Bloodlines
Prologue:
Bloodlines
It started with a boy, too old to be child, too young to be man. Some little prince who disobeyed his father. But all such events are significant, and no less this one.
He knew he wasn’t supposed to be playing in the back of the rose garden. That’s what his father had told him, what his father’s father had told his father, reaching back into the darkening centuries, when light was a privilege, and darkness a way of life. You can go anywhere but there, they said, for there lies danger.
But our Prince didn’t heed his warning. No, he was all round eyes, youthful curiosity, and of course, bravery. Foolish bravery, enough to scorn the craggy face of his father, and wander to the back of the garden through the hedges of shadow-limbed roses, through the three rings of stone-circled thorns, where the back of the garden met the dark Mere Trees, their leaves slick-backed and black.
The light of the full moon outlined the garden and carved out the archway in pale luminescence. It fell on the gateway, the entrance rippling like the surface of a disturbed lake.
If only his heart had stopped. If only his breath had hitched. If only, if only—he might have turned around. But he didn’t, and the gateway pressed upon him; the air shifted thick as oil, settling over him with the warm wet of blood.
On the other side, he beheld wonders. Lightning that split a sky reddened with twilight, the hiss of petal and thorn, and the cool bitterness of shadows beyond light.
There, he met a sorceress with eyes as gray as moonlight flashing over stone. There, she beheld him. There, she chose.
When he returned, he didn’t come empty-handed. He carried a rose coiled around his arm; a burgundy bloom resting in his palm, petals brushing his fingers, as if mid-whisper, mid-caress.
But the problem with boys—the problem with princes—is that you can never tell how they’ll grow. From gentleman to tyrant, they all start the same—a little boy with too much curiosity. And even sorceresses can be wrong.
Part One:
Bud
Once, there were two tribes,
A king for one, a shaman for the other.
One with eyes of blackest dark
Another fair as gold.
“For each a rose,” The Enchantress said,
“A rose to protect.” And with those words
gave them the World beyond the archway.
Canticle of the Rose
Stanza 1, Verse 1
Book of the Forgotten Rose
I.
Calling
Year of Our Lord 1511:
Spring: Ile de Vaisseau
The garden was calling Corrine, again.
Of the gardens around the castle, the rose garden had once been her favorite. When she was little, her father would take her by her tiny hand and walk through it with her, letting her touch and see and smell every rose she could reach.
It had been a wondrous place to her then. Unlike the herb garden or the courtyard flowers, the roses were native to the island. Pathways ran through them, curled like the vines they protected. The roses were bursts of color light and dark—pinks as fresh as new skin, dark purples that shimmered with velvet sheen, and of course, crimsons so deep they were nearly black, save for when dew touched them and each droplet turned red, like a pinprick of blood.
It fascinated her.
But now, at ten years old, something about it was wrong. It made Corrine feel strange, like there were eyes watching her the deeper she walked in the garden, and that she had to flee back to the castle to escape the searching, invisible gaze. Sometimes, she thought she could feel a hand run a finger down her neck, beckoning, through the softness of petal and thorn.
She was afraid to tell anyone. Her father might listen, but he’d think it a child’s dream, a fantasy, and her mother would laugh and tell her she spent too much time with the cook’s son. Her sister, Agatha, was too consumed with other things to think her words of any worth—too enamored with the suffering that being away from court brought her—enraptured with the stream of letters that came to the island from friends and potential lovers.
But she told Damien.
He laughed, “You’re sure about that? Looks like a bunch of flowers to me.”
Corrine sat on the dirty steps that led from the kitchen to the herb garden, dust staining the yellow lace of her dress. She didn’t care; she hated it anyway. Whenever she was shoved into it she felt like she was being stuffed into the lemon tarts her father bought when they were on the mainland.
She wrung her hands together and looked over her shoulder. From the stairs, just beyond the lip of the wall that ran alongside the kitchen, she could just make out the back rim of the stones that housed the rose garden.
