Rosalie hadn’t slept.
Night had grown darker, the hours had ticked later and later while tears soaked the pillow she’d laid on. The girl had cried herself so thoroughly that the thin skin of her eyelids had begun to burn. The corners of her eyes ached and her throat seared raw from sucking in one shallow breath after another.
As night turned into dawn, her limbs grew heavy and stuck, aching in the position of crossed arms and knees pulled to her chest. She’d grimaced as she’d pulled herself apart and out of the bed, sitting on the edge of it for far longer than she realized.
She stared. At the floor. At the wall. Out the window that allowed her to see out across the back garden. Her hands clenched the edge of the mattress as she fought with herself, willing herself to get up, move and not let the room consume her.
It was what had happened before. Days and nights spent in Justine’s room, talking to the ceiling and revealing all her quiet demons to the rafters that would never tell. She’d spiraled beneath that roof, letting herself sink further and further away until she was a literal skeleton of herself.
Rosalie couldn’t do that this time. Not if she were going to be the wife Cassian deserved, and the wife she’d promised to be.
She sighed, pulling herself to her feet and wandered to the mirror above the small dresser that had been placed for her.
Puffy, dark and circled. The blue in her eyes was no less vibrant but lacking something. Her lips revealed her derision, her expression full of the emptiness she felt inside.
She’d tried. She’d tried so fucking hard, for so fucking long.
“Language,” she said to herself, and felt her body give in again. She cupped a hand over her mouth as she leaned over the dresser to steady herself, letting the sob that shook her have its silent moment lest she alarm anyone.
At breakfast, Rosalie stared at her untouched plate, moving her fork idly through eggs that had gone cold. To her left, Kathryn who’d seemed almost bothered when Rosalie had sat down a few moments after everyone else had started eating. To her right, Evander, who seemed to have had a great night’s sleep and was powering through his breakfast.
Maddox and Julia chatted amongst themselves, correcting Evander now and then while Jude slept up in his nursery, apparently a nocturnal little creature.
Rosalie didn’t know where Morgan or Benji were, and hadn’t bothered to ask.
It all felt too…easy, and while she could sense the occasional concerned looks from the adults, it didn’t cause her to look up or try to put on a brave face.
Rosie didn’t think she knew what a brave face even looked like anymore.
She had decided they needed this. Despite all they had overcome and the cemented understanding between them that it was them against the world, Rosalie had asked Cassian to give her space. Space she didn’t want.
All she had wanted was to help him. All she had wanted was to know that they had support outside of themselves. But it never mattered what Rosalie wanted. Nothing was hers to hold. Nothing was hers to keep. Everything she wanted turned to ash in her hands the moment she held it.
Freedom. Autonomy. Love. Adventure. Romance.
Cassian.
“Rosalie?”
She looked up when Julia called her name, growing red when she realized both of them were looking at her. “Yes ma’am?” she replied softly, feeling her shoulders sink slightly. She wasn’t sitting up straight, or her mood was ruining breakfast. She should know better than to behave this way, especially in front of the kids.
Julia’s eyebrows came together for a moment, taken aback only until the realization of what Rosie was doing hit her. Her eyes softened and she motioned towards Rosalie’s plate. “You haven’t touched your breakfast. Do you need it warmed up?”
Her food? Rosie looked back down at the pushed-around eggs and the small amount of fruit. It wasn’t much, but her appetite just wasn’t there and…
Something turned in Rosalie’s chest. She had to eat even when she didn’t feel like it. She had to eat even if things were hard. She had to eat because her body needed food to stay healthy.
Healthy. It was the whole reason wasn’t it? To get healthy for him?
“It’s okay,” she answered and took a small bite of the cold eggs.
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
“Do you want to hold him?”
Rosalie wasn’t sure. She’d avoided meeting Julia’s baby for the better part of forty-eight hours, with simple excuses of being tired or just needing some quiet time every time Jude woke up.
It wasn’t that…she wasn’t over the moon for Julia and Maddox, nor that she didn’t want to see the precious little one and dote on him. It was more that Rosalie wasn’t sure what seeing Jude for the first time would do to her.
It was little more than a month that had gone by since the miscarriage, and Jude had only turned a month old a couple of weeks before. How strange to think that as Julia had brought her son into the world, Rosalie was getting ready to say goodbye to hers. It was an injustice; not one she’d ever voice or one she resented. In a wild contradiction that left the girl confused, she was glad that Julia’s baby was happy and healthy even if hers wasn’t.
It didn’t make it all feel less unfair.
“You don’t have to, Dove. I just thought you might like to see him.”
Rosie looked at the blanketed bundle in Julia’s arms, hesitating only a moment longer before she nodded, holding her arms out to gently take Jude from her. She cradled him, nestling his little head against her hand as her arm crooked around him.
Blue eyes gazed up at her own, the baby sucking on his bottom lip as he opened and closed his tiny fists. “Oh Julia,” she breathed, tears burning in the corners of her eyes as her heart melted into itself. Julia smiled, sitting down beside her on the sofa and wrapping an arm around her.
“What do you think?” Julia asked, as Rosie ran her fingers through Jude’s soft brown hair. She smiled through her tears, shaking her head slightly, “I think he’s amazing.” Julia kissed her cousin’s temple, running her hand along her arm.
“You see Dove? Sometimes it feels like the world is crashing in on you. Sometimes it feels like nothing will ever make you feel happy again.” Rosie thumb brushed along the baby’s as she listened, but didn’t reply. “And then one day, something miraculous happens when you least expect it. And it won’t fix everything that happened before, but it’ll give you hope and excitement for the future. It’ll show you that a broken heart doesn’t stop loving.”
The girl wiped at her cheeks, before leaning against her cousin and fighting for her words. “I really am happy for you, Julia. I promise.” Julia smiled softly, holding the girl gently against her as Jude’s fingers wrapped around Rosalie’s thumb.
“I know that someday you will be. And that’s enough for me.” Julia paused, as Rosie nodded and the two Laurence women who had been caught in their family’s web so tightly, looked down at a little boy who knew none of it.
“Cassian loves you. He knows you love him. He’ll wait for you, sweet girl. Merlin knows I’ve tried to discourage him.” They laughed briefly, as Rosalie’s tears slowed.
Would he wait for her? Would he understand why she did it? Would he still look at her the same? Love her the same? See the same girl he fell in love with and know she’d only meant to save him?
What if….
….he didn’t?
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
Rosalie was busy.
Busy hands kept a busy mind. It was one of Edith’s favorite sayings, and when she was younger, Rosalie didn’t quite understand what she’d meant. She’d thought in a way it was another one of Edith’s pious sayings, a little lecture for anyone who found themselves on the undesirable end of trouble.
She knew now it wasn’t quite that deep. In the months after Adira was born and Edward had been murdered, Edith had been in constant motion. Whether it was taking care of her new baby, or filing paperwork or reorganizing the space she and Edward had shared together in the castle, Edith hadn’t allowed her body to remain idle for long.
Rosalie felt that in her bones. If she were busy, she didn’t have time to linger on a lot of the feelings that she knew she still needed to work herself through. If she were busy, she didn’t have time to think about him or wonder what he was doing. She didn’t have to think about that crushed look on his face as they’d stood on that sidewalk or the way he’d begged her not to leave.
She didn’t have to think about the tears that fell from his eyes. But she could work through the way it had made her feel. She could work through why she’d had to do what she’d done. She could rationalize with herself that Cassian wasn’t a bad person…but neither was she.
This was the right thing, her decision reiterated every time she beat the bread dough or scrubbed a dish or swept the porch. Every time she picked up after Evander or changed Jude’s diaper.
It wasn’t much different from the McCormick house. She got up in the mornings and bathed before dressing, and then got to work. Dusting, sweeping, wiping, scrubbing, cooking, baking. They all provided work for her hands while she worked through her own self doubt.
“Rosalie,” Julia had said that morning as she stood in the kitchen with her tea. Her eyes followed the girls movements as wiped down the icebox for the fourth time that week. “Hmm?” Rosie stopped for a moment, as she turned to her cousin, her hand static with the rag.
“You can just exist here. You don’t have to be…whatever this is.”
Oh. Wait, what did that mean? Rosie looked back at the rag and then to Julia again. “I’m just trying to help,” she offered. Help. Something she was apparently rubbish at. Julia shook her head, taking the rag from her and motioned her towards the back door. “Out. Go. Walk. Something else. Now.” Each word accompanied with a shoo of her hand.
Rosie sighed, relenting for the moment and headed out the back door, feeling like an admonished child. It was funny wasn’t it? How just a few months ago she’d been the woman of her own household, and now…she was just the prodigal cousin returned home, with nothing to her name or to show for it, except a series of bad decisions and a husband whose heart she’d broken.
She hated this. She wanted to go home. Not to Arundel, but to Cassian. She wanted to lay in his bed and cry it all away. She wanted to feel his arms wrapped around her while she apologized profusely. She wanted to fall asleep against his chest, knowing that everything was going to be okay, and nothing was changing.
But it was changing wasn’t it?
Rosalie stepped out into the grass and headed for the flower garden, letting the soft blades tickle the bottom of her feet.
Everything was changing.
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
"Would have worked better under the full moon."
Rosalie glanced up at the third-quarter moon, what light it gave illuminating the garden where the candles didn't touch. It was already diminishing, the vibrancy it exuded just eight days ago melting into darkness; space taking place where its light shined so wholly. Waning, just as she felt she'd been doing for months. A slow dissipation of life and perseverance. There had been moments, soft ones here or there where she felt the sparkle of it renewing, but the night always swallowed it again.
Rosalie didn't know when she had become so melancholy, so pessimistic, so downtrodden about life. She had reasons to be, she supposed, but she had never been the type to wallow or feel sorry for herself.
Was that what she was doing?
Julia seemed to think so.
After everything that Rosalie had been through, she'd thought maybe she deserved a little pity party, but Julia was of a whole different mind. Nothing good came from dwelling or spiraling, she'd insisted and had been adamant the girl return to some sort of normal existence.
"Nonsense," Julia answered, "A full moon would have fed it, you know that." Julia summoned Rosalie to sit with her in the dirt, nine black candles flickering in a row just behind them. "A waning moon cleanses." The two shared a look for a moment, before Rosalie's gaze moved to the dark trees at the edge of the property. "Do we really have to do this?"
