Chapter Three: The Rose That Remembered
The forest bowed to no one, not even a queen.
Mist clung to the blackened branches, and the air stank of rain and rot. Hooves struck the soaked earth like muffled heartbeats, echoing through the desolate road that led to Otherlyn a place whispered of in old prayers and older fears.
Inside the carriage sat a woman draped in velvet and venom. Her hair, the color of spun gold, gleamed faintly beneath the lantern's glow, and her eyes cold, glacial green, were the kind that saw beauty as possession and love as conquest.
She had been born into House Vaelir, the oldest of the noble lines, its bloodline said to carry silver in their veins and ice in their hearts. It was not love that had bound her to the king , it was politics, power, and the will of a court too afraid to let a commoner sit beside the crown.
But the king's heart had always belonged to another.
He still visited her, the woman without title, without a crown. The one he called his in the dark. He gave her laughter, warmth, and words that burned sweeter than wine. And when dawn came, he gave the real queen nothing at all.
It hollowed her.
It consumed her.
And it led her here, to the cursed waters of Otherlyn, where mortals came only when desperation outweighed fear.
The carriage halted. Even the guards dared not breathe. The air itself seemed to recoil.
The queen stepped down. Rain slid through her hair like tears she would never shed. Her gown black silk laced with silver dragged through the mud like mourning cloth.
When she reached the lake, she called out, "Oracle of Otherlyn! Hear me!"
The fog stirred, thickening like breath on glass. The water rippled, once, twice then split apart, and from its depths rose a figure neither living nor dead. Cloaked in shadow, its face obscured by smoke, it spoke in a voice that seemed to crawl from beneath the earth.
"Daughter of Vaelir… you bring the stench of envy. Why disturb what sleeps?"
The queen lifted her chin, regal yet trembling. "Because I am a queen unloved. My husband's heart lies with another. My throne grows colder by the day. I will not be replaced."
The Oracle's silence pressed like a weight on her chest. When it spoke again, its tone was low, disgust simmering beneath.
"You seek not love… but