The Branded Rose Prophecy

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Asher stayed silent, schooling his face to stillness so he would not give anything away. Eira was watching him carefully, reading his reaction. She watched enemies over the edge of her sword in just the same way. Eira was the strategist. She saw patterns before anyone else and had led armies to victory because of it.

  Then she smiled. “Defending that right and winning, too. I am glad you are not yet an earl, or I would be worried about Stefan’s longevity as Annarr.”

  Stefan and Roar stepped up on either side of her. “You are heading back to New York?” Roar asked.

  “To sleep for a week, if I can,” Asher said in agreement.

  “Walk with me,” Stefan said, moving past him toward the big doors at the end of the hall.

  Asher turned and kept pace with him and Roar fell in on the other side of Stefan.

  “You were eloquent in your defense of friendship with a human,” Stefan said.

  “I simply spoke the truth as I see it.”

  “That is what surprises me,” Stefan said. “You are full of contradictions, Askr Brynjarson. Your own brother learned one of the hardest lessons we of the Kine have ever had to face.”

  Asher glanced at Roar. He was walking with his gaze ahead, his expression fixed. Even now, he could not speak of it.

  “It is your brother’s tragedy that has formed the principles of laun more than any other single experience, yet you choose to ignore all that and embrace the dangers of a human dalliance, instead.”

  “I am not dallying with her,” Asher shot back.

  Stefan lifted his hand. Peace. “Any relationship with a human carries the same perils. I can already see the signs in you, Asher. You have vigorously defended your human here tonight. That is not something you would have done with such zealousness if you didn’t care for her. From such simple beginnings, all things grow.”

  “Then tell me not to see her again,” Asher said. “I know you wanted to.”

  “Would you obey, if I say you must cut her out of your life?”

  Asher hesitated. “If I don’t protect her, if I don’t watch out for her, she will....” He blew out his breath, rubbing at the back of his neck where the hair used to be. It would take a few days to get used to having short hair again.

  Stefan smiled and rested his hand on Asher’s arm. “You see?” he asked simply. “I would rather keep you safe within my hall, where we can protect you when we need to, than have you defy everyone and be left exposed when you are most vulnerable.”

  Asher stared at him. “She’s just a friend,” he said weakly.

  “A friend that makes you feel like a superhero. Yes, I understand,” Stefan replied.

  “Lord Asher,” Sindri called, hurrying up.

  “I hope your sleep is a peaceful one, Asher,” Stefan said and pulled Roar away, back toward the dais, talking softly.

  It left Asher standing alone. Sindri stepped in front of him. “Sleep is such a waste of time,” he said. “My salon is open tonight. Can I talk you into sharing a cup with me before you leave for home?”

  “I’m tired,” Asher said. “Not tonight.”

  He turned to leave, and Sindri moved to his side, following him. “I have a barrel of the Romanian mead coming in tomorrow night. I know you are particularly fond of it.”

  Asher turned to face him. “Actually, I don’t like mead much at all.”

  Sindri licked his lips. “Then it is the company you prefer?” he said.

  “I have my own company,” Asher said flatly.

  “Your human?” Sindri asked, and this time, his contempt was visible.

  Be safe, Asher. You haven’t been keeping safe. Her voice was a silent whisper.

  “Her name is Charlee,” Asher told him. “Goodbye, Sindri.” He deliberately and pointedly stepped around him and strode to the giant doors. They were perfectly balanced so that a single man could move them on his own, but it still took muscle to get one of them swinging slowly open or closed. He stepped around the silently opening door and saw Sindri standing where he had left him, scowling, both hands buried deep inside the wide sleeves of his robe.

  Stefan and Roar were both watching him from their place near the dais. As Asher’s glance fell on him, Stefan inclined his head.

