When Dead Roses Bloom

ELSBETH

I woke before the bells. For a few quiet seconds, I lay still beneath the thin blanket, staring at the ceiling of my small room while the darkness pressed against the windows. The village was unusually quiet. There were no children running through the streets, no voices drifting up from the homes below, no laughter coming from the tavern at the edge of the square. Only the wind. It whispered against the shutters, carrying the bitter cold down from the mountains. I already knew what today was. I had known for weeks. Still, knowing something was coming and actually waking up on the morning it was supposed to happen were two entirely different things.

A soft knock came at my door. I didn't answer. The door opened anyway. Mara stepped inside. She was one of the older women from the village, though I had never known exactly how old she was. Her face had become a map of fine lines over the years, and her hands were rough from working in the fields and tending to the homes of others. She had always been kind to me in small ways, though never enough to make me believe she truly wanted me around. Today, she wouldn't meet my eyes. She carried a bundle of white fabric in her arms. My stomach twisted.

"Get up," she whispered.

I pushed myself upright. Mara placed the bundle on the end of my bed and began unfolding it. White. Not ordinary white. Funeral white. The fabric was soft and almost beautiful, which somehow made it worse. It was the kind of cloth reserved for the dead, meant to make a body look peaceful after life had already left it.

And today, I was the dead.

My fingers curled into the blanket. "Do I have to wear that?"

Mara's hands stopped. For a moment, she said nothing. Then she nodded. "You know the tradition."

I almost laughed. Tradition. That was what they called it. Everything cruel became tradition if enough generations repeated it. "I know."

She came around the bed and helped me stand. My legs felt strangely weak beneath me. She began removing my nightclothes and replacing them with the white garments they had prepared. I stood silently while she worked. Then I sat on the edge of my narrow bed while Mara tightened the laces down my back. Her fingers trembled as she worked. I noticed. She wouldn't look at me.

"Is it tight enough?" she asked.

I stared at her reflection in the small mirror across the room. "Does it matter?"

Her hands stopped. For a moment, I thought she might answer me honestly. Instead, she pulled the laces tighter. I winced.

"I'm sorry."

She wasn't. Not really. She was sorry that she had been chosen to dress me. Sorry that she had to be part of it. But she wasn't sorry enough to stop. None of them were.

When she finished, she brushed my long, midnight-black hair over my shoulders. Her fingers lingered for a moment before she reached for the brush and carefully ran it through my hair. She brushed it until it shone, then braided part of it back and left the rest hanging down my back. Someone had brought dead winter roses, and Mara carefully wove them through my hair. Their petals were pale and brittle, their stems wrapped carefully around my hair.

Dead flowers. How appropriate.

When she finished, she stepped away from me. "You look beautiful."

I looked at myself in the mirror. I hardly recognized the woman staring back. Beautiful wasn't the word that came to mind. I looked like someone already dead. My skin looked too pale against the white silk. My sky-blue eyes seemed enormous in my face, and the dark hair falling down my back only made the contrast more striking.

I looked like an offering. Because that's what I was.

"They said I should be honored," I whispered.

Mara lowered her eyes. I almost laughed. Almost. Mara reached up and adjusted the collar around my neck.

"Why me?"

Her hands froze. I hadn't meant to ask it aloud. She slowly lowered them. "You know why."

"No. I know what they said. That's different."

Her eyes finally met mine. There was guilt there. And pity. I hated both.

"They said no one would miss me," I continued quietly. "That's why, isn't it?"

Mara looked away. That was answer enough. I had always been the village outcast. The unwanted girl. The one people whispered about when they thought I couldn't hear them. I had never belonged there, and everyone knew it. So when the elders needed someone to offer to the thing beneath the mountain, my name had been an easy choice.

No husband. No children. No parents left to protest. No family powerful enough to make anyone care. No one important.

Mara swallowed. "I'm sorry."

Those two words almost broke me. Not because they comforted me. Because they didn't.

I nodded once. "Me too."

My wrists were tied together with a length of rough rope. The knots were tight enough that my fingers were already beginning to numb. I looked down at them.

"Do I at least get to know who tied these?"

No answer. Of course not. There were no answers for people like me. Only instructions. Walk. Don't resist. Don't cry. Accept your sacrifice. The elders had told me that I had been chosen for a great purpose.

For one last moment, I allowed myself to imagine that this was all some terrible mistake. That someone would come through the door and tell me the elders had changed their minds. That the ceremony had been canceled. That I could take off the white clothes and climb back into bed.

But the bells began ringing outside. Once. Twice. Then again. The sound carried through the village. There would be no miracle.

Mara opened the door. The cold struck me immediately. I stepped outside. The villagers were waiting.

No one spoke as I walked past them. Some looked away. Others watched me with fear. Not fear for me. Fear of what might happen if I wasn't given to the mountain. I understood then that they weren't sending me away because they hated me. That would have almost been easier. They were sending me away because they believed my life was worth less than their comfort.

The elders led me through the village and toward the mountains. I didn't look back. I couldn't bear to see the place that had never truly been home disappear behind me. The farther we walked, the colder it became. The mountains rose ahead of us, jagged and black against the pale sky. Snow whipped around our feet, and the wind screamed through the narrow passes. No one spoke.

I kept walking. One step. Then another. Until the entrance to the cavern appeared before us. The mouth of the mountain looked like a wound cut into the earth.

I stopped. My body refused to move.

One of the elders placed a hand against my shoulder. "Go."

I looked at him. "Will it hurt?"

His face changed. Only for a second. Then the mask returned. "You won't feel anything."

It was a lie. I knew it. He knew it. And somehow that made it worse.

I stepped inside. The villagers followed until we reached the threshold. The elders carried torches, their flames trembling in the freezing air. I could hear them whispering their prayers behind me. Prayers for themselves. Never for me.

Then the heavy stone doors slammed shut behind me. The sound echoed through the cavern with a sickening finality. I turned around. The torches of the village elders flickered beyond the threshold. Then they disappeared. One by one. Until there was nothing left.

No village. No elders. No way back. Only darkness.

I wrapped my arms around myself. I had been told to wait for the beast's jaws. So I waited.

At first, there was nothing. Then I heard it. A slow, heavy thrum. Something massive shifting somewhere in the darkness. My breath caught. The sound came again. Closer.

A cold, silvery light began bleeding into the darkness. It wasn't fire. It seemed to come from the creature itself.

And then I saw him.

Vaelen.

He emerged from the shadows slowly, impossibly large, his pale skin marked by obsidian scales that caught the silver light. His chest rose and fell with a slow, rumbling breath. His eyes found mine. Abyssal blue. Ancient.

I couldn't move.

This wasn't the mindless beast I had been warned about. He looked at me like he had been waiting. Like he had been waiting for a very long time.

And somehow, that frightened me more