“It hurts to go there, Damien.” She looked down at the cool gray of the steps. They were worn and rutted with deep crags—looking at them was almost soothing. Almost.
Damien smirked and leaned against the wall beside the short steps. He had cloth wrapped around his head—not high, like she read some of the Arabic princes wore their turbans, but lower, flatter to his skull. Next to his golden skin, it was almost white, despite being caked in dirt. His pants were even dirtier and loose, ending a few inches above his brown sandals, showing off a paler, skinny ankle. Despite all his mother’s attempts to keep him clean, Damien always managed to be covered in grime, but then Corrine’s mother often said the same thing about her.
“Women,” Damien snorted, laughing to himself, “always fearing the unknown.”
“I know I didn’t hear that child.”
Corrine usually found it funny that Damien’s mother could hear the stupid things he said from across a room, but it unnerved her when she could hear them through walls. Claudia walked out through the door above them and shut it behind her. She was a big woman, with deep, reddish brown skin, almost as dark as the Mere trees that blanketed the island. She was shades darker than Damien, who had skin the color of caramel, and who was as thin as Claudia was round. Even so, Corrine thought Claudia was beautiful: her eyelashes were dark, and they curled to frame her honey-colored eyes; the same color as Damien’s. Corrine wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to have eyes that color. Her own were darker than Claudia’s skin, the same black that her father’s were.
There were people in the castle who didn’t trust how light Damien’s mother’s eyes were. Corrine had once heard some of the other servants say that there was something not right about her; that she spent too much time in the kitchen, even if she was the head cook. That it wasn’t only spices she mixed into her cooking, but enchantments as well. That she had bewitched Corrine’s father and the family with him. Corrine didn’t believe them, but she hadn’t met anyone with hearing as good as Claudia’s.
It didn’t matter. Despite Claudia’s stern temperament, Corrine was as fond of Damien’s mother as she was of him, and Corrine suspected Claudia felt the same about her—even if she could give a glare that could make thunderclouds flee.
She was giving Damien such a look now. He blanched, turning as gray as the sky above him. “Mother, I—”
“You know better than that.” She looked down at him over her nose, her plump mouth downturned. “You would do well to heed a woman’s fears. It may prevent that mouth of yours from being your doom.”
She walked down the steps, and gave Corrine a brief nod of acknowledgement. She didn’t wait for Corrine to return it, but went to the herb garden, the hem of her skirt bouncing from the movement of her round bottom.
Corrine looked at Damien. He frowned, and watched his mother leave. Then he turned in the direction of the garden wall and stared at the stones as if seeing through them.
“Have…have you been to the back of the gardens?” Corrine asked.
Damien frowned. If his mother’s warning didn’t give him pause, Corrine’s voice did. It wasn’t often that she showed fear, and never to him. Maybe now, that thought had occurred to him.
But even if it had, he couldn’t feel the eyes, the invisible gaze that came through the wall, penetrating the stone as easily as it did her skin.
“No, but maybe we should,” he said.
Corrine rose from the steps. The air was thick with waiting rain, and the spring had brought a humidity with it that made her skin sticky. She made a distracted attempt to wipe some of the residual dirt from her dress, and instead made a brown smear across the yellow lace. She winced; she’d pay for it later.
“That pretty dress of yours is going to get ruined.”
She stuck her tongue out at Damien. “At least it fits me,” she said, and pointed a finger at Damien’s ankles.
“Better too short than a lemon cake.”
Corrine laughed, but it was cut short. Her eyes went back to the stone wall.
“If we’re going to…”
“Yeah.” Damien shivered, then shook himself loose. “You’ve made me all tense. My mother too.”
Corrine’s eyes didn’t leave the doorway. Something about it pulled at her—the way the stones caught the dim gray light, surrounding it with a glow.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just…”
There was a pause, a breath held by the wind, in the moist, thick air.
She took a step towards the garden door, then another, then another. Each one came faster until she was running. She heard Damien call for her, then follow. His sandals slapped against the dusty earth.