"Yes."
"Why can't we just talk, like normal people?" Rosalie felt her shoulders sink as a lump rose in her throat. Her fingers ran along the rough edges of the bones in the small sack she carried, blue eyes falling back to the cousin she loved but...still struggled to reconcile with. Julia stared up at the girl who remained standing, a soft sigh leaving through her nose. Rosalie was always the sensitive sort, led with her heart before any logic could argue its merit.
"Is that what you want?"
"I don't...I don't know," Rosie answered honestly, "But we never do. All we ever do is rituals and silence and strange looks across the table." Julia moved to speak, but Rosie's voice rose slightly, insisting on being heard. "Not just you, all of us. Like...why don't we ever just talk? What's so terrible about it? Why does everybody act like it's the hardest thing?"
Julia went quiet for a moment, giving Rosalie the space to get it out. Instead, the girl quieted, her lips tightening for a moment as she stared off into the night, before relenting and settling herself down in the dirt. Silence expanded between the two as Rosie dug into the bag and set nine bones into the dirt before them.
An ewe's pelvis. Two wolf ribs. A kneazle vertebrae. A rabbit's jawbone. A crow's wing. A lamb's tooth. A deer's knucklebone. Finally, an unknown bone shard that neither woman knew the origin for.
"Our family has a way with words," Julia said, her soft voice warm in the already balmy air. "And yet struggles with relation or empathy." It wasn't an excuse, and Julia knew well she was a part of it all. She'd never quite broken the cycles in the way she'd thought she had, and only realized it the night Rosalie had run. "You're the exception to that. Our little mourning dove. You were always too gentle for this family."
Rosalie swallowed hard before raising her eyes to look at Julia. Her cousin sighed, sitting back on her hands for a moment. "You were always softer than the rest of us. Not fragile, though I don't suppose we made that distinction very clear." Rosalie's fingers moved idly over the lamb's tooth. She didn't suppose they did no. The girl had always felt her family's disdain - especially her father's and Julia's - for being so delicate in her sensitivities, so unlikely to use sharper words or speak with the authority that they did.
For a long time, it had made her feel defective.
"You may not believe it, but we loved it about you," Julia smiled, tilting her head slightly, "Most of us did. You made rooms warmer simply by being in them. You cried when you were hurt. You asked people what was wrong and wanted them to answer. You forgave without first making the other person earn the privilege of approaching you. You loved people in ways that could be seen. You always treated Fidèle better than anyone else." She smiled a bit and continued, "But it was a bit irritating."
Rosalie's eyebrows came together in confusion. "You made tenderness look natural, and that made everyone who had beaten it out of themselves uncomfortable." She retrieved three bowls from her own satchel and handed them to Rosalie to set out between them. In each bowl, Rosalie emptied dirt from small vials. The first from Arundel, her childhood home. "So we called you sensitive. Naïve. Delicate. We rolled our eyes when you became emotional and spoke to you as though you were younger than you were."
"I wasn't weak," Rosie answered quietly as she set the first vial aside and reached for the next - dirt from their house in Allonnes, retrieved from one of her plants that Cassian had saved.
No.” Julia answered without hesitation. “You were soft in a family that mistook hardness for strength. There is a difference.” She took a fistful of dirt from the ground, dropping it into the third bowl and giving it a small pat. "Weakness cannot withstand pressure and it yields to it over time, bending and breaking. You have been pressed upon your entire life, and yet you maintain your tenderness and gentleness. Do you realize what a remarkable strength that is?" Rosalie shook her head slightly. "It doesn't feel like strength. It feels like...suffering. Like being stabbed over and over again and not dying."
Julia dropped Rosie's gaze for a moment, helping her straighten the bones into a crescent arrangement, facing the darkest part of the garden. Rosie reached for the vertebrae before Julia could move it, "I remember. From when Edith was giving birth." She placed it on the outside of the crescent while Julia merely smiled and continued. "It's easy to become cold when warmth has cost you. Easy to make contempt and jadedness look like wisdom."
She took Rosalie's hand in hers, not to comfort, but to draw blood. Rosalie held still, grimacing when the blade ran across her palm. "Calling you our little dove was affection, but there was plenty of condescension in it too. It was thought you were too sweet and naive, because it was easier than admitting the family was too cruel for you."
Rosalie's voice became small as she let the blood drip over the vertebrae, "Did you think that?"
"Yes."
Rosie felt her stomach knot, the confession striking harder than she'd anticipated. "I always loved you," she said, and shrugged her shoulders, "But I could never understand why you were so hard on me, but so gentle with others."
"I thought your softness needed protecting because it couldn't survive the world that awaited you. I saw a lot of my younger self in you." Blue eyes locked on brown. "Romantic and adventurous. Fearless and curious. I thought it needed correcting because..." Julia scoffed, shaking her head at the ludicrousness of it all now, "Because I didn't want you to experience the same pain that I did." Rosie felt tears sting, That seemed the crux of it all, didn't it? Julia had tried to warn her and protect her, and she hadn't listened. She hadn't listened. She hadn't obeyed and now...now...
"But you are so much more resilient than I ever was or ever will be." Julia's words came almost hushed as she leaned forward, ensuring Rosalie looked at her. "I underestimated you. We all did. And I will forever be sorry to you for that, my love." Another pause. "But you also underestimate yourself. You don't give yourself the same compassion that you offer so freely to the people you love. You excuse every person who wounds you and punish the heart that carried you through it."
Rosalie's face tightened as she swiped her blood across the remaining bones, pain at Julia's words - truthful words - overwhelming her. "I don't know how to stop," she whispered. Her vision blurred into darkness at the tears that flooded it, flickers of orange from the candlelight dancing among the shadows. "That's why we're doing this. To stop you from believing that hardening your heart is the price of survival. To stop letting your anger and your grief consume you."
Rosie remained still for a moment, blinking the tears away as Julia leaned in to wipe them gently from her cheeks. "I'm not," she insisted quietly.
"No?"
She didn't answer, looking away towards the trees again. "You barely eat. You apologize whenever you cry. You clean like you owe us something. Rosalie, you can't keep measuring yourself against who you were even a few months ago. She didn't know what you know now. She never carried what you carry. You'll never be her again."
"I know. I know that. I do. I just wish I didn't."
Another quiet fell between them as Rosalie cried, soft sounds that drifted into the air above them. "Well," Julia said, taking Rosalie's unbloodied hand, her usual sternness finding its way back into her voice, "We all wish for things that are out of our grasp. All we can do is make the best of it and try to emerge from the rubble. So," she gave the girl's hand a squeeze, "The first thing we're going to do is stop crying, and then we're going to finish this ritual because I carried all this shit through the house without waking Maddox."
Rosalie let out a wet, unwilling laugh. Julia smiled, nodding her on as the girl began digging shallow indents into the earth with her bare hands. "Can't let that effort go to waste."
Julia shook her head in amusement and after another moment, "I love you, Rosalie. I'm sorry I never told you as often as you deserved to hear." Rosie stopped for a moment, her heart aching at the words she'd longed to hear from her family for so long. Lingering there, in the space between them.
Love. The source of all her happiness, all her pain. The only thing she'd ever wanted from any of the Laurences. Just to know that she was loved. She had never truly convinced herself she was.
"I love you more."
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
BOOM!
The house shook with the roar of thunder overhead, lightning flashing through the sheer white curtains to briefly illuminate the attic. Rosalie's eyes popped open, heart racing in her chest with the sudden startle, and her hand instinctively reached to the other side of the bed for him.
She'd never liked storms. Of all the things that should have frightened her, it was always the downpour of rain and the explosion of thunder and lightning that tightened the girl's muscles and raised goosebumps along her skin. She sucked in a breath, as she withdrew her hand from the empty side of the bed, running it through her hair. Another crack from the sky, another rough shake of the beams.
She sat up, pulling the blankets up higher on her chest as she summoned her wand, igniting it with a hushed, "Lumos." The light grew, chasing the shadows from the corners of the room. Knowing she was far too old to be frightened by a thunderstorm, she took a moment to shake the nerves from her body, knowing she was safe within her cousins' home. "It's a bad one tonight, Fawn." Blue eyes drifted to the bed she'd made for the baby demiguise. A basket, layered with soft thin pillows and softer blankets.
Empty.
"Fawn?" Rosie called, sitting up straighter, casting her wand's light across the room, in search of the little creature who'd escaped her bed. Demiguise had the unique ability to go invisible when frightened or needing to protect themselves, making it a fun chore for Rosalie to track the little baby down at various times.
She was skittish, Maddox had told her, having lost her mother to poachers. It meant that Fawn startled easily and didn't come to Rosie just because she called her. Often, it took a lot of coaxing and quiet patience before the little one would crawl its way into her hands, and even then it usually only did so because it was feeding time and Fawn's appetite was louder than her timidity.
They had a long way to go, Rosie and Fawn. A mother without a baby and a baby without a mother. It seemed like a match-made in Heaven, but so far, things were progressing at Fawn's pace. That was to say, not at all.
She rose from the bed, snuffing out her wand as she wandered through the room, calling for her. "Come on, you know I won't hurt you," she said softly. She flinched at another flash of light, sucking in a sharp breath as she stiffened, turning as her eyes searched for any little glimmer of the creature.
A whisper, the softest hush. "Fawn?" she called again, lowering her voice to a gentle hum, warm and inviting, despite the fear that ran through her own body. She followed the sound as it whispered through the room, beckoning her back to her bed. Strange. She hadn't felt Fawn's fur when she'd woken and she doubted the demiguise would have crawled into bed with her, if she wasn't yet willing to come to her most of the time.
She dropped to her knees, peeking her head beneath the bed, where the whispers grew slightly. "You're under here?" A little shimmer of silver, and then shiny black eyes peering at her from the far corner from beneath the bed. "It's okay," Rosalie said, as Fawn vanished again with the another boom of thunder. "It's just a storm, and won't last forever. It'll pass." Fawn's eyes reappeared, blinking as she stared at Rosalie and the hand she beckoned the demiguise with.
