Chapter 1
WHERE THE DEAD ROSES BLOOM
Chapter 1
The Maiden Beneath the Fir Trees
The forest was whispering again.
It began shortly before dusk, when the last pale fingers of sunlight slipped between the towering fir trees and the Black Forest surrendered itself to shadow.
At first, the sound was little more than a murmur.
A sigh beneath the branches.
A breath against the moss.
Then came the voices.
They drifted through the trees in fragments, carried upon a wind that touched neither the leaves nor the grass. Some whispered names. Others wept. One laughed softly, like a child who had discovered a secret no grown soul should ever know.
And somewhere beyond the ancient stones, a woman began to sing.
Her voice was beautiful.
Her song was not.
It spoke of a wedding without a bridegroom, a grave without a body, and a promise made beneath a moon that had never appeared in the heavens.
The villagers of Tannenbrück knew the song.
They had heard it in their mothers' arms and taught it to their children beside dying hearths. They knew every note, every pause, every trembling breath.
And they knew better than to sing along.
For the woman who sang beneath the fir trees was not meant to be disturbed.
She had been sleeping for a very long time.
And the forest preferred her that way.
---
Friedrich Albrecht first saw Tannenbrück beneath a sky the color of a bruised plum.
His horse had grown restless two miles before the village, tossing its head whenever the path narrowed beneath the trees. The animal's ears remained pinned backward, and twice it had refused to cross patches of shadow that Friedrich could see no reason to fear.
He had ridden through worse country.
He had crossed battlefields where the earth remained warm beneath his boots long after the fighting ended. He had watched men die with prayers on their lips and others die cursing the heavens. He had slept beneath ruined watchtowers while storms tore at the countryside, and he had once spent three days traveling through a mountain pass with nothing but a half-empty flask and a dying horse for company.
He did not frighten easily.
Yet something about the Schwarzwald unsettled him.
Perhaps it was the silence.
No birds called from the branches. No squirrels darted across the path. Even the insects seemed to have abandoned the forest, leaving only the rhythmic clop of his horse's hooves and the faint creaking of leather beneath his gloved hands.
The trees stood close together, their trunks dark with dampness and age. Moss swallowed the stones lining the path. Twisted roots rose from the earth like the knuckles of buried giants, and pale mushrooms clung to fallen logs in clusters resembling tiny, listening ears.
Friedrich glanced upward.
The canopy was so dense that the evening sky appeared only in narrow, broken slivers.
He had heard stories about this place since childhood.
Stories of hunters who returned without their shadows. Of travelers who wandered into the woods and emerged decades later, unchanged, insisting they had been gone only a single night. Of a ruined castle where candles burned behind sealed windows, though no living soul had crossed its threshold in generations.
And, of course, there was the maiden.
Every village had a ghost. Every old family had a tragedy. Friedrich had never paid much attention to either.
But he had paid attention when his father, feverish and trembling in the final hours of his life, had seized his wrist with surprising strength.
Find her.
Those had been his father's last words.
Not the priest.
Not the physician.
Not even his own family.
Her.
Friedrich had asked who she was, but his father had begun to weep before he could answer.
Then he had spoken a name Friedrich had never heard.
Lieselotte.
The name had lingered in Friedrich's thoughts for three weeks, becoming a splinter he could neither ignore nor remove.
Now he had come to the forest to discover why.
His father had left him one other thing: a tarnished silver ring bearing the Albrecht family crest, a black eagle clutching a thorn branch.
The ring had belonged to Friedrich's ancestors for centuries.
On its inner surface, beneath the worn engraving, someone had scratched four small words.
She was innocent once.
Friedrich had spent days trying to determine who had carved them.
He had found no answer.
Only a letter, a handful of old records, and a name that appeared in documents separated by generations.
Lieselotte Nachtblume.
Always the same name.
Always accompanied by the same warning.
Do not seek the maiden after sunset.
Friedrich had arrived in the Schwarzwald two hours before sunset.
He had already lost the light.
---
Tannenbrück appeared at the end of the road like a village that had been forgotten by God.
Its houses huddled together beneath steep roofs darkened by rain. Their timber frames were nearly black with age, and narrow chimneys sent ribbons of smoke into the fading sky. A little stone church stood at the village center, its bell tower leaning slightly to one side. Beyond it, the roofs descended toward a narrow river that disappeared into the forest.
A wooden sign marked the entrance.
TANNENBRÜCK.
Someone had carved a second message beneath the name.
The letters were deep and uneven, as though made with a knife in the hands of a frightened person.