She reached the door and found the iron ring without looking. She yanked it open hard enough that it slammed against the stone. But she only hard it in the distance, for she was through before it hit.
Damien continued to call her. She didn’t hear it, or maybe couldn’t. It was only an echo in the back of her mind.
The stones of the patio passed, and then she was in the garden, rushing between the hedges and along the path that slithered through thousands of roses, past the statues that glowed white against the gray morning. More than once, thorns found the chance to bite at her dress.
Corrine didn’t stop until she found it.
At the back of the garden, where the labyrinth of hedges gave way to trees, was an archway made of wind-burned stone. It sat taller than her by four or five times, wrapped in dim daylight, waiting amongst the vines as if it had always been there. As if the earth itself had long ago accepted its existence. As if it had been waiting to find her.
She placed a shaking hand on the stone. It was cold, and sent a chill coursing through her arms. She pulled her hand back, as if she’d been scratched.
“Coooooorriine…”
She turned around. Damien was behind her, but his movements were slow, lethargic, like he was running through thick liquid. A strange languidness came over her, like her mind had been dipped in water, and the entire world was afloat. Lightning flashed—drenching the archway in light that became fluid and reflective, and it reflected onto its walls like a pool of contained water.
The sky collapsed into thunder, and rain fell upon the garden.
Corrine took a breath. It came out slow, pushing out from her lips like a bubble. Her hair rose around her, floating in fine tendrils, now soaked from the rain like strands of seaweed. She took a step forward into the archway, and a great weight pressed on her shoulders, sucking and pulling her in.
Then, it passed. Her hair fell dry around her, and the light was gone.
But so was the garden.
Cloudless twilight spread over the sky—stained red as a blooming bruise. It colored the tops of the trees, the leaves dark as ink dripping form a pen. The trees glowed shadows, releasing them like a flame releases light, casting them into the air, onto the ground, onto Corrine. It felt like they sought her skin, as if they could drink in paleness.
And all around, there were rose vines—dark and corded as rope, their thorns latched onto the flesh of the trees, their teeth deep in their bark. Their scent caught the air—it burned in Corrine’s nose, thick in the humidity that made sweat pool under her arms.
There was no sound, and Corrine’s thoughts seemed to echo around her. Where was she?
There was the sound of footsteps behind her. She turned—Damien. His face was ashen, his dark skin gray and brightened only by his fear.
“Damien?”
“We need to leave. We need to leave now.”
“But I—”
“You were right. This isn’t good. We can’t stay here.”
“I’d like to know where here is first.” Corrine frowned at him. “Wasn’t I the one who was scared?”
Damien glared at her. “I finally admit you’re right, and you want to explore?”
Corrine rolled her eyes, and started to walk through the trees.
“Wait for me!”
Damien followed her. The trees, thin as they were, were packed tight together. Corrine had to weave between them, Damien close at her heels.
“Ow.”
Corrine looked back. Damien was staring at his hand. Blood was pooling in the center of his palm—not much, but still, blood.
“What happened?”
“Thorns. This tree is covered in them.”
Corrine looked at the tree close to him. Sure enough, there was a massive vine there—at least as thick as three of her fingers, latched onto the tree like a snake on a victim. It looked like it was trying to squeeze the life from the bark. And it wasn’t only this one. If she turned around, she could see vines just like it on most, if not all the trees—some at the center, some wrapped around like bracelets on branches—some even circled the thinner ones like rings.
“Well, don’t touch it again.”
Damien frowned, and wiped his hand against the bark. “No, I think I’ll give it a hug instead.”
Corrine ignored him. She could feel something like the draw that pulled her to the garden here, like a finger had pressed itself under her ribcage and was pulling her forward.
Then, through a break in the trees, she saw something shining.
“Is that water?
Corrine took a few steps more and cleared the last of the trees.
She was standing on a shore, or at least, it felt like it. Her feet sank down as if on sand, but a thick mist ran low over it, rolling smoky over her ankles, hiding her feet. It wafted off the lake in front of her, the water smooth and still as glass otherwise.