"Do you want to come in my bed? I don't like storms either. Maybe you can keep me safe." The baby's soft silver fur slowly came into view as her eyes remained on Rosie's hand, seemingly considering the request. Rosie lowered herself further, laying on her stomach and resting her cheek on the hard wood, her expression soft and patient while the storm roared outside the window.
"I bet you miss your mummy right now." Fawn took a slow step towards her, clasping her little hands close to her chest. "I miss mine sometimes too." She smiled lightly, "But I bet yours was better than mine." Another step. Two. Rosie watched, her expression softening with each timid movement that closed the space between them. Fawn stopped at the tips of her fingers, her tiny face studying her hand, as though deciding if she really wanted to be held outside of a feeding time.
Rosie was quiet, giving the little creature a moment to decide for herself. She did. With slight hesitation, Fawn crawled into Rosie's palm, curling into little ball with her tail wrapped around her. "Sweet thing," the girl whispered, climbing slowly to her knees and then hoisting herself gently back onto the bed. "Babies aren't meant to be without their mothers."
She held her hand steady as she climbed beneath the blankets again and lowered herself onto the pillow. Fawn never took her eyes off Rosie, and when she lowered her hand to the mattress, the baby slowly crawled off and instead moved closer to the girl, curling up against her neck, just beneath her chin.
The little thing trembled as the house shook again and Rosie nuzzled herself gently against Fawn, her fingers stroking lightly at her soft fur.
"We'll be alright, me and you. We'll keep each other safe."
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
"Try this one." Rosie held up another strawberry, deeper red than the one Fawn had unceremoniously thrown as though it had offended her. The baby demiguise stared at it a moment from Rosie's shoulder, her fluffy tail curled around the girl's neck for comfort. "I know, I should have known better giving you the wrong color. Trust is destroyed." Rosie smiled patiently as Fawn sniffed at it for a moment, before deciding she would have that strawberry, now that it was properly red and juicy.
Baby demiguise, Rosalie was finding, were as picky as toddlers and twice as discerning. Fawn only liked the ripest fruit; anything otherwise was unacceptable. She only liked the greenest vegetables and turned her nose up at carrots and yellow squash without a second thought. She loved flowers, nearly all kinds, but had absolutely zero interest in clover or tree leaves. How Fawn ever thought she'd survive in the wild on nothing but garden vegetables, Rosalie didn't know.
Since the night of the storm, the two had established the beginnings of trust, Fawn being more and more willing to come when called and was happily accompanying the girl wherever she went. She was a curious demiguise, watching everything Rosie did with shiny black eyes. If they were outside, she never left Rosie’s shoulder, keeping one tiny hand hooked around the girl’s ear for balance unless food, or something sufficiently interesting, tempted her to let go.
They were becoming quite the pair, Julia had observed, much to her younger cousin's delight.
Strawberry juice dripped onto Rosie's shoulder as Fawn munched away, much more satisfied with this offering than the last when a voice called out to her from the right.
"Hey! What's that on your shoulder?"
Fawn froze at the strange voice, her gaze shifting immediately to the far end of the yard. Rosie followed, her eyes settling on the figure of a young man, maybe a year or two older than her, grinning at her from the other side of the wooden fence. Rosie smiled politely her hand stroking Fawn's tail to comfort her. "She's a demiguise. My cousin's rehabilitating her."
"Oh yeah, Barlowe's some sort of creatures guy, right?"
"Among other things," she answered.
"Well, I live right next door," the young man said, indicating to the house behind him. "I saw you out and about the other day in the garden and thought I'd bring you some herbs from ours."
"Oh," Rosie said, perking up immediately, and crossed the yard to meet him at the fence. "That's really nice of you."
Fawn narrowed her suddenly vibrant blue eyes as they approached the neighbor, letting the rest of her silver body disappear before her eyes vanished into Rosie's blonde hair. The girl could feel the little one trembling, her tiny hand tightening slightly on her ear. The man's eyebrows raised in surprise, tilting his head to see around Rosie for where the creature had gone. "Did she just vanish?"
"She's just a little timid around strangers," Rosie answered, "She lost her mother not long after she was born." The neighbor nodded, "That's too bad." It was. Poachers were the nastiest sort, and Maddox had explained that they often hunted demiguise for their fur's invisibility properties. It hurt Rosalie's heart, knowing how gentle and peaceful Fawn was that her poor mother had met an end at such horrible people's hands. "You said something about herbs?" she asked, her smile widening as she rocked on her heels a bit.
"Oh right! Here." He handed a small satchel over the fence. "There's some parsley, sage, thyme and a bit of mint in there for your tea."
"Thank you! I can't wait to use them!" Rosalie said, her excitement palpable. It wasn't that Maddox and Julia didn't have herbs, but most of them were dried and Julia wasn't growing any fresh ones this year. The mint would be great for the morning when she wasn't feeling especially hungry for breakfast. "Sorry, I didn't catch your name?"
"I didn't give it." The neighbor grinned cheekily, draping his arms over the fence to lean on it. "Landon Fell. I work for one of the farmers a few miles up. Dairy mostly. Your name?"
"Rosalie." There was a pause as Landon seemed to mull the name around in his mind a moment. Confusion crossed her face, not sure what spurred the shift.
"...Barlowe?" His question came with an inflection, almost like he was uncertain that the name she'd given him wasn't real. Fawn's tail tightened slightly at her neck. "McCormick," she answered without hesitation. Landon's gaze drifted downward, settling on the ring on her wedding finger. "A married woman," he said, drawing out his revelation in a lazy, unimpressed tone. "So, where is he then? I haven't seen him around."
Rosalie felt her face flush at the intrusive question. She tightened her lips in annoyance, but kept her tone polite, "I'm staying with my cousins for a bit to help them out." There was no need to engage in an interrogation about her husband with a brand-new acquaintance, and frankly, Rosie felt rather put out by the direction the conversation was going. She had half a mind to hand him back his herbs, but he pivoted.
"Sorry, that was rude. Country boys, you know? We're not really the well-bred sort." He grinned again. "Listen, there's a glade not far from here. Pretty interesting stuff, if you haven't seen it. If you ever want to go for a walk, I'd be happy to show it to you. Rest of the neighborhood too if you're up for it."
"Oh." Well, that was nice of him, but Rosalie wasn't trying to go on walks with strange men she'd just met. "That's really kind, but I'm busy around here and like you said, I'm married so."
"I mean he wouldn't know."
Rosie blinked at the boldness, her eyebrows lowering over her eyes as her lips parted, but he laughed.
"Hey, I'm just kidding. No worries." Landon lifted his hands to show it was no big deal. "We can just talk over the fence now and then. It'd be nice to have a friend around here. It's too quiet sometimes you know?" Rosie smiled uncomfortably, feeling a strange discomfort in her chest, but nodded. "Sure, yeah. I guess so." Fawn hissed, softly enough that only Rosie could hear, and her hand automatically rose to stroke her still-invisible tail.
"Listen, it was really nice meeting you, but she's getting upset and I don't want her bolting. I'll talk to you some other time?" She held up the herbs as another thank you, backing away from the fence as Landon gave her a brief nod. "Yeah, nice meeting you too, Rosalie."
The girl turned to head back to the house as Fawn reappeared, and peeked through Rosie's hair at Landon whose eyes had visibly darkened.
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
She'd reached out. After twenty-two long days of silence and not a word from his end, Rosalie had finally given in.
She'd told him she'd wait for him to write. That she'd let it be on his terms and he could initiate when he was ready and everything wasn't so raw. It wasn't because she'd had no interest or wanted to put in no effort, but she'd been the one who had left, and she felt it would have been rich to immediately try and write as though nothing had happened.
But when five days turned into ten, and then ten into twenty, every morning of silence led by a night of tears, she'd begun to wonder if he was never coming. Not in the physical sense of showing up at the Barlowe's door and making some grand speech, but in the quiet way of checking in on her, or just letting her know he was thinking of her.
So she'd written. Nothing extraordinary or world-shaking, but an olive branch. A hand reaching for his to let him know she hadn't disappeared. She hadn't removed him from her heart. She'd written that she missed him and loved him.
And he...had replied with neither. It had been direct and...he said things were fine. No words of love. Nothing that indicated he missed her. No warmth. No nothing.
Nothing.
If Rosie tried, she didn't think she could put into words how cold it had left her. How ice had cracked along her skin and left her with a sinking feeling that the worst outcome she could fathom was possible. She couldn't go back, not yet. As much as every muscle in her body wanted to wave the white flag and rush back to him and try to fix everything, she knew better.
They both needed this, no matter how hard it was.
The grass tickled her legs as she laid on her belly, elbows propped up over her notebook and quill in hand, posed to write, unsure of what to say. In front of her, Fawn nibbled away on a dandelion blossom, her nose twitching against the scents in the air, watching as birds flew overhead.
Rosie wanted to reach him. Maybe he was just unsure. Maybe he didn't quite believe the words she'd written when her absence spoke louder. Maybe for once, he needed the grand gesture.
Her quill set to writing as her ankles crossed, her bare feet warm against the sun.
The stars drew close within my hands
Then slipped like secrets from my grasp
I tried to trace their silver strands
But watched their patterns fade too fast
They once led home through gilded halls
With nightfall keeping watch above
His moonlight slipped between the walls
And taught his sun the shape of love
Now silence gathers where they shone
Above the place we named as ours
Two hearts once woven into one
Now fading through the quiet hours
I lift my light into the blue,
Where once it always found its place
The heavens hide their stars from view
As though I’d strayed beyond their grace
Nightfall settles, still and far
No moonlight answers daylight’s flame
The sun still searches every star
Unsure if night still knows her name
Still daylight guards one ember bright
Though silence stretches cold and long
The sun may falter into night
But nightfall remains her truest song
She hesitated for a moment, reading over the poem once, before drawing a small heart beneath it and closing the notebook with a soft thud. Crossing her arms over it, she rested her chin in her hands and smiled at Fawn.
She was trying.
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
Blue eyes cast across the imposing structure of Arundel Castle, its architecture looming over her with the same sense of imprisonment it always had.
As a little girl, Rosalie had never had the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of such a place, or the incredible luck she had to be able to reside within the ancient walls that so few ever got to see. She’d never embraced the magic of it, the history or the way her blood was weaved within every stone, knowing all of her ancestors had once told their stories here and walked the same corridors.