LEAVE BEFORE THE BELLS RING THIRTEEN.
Friedrich regarded it for a moment.
Then he urged his horse forward.
The village fell silent as he entered.
A woman carrying a basket of apples stopped in the middle of the street. An old man sitting outside a tavern lowered his pipe. Two children playing beside a water trough were hurried indoors by a woman who glanced at Friedrich's black riding coat and then quickly looked away.
Nobody greeted him.
Nobody asked where he had come from.
They simply watched.
Friedrich had encountered suspicion before. His family name had not been spoken kindly in certain parts of Germany for a very long time. The Albrechts had once possessed considerable land, wealth, and influence, but the family had fallen into disgrace following a scandal no surviving account explained clearly.
In some places, people called them murderers.
In others, they called them oathbreakers.
One particularly old account described the Albrecht bloodline as a family that had forgotten the difference between love and possession.
Friedrich had dismissed the phrase as melodrama.
Standing beneath the villagers' stares, he found himself remembering it.
He dismounted outside the only tavern in the village.
A wooden sign creaked above its door, depicting a white stag beneath a crescent moon.
Warm light glowed through the windows.
For the first time since entering the forest, Friedrich smelled something familiar: woodsmoke, roasting onions, and bread.
He tied his horse beneath the awning and entered.
Conversation died instantly.
The tavern was small, with low beams and a stone fireplace blackened by generations of smoke. Candles stood in iron holders along the walls, illuminating rough wooden tables and shelves crowded with bottles. A faded religious painting hung above the hearth, its colors nearly swallowed by age.
Behind the counter stood a broad-shouldered woman with iron-gray hair braided tightly against her head.
She looked Friedrich over from his boots to his face.
"You're late," she said.
Friedrich removed his gloves.
"For what?"
The woman did not answer.
Instead, she glanced toward the narrow windows, where darkness had begun to gather between the houses.
"You should have reached us before sundown."
"I had no particular reason to hurry."
"Then you have a great deal to learn."
Friedrich almost smiled.
He had heard that sort of warning from old women before. They often possessed a talent for making ordinary things sound like matters of life and death.
"I require a room," he said. "A meal for myself and oats for my horse. I can pay."
The woman accepted his coins without looking at them.
"Name?"
"Friedrich Albrecht."
The coins slipped from her fingers.
They struck the wooden counter with a sharp, metallic clatter.
For several moments, she did not move.
Then she slowly raised her eyes.
"Albrecht," she repeated.
"Yes."
The woman looked toward the other patrons.
One by one, they lowered their gazes.
A man sitting beside the fireplace muttered something under his breath. Another crossed himself. Near the back of the room, an elderly woman began gathering her belongings with shaking hands.
Friedrich's patience thinned.
"Is there a problem?"
The tavern keeper stared at him as though he had announced his intention to dig up every grave in the village.
"Your family should never have come here."
"My family has owned land near this forest for generations."
"That isn't what I said."
The woman leaned closer.
Her voice fell so low that Friedrich had to bend toward her to hear.
"If you have any sense, Herr Albrecht, you'll leave Tannenbrück tomorrow morning. You'll take the road east, and you won't look back."
"Why?"
She studied him.
For a moment, something almost like pity crossed her face.
"Because the forest knows your name."
Before Friedrich could question her further, a bell rang from the church tower.
One deep, mournful note.
The tavern keeper went pale.
Outside, the last of the villagers hurried indoors.
Someone bolted the front door.
Friedrich turned toward the window.
The sky had darkened completely.
He counted the seconds between the echoes.
Then came a second bell.
And a third.
By the fourth, the tavern keeper had extinguished every candle except the one nearest the door.
By the fifth, the old woman near the fireplace had begun whispering a prayer.
By the sixth, Friedrich noticed that every mirror in the tavern had been covered with cloth.
The seventh bell rang.
The eighth followed.
Friedrich's hand drifted toward the hilt of his sword.
"What is this?"
"Be silent," the tavern keeper whispered.
The ninth bell rolled through the village.
Then the tenth.
The eleventh.
Friedrich glanced at the church tower through the window.
He could see its dark silhouette above the rooftops, but the bell itself was hidden behind the wooden slats.
The twelfth note sounded.
Silence followed.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then a woman's voice rose from the forest.
Soft.
Melodious.
Unbearably sad.
It carried through the village as though the distance between the trees and the tavern did not exist.
Friedrich could not understand the words, yet the melody stirred something deep within him. A strange ache spread beneath his ribs, followed by a sensation so vivid that he nearly staggered.
