picture her in the low cut black dress she had worn that night, the sacred reindeer cape wrapped tightly around her bare shoulders as she shivered in the frozen night air, the way the golden crown with its massive gems had seemed too large placed upon her head with her long curls tumbling like a black waterfall down her back.
“My coronation was fifty years ago Darron.” Despite her somber tone, her lips twitched in a smile.
“What? No, that’s not—” he stopped himself as he counted the years in his head. In the nameless village one day had been the same as any other. It made sense that, with how little he involved himself with others beyond paying his rent and buying anisette and spending nights with Marta the blacksmith’s daughter—who eventually became Marta the blacksmith—on nights when the anisette wasn’t enough to keep him warm, that fifty years could pass in the blink of an eye. Or, more accurately, fifty years passed while he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut against the world.
“So, after fifty years, I’m the only one left?” Darron’s chest felt oddly hollow, like it wasn’t sure what emotion to fill it with just yet.
“Not exactly. They didn’t start dying until ten years ago or so. Of all of you, Two was the only one who kept in touch. When she stopped responding to my letters, I knew the worst had happened. Soon, all of them were dead except for you.”
“What could possibly kill a Rose Red though? Let alone Number Two?” The emptiness was gone now, filled with a desire to hunt and tear out the throat of whoever had done this. It had been fifty years since he had seen any of his fellow Rose Reds but the bond they held—the ties that connected them to Aurora and each other—could not be severed by something so mundane as time. Darron felt a pang that he hadn’t realized it all sooner.
“I don’t want you thinking about that.”
Darron had been lightly tugging on his beard while he thought but he stopped to look down at Aurora.
“Think about it.” Aurora began counting off on her fingers, she wore several thick rings that smelled of magic, although from this distance Darron couldn’t make out the exact details with all the other magic clogging his nose. “First of all: whatever did this was either fast enough or hid its presence well enough that Two didn’t realize she was in danger. Second: it killed her so quickly she couldn’t send a warning to any other Rose Reds. She knew where you all were after all. Third: after I discovered Two’s death I warned as many Rose Reds as I could, it still managed to kill them off. How does something kill a Rose Red that knows they’re in danger? What could be strong enough to kill even Six and Twelve, who were always together?” She chewed her bottom lip, clearly mulling over her next statement. “I want to warn you to be safe, but I don’t want you to fight it.”
“So, you think I’m not as strong as the other Rose Reds?” He growled.
Aurora flinched, which was equal to shouting ‘yes’ from the palace roof. “You might have,” she trailed off, thinking of a way to put things diplomatically, “lost a step. From where I sit, while the others moved forward, you stayed still.”
“Spit it out before the Nameless Ones take me, Aurora.”
She met his eyes, spine straight, shoulders back. Every inch of her the queen Darron and his nineteen companions placed on the throne. “Did you know Seventeen had a wife? Twenty formed a mercenary company. Nine returned to his homeland and became a regent. In big or small ways they stopped being Rose Reds. What have you done? You drink and you roll in the hay with a woman whose name you don’t remember most days.”
“I’m not weak.” Darron could hear the desperation in his voice and could only hope Aurora didn’t hear it too. “Don’t look at me that way.”
“What way is that?” Aurora’s voice was so soft it crushed Darron.
“With pity!” He balled his fist and slammed it into the wall. Behind the curtain he felt something break.
“There’s nothing wrong with pity Darron.” Slowly, Aurora stood and circled around the table toward Darron, but stopped when he lowered his head and bared his teeth. “It means I care about you, and I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.” Even he didn’t buy the lie.
Aurora shook her head and took a step closer. “You’re not. But you deserve to be, and it’s my fault you aren’t.”
“Don’t blame yourself Aurora,” he countered immediately.
She smiled down at him, now close enough to reach out and touch. “But I am. I made the Rose Reds. If it weren’t for me, whatever is out there hunting you wouldn’t be killing you.
“You saved me.” Darron looked up at her fully now. “You picked me out of that executioner’s line. If it weren’t for you, I’d have died an hour later.”
Like Darron was a wild wolf or a half-crazed bear, Aurora reached out and touched his furry cheek. Even through his beard her hand was one of the softest things he’d ever felt. He closed his eyes with a shudder, butting his cheek against her palm.
“You really don’t regret being my Rose Red?”
“Not for an instant.”
Aurora’s other hand touched his other cheek and gently pulled his head down to rest against her bosom. Through the soft cashmere samite of her dress, he could hear the bellows of her lungs and feel the gentle beat of her heart against his temple. When she spoke, her voice echoed in his head, drowning out all other thoughts and fears. “I did call you here for a reason, beyond just warning you.”
“Go on.”
Aurora’s delicate fingers carded through his hair and traced nonsense symbols against his scalp, making it difficult to focus on much else. “I have a son. I’m worried someone is going to threaten his life.”
“Has he been endangered yet?”
“No. But the court has always been a dangerous place, with the deaths of the Rose Reds I don’t want to take any more risks.”
Darron stood slowly and rested his hands on Aurora’s slight shoulders. Her already large eyes widened, and her red lips parted slightly to offer a glimpse of straight white teeth. This close, he could smell the magic on her, and her own natural scent beneath that, nutty and sweet. There was no possibility he could ever forget that scent, not in fifty years.
“Aurora.” He said firmly, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “I promise that I will protect your boy with my life.”
A smile broke through Aurora’s worried expression like down breaking through a stormy night and Darron had to swallow down his desire to crush her into an embrace against him. “Hopefully there will be no need to test that oath.”