How could she? When all she had ever been preoccupied with was the dream of escape?
She’d never thought to willingly step foot here again. The night that Cassian had proposed had sealed her fate - or so she thought. Never did the girl think she’d be able to return after leaving the way she had and taking her father’s money with her. After Thomas’s death, Rosalie had never fathomed being welcomed back by her extended family, or even being acknowledged as one of them. Her crimes were too great, her sins too unforgiveable.
And yet, the invitation had come. James had asked her to come and stay for a few days. See her grandparents and cousins and…reintegrate herself into the family that had missed her in the year she’d be gone.
Rosalie hadn’t initially trusted it, or even wanted to accept, but Julia had reassured her. She’d told Rosie how the rest of the family had reacted when they’d heard the news that Leo had acted against her. How Amelia had cried. How Benji had lost his cool. How her granddad has panicked. How Edith had slapped Gretchen senseless for her role in everything.
Maybe…not all was lost. Maybe Rosalie did still have a place amongst them. Maybe she was still allowed to be a Laurence, even after all that had transpired. Would…would they really have forgiven her for all of it?
Her parents were gone. Arthur and Aunt Anna were gone. Thomas was dead. Matthew…she didn’t know, but she didn’t fathom if he were still here that she could even look him in the eye, much less reconcile with him after destroying his family.
Her knock sounded hollow against the ancient wooden doors that led to the foyer, and when it didn’t immediately open, Rosie turned the latch and slowly stuck her head inside. It smelled the same. It looked the same. The echoing silence of gilded halls remained the same, save for the sound of the creaking door. Pushing it open further, the girl stepped inside, eyes washing over every inch of the place with an almost - disassociation. Closing it quietly behind her, Rosalie walked softly into the middle of the foyer, marveling at what a difference a year made.
A place she’d once been trapped in, unable to leave, now welcomed her comings and goings freely. She almost didn’t believe it.
“Lady…Lady Rosalie?!”
A familiar voice and a shuffling of aching feet had her turning her head to the corridor on the left that led to Julia’s old rooms. There, with wide green eyes, rimming with disbelief, was Fidele. He clasped his hands to his chest, ears lowering to the side as his mouth fell slightly open and he shuffled with a painful gait towards the girl as fast as he could manage. “My…my…” His voice shook, as Rosie dropped to her knees, opening her arms to him. The house elf wrapped his shorter arms around her, forgetting propriety and what was expected.
“I’ve missed you,” Rosie said, dropping her cheek on the top of the elf’s head as she held him tightly. “Fidele thought…Fidele thought to never see Lady Rosalie again.” Rosie nodded, but didn’t answer, knowing she’d thought the same. In all that had transpired, seeing the house elf that had nannied her her entire childhood, was something she’d never allowed herself to contemplate. While others saw house elves as servants or property, Fidele had always been a part of her family. “What’s happened to you?” Rosie asked as she pulled back, lifting Fidele’s rags to get a better look at his knees.
“Oh, it is nothing. Fidele ages, and is recovering from a nasty accident that happened some time back.”
An accident? “What sort of accident?” Her eyebrows lowered, as she studied the elf’s expression who only seemed to grow uncomfortable with the questioning. He chittered a bit, hemming anxiously as he fought against his better sense to remain professional and answer his mistress’s question. His ears turned red, and he shifted uncomfortably. “
"Okay, later then,” Rosie said softly, running her hand along Fidele’s face. Fidele smiled and nodded, obviously relieved to leave his own troubles at the door, and reached for the girl’s hand. “Master James will want to know Lady Rosalie is here. Fidele will call for him.” With a snap of his fingers, the elf gave the girl’s hand a squeeze and vanished.
“My dove,” Edith breathed, her hands clasping either side of Rosie’s face as she planted a kiss on the young woman’s forehead. Amelia rushed into the family room, having just been told the news, tears streaming down her face. She grabbed Rosie in a tight hug, murmurs of ‘thank Merlin’ falling from her lips.
James stood at the fireplace, watching it all quietly.
Rosie wondered, as her arms wrapped around Amelia, if James felt the same elation at her return as the women did. He’d invited her, so obviously he was alright with the idea of her being here, but…Rosie knew emotions and feelings were complicated things. And while James had never been as cruel and outright harsh as his cousins, Rosie knew beneath the charm and veneer, there was as much a predator within him as any man she knew. He was one of them, raised in the same castle, beneath the same rules and expectations. He’d witnessed the same things and had them shape him.
She knew he could be twice as cold as he could be warm.
Did it frighten her? Not in the way it used to, she supposed.
“We’re so sorry Dove,” Amelia said between her tears, “We didn’t know, we had…no idea. We would have stopped them…” That was the part that was hardest for Rosalie to believe, she supposed. Not that her family was callous and everyone had been in on it, but that even if they had known that they would have stopped her father.
Would they? They’d all seen as Leo and Gretchen kept her a prisoner within the walls, refusing to let her even go to lunch with Julia in town. They’d all watched as she shrunk further and further into herself with every reprimand, every scolding. None of them had tried to speak up for her when her father wanted to use her as a honeytrap. Not one of them ever spoke up in defense of the boy that she loved, recognizing out loud that he was a person and deserving of respect.
Was it so hard to believe they wouldn’t have stopped Leo if they’d known?
Rosie didn’t answer, but she nodded, taking a step back from the women who had helped raise her. “I’m sorry I worried all of you,” she said earnestly, the only thing she could offer to the conversation. “I should think so,” Edith said, her natural tendency to be blunt overriding her need to be soft for the moment. “We hardly slept around here for months and -“
“Edith.”
James shook his head, silencing his sister-in-law, but it was too late. Shame crept across Rosalie’s face, her skin flushing with color as she dropped her eyes. “The girl’s just arrived home. Let’s give her some space to breathe before we begin our scolding, shall we?” The man’s voice was dry but bemused as he crossed the room to take Rosie by the shoulder. “Sit down, Rosie. Fidele’s bringing tea.”
When Edith and Amelia had left to check on their children, both leaving her with sweet words of love and thankfulness that she was home, she and James sat in the quiet, unsure of what to say to one another.
Rosalie had always loved him, but there was a distance between the two, cultivated by her father and the natural expectation that girls spent the majority of their time with the women of the family and boys with the men. It naturally led to the two never having been overly close, even if they’d enjoyed each others company when they were together.
“There are things men do sometimes that don’t make sense.” Rosalie’s blue eyes rose to meet James’s brown as he sat in the chair opposite her. “In a world like this, like ours, it can make them desperate to hold on to everything that gives them power. It makes them resistant to change.” He raised his hand slightly from the arm of the chair, resignation in the motion as it fell back down. “And desperate men do desperate things.”
“My father wasn’t desperate,” Rosie answered, her voice clear and lacking its usual softness. “He didn’t want me, not really. He wanted control and when I didn’t let him have it, he punished me for it.” Her jaw tightened as she held her cousin’s gaze, surprising even herself at the calm she felt. “He didn’t do something desperate. He did something evil.” The room grew quieter as her words drifted into the ceiling above them. It was the first time she’d ever defied James outright, but she didn’t belong to him or this castle anymore. She didn’t have to agree with any sentiments she didn’t want to, and she didn’t have to listen to the ‘mea culpas’ that everyone exuded.
They meant nothing to her, in the grand scheme of things, she was realizing. Only Julia had ever sought to really help. Only Julia had ever shown Cassian any type of care or love or even respect. Only Julia had asked her how she felt, how she wanted to handle things. Everyone else just wanted to excuse themselves.
“I’m sure it felt that way, Rosalie. And I don’t want to take away from that -“
“It didn’t feel like it, James. It was. He broke into my home. He tortured my husband in front of me. He made my favorite cousin hold me still and make me watch. And when I thought they were going to kill Cassian, he forced my hand with Thomas.” Her eyes remained dry and her voice remained steady, as her fingers trailed the metal embellishments along the velvet armchair. “A good, but desperate man would never do such a thing to his daughter. You would never do that to Claire.” She watched as James’s expression changed, dropping into a genuinely softer look, his eyes taking on a sorrow she wasn’t sure she had ever seen before. “You wouldn’t have done that to me.”
James shook his head without hesitation. “No, Dove. Never.” He sighed, opening the drawer on the end table beside him to retrieve a cigarette. He paused a moment, before holding one out to her. She shook her head quietly, lifting her legs to tuck her feet into the chair with her. James let the end of his cigarette as Rosie continued, “So don’t make excuses for him or try to explain what he did. There is no excuse. There is no explanation.” Her voice grew softer again as she glanced out the window, past the gardens to where the family cemetery sat behind a low stone wall.
“Do they all hate me? For Thomas?” She brought her gaze back to James as he blew a puff of smoke above his head. “Thomas made his own decisions that night, the same as your father and uncle.” It wasn’t an answer, but a statement she’d already known. “But…do they hate me for it?” James studied her a moment. “Would it matter if they did?”
She…realized she didn’t know. Sitting here, talking to her cousin made her realize how angry she was with all of them. For not saving her. For not protecting her. For not hearing her numerous cries for help over the years. “I guess not,” she answered, “Maybe. They’re still my family. I don’t have another.” Her expression finally broke, but she held back the tears that threatened her resolve to be strong. “All of you always say family is everything. Family is first. Why wasn’t I first? Why did all of you let this happen?” James didn’t answer, letting her continue as her words came more flustered and raw. “I tried, so hard, for so long to be perfect. To be good. To be everything all of you wanted me to be. And the first person who came along and tried to just let me be myself…you all nearly killed him for it.”
She wiped at the tears that finally fell. “This isn’t a family. This is…” she shook her head, dropping her face into her hands, overwhelmed at being back in the place that had held her captive for so long, and yet still held the strongest sense of home for her.