He saw a ballroom illuminated by hundreds of candles.
White flowers covered the floor.
A woman stood at the end of a long aisle, her face hidden beneath a veil.
Someone held Friedrich's hand.
Someone was crying.
Then the vision vanished.
He found himself gripping the counter.
The tavern keeper stared at him.
"What did you hear?" she whispered.
Friedrich swallowed.
"A song."
The woman's expression crumpled.
"Oh, God help us."
From somewhere in the church tower came a sound that should not have been possible.
The thirteenth bell rang.
And the forest answered.
---
Friedrich left the tavern an hour later.
The tavern keeper had refused to give him a room, though she had pressed a small iron charm into his palm before practically pushing him through the door.
"Keep it on you," she had said. "And if you hear someone calling your name from the trees, do not answer."
He had asked what would happen if he did.
She had shut the door.
Now the village lay beneath a blanket of mist.
Every window was dark. Every door was locked. Even the church bell had fallen silent, its tower looming above the rooftops like a finger raised in warning.
Friedrich walked toward the stable to retrieve his horse.
He had taken barely a dozen steps when he heard the song again.
This time, it came from the forest.
He stopped.
The melody was faint, drifting between the trees beyond the last cottage.
He should have returned to the tavern.
He should have found another place to sleep.
Instead, he turned toward the sound.
The path began where the village road dissolved into tangled grass. Ancient stones lined its edges, their surfaces covered in moss and pale lichen. The farther Friedrich walked, the colder the air became.
The song continued.
He recognized no words, but he found himself moving in time with its rhythm.
The iron charm in his pocket grew warm.
Then hot.
Friedrich pulled it out.
It was a simple piece of iron shaped like a little star, with thirteen points surrounding a hollow center.
A thin line of red light glimmered along its edges.
He stared at it.
Then he heard a whisper behind him.
"Friedrich."
He turned sharply.
Nobody stood on the path.
The village had vanished behind the mist.
He looked toward the trees.
"Who's there?"
The song stopped.
For a moment, the silence was absolute.
Then a woman laughed softly.
Not mockingly.
Not cruelly.
It was the sound of someone hearing a familiar voice after an eternity of loneliness.
Friedrich stepped between the trees.
Branches brushed his shoulders. Wet leaves clung to his boots. The darkness seemed to thicken around him, swallowing the faint light from the village until the only illumination came from the moon overhead.
It was a strange moon.
Too large.
Too red.
Its light stained the forest floor, turning the pale mist pink and painting the trunks of the fir trees in the color of old blood.
Friedrich walked deeper.
He passed a fallen tree covered in white mushrooms. He crossed a narrow stream where the water ran black over smooth stones. He passed a statue of a woman whose face had been worn away by weather, though the rest of the stone remained remarkably intact.
Beyond it, the forest opened into a small clearing.
And there she stood.
For several heartbeats, Friedrich forgot how to breathe.
The woman stood beneath an ancient fir tree, her bare feet resting on a carpet of moss and dead leaves. Her gown was ivory, delicate and old-fashioned, with sleeves that fell in soft folds around her wrists. The hem drifted against the earth, yet not a single leaf clung to its fabric.
Her hair fell past her waist in pale silver-blond waves.
Small white flowers had been woven into it.
Her skin was luminous beneath the moonlight, so pale that she seemed almost translucent. Yet it was her eyes that held him still.
They were blue.
Not the blue of a summer sky, nor the bright blue of a jewel.
They were the blue of a frozen lake beneath winter clouds.
She watched him with an expression he could not understand.
Recognition.
Grief.
And something that looked terribly like relief.
Friedrich's hand tightened around the iron charm.
The woman glanced at it.
A shadow passed across her face.
"You shouldn't have come here," she said.
Her voice was the voice from the song.
Friedrich drew himself upright.
"I was looking for someone."
"I know."
"Then you know why I'm here."
She lowered her gaze to the ring on his hand.
The silver eagle caught the moonlight.
For the first time, the woman's composure faltered.
She took one step backward.
"No."
The word was scarcely audible.
Friedrich approached her.
"Your name is Lieselotte Nachtblume."
She looked at him as though the name itself had wounded her.
"Who told you that?"
"My father."
"Your father is dead."
Friedrich went still.
He had not told her that.
Before he could respond, she lifted her eyes to his face.
For one impossible moment, her expression changed.
The sorrow disappeared.
In its place came naked terror.
"No," she whispered again. "Not you."
Friedrich felt the forest close around them.
"What do you mean?"
She stared at him.
Then, with a trembling hand, she reached toward his face.