  Chapter Fifteen

  There was a new girl in school. The gossip grapevine in high school is just as efficient as any newspaper at digging up the facts and passing them along, and far more casual about the truth. By lunchtime of that Monday, Charlee had already overheard that the girl’s name was Elizabeth Brinkmeyer, and she was a junior, like Charlee. Everything else she heard seemed unlikely: that she had been expelled from every high school in the Bronx, that her father was richer than Warren Buffett, that her family owned half the neighborhood or maybe all of it. They said Elizabeth had been delivered to school in one of those long limousines (Charlee wanted to see one take a corner. She didn’t know how they could possibly turn without bending in the middle).

  It was a miserable February day, when the wind sang with high, bitter notes, slicing through every layer she wore and imprinting her flesh with cold fingers. Charlee couldn’t stay warm, and she was merely waiting for the end of the day when she could go home and curl up under a quilt.

  But it was still lunchtime, and she had a few hours to get through first. She found a table at the far corner of the canteen where the sun shone through the high windows. It was warmer in that corner, and by the end of the lunch break it would be cozy with all the warm bodies around her.

  Charlee shook her hair over her face, propped one of her books up in front of her, leaning on all the rest, and laid her sandwich out in front of her. She had taken a bite and finished off two pages of A Tale of Two Cities when she heard, “Can I sit here with you?”

  She turned her page and kept reading.

  A hand came down over her page. The fingernails, Charlee saw, were beautifully manicured. Long, with the white stuff they put under the nails. A million miles away from Charlee’s jagged, raw nails. She looked up.

  The new girl, Elizabeth, was standing over her table.

  Wow, she’s so pretty! was Charlee’s first thought.

  “I said, can I sit here?” Elizabeth said. “Do you mind, or is the book really that good?”

  Charlee stared at her. She wondered if this was a joke. Had someone put the new girl up to it? “You don’t want to sit here,” Charlee assured her. She glanced over at the big tables in the center, where all the cool kids hung out. Chrissie and Suzy and Daphne were all watching this go down. Suzy was smiling, like it really was a joke, but Chrissie, to whom all at that table tended to look, was glaring. “That table there,” Charlee said, nodding. “There’s a seat there.”

  Elizabeth sat on the chair in front of Charlee. “I can’t sit with them,” she confessed. She smiled, and it was a beautiful smile. “Don’t make it obvious that you’re looking, but see the blonde girl at the end of the table with the blue sweater?”

  “Marcy Graham?” Charlee clarified, too curious to protest that Elizabeth had sat at her table without specifically being invited.

  “Marcy, yes. She’s going out with my brother, and he’s trying to dump her.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes. They were big, green eyes with thick black lashes. Charlee couldn’t stop looking at them. They really were that gorgeous. “Marcy is so stupid, she hasn’t figured out he doesn’t want to see her. So, it would be really awkward to sit at that table.”

  There were over a hundred tables in the big cafeteria, all of them bursting with kids. But there were spare chairs all over the place. “If you sit somewhere else,” Charlee said slowly, “you won’t get half the flak you will if you stay here.”

  “Because you’re the freaky redhead?” Elizabeth asked curiously, putting her smart leather handbag on the table in front of her, pushing it up against Charlee’s pile of books.

  Charlee had no response for that. She stared at Elizabeth, who smiled again. This time there was a hint of mischief. “I’ve started a new school
every year for the last four years and this year, this is my second school. In every single school, there’s a group that is the popular group. In every single school, there about five kids that everyone thinks of as freaks or just plain weird.”

  “I’m one of the five,” Charlee agreed. Elizabeth wasn’t saying it in a way that made it sound like a bad thing. She said it as if this was just a fact of life, like spring following winter, which followed fall.

  “Yes, but you’re smart freaky. That makes you a different sort of freak. They told me you get one hundred percent nearly all the time, and you take all the heavy courses.”

  “That’s why you sat with me?” Charlee asked, astonished.

  Elizabeth threaded her fingers together and rested them on her bag, leaning forward. “I’m trying to break the run. Five schools in four years…my dad was so angry about the Academy last week that he did what he threatened. I’m in public school, now.”