James rose, moving swiftly to close the distance between them, before kneeling before his cousin. “This is a family, Rosalie. This is your family. For better or worse.” Rosie lifted her head again, her skin wet and glistening with the tears that had soaked into her hands. “I can’t answer for what your parents did to you and Cassian. I won’t even try.” He paused. “The moment Cassian’s father burst through our doors, you came first.” He took hold of her hand, wanting to hear him. “It was too late. I know that. But families are complicated things. When you add in cousins and uncles and extended family, and then all the nuances that come with it….fuck it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t,” Rosie answered, withdrawing her hand slowly. “It doesn’t bring Thomas back. It doesn’t change what my father did. It doesn’t unbreak my heart or my husband’s.” She thought for a moment. “You didn’t hurt me that night, but you knew it was coming, and you never tried to help.”
Another long silence passed between them. James's lips parted, searching for the words that seemed to have been lost on him. A rarity for the man who always had an answer for everything. "That's not how it was, Rosalie." Her eyebrows came together, but she didn't answer. "You can't try and lay the blame for this at everyone's feet because the people who hurt you aren't available for you to lash out at."
The girl looked away again, shaking her head. "You don't get it. No one does."
"Then tell me."
"Why should I?" She almost yelled, but pulled herself back in. "No one in this fucking castle has ever cared a single iota about what I think or feel. Everyone saw me drowning and did nothing, because it was easier to look away and let it happen." There it finally was. The punishment that Julia said others deserved for hurting her. No excuses. Just accountability. "You all would have seen me married to that ogre Leo chose, before you'd ever care about how I felt about it." Her tears came harder now, as James looked more and more despondent with each word. "None of you ever asked about Cassian, or cared about how he felt. Why should I believe that you all care now?"
"Dove..."
"Don't call me that."
She stood from her chair as James rose as well. “I’m...I'm just going for a walk, okay?” She wiped furiously at her eyes as she moved past him for the terrace door.
"Rosalie, just..."
The door closed with a soft thud behind her.
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
Glastonbury nestled beneath the steep green rise of the Tor, crowned by the roofless tower of St. Michael’s Church. Long ago, before the marshlands of the Somerset Levels had been drained, the higher ground had risen from the water like an island. Centuries had passed since then, but the town still set itself apart from the rest of England, as though the receding waters had neglected to carry its magic away with them.
Legends had collected there in their place. King Arthur and Avalon. Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail. Saints, miracles and ancient kings whose bones supposedly rested beneath the ruined abbey. There were even rumors of ancient Norfolks - the Laurences before they were called such - having made their place there amongst the great battles and pilgrimages through this countryside. The muggles had preserved what they could in stories, softening centuries of magic into folklore whenever the truth proved too uncomfortable to explain.
Beneath it all, ordinary life continued.
Thursday lacked the crowded stalls of Glastonbury's weekly Tuesday market, but the heart of the town was hardly quiet. Doors to various shops were left propped open, allowing airflow against the balmy conditions of summer. On the sidewalks were little samples of what each shop offered. Displays of cheese, flowers, fabrics and leather, books and stationary and a multitude of offerings to please any shopper.
Along the street, horses clopped between carts and muggle motorcars and townspeople drifted beneath colorful awnings.
Rosie moved among them, a large canvas bag hanging from her shoulder, entrusted with a list from Julia. It was time she got out and about, her cousin had insisted, stating that being cooped up too long in one place wasn't good for the girl who was an incorrigible ruminator and bottler on her worst days.
With Fawn tucked safely away in Maddox's barn and no other responsibilities to concern herself with, Rosie had decided to make a day of it. She'd apparated into the town, appearing behind an old watermill, just as Maddox had instructed, and wandered down the old gravel road until it turned into asphalt and led into the heart of the town.
For awhile, she'd simply strolled, noting the differences between the markets in the Somerset countryside and Allonnes. The smells, the atmosphere, even the energy felt different here. More relaxed, less busy and frantic. Less rough around the edges and more family-oriented. It was here, as Rosie replied to various 'good afternoons' with her own, that she began to understand why Julia and Maddox had moved their family here. Aside from the obvious beauty around their home and the relative quiet, the town was picturesque and peaceful.
Who wouldn't want to raise their children in such a place?
With the day winding down, Rosalie worked through her errands. A stop at the hidden apothecary behind the muggle pharmacy for some billywig stingers and rose oil. Another at the toy shop for a few new wooden cars and a stuffed animal for the boys. Parchment from the bookstore for Kathryn.
All that was left was bread. Rosalie had tried, several times, to make bread the way the family liked, but Evander was a curious boy and enjoyed being in every facet of her business that intrigued him. Baking was one such thing, and while she was happy to have him stir, he was always more interested in the poofs that exploded when he slapped his hands down in the flour.
Needless to say, no one was very interested in eating the bread that had had toddler hands all over it.
The bell above the door chimed as she stepped into the bakery, the scent of fresh sourdough, cinnamon rolls and herb-infusions inviting her in. The shop was old, the stone walls lined with beautiful wood paneling, and electric lighting that frizzled in and out with a short somewhere. Along the windows were long displays of baskets showcasing various breads and pastries, with more lining the shelves behind the main counter. In the center of the shop were tables filled to the brim with various butters and house-made jams, all decorated with checkered cloth around the lids and tied with twine.
"Looking for something in particular?"
Rosie followed the voice to the tall young man leaning behind the counter, his half-smile beckoning her over as he nodded to the displays behind. "You're in the wrong place if you're in the market for salami." Rosalie laughed, a soft but genuine sound, her smile reaching her eyes as she wandered over to the counter. The boy's eyes never left her as she set her now-heavy bag onto the counter. "Ugh, too bad," Rosie tsked, faux resignation lacing her tongue, "I was actually looking for ham."
"You're definitely in the right place then, love." A girl popped up from below, holding a large basket that she hoisted up with some difficulty. She nodded her head to the boy, "This one's the biggest ham in town."
Rosie looked from the girl to the young man, studying him with exaggerated consideration. Chestnut waves and dark blue eyes that sat beneath heavy brows. Strong arms, likely from kneading and hauling flour all day long. “I don’t know,” she finally decided, her eyes narrowing on him. “He looks a little lean to be the biggest ham.”
The girl dissolved into laughter, nearly losing her grip on the basket as the young man pressed one hand over his heart.
“Insulted in my own establishment.”
“My establishment,” the girl corrected, lowering the basket onto the counter with a heavy thump. “You merely haunt it.”
“I carried that up from the cellar.”
“After I filled it.”
“Still carried it.”
“Heroically, I’m sure,” Rosie offered.
“Thank you.” He gestured toward Rosie, his gratitude exaggerated, as though her support had settled the matter. “At last, someone in this town appreciates me.”
“She’s known you less than a minute.”
“Exactly. Completely unbiased.”
Another laugh escaped Rosie before she could think to temper it. It came easily here, surrounded by the warmth of the ovens and two strangers whose bickering required nothing from her except amusement. There was nothing else to it. No fake smiles or forcing happiness where there was none. For so long, Rosalie had forgotten what it felt like to just...be.
She had forgotten things could be this simple.
"Now then," the girl said, turning her bright smile to Rosalie as she wiped the remnants of flour and oven soot from her apron, "Before my brother drives away one of the few customers willing to enter, what can we get you?" Rosie retrieved Julia's list, smoothing it open against the counter. "Two loaves of sourdough and one of the rosemary," she said, glancing up, her eyes searching the displays behind them. Her gaze fell on the spiraled buns with cinnamon and sugar swirled within them. "And probably a few of those."
The young man didn't move from his lean, but turned his head to follow her finger. "How many?" Rosie counted off in her head. Julia and Maddox, herself, Evander would want the biggest one, Kathryn...maybe. Morgan and Benji if they were around the next few days. "Seven."
He reached for a paper bag. "Eight."
His sister's eyes narrowed as she cocked her head to the side impatiently. "She said seven, Daniel."
"The eighth's complimentary, Sherry."
“You mean you're trying to get on her good side.”
“I mean we reward charming customers.”
Sherry indicated to Rosie's left hand that still held open the list. "Charming, married customers." Rosie's eyes followed the girl's to the ring on her wedding finger, the center opal glistening against the sporadic flickering of the shop's lights. She ignored the lurch in her stomach it caused, not wanting to be distracted from the entertainment a stop for bread had turned into.
Daniel appeared completely unbothered as he grinned at Rosie, tucking another roll gently into the sack. "Marriage doesn't make her less charming." "No," Rosalie agreed, returning his smile as she moved her gaze from her hand back to the lazy baker. "Just less likely to be impressed by free bread."
Sherry barked her laughter as she began to busy herself unloading her basket. She shook her head at her brother, "I like her."
"So do I."
"Well no one asked you."
As Sherry retreated behind the back door and into the kitchen, warmth spread through Rosie's cheeks. Her lips tightened as the boy smiled wider, obviously pleased with himself at being able to make the girl blush. There had been nothing inappropriate in the exchange - only the effortless charm of a flirtatious boy accustomed to smiling at every pretty girl who entered the shop. She knew the sort.
Knew it well.
"Seven," Rosie repeated, sliding her coin across the counter to him, a shyer smile gracing her lips now that his sister had left them to do business. "....and the complimentary one."
"Knew you were impressed."
“By the bun,” she clarified, shaking her head at his ridiculousness.
“Devastating.”
"Yeah, I'm so sure." She rolled her eyes in amusement, a flutter of something familiar about him nestling in her mind.
Daniel finished wrapping up the last of the rolls before retrieving the loaves she'd asked for, taking his time to select just the right amount of paper. "You and your husband just move here?" he asked. "No, I'm just staying with my cousins for awhile." He nodded, "It's a nice place to visit. Bit of a bore to live in though. Not so many of those fancy nightclubs or dancehalls around these parts." She shrugged a little. "I don't really go to those anyway."
"Yeah me neither," he said, tying off the bag with a small string. Pressing a few buttons on the cash register, he counted out her change and plopped it down on the counter. "I like the quiet. Sometimes I hang out by the lake and just read or watch the ducks," his smile returned as he leaned across the counter again, "Obviously, I'm a bloke full of mystery and dangerous pursuits."
“Terrifying,” Rosie agreed. He was sweet, she'd decided. Nice. Not the sort to give her the creeps like the neighbor boy had. “Do the ducks know?”
“They’re the dangerous pursuit.” His expression grew solemn, but absent any sincerity. “Had a nasty encounter with one last week.”
