Sanctuary of Roses

to the wooden ceiling above, and shrieked before launching himself at Seton. “You have killed him! My priest!”

“’Tis no matter, Fantin. Your work will come to naught,” Seton told him, jumping gracefully from his path. He pivoted toward Madelyne, breathing heavily against his pain. “Madelyne cannot fulfill the role you have made her as your daughter. She is not of your seed.”

Madelyne froze as Fantin screamed again. “You lie! She is my flesh, my only flesh and she was created with the woman God has chosen for me! She is my destiny!”

“Nay, you have been fooled all these years,” Seton continued, taunting him, dancing around the table as his eyes flashed with purpose. “Madelyne is my daughter.”

Thirty

The time had long come and since passed for Seton de Masin to open the small, side gate as he’d avowed he would.

Gavin pushed all emotion from his mind. He focused only on that gateway lit by flickering torches—watching the weathered with age, gray wood that kept him from his beloved—nay, he would not think on that.

Look only on the door. Wait for it to open. Count the knots, study the texture and grain of the wood.

It did not open.

Stare in the dim light at the splinters that form each plank.

It did not open.

His nerves screamed and yet he looked only there. He didn’t hear the shuffling of his men. He didn’t see them watching him.

He did not look at the night sky, studded with stars and a low moon. He knew only stillness, black stillness within—rage simmering beneath, struggling to erupt.

He did not allow it. He stared, grasping the hilt of his sword and still he waited.

And still the gate remained closed.

* * *

“Nay!” Fantin shrieked, freezing with his sword in the air. “Lying whoreson!”

Madelyne saw her own shock reflected in his face. Her body shook with chills and disbelief, yet something surged warm within her. She carried no madness in her veins. Her love to serve God came wholesome and from her heart…not from the twisted, skewed need of Fantin de Belgrume.

Seton continued to move, holding his arm, taunting Fantin. “All of these years, I have known she is of my blood and she has lived safely out of your reach. I have made certain it would be so. Why do you think I have stayed in your service for all these years?”

“Nay! ’Tis not true!” Fantin’s voice reached a shrill pitch, then cracked into dryness. “Nay! Lady Anne would never have lain with one such as you…and you tell me tales with no truth, Seton de Masin! You will not sway me from my purpose, for I am chosen !”

Seton yanked up the sleeve of his tunic, baring his wrist, still dancing, moving ever closer to Madelyne. “See you here, Fantin—’tis all the proof you need. She and I have the self-same wrist-markings that my mother and her father have had before us. She is of my flesh. Madelyne is not your daughter, and she will not remain here under your care to live in the darkness of your world. I shall see to that.”

With these words, Seton launched himself over the table, knocking bowls and dishes askew as he thumped to the floor next to Madelyne, banging into Tricky’s stool and upsetting her onto the floor.

Seton reached for a long wooden broom and whipped it around, missing Fantin by only a whistle of air. He shifted his grip, settling the pole like a lance at his side, when something flew across the room and, with a dull thud, Seton dropped to the floor next to Tricky.

Madelyne screamed weakly when she saw the small, black ball that had smashed into her new-found father’s forehead, and looked over to see Tavis, holding a leather sling.

“Master!” he shouted, horror crossing his face as he stared at Fantin.

Turning to look, Madelyne saw that her father had metamorphosed. While before, he had been animated, with fervor, and with eyes that glowed…now, his face curdled, darkening and shattering. His brows knit together and his eyes were slitted into angry black slashes. And his mouth…Madelyne swallowed when she saw the way his lips twitched and yanked, played as if a tiny thread tugged at them—as if they were controlled by some puppet master.

A thin stream of saliva leaked from the corner of his twitching mouth as it seized up and around in this silent, eerie movement.

At last, the mouth opened and a shriek of ungodly rage spewed forth, filling the chamber with such force that the bowls rattled. Fantin’s face blossomed red and purple and his hands clutched at his middle as though he were trying to tear out his insides even as his feet stepped and jumped and danced on the stone floor.

The veins in his neck grew, swelling to blue and then black, as he screamed the cry of a dying man.

For Madelyne, in a moment of pure black fear and icy hopelessness, realized that his insides were dying…that he had naught left for himself, and that his mind died because his dream had been taken from him by Seton’s taunting knowledge. She could barely comprehend that Fantin was not her father—it was unimaginable how shattered he should feel, learning that she was not of his flesh.

Fantin swept to her side, then, and before she could draw a breath to scream again, had the tip of a knife at her throat. His eyes bored into hers, burning, and his pupils were no longer pinpricks of black, but huge black saucers.

Madelyne closed her eyes, swallowing, and felt the tip of the knife cold on her throat as it constricted. She would meet her God now. The God she knew, not the one her father—nay! her father no longer!—not the God Fantin had fabricated.

Then the coolness withdrew.

She opened her eyes and found Fantin’s face very close to hers, still crumpled with the destruction of his dreams, rasping a harsh breath from flared nostrils. “Nay.” His single word, whispered, puffed on her face, stale and moist. Then he spoke, again, slowly, as though the words formed like perfect, single drops of water, dropping, one at a time, in his mind: “I loved your mother. She betrayed me.”

He pulled away. The rage seemed to have subsided and though his eyes remained wild, his movements smoothed and slowed. “Nay,” he said again, as if needing to convince himself. “She betrayed our God.”

Those simple words, that coolness, caused a great, icy, fathomless fear to billow in her. Fantin’s rages had always been a source of great horror and pain…but this—this calmness, this studied calmness, laced with purpose, caused her to shake with terror as never before.

If Fantin believed his God had been betrayed, then nothing would save her now. She held back a whimper. Nay. She did not live a life without hope.

And then hope, in the form of Tricky, seized her attention.

Madelyne saw her maid moving on the floor, wriggling, somehow no longer attached to her stool, no longer bound.

Quickly averting her eyes, she raised them to meet Fantin’s. Mayhap…

“Fath—my lord,” she said, struggling to keep her voice calm. “My lord, may—”

“Silence!” he shouted, spittle flying into her face. Madelyne reared against the stones, away from the sudden recurrence of rage.

He seemed to consider her for a moment. “What is it you wish to say?”

“The queen… ”

Those were the only words necessary. “The whore! She yet lives, or so I hear from Rohan, my faithful man.” He slammed his foot into Seton’s unmoving body upon those words.

Madelyne’s unspoken question was thus answered. “Why did you poison the necklet?” she asked, using every last vestige of energy to force the words from her lips, seizing upon anything that might keep Fantin’s attention from the figure that slinked under the tables. A quick glance showed Madelyne that Tavis had not noticed Tricky’s movements.

Nay, blessedly, he stared, enraptured by the exchange betwixt herself and Fantin.