Page 81 of Crowned By Roses

There’s a glow beneath her palm, soft and golden. My breath hitches, and I feel something inside me awaken. A place I had thought lost forever.

It can’t be.

The light seems to sink from her palm into me. I know what this is now. A tear spills out of the corner of my eye. That lost part of me, a power I hadn’t realized was so important until it was gone…

It wakes up.

I breathe out a gasp, and briars burst from the ground. Not Rosalina’s. Mine.

Purple thorns erupt, but not the same as before. From these briars bloom brilliant lilac roses. I clench my fist, spreading the briars higher and higher, like muscles I haven’t stretched in a long time.

“Rosalina,” I shout, then take her face in my hands. “Rosalina!”

She opens her eyes, smiling as she stares at the briars around her. “It worked.”

I haul her onto my lap and look at my wrist. “Anya gave me a bracelet when she gifted me this power. Where did you⁠—”

“I didn’t gift this power to you,” Rosalina says. “I woke up what was already there. The thorns became a part of you.”

“A part of me,” I whisper, sprouting more roses above us so the petals fall down like rain. Then I kiss my mate, tangling my fingers in her hair.

“My Prince of Roses.” She sighs.

Both she and Keldarion have called me that, but I’m not sure who that is. “I don’t know if the Prince of Roses can exist until after this war.” A soft smirk appears on my lips. “What is a Rose without her Thorns?”

She smiles at me, running a hand through my hair. “I would know you in any form, Cas.”

Slowly, I slither briars up the broken telescope. “Do you remember the first time we met?”

“Of course I do.” She looks down to where a small briar crawls up her ankle. “Prince of Thorns…”

I kiss her again and know I’ve never liked the sound of that name more.

32

Ezryn

Iface the forge again. It looms before me, this long-slumbering monster.

But this time, I’m resolved to wake it up.

Rosalina reminded me of something when she wove our roses back into the earth. The Enchanted Vale is a tapestry of all the realms; Castletree is made of bark from every corner of our world. I kept thinking the only way to light the forge was to discover the secrets of how it was done before. But Aurelia carved her own path when she made the Enchanted Vale. Rafael forged the divine weapons with no instructions.

We will light the forge. And we’ll do it our way.

“Ready?” Keldarion says, coming up beside me.

I look at him, then to Farron, Dayton, and Caspian. They nod in unison. On my other side, Rosalina and Wrenley stand, shoulders touching. At this angle, they appear so similar, their eyes blazing with determination. Everyone seems to burst with color as I stare at them without the tint of the helm. I want to look at my family with my own eyes for this.

“Ready.” My boots echo against the stone as I lead us toward the hearth. We stand in a circle. I pull off my glove and extend my hand. “Seven flames for seven realms. We will light this forge with magic from every corner of the Vale.”

One by one, their hands join mine, palms up. I take a deep breath.

“You begin, Ez,” Farron says. He locks gazes with me and gives a reassuring nod. “Remember what I taught you. It begins in the heart. Don’t fight it. Let it flow like wind or water.”

Flame seems the antithesis of everything Spring stands for: it destroys, ripping apart woods and eating homes. But where a fire has burned, new beginnings can sprout. And deep within the bellows of the earth, fire bubbles and pops. It is the heat of a hearth, the orange glow of metal reworked.

The words tear out of me: “The flame of Spring!”