Rosie couldn't help the laugh that followed, "Can't imagine how traumatized you must be. You're lucky to have survived."
“Only just. Suppose I’ll have to face them again tomorrow.” Daniel gathered the wrapped loaves together, but instead of handing them over, he rested his palms against the counter and regarded her with that same lazy smile. “You should come with me.”
Her hand paused over the clasp of her bag. “Come with you?” Her eyebrows furrowed as she was taken aback by the offer. She'd only just met him, and certainly he knew this couldn't go anywhere. His sister had pointed out the ring.
“To the lake. There’s a quiet little spot beyond town, shaded by willows. I usually bring a book and stay until Sherry starts wondering whether I’ve drowned.”
“I don’t wonder,” his sister called from somewhere beyond the kitchen door. “I hope.”
Daniel raised his voice without looking away from Rosie. “She worries terribly.” He shrugged a bit, "What do you say?"
"Umm," Rosie hesitated a bit, but couldn't stop smiling, "Do you invite all your customers to the lake with you?" Her shyness grew as she reached for the bag, tucking it inside her larger canvas.
"Only the ones who insult me in my own bakery."
"Your sister's bakery."
"There you go again."
His grin widened, but Rosie’s gaze fell once more to the ring on her finger. The pleasant flutter in her chest quieted beneath its weight. Would Cassian mind? Would he even care? She wouldn't be going on a date or anything of the sort. Daniel seemed friendly enough...but what would it look like for a married girl to be seen wandering off to the lake with a boy she didn't know?
Daniel followed the movement of her eyes.
“I am married,” she reminded him, softer now.
“I know.” There was no embarrassment in his answer, nor any attempt to pretend he hadn’t been flirting with her. “I’m inviting you to read beside a lake in broad daylight, not flee the country with me.” Her lips parted, slightly stunned by the choice of words, all things considered. If only he knew how willing she'd once been to flee the country with a boy. And had. Twice.
She let out a soft laugh, but it caught in her throat as she dropped her eyes away from him again. "I don't know," she said.
He tilted his head. “Would it help if I told you I had a girlfriend?”
Oh! Well...that certainly did change things. In any case, it made this seem much less an attempt at a date and definitely more along the lines of getting to know a new friend. "Do you really, or are you just saying so?"
"He really does!" Sherry called from the back. "Pretty one too!"
Rosie lifted her bag onto her shoulder and backed away from the counter. "Where should I meet you then?"
"Here. Ten in the morning. Your name would be helpful."
"I suppose you'll have to learn it tomorrow." Her smile returned as she headed for the door. "Try not to get too excited."
"I'll endeavor to contain myself."
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
"Does your girlfriend live around here?"
Rosie laid on her belly beside Daniel, her book opened in front of her as the two stared out the still lake. Ducks and geese glided across it with quiet ease. Overhead, the willow he'd told her about hung low in its branches, its soft leaves rustling in the warm breeze. It was picturesque, peaceful, the little town buzzing directly behind them without a care in the world.
"She did. We both grew up here, but Emma's father was killed in the war and she and her mother had to move down to Cornwall to live with her grandparents."
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Rosie said, propping her chin in her hands. "I'm sure so much change was really hard on her."
Daniel shrugged a bit, keeping his gaze on the water. "It wasn't easy. Her father was a good man. They owned the farm supply depot just outside of town, but once he died, her mother couldn't manage it on her own. They had to sell it so they wouldn't lose everything."
Rosie wasn't sure what to say. War had changed many families and affected the country as a whole. There weren't many that had gone untouched by it in some way shape or form, but she'd never given much thought to the affect it would have on a widow and her children if her husband never came home. For Emma's mother, it wasn't just losing her love, but her home and business and sense of independence.
"How do you manage it? Long distance after all this time?" Three years was a long time to go without being able to regularly see the person you loved. "I don't know that we do," he said honestly, turning his gaze to Rosie with a more contemplative look than he'd had before. "She's talked about ending it. I don't have the money right now to marry her or even move her here with me, so," he pulled his book from his bag and plopped it down in front of him. "She says its getting too hard. I guess I can't blame her."
Rosie nodded but looked back at the lake. Her mind spun at how casually he spoke. How resigned he already seemed to letting his girlfriend go if it was what she wanted. "Is it that easy?" she asked softly, "To wash your hands of it?" Daniel didn't answer but she could feel him looking at her. She took a deep breath, "Boys. You all seem so unbothered. Girls will sit there with their hearts bleeding out, and...you make it all look so effortless."
"Hmm," the boy hummed, fingering through the pages of his book. He was quiet for a moment, the sounds of paper turning against the spine melding with the quacks from the lake. "I wouldn't say it's easy, no. But...we've been apart for so long now. Visits here or there, but it's hard to be something real when you can't be with the other person, you know?" Rosie looked at him again, her bright blue catching his darker. "It's been fading for a long time. I guess I'm just waiting for her to say it's over. Probably sounds selfish, but I can't bring myself to do it."
"It does," Rosie said, a smile rising across her features as his expression reflected his surprise at her agreement. "I mean, you obviously think its over. She's probably hoping you feel otherwise, and show up to sweep her off her feet or something." She shrugged a bit. "If you're not going to, wouldn't the kinder thing be to end it? Let her move on?"
Daniel narrowed his eyes a bit, but his smile remained. "Alright, enough about me, Rosalie. This is coming from somewhere." He groaned, rolling onto his back and clasping his hands behind his head. He closed one eye as he looked at her. "Shrink's in the house. Tell me everything about this Cassian."
"I thought you were a baker."
"It's my sister's establishment."
Rosalie laughed, dropping her head into her book with a groan. How convenient for him. "I shouldn't. We don't know each other." They didn't. Thirty minutes sitting beside a lake together and a brief bread transaction didn't make them friends or even much of acquaintances yet. Rosalie was naturally guarded these days. Where she may have been more open and free with her friendship and heart as a younger girl, this version of her treaded carefully.
Or so she wanted to believe.
"Even better. No mutual friends to tell."
A puff of air left softly through her nose as she lifted her head again, agreeing with a slight shrug of her shoulders. She sighed, closing the book with a soft thud, recognizing that no reading was going to be done today after all. What could it hurt, she supposed. It wasn't like Daniel would go running straight to everyone she and Cassian knew to shout all of their business.
They didn't even know each other's last names.
"Cassian feels everything." Daniel smiled but said nothing, allowing her to continue. "Too much and all at once, and he doesn't usually know what to do with it. He's brilliant, so he turns all of that feeling and pain into something else. Entertainment. Stories. Music. Jokes. He's dramatic and impulsive and incredibly intense." A smile touched her lips, her eyes moving from the boy's back to the lake as she finally let herself talk about the boy she longed for.
"He sounds exhausting."
"He is."
"You smile when you say it."
She pressed her lips together, drawing them into her mouth to conceal what he'd already seen, a flush of color rising along her cheeks. "He makes everything feel bigger. More beautiful. Cassian can take something completely ordinary and make it feel like it exists only for the two of us. He knows how to perform love in the way that you can't help but fall completely head over heels for him." She grinned with a little shrug. "Or at least I couldn't."
"You obviously love him."
"More than anything in the world." There was no uncertainty to it or hesitation. Rosalie loved that boy more than even he could fathom, she supposed. Even through the hardest times, that love had never diminished an ounce. If anything, it only grew, evolving and weaving itself tightly around her heart that Rosie knew it'd never come undone.
“So why are you staying with your cousins?”
It was the hardest question, one she didn't want to answer. One she hadn't had to answer for Julia or Maddox. There was a knowing within them, the moment she'd shown up on their door, that it had all become overwhelming and she couldn't handle it on her own anymore. Not because she didn't love him. But she was afraid if she couldn't handle it and tried anyway, that something horrific would happen. Something they couldn't come back from.
The fondness lingering across Rosie’s expression slowly faded. "A lot of bad things happened and, I think somewhere along the way I realized I wasn't helping him. I was making him worse. He...he's larger than life, you know? And sometimes that comes with wanting to just be small or quiet. I don't know really."
Daniel's expression fell, his lips parted, wanting to ask, but Rosie continued. "I got really sick. We were going to have a baby but I lost him, and I didn't handle it well. Ended up in the hospital because I couldn't eat. It just...made him worse, you know?"
"Oh, Rosalie, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be. It's probably better this way."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean..." she swallowed hard, forcing her gaze back to the boy she'd just met. "We were so broken, after so many bad things happened and...I'd probably have had to do some of it on my own. It was just a fucked up situation." Her eyes widened slightly, embarrassment flushing through her at her language. "Sorry."
"It's alright. I've heard worse." Daniel propped himself up on his elbows as he looked at her. "That sounds like it was really hard for you both."
Rosie nodded. "So we're separated for a little while. And you wanna know the shittiest part?"
"Tell me."
"Our one year anniversary is in four days. I've written to him and told him over and over that I miss him and that I love him, and...he doesn't say it back." Her eyes glistened, giving voice to her fear for the first time, and to a perfect stranger. "He always says it back. I...I even wrote him some bullshit poem." She laughed, wiping at her eyes. "At this point I feel kind of pathetic."
Daniel shook his head. "It's not pathetic if you love him."
"It's pathetic that I keep telling him when he doesn't say it back. It makes me think, that maybe he doesn't want me back, you know?"
Daniel smiled gently. "Pretty girl like you, Rosalie?"
"Emma's pretty, you said. Pretty's got nothing to do with it. There's millions of pretty girls out there. Most of them who would fall at his feet the second he smiled at them."
"Shit," Daniel said with a soft sigh. Rosie nodded, wiping at her eyes again. "You know Emma, I really loved her for a long time. Still do I guess. But I think we fell out of love because there just wasn't much effort on either end you know? On mine or hers. It sounds like you're trying."
"I don't think trying is enough for Cassian," she mused, sitting up straight and crossing her legs in front of her. She pushed her hair back from her face. "He's...the type that needs to see everything in front of him. If something doesn't look the way he has it in his head as the way it's supposed to look, then its not right. It's the artist in him I think. He'll pour over one line of script fifteen different times before he gets it exactly right, and anything less than perfect drives him insane. I admired it about him for a really long time. But I realized that he does that with everything. Even in the way he loves me."