Her fingers stopped just short of his cheek.
"I watched you die," she said.
A cold sensation spread through Friedrich's chest.
"You've never met me."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"That is what you said last time."
The words seemed to hang in the air between them.
Friedrich could hear his own heartbeat.
He wanted to demand an explanation, to seize her wrist and force the truth from her. Yet something in her expression stopped him.
She looked less like a monster than a woman standing at the edge of a grave she had never escaped.
He lowered his voice.
"Who do you think I am?"
Lieselotte looked toward the red moon.
When she spoke, her voice was barely more than a breath.
"Konrad."
The name struck him like a physical blow.
Friedrich stumbled backward.
The forest tilted.
For an instant, he saw another face superimposed upon his own reflection in a pool of black water.
The same dark hair.
The same eyes.
The same scarless cheek.
But the man in the reflection wore a black velvet coat embroidered with silver thread, and his expression was one of desperate devotion.
Behind him stood Lieselotte, dressed in white.
Her hands were stained with blood.
The vision shattered.
Friedrich found himself on one knee, gasping.
When he looked up, Lieselotte had moved closer.
She knelt before him, her ivory gown spreading across the moss.
"Please," she whispered. "Tell me you don't remember."
Friedrich struggled to speak.
"Remember what?"
She touched the ring on his hand.
The moment her fingers brushed the silver, the iron charm in his palm cracked.
A sharp sound split the clearing.
The red moon vanished behind a wall of black clouds.
All around them, the forest erupted into whispers.
Dozens of voices.
Hundreds.
They spoke Friedrich's name, Lieselotte's name, and a third name neither of them seemed willing to acknowledge.
Then came the sound of footsteps.
Slow.
Heavy.
Approaching from somewhere beyond the trees.
Lieselotte's head snapped toward the darkness.
The tenderness vanished from her face.
Fear returned, but this time it was not for herself.
She seized Friedrich's wrist.
Her fingers were ice-cold.
"You must leave."
"What is that?"
"Something that should have remained dead."
The footsteps drew nearer.
Friedrich reached for his sword, but Lieselotte tightened her grip.
"Listen to me," she said urgently. "If you hear my voice calling to you tonight, do not follow it. If you see me standing beyond the trees, do not approach me. And whatever happens, do not let anything wearing my face touch you."
He stared at her.
"What in God's name are you?"
For a moment, the forest became silent.
Lieselotte looked at him with an expression so old and sorrowful that it seemed to belong to another century.
"Once," she said, "I was a woman who believed love could save me."
A tear slipped down her cheek.
It did not fall.
It hardened into a tiny crystal of ice against her skin.
"Now I am what remains of that belief."
The footsteps stopped.
A voice emerged from the darkness behind her.
A man's voice.
Friedrich's voice.
"Lieselotte, my love."
The maiden went deathly still.
Friedrich felt every hair on his arms rise.
The voice spoke again, tender and familiar.
"I have come to take you home."
Lieselotte released Friedrich's wrist.
Slowly, she rose to her feet.
For the first time, he saw something beneath her sorrow that frightened him more than the forest, the impossible moon, or the voice wearing his own.
Hatred.
Pure and ancient.
She turned toward the darkness.
"You are not him," she whispered.
The voice laughed.
"Not yet."
The trees shuddered.
Something moved between the trunks, tall and slender, its shape obscured by the mist. Friedrich caught a glimpse of a pale hand, a black sleeve, and a silver ring identical to the one on his own finger.
Then the figure disappeared.
The whispers ceased.
The moon returned.
And Lieselotte was gone.
Friedrich stood alone beneath the fir tree, the broken iron charm lying in his palm.
At his feet rested a single crimson rose.
Its rested a single crimson rose.
Its petals were soft and fresh, its stem black as charcoal.
He bent to pick it up.
A thorn pierced his finger.
A bead of blood welled against his skin.
The rose shuddered.
Then, before his eyes, its petals curled inward and turned to ash.
Beneath the ash lay a tiny scrap of yellowed parchment.
Friedrich unfolded it with trembling fingers.
The handwriting was old-fashioned, elegant, and unmistakably familiar.
It was his own.
Four words had been written across the page.
Do not love her again.
Friedrich read them twice.
Then a final line appeared beneath the first, the ink spreading across the parchment as though an invisible hand were writing it.
This time, she will remember.
Far away, beneath the ruined castle, thirteen coffins trembled in the darkness.
Twelve lids remained sealed.
The thirteenth stood open.
And somewhere deep beneath the earth, a woman began to scream.
End of Chapter 1