Everything was silent. Still. She realized, finally, that there were no birds here, no rustling life underfoot, no insects flying in the air. Just mist and water.
Damien came up behind her.
“I don’t think we should be here.”
Staring at the lake, and with an unsettling feeling creeping into her belly, Corrine nodded. “We should go.”
“Wait, is that a tree?”
Damien pointed out into the lake. Corrine frowned.
“A tree? There’s only water.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, they fell away, because she saw it.
It was hard to see, at first. You might miss it, if you couldn’t make out its silhouette against the mist. It was large enough that unless you saw its edges, you’d think it was just the gray distance.
It rose in the middle of the lake, and as Corrine stared at it, layers of fog started to lift from the bottom up. Layer after layer of the tree’s thick body appeared, and it rose high above them—bigger than any tree Corrine had ever seen before. It was bigger than some castles, with the branches as wide as towers.
“How did I not see that before?”
Damien shrugged. “Corrine, can we go? Please.”
“I said we could. Stop being so scared.”
“I’m not scared—I’m cautious!”
“And neither one is like you.” Corrine crossed her arms. “Why are you now?”
“Because something here doesn’t feel right!”
Corrine’s eyes shifted downward. The water was so smooth. She’d never seen water so still unless it was frozen.
“Let me just look at the water, then we can go, all right?”
Damien scowled and crossed his arms. “And you were the scared one? Fine.”
Corrine crept up to the water. It didn’t even move against the short—there was no sway, no ripples, waves—anything. She leaned over the water’s edge and peered down into the water. Beneath the softening mist, it looked nearly lavender.
As she looked down, the remaining mist parted, as if hiding from her gaze. She beheld her own reflection, staring back as clear as in a mirror. But there was something wrong with it. She couldn’t put her finger on what, but something was off.
“Corrine…” Damien started.
She studied it closer. No, those were her lips, as always just a little too full for her chin, and those were her eyes, dark as ever. Her hair was a tangled mess-it had come loose from its pins and was falling into dark curls across her shoulder. But that wasn’t a surprise either.
Maybe it was the second pair of eyes.
Corrine jumped backward. The eyes had been just above her head, clear and blue and faceless. Where had they come from? Had they been from the lake, or had she just imagined them?
“Corrine?”
“I think you’re right, Damien. Let’s go.”
“Finally.”
They started back for the trees. They had just moved past the inner thicket when Corrine saw it and stopped.
A dark mound was nestled amongst the thick foliage. It was as dark as the trees themselves, and form a distance it was almost shapeless. Corrine had nearly missed it.
“What now?” Damien asked. Corrine pointed at the mound and he frowned.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Corrine said.
Corrine moved in closer. It looked like it was bound in cloth, but she couldn’t tell. She took a step closer and Damien grabbed her wrist.
“No, Corrine. This place—there’s something wrong here. I know you can tell.”
And she could. It was a crawling foreboding that sat just beneath her skin, writhing at the feel of this place. She felt like a sinner walking between the pew of a church, and yet there was something deeper. A yearning curiosity that nibbled at her ribs, urging her to stay. And if she were honest, she knew which urge would win.
“One look?”
Damien gave her an exasperated look, and glanced nervously over her shoulder as if he expected something to jump out at him. When nothing did, he sighed.
“Fine. But only because I’m curious too.”
Corrine nodded, and they moved towards the mound. The closer they became, the more it took shape.
“Is that cloth?” Damien asked.
It was. The statues was covered in cloth—because that’s what it was, a statue. It was taller than Corrine and Damien put together, and from a distance it was so overgrown you couldn’t tell what lay beneath the vines that coiled around it. But up close, you could see.
It was a man sitting on something. His face was half-broken across the nose and through the lips. Where it wasn’t broken, it was deformed, the nose too big, the eyes too wide, the jaw too low and harshly carved. The cloth that covered it was actually a robe the color of burned parchment, frayed and tattered where they could see it beneath the growth.