"And what about you?"
"What about me?"
"Where do you mess up in this?"
Rosalie sat with his question for a moment. It wasn't one that she'd let herself really sit with. "I left," she said finally, with a shrug. "When I promised him I wouldn't."
“What are you waiting for? Maybe you should just go back to him.”
“I don’t know that we’re waiting at all. I’m trying to become someone who can go home without disappearing into him again. He’s trying to…” Her voice trailed off.
She didn’t know what Cassian was trying to do. That was the part she couldn’t say without feeling the ache in her chest.
Daniel watched her carefully. “When did you last see him?”
“When he brought me to the house.”
“And will you see him on your anniversary?”
"I don't know. It's our birthdays too. We're a day apart."
"You got married on your birthdays?" Daniel's smile return as he rolled his eyes before shutting them against the sun that continued to rise overhead. Rosalie's mouth fell open as she stared at him, her eyes drying at the new humor Daniel attempted to instill.
"It was romantic!"
"Very efficient of him. No birthday present needed. Just a ring."
"Cassian would hate you." She laughed despite herself, reaching over to push the boy's shoulder with her hand. His smile grew wider but his eyes remained closed as soaked up the warmth of the day. “He hasn’t even met me.” Rosie shook her head with a sigh. "You'd probably really like him though."
"He sounds like someone I'd like. Give him a week solid with me. He'll warm up. We'll be best friends before fall."
"I'm so sure." She giggled, thumbing the spine of her book.
"I know we just met, but you seem like a good person. Good heart and all that. Blokes...are hard-headed sometimes. And if he loves you half as much as you obviously love him, I don't think you'll be waiting long."
Rosie smiled tightly. "I hope you're right."
"And if I'm not, there's always free cinnamon buns to lift your spirits. You'll be plump as a partridge in no time."
Another laugh as the girl leaned back against the tree, crossing her legs in front of her. "Exactly what I've always wanted."
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
Every step was familiar; an old path she'd traveled along countless times before.
A loose tile here. A quick leap there. Balancing herself along the narrower ledges as she held her arms out to her side, her feet carrying her to the spot where she and Cassian had once made their leap of faith. The spot where she'd laid her head on his shoulder and guided his hand to their place in the heavens. The place where he'd held her hand and told her she was never too much. Where he'd read to her late in the night after a disastrous gala. Where he'd laid in her lap as she read the sonnet he'd written about her eyes and the love he'd found in them.
Julia had had some work to do in preparation for the term starting again in less than a month and had been happy to bring Rosalie along when she'd asked to come.
No one knew it was her anniversary.
The night before, they'd celebrated her eighteenth birthday. Dinner at one of the restaurants in town, where she'd opened the gifts the family had gotten her. A sweet handmade card from the babies with their handprints on them. An apothecary cabinet that could be shrunken down and made portable from Julia and Maddox. A new dress from Edith.
And a card from James and Amelia that had shocked her in a way she'd never seen coming. "Happy Birthday," they'd wished her as she'd opened it, and within, there lay a document outlining a rewriting of her inheritance. Everything that her father and uncle were supposed to receive now belonged to Rosalie. A hefty portion of the family money that was meant to be split between two families, now consolidated just for her.
Rosie's eyes had widened, as she stared at James, then at Julia. One by one, her gaze flicked to each family member who smiled but said nothing as she tried to force her brain to understand. It was...a substantial amount. More than Rosalie could have ever even dreamed of. As she'd sat there, reading the words over and over again, unable to even begin to think about what this sort of money could mean for her and Cassian and their future, James had revealed another layer.
"Starting now, and every month, you'll be getting the same allowance that your father had. It'll be enough to afford an apartment for yourself and your living expenses, whatever they may be. If you want to take the time to go to school instead, it can pay for that. It's for you to use as you see fit."
It...was overwhelming. Rosalie had always known that members of her family received allowances as adults, but never the amounts or when it started. She'd never expected she'd receive one, especially not after all that happened, but there it was. The inheritance, James said, would be put in a trust and she would receive it on her twenty-fifth birthday.
She hadn't been able to comprehend any of it, not until she and Julia had arrived at Hogwarts. Given time to herself to wander her old stomping grounds and think, Rosie began to imagine what she could do with all of it.
Cassian could finally chase his dreams. Without a need for his job at the Ministry, he could throw himself into acting or directing, writing...maybe all of it. He could buy his old theatre or start a new one. He could spend every day there if he wanted to, doing the things he loved and focusing on what made him happy.
Their children - if they ever had any - could go to university someday and study whatever they wanted without worry of how their parents were going to pay for it. Her mind had raced, imagining all the ways the things that had stressed them would be a thing of the past. They could just be married and focus on each other. No more factories or late nights or loud pubs or dreary desk jobs.
She'd saved the gift that Cassian had sent for tonight.
As she climbed over the last barrier and settled herself into their old spot, the girl raised her eyes to the constellations above her.
He'd always been here. There had never been a time she'd climbed up onto this roof and Cassian wasn't right behind her or already waiting for her. The silence felt enormous as she dangled her feet over the edge, sitting back on the balls of her palms to search the sky. For what...she didn't know.
Part of her almost expected him to appear. To bound over to her with that boyish grin and a bright, "There you are, gorgeous".
One year. A year since she'd stood in that office, her heart singing Cassian's praises as she stared into his eyes and promised him her forever. A year of excitement, love, heartbreak, pain and disaster.
Two kids who had wanted nothing but each other. Was it so awful? Was it so ludicrous to just want to be together that the universe had to tear them apart in every way imaginable? Why them? There were so many horrible people in the world...why were they the ones who had to suffer?
She reached into her pocket to retrieve the small box that he'd sent. A note.
She was the only girl he'd ever love.
It was the first time he'd written it since she'd left. Tears filled her eyes as her fingers brushed over the ink. There were so many promises they'd made each other. So many dreams they'd share that had all fallen to pieces. In the thick of it all, Rosie had clung to the idea that there was still love. That love would carry them through to the other side of all of it. When he'd gone quiet and in the aftermath when he either couldn't or wouldn't say the words that reassured her, she'd lost much of the hope that they were as unbreakable as she'd always thought.
The only girl he'd ever love. She'd said the same to him, three years ago nearly to the day when she'd stared into his warm brown eyes and left her heart fully in his hands.
She'd give anything to look into them now. To feel his hands on her. To feel his heartbeat against hers. To know by his touch that he was still hers as much as she was still his. It was an agony, a longing she didn't think she could bear any longer.
The earrings were beautiful. Roses in rose gold. He'd called her a blushing rose once, admiring the way her shyness crept across her cheeks when he complimented her. She smiled, closing the box and tucking it back into her pocket.
Wherever he was tonight, she hoped he was okay. She hoped he was laying beneath the same stars as her, looking up at them and remembering that somewhere out there, was a girl whose entire heart he still held in the palm of his hand. She hoped that he knew he was everything to her.
And that he knew she was coming back to him better than she'd left.
When she came back, she had the means to make all of their dreams come true.
She just needed to know he wanted it.
She looked up at the constellations, to the little spot just far away enough from the moon where they could never be outshined.
"Happy Anniversary, my love."
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
It was a cooler morning than usual, and Rosie intended to take full advantage of it. With the fresh breeze filtering through the back garden, it was pleasant enough to brew, the fire beneath the cauldron usually being too much on a hotter afternoon or evening to take advantage of. She'd had it in her mind to begin bottling and selling her potions again, especially now that she had access to all the wild flora that grew on the Barlowes' property and within the forest that laid just outside of it.
She'd mentioned to Sherry when she'd popped into the bakery the other day that she'd used to make 'holistic medicines', and the girl had encouraged her to start up again, saying the Tuesday market could definitely use something so niche and different. It had set a little bug in the girl's ear, deciding she wanted to get back into some of the things that had made her happy and reminded her of the gifts and talents she possessed.
A quick flick of her wand over the wood she'd 'borrowed' from the pile Maddox had accumulated near his barn and the small fire roared to life beneath the pot. Another flick and water filled to the brim, while Rosie dropped in a few dittany leaves. She rose, warding the pot and fire before she wandered away to keep Fawn from it in the case she wandered too close while she was gathering the rest of her ingredients.
"Rosalie!"
She sighed as she knelt down beside Julia's raised flowerbeds, closing her eyes momentarily at the sound of the voice that never failed to call out her name when she was outside.
Landon Fell didn't seem to know how to take a hint.
After their first meeting, Rosie had expressed to her cousins how uncomfortable the neighbor had made her feel, asking intrusive questions and almost laughing at her fidelity to her marriage. Maddox had made his feelings plain. She was to stay away from him and not engage. Trouble she didn't need, he'd called the boy, and Rosalie had listened without fuss. It was no great loss to her to never talk to the boy. He gave her the creeps, and knowing Maddox and Julia felt similar made it easier for her to ignore him.
Of course that didn't dissuade Landon from calling out to her or trying to get her attention every single time he saw her. It was getting ridiculous at this point, and she was beginning to think he watched the yard, waiting for her to come out so he could bother her. She hadn't told Maddox, preferring not to make a problem with the neighbors when there didn't need to be one, but it was annoying all the same.
She gave a dismissive wave of her hand, not looking up from her work as she plucked through the lavender and chamomile blossoms. There. That should satisfy him, if he didn't intend to stand at the fence and stare at her.
There was the sound of metal against wood, a clicking of a latch and a hard bang as the fence's gate slammed back on itself. Rosie glanced out of the corner of her eye, the hair standing up on the back of her neck. The demiguise who had been quiet and curiously watching Rosie's work froze, leaping onto the girl's shoulder and vanishing instantly. Landon was in the yard.
Moving quickly towards her.
Rosie dropped her eyes back down to the flowers, her body tensing as the neighbor came close. Maddox and Julia had left earlier in the morning to run an errand out to Arundel, taking the boys and Kathryn with them. She was alone, and became all the more aware of it with every step he gained on her.
"Is Maddox home? I've got a favor to ask of him." Landon stopped beside her, hovering over her as Rosie tried to appear unbothered, cutting a few more plants and adding them to the pile at her side. On her shoulder, she could feel Fawn trembling, her little hands grasping painfully to the girl's ear.