  “You got kicked out of private schools?” Charlee asked, astonished.

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes again. “I’m not so hot with books and stuff. Classes are boring, and in private school they take all that stuff soooo seriously. I honestly couldn’t be bothered. My dad is rich as anything and I got my mom’s looks, so they’re probably going to get me married off as soon as they find someone suitable, so who needs it?”

  Charlee was speechless again. Not because she had nothing to say, like last time, but because there was just so much she could say about Elizabeth’s out-there question that she didn’t know what to say first. “Well, I need it,” she said at last.

  “Need what? Classes?” She seemed genuinely curious.

  “I need to graduate as well as possible. It’s the only way I’ll get to college. I’m not rich, like you.”

  “I know.” Elizabeth smiled. “That’s another reason I sat here. You’re totally not the kind of person I would talk to. If I do everything different and opposite this time, then maybe something different will happen, don’t you think?”

  Charlee nodded slowly.

  “Public school is the total opposite of private schools, so I figured I should stay with the theme. It’ll be fun finding out what happens, anyway.”

  “So I’m an experiment?” Charlee asked.

  “God, I hope you’re not. You walk and talk just like a human, and they haven’t invented robots yet, so I figure you’re normal.”

  Charlee shut her book. “My grades aren’t the only reason they call me a freak,” she said carefully. “Did they tell you the other reason?” She didn’t move her hair out of the way to reveal it. If she did, the rest of the cafeteria would see it.

  “Something about a scar.” Elizabeth shrugged. “I can’t see it, so I don’t know what the fuss is all about. Who cares anyway, right? You’re the freak genius. A little scar can’t stop you, unless….” Elizabeth tilted her head. “Are you a freak genius because of the scar?”

  Charlee took a breath, trying to catch up with the whirlwind changes of direction Elizabeth was bouncing in. “The grades came before the scar,” she said slowly.

  “So the scar is nothing, then,” Elizabeth said.

  Charlee stared at her, absorbing her prettiness and the fact that she was sitting there, at her table, and also that the scar that had had such a profound effect on Charlee’s life had been dismissed inside sixty seconds as irrelevant. It was almost a relief to have it treated in such a cavalier fashion instead of being stared at and treated like she was diseased and infectious.

  “Do you really read all through lunch?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I really do.”

  “How do you not get bored? I would be.”

  “How do you not get bored talking about clothes?” Charlee asked, genuinely curious.

  “Because it’s clothes!” Elizabeth leaned forward, excited. “There’s so much about fashion and it’s changing all the time. In last week’s Glamour, they had leopard print leggings….” She stopped. “That’s why you don’t get bored with books, right? Same thing?”

  Charlee nodded.

  “Hey, that was clever. You explained it to me so I got it.” Elizabeth picked up her bag. “This is a Louis Vuitton bag. It’s called the Alma.”

  “It’s expensive,” Charlee guessed.

  “Very, but mostly because it’s Vuitton and the style only came out this year, not because of what it’s made of.” Elizabeth grinned. “The blonde girl sitting opposite Marcy has a Louis Vuitton, too, but she probably doesn’t know that I know it’s two years old.”

  Charlee blinked. “That’s bad?”

  “If it was twenty years old, I’d have more respect. Even if it was ten years old. But two just means she’s out of date.” Elizabeth crossed her arms, her beautiful nails resting against the velvet of her jacket, which was a deep green that played nicely against her eyes. “And that is all you need to know about fashion. Everything else is just details.” Then she laughed. “Now I’ve explained something to you.”

  Charlee took a bite of her sandwich. She had almost forgotten it was there. “You have to be rich to keep up with fashion,” she surmised.

  “Rich, or smart,” Elizabeth said. “There’s this whole vintage thing, though—you only wear vintage designer wear, but you spend your life in the consignment stores trying to find the good stuff and I don’t have that sort of patience. Then there’s this gypsy romantic thing. You wear cast-offs and hand-mades. Sort of a shabby chic thing. There’s lots of possibilities, even if you’re dead broke.”