“What a strange statue.” Corrine reached a hand out to touch the base of it. That was where the growth was worst—she could see it was a throne of some kind, carved out of stone, but much more than that she couldn’t tell.
Damien reached out and grabbed her hand.
“We need to leave, remember? We’ve seen it. Let’s go.”
She looked at him, frowned, but nodded. “You’re right, I know.”
They turned to move when they heard it.
“What was—”
It was a low, distant rumbling, as if the earth were moving but the ground was still. It was the sound that preceded the cavalry of war….or the stampede of beasts.
They had no time to react before the statue began to move.
It rose up from beneath the vines, snapping and popping them as it stood. The stone of its face worked and moved, the color changing from gray to white, then to a dark, fleshy brown. The skull peeked out from the broken, malformed face.
Corrine stood frozen, and then all around her, the sound grew closer and closer, filling the air not with the pounding of hooves, but with the hissing of serpents.
Damien grabbed her.
“Run!”
His touch drew her out of her stupor, and they fled. They sprinted through the trees, Corrine clutching her skirts as they did. And all the while the sound grew and grew until Corrine could feel it thrum in her skull.
Her skirt caught on a loose vines from one of the trees and she fell. She pulled at it, but her dress was stuck to thorns as large as her hands. They hadn’t been that big before, had they? How hadn’t she noticed?
“Corrine!” Damien screamed and started to run back for her. Corrine pulled and pulled, but the dress wouldn’t give.
Then the statue came.
It came in a swath of dark mist, making the air shift and quiver like summer heat off stone. It had the form of a man in a beige robe, cut through with black lines like the lightning above them—and slick, as if it had been drenched in oil. A hood concealed its face. It loomed above them, taller than any man.
Her eyes drifted down, and she held back a scream. There, at the hem of its robe, vines encircled the creature like snakes and curled up its body. She could almost taste the blood in her mouth as her heart leapt into it.
As if drawn to them, as if seeing Corrine and Damien, the creature turned in their direction.
“Leave. Now.”
It spoke in slow succession, each syllable rasped out as if from a slit throat. It echoed not in the air, but in the earth, in the trees. In her own bones. It was a mournful sound, like hearing the voice of an old friend years after their death. Somewhere, deep inside, Corrine felt pity. But more than that, she felt fear. It was screaming at her to run, but she couldn’t move.
“Leave.” The creature groaned. It lurched forward. “Now.”
It came closer and extended a single robed arm. Its hand came out from the folds of the robe—the flesh there was parched, sucked close and pinched to the bone. A long, yellow nail pointed at them, and a single spider crawled down from the tip. Around the hem of the robe, the vines coiled forward—the buds spread wide, blooming until tiny, fanged mouths emerged from them, the teeth dripping clear, perfumed saliva.
“Corrine, we have to—argh!”
She turned. Damien was being held back by a vine. It coiled around his arm, sinking its thorns down like fangs. He screamed and grabbed at it, scratching and pulling as his fingers bled.
Above him a crimson bloom hovered, teeth flashing.
“Damien!”
“Corrine, run!”
Corrine looked behind her. The creature was coming, and the vines were shifting. They were moving all around—not just off the creature, but from the trees too. They dropped from the canopy, each one blooming and closing and blooming again over a mouth of fangs.
She screamed. She turned and started to claw at the vine that held Damien. Her fingers bled in protest, and the rose swooped down. She punched it in the side of the its head, and petals fell. It hissed and released him, slithering away. Still, the roses came.
“Damien!” She grabbed his hand. “We need to go!”
He shook. White froth poured form his mouth.
“Damien!” The creature was getting closer. It’s wide dark eyes were still on her, glowing with eerie light.
“Corrine!”
An unearthly screech shattered the air. The red light of the twilight grew stronger, painting the trees with blood. Corrine grabbed Damien and pulled him over her shoulder. His head flipped backward, and she ran through the underbrush, trying to carry him.