"He'll be back in a few minutes," Rosie answered stiffly, knowing good and well they wouldn't be back until after lunch. "But he wouldn't want you hanging around the yard. I'll tell him to come see you." He was quiet a moment, and she could feel his eyes boring into the back of her neck.
"No, he won't."
Rosie's fingers stilled amongst the flowers.
"They left just after eight. Maddox, his wife, both boys and the quiet girl." Landon glanced towards the house before returning his attention to her. "You've been alone for nearly an hour and a half."
"Have you been watching the house?"
His eyes remained fixed on her. "Not the house."
Her blood ran cold. She held her breath, her attention abandoning the foliage as her eyes darted across the ground in search of an exit.
Landon shifted on his feet, looking out across the yard and towards her cauldron.
"Must be a big change, eh?" he asked, but Rosalie didn't answer, not sure what he meant. "Coming from a big fancy castle to this. Picking flowers from somebody else's garden. Living beneath somebody else's roof."
The words settled on her back, raising goosebumps along her skin. How did he know? Julia's last name was Barlowe. Hers was McCormick. Aside from Benji, who she doubted would just engage the neighbor and tell him everything about their family, there wasn't anyone named 'Laurence' here.
She kept her movements calm as she gathered the last of her flowers before standing and turning to face him. His eyes were darker than she remembered, no sign of the former friendliness on his face. She could feel something off about him, as she glanced around subtly for a sign of anyone else in the vicinity.
No one.
"My parents are muggleborns, you know. Trash, as your family calls them. Filth beneath a Laurence's shoes, unless there's work that needs doing." A ghost of a grin played at the corner of his lips. "That's how your lot like things, isn't it? Laurences at the top and everyone else beneath them. Suppose looking down on everyone from a castle wasn't enough. Now your family's reaching for the whole bloody Ministry." His eyes swept over her. "And now look at you. Their precious little princess, cast out of her castle after throwing it all away for a good-for-nothing halfbreed."
Rosie inhaled softly, keeping her eyes on Landon as she stood still. "You need to leave."
Landon shook his head. "You don't get to tell me what to do. You still think you're better than us, don't you? Too good to give the likes of me the time of day? Your own family disowned you after you put your father in Azkaban." Rosie's eyes widened as Fawn's incoherent whispers came more frantically beside her ear. "Yeah, I know all about it. We all do. You made your husband choose you over everything he had, ruined his life, and then left him once there was nothing more he could give you." His eyes dropped to the ring still circling her finger. "That's what you do, isn't it? Take until there's nothing left, then find someone else to keep you."
Rosie clenched her jaw, blinking hard against Landon's accusations. Tightening her grip on her flowers, she shoved at him with her shoulder to move past him, but he grabbed hard at her wrist, yanking her close to him. "Don't you turn your back on me—" he started.
Her hand shot out, striking his chest and shoving him back. When he yanked her towards him again, she didn't scream. She didn't tell him to let her go. He would let her go. Rosalie McCormick was sick of men putting their hands on her because they could.
"Depulso!"
Landon's eyes widened as her spell flew through his chest. He dropped her wrist as he was shot flying back through the air and across the yard. He crashed through the fence, sending wood splintering in every direction. Rosie was fast, dropping the flowers to the ground. She took hold of Fawn, cradling her beneath her arm as she sprinted across the yard. Landon shouted for her, incoherent screams of anger and frustration as she bolted past her cauldron, refusing to look back. She could hear him struggling against the broken fence, but she burst through the back door, slamming it hard behind her and locking it as fast as she could.
Her breath came hard as she threw her weight against the door, holding it closed with her back in case he tried to break through. Her heart pounded, her body shook, and Fawn leapt from her arms, knocking over one of Julia’s vases as the demiguise raced up the stairs towards the attic.
Rosie closed her eyes as the sound of Landon's shouting quieted, though whether it meant he was retreating to his own house or trying again for theirs, she couldn't say.
The moment she could think straight, she warded it. The doors, the windows. Every protection charm she could think of, before slumping down against the back door to wait for Maddox and Julia to get home.
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
One hundred and eighty feet. Two hundred steps.
Nothing but the wide open sky.
Rosalie inhaled, a smile crossing her lips as she looked out over the Bake House Tower, the tallest within Arundel Castle. It was a gorgeous evening, the sunset painting the horizon with its usual golds, oranges and pinks, melting into the western hills and glistening off the faint strip of ocean her eyes could see.
She'd promised Maddox, no more jumping to her broom - from his barn or otherwise, and she intended to keep that promise. He'd never said anything about jumping with her broom, and with the castle quiet and settled into its routine for the evening, even Edith wouldn't be watching for any untoward movements.
She steadied her feet as she peered over the tower ledge, her heart beginning that exhilarating race in anticipation of what was to come. It had been too long since she'd felt the rush of gravity, the fall before the catch, the moment when everything felt uncertain but free.
Hogwarts had been the last time.
Shouldn't there be a new first time?
She waited, her eyes drifting from the far-below ground to the horizon again, swallowing hard as she readied herself. The broom rested against her side, its polished handle cool beneath her palm. Rosie tightened her grip around it and moved one foot closer to the edge. The toe of her shoe disturbed a loose fragment of stone. It slipped soundlessly from beneath her, tumbling over the side. She followed it with her eyes, watching it grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared entirely against the earth below. She waited for the sound of it striking the ground.
None came. For several moments, she did nothing.
Her eyes dropped to the fingers wrapped around the broomstick. The bruises Landon had left around her wrist were already fading, purple softened into sickly shades of yellow, but she could still feel his hand whenever she looked at them. Another injury. Another - eventually - invisible scar. Another person who was bold enough to try and hurt her.
Nowhere felt safe anymore, save for the school that had liberated her from everything she'd ever thought she had to be.
Hogwarts felt like another lifetime now. A lifetime before she had learned how many ways a person could fall without ever leaving the ground.
The sky beckoned her quietly. It didn't care whose daughter she was, whose wife, or how many people believed she'd hurt them. It only waited.
Without wasting another moment, Rosie swung the broom between her legs, emptying her mind of everything but the adrenaline that awaited her. With a wide leap, the girl sprang from the safety the tower, letting the wind catch her with its next gust.
The ground rushed at her with dizzying speed. The air whipped through her hair and screamed in her ears. Rosie's stomach rose into her chest as she clenched the edge of the broom handle. She screamed, a dazzling sound of freedom and recklessness. But as the ground grew closer and closer, a sinking feeling suddenly took hold from seemingly out of nowhere.
Without knowing why, Rosie looked over her shoulder, back up towards the top of the tower, her heart sinking at the vision that rushed toward her.
"FAWN, NO!"
Rosie screamed as the baby demiguise flung herself from the tower after her, silver fur shimmering and fluttering chaotically with the wind that caught her. Black shiny eyes transitioned to brilliant blue as her tiny hands outstretched, reaching for the girl who was too far down.
It was a matter of a split second in which she had to make a decision. If she pulled up on her broom, there wouldn't be enough time to circle back and catch Fawn with the momentum they both were falling. If she didn't pull up and caught Fawn instead, the fall to the ground would be horrific.
Rosie couldn't let her fall alone.
She didn’t think. Thinking would cost them time they no longer had.
Throwing her weight sharply to one side, Rosie wrenched the broom out of its dive. It bucked violently beneath her, turning her clean descent into a wild, stomach-churning arc. Her knees tightened around the handle as one hand tore free, reaching back towards the tiny silver body plummeting after her.
The demiguise stretched for her, eyes wide with terror. Their fingertips brushed, and then slipped.
Rosie reached farther, twisting until pain tore through her shoulder and the broom rolled dangerously beneath her. The ground spun into the sky. Stone became grass became sunset, the entire world turning around them while the wind screamed past.
“Come on, baby!”
Fawn’s tiny fingers caught the sleeve of her dress.
Though tiny, the momentum and sudden weight nearly pulled Rosie from the broom. Fabric ripped beneath the demiguise’s hands, but Rosie caught a fistful of silver fur and dragged her close. Fawn crashed against her chest with enough force to drive the air from both of them.
Rosie locked an arm around her. There was no time left to straighten herself. No distance left to circle or climb.
The ground came at her with blinding speed, her body crashing into the grass with such force that it knocked the wind from her. She bounced, once, landing a second time with a hard thud that made the world go white. Pain ripped through her back and shoulders, searing into her head and nestling beneath her eyes. In her arms, Fawn trembled so violently that Rosie's arm shook with her. Adrenaline poured through every crevice of Rosie's body, filling her veins until there was nothing left but blind shock.
Somewhere, a little ways away, her broom lay in pieces again.
Rosie’s mouth opened, but her body refused to breathe. Panic flared as she tried again, her lungs fluttering uselessly beneath her ribs. On the third attempt, air tore into her with a strangled gasp, and she forced herself up onto her elbow, holding the baby demiguise tightly against her chest.
The demiguise lifted her head from beneath Rosie’s chin, silver fur wild and dishevelled but her tiny body whole. Brilliant blue eyes had turned black again, staring back at her before small hands began frantically patting Rosalie’s cheeks, frightened whispers pouring from her little mouth.
Relief broke through the pain.
“You’re all right,” Rosie breathed, though the words barely carried. Her fingers moved through Fawn’s fur, searching for blood or injury and finding none. “You’re all right.”
Fawn pressed herself beneath Rosie’s chin. Only then did Rosalie let herself sink back into the ground, her head falling into the grass in a mix of relief and disbelief.
Her eyes trained on the tower that loomed above her. It cut into the sky, imposing and staring down at her in judgment. Again, the castle had found its way to imprison her. To keep her on the ground and punish her for chasing freedom. The ledge looked so distant now, ancient stones glowing beneath fading sunlight.
She lay there, for what felt like hours, holding Fawn and letting hot tears stream down the sides of her temples before they dripped from her ears.
Maddox was right.
Julia was right.
Cassian was right.
Maybe even Landon was right.
It was beginning to feel like Rosalie had never been right about anything in her life.
"I'm sorry Fawn," she murmured, as the baby nuzzled against her jaw, willing her to get up. "Just a little while longer."
just like the white-winged dove
Ooh Baby, Ooh, Said Ooh
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