  It was like having a door thrown open upon a whole room of knowledge that she had not been aware of until that moment. “But wouldn’t wearing vintage or…or…shabby chic… wouldn’t that be not being in fashion?”

  “That’s called making your own fashion statement,” Elizabeth corrected. “Only the most iconic and stylish women make their own fashion statements.”

  Charlee stared, absorbing this. “Like who?” she asked, certain that Elizabeth would be able to name such women.

  “Audrey Hepburn,” Elizabeth said instantly. “Grace Kelly. Rita Hayworth.”

  “So, you have to be a really old movie star to be iconic?”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Madonna.”

  “Rock star,” Charlee classified.

  “Cindy Crawford. Naomi Campbell.”

  “Supermodels.”

  Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at Charlee. “They’re famous. That’s the point. If I said that Marjorie Prescott is an iconic dresser, it wouldn’t tell you anything.”

  “Who’s Marjorie Prescott?”

  They looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing, startling the sophomores at the table next to them, who sent them dirty looks that both of them ignored.

  * * * * *

  When Lucas stopped by during the afternoon lull, Asher was at first surprised, then pleased.

  The boy had finished filling out over the last year. Life on the docks was just physical enough to keep him in shape. He’d finished growing vertically, too. He didn’t look like he was much shorter than Asher. His hair was black and his skin fine and pale and clear, with a touch of color in his cheeks from the early March chill. With his dark eyes, identical to Charlee’s, he had the sort of black Irish good looks that tended to turn women’s heads. If there had been any women sitting at any of the tables, they would probably be checking him out as he stood at the hostess podium looking around, his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets.

  Then Lucas spotted Asher at the bar and lifted a hand in greeting.

  Asher waved him over. “Welcome to my office.”

  “I’ve never been here before,” Lucas said, looking around. “It’s nice.”

  “It does pretty well,” Asher told him. He had just finished reviewing the accounts that Anthony had prepared for last month’s take, and they were doing very well indeed, which was astonishing considering the economic downturn all the newspapers were blaring about. “People have to eat, and Wall Street types think it’s not co
ol to bring their lunch in a brown bag.” He pulled out the barstool next to him and patted it. “So why the honor of a visit now?”

  Lucas hitched one hip onto the stool. His legs were long enough that he didn’t have to lift himself up to do it. His hands were back in his jacket. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Asher nodded, letting Lucas spit it out at his own speed. The lunch rush had just finished. He wasn’t needed at the bank. There was time.

  There was always time.

  Lucas hunched his shoulders, like he was trying to relieve pressure. “You never said so, but I figured…I thought…I guessed you were in the military once.”

  Asher knew why he had come to that conclusion. “Intimidating a few punks into toeing the line doesn’t take military skills. Mostly it’s basic human psychology.”

  “You knew what to do. Physically. I…I didn’t.”

  “How is the leg?”

  Lucas’ hands tightened into fists, the knuckles lifting the thin fabric of his jacket. “I think I’m going to join up.”

  Asher considered him. The statement wasn’t the surprise it might have been before he’d mentioned Asher’s military background. “What’s happened?” Something must have tripped Lucas into facing this decision.

  Lucas’ gaze dropped to his thighs. “Dad’s sick.”

  Asher waited. Their father had been sick for years. Lucas had more or less taken over his father’s job at the docks because he couldn’t make the shifts. That decision had been a pragmatic one although Asher hadn’t been thrilled about it, as there were plenty of better opportunities for a boy like Lucas. But it kept Charlee’s family functioning and for that, Asher had admired the kid. But this, joining up, seemed to be coming out of nowhere. There had to be more to it than Lucas spontaneously deciding it might be a good idea.

  “Charlee and I…we can’t look after him anymore. He needs help with just about everything. He fell out of bed a couple of days ago, when I wasn’t home. Charlee didn’t have the strength to lift him back up, so he just...he just laid there until I got home.”