The trees were dense. She moved through them as fast as she could, but Damien weighed more than her. His foaming spit drenched the side of her dress and ran down the side. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold him.
She broke through the edge of the trees, again coming to the lake. But this time, the sand wasn’t solid. It was soft and moist beneath her feet. Her steps began to sink into the earth.
She threw a quick look behind her. The treetops were swarming with vines. The forest was alive with the thrum f the roses. The low hiss of it slithered through her skin. She moved closer and closer the lake. It was no longer still, but writhing, the surface bubbling and swelling, the lakeshore creeping closer and closer.
She tripped.
She slammed face first into the muck. Damien fell with her. She tried to get up, but mud sucked her leg up to the knee. Her hands were sinking too, and her fingertips disappeared in gray-brown earth.
Above her, the hiss grew. Her vision was skirted by red, black, and green. Panic filled her lungs with silent screams. She looked up. Damien was sinking too, but he wasn’t struggling. His head had turned to the side, and he stared up at her with white, unseeing eyes. “No!:
She reached for him. Her hands pulled up sticky strands of sludge; she couldn’t touch him. The mud pulled her back down. He was just out of reach—just a little too far.
And then they came.
They crawled down from the trees, slithering down the trunks and lowering themselves to the sand. Some of these were different—not full-grown blossoms, but buds with split heads and rows of sharp, serrated tusks that jutted from the openings. Their leaves shook as they wove between the descending heads of the bigger blossoms.
They were red, they were burgundy, they were black—all as saturated as a pool of still blood.
Corrine reached again for Damien, stretching as far as she could.
The roses found him first.
They circled over his body, twisting over and under him through the mud, wrapping their bodies around him like a constrictor and sitting him upright. The roses started to squeeze. One bud sank tucks into Damien’s throat, and he released a gurgling, wet moan. Blood drooled from his neck.
“No!” Corrine shrieked, reaching for him again, grabbing hold of handfuls of muddy sand, trying to find something to pull herself toward him. Damien moaned again, and the vine bit deeper. His head rolled back and his tongue lolled out.
The hissing grew all around her. There was another sound too—an oddness of air pushed away, displaced. Corrine’s skin grew wet, cold. Water swelled around her, sloshing with mist. The lake was rising, growing around her. It rose up to her neck. Her gown sunk heavy beneath her feet.
It stood a foot away. This close, she could see the eyes, dark and luminescent within the receded skin of its eyelids. At the forehead, a piece of dried skin sloughed off the skull, exposing age-withered bone. The creature loomed over her, a tower made of parchment skin, and this close, Corrine could see the scars and pockmarks that blemished what was left of its face.
There was no scream loud enough to break the quiet of her throat.
Its eyes focused on her. This close, she could see the pain in that haunted, distant gaze.
She could see the fear.
The end.
Those two words echoed. Its mouth hadn’t moved. The air repeated it—and Corrine couldn’t tell if the world around her was speaking, or if the words just sang inside her own head.
The vines came slithering up behind the creature and waited, their teeth bared and dripping.
Help me, it said.
The vines entangled it, pulling tight around its body. The thorns sliced through the remaining skin. It bled like a tree bleeds—slow, thick, and syrupy. She began to be able to see its bones, then through them, all the way to the tree in the distance.
Then, they found its face. It peeled away like a seal of wax on a letter. Beneath the remaining, paper flesh wasn’t bone, but skin. Pale flesh poked out, cracked through with bone, and dark hair fell over a lowered brow.
The face of the man broken inside that creature’s shell looked down at her with more misery than she could ever fathom.
The end.
The roses came for his face once more, and her throat found its final scream.
The vines pulled him to the ground, cocooned him with thorns like razors, and then the remaining blooms turned their attention to her. Their petals bristled like a cat’s fur.
The water continued to rise around her face, and she choked on it. It swam in her nose, filling her nostrils, her lungs. She coughed, and the strange sky above grew dark.
The last thing she was the vines coming for her, and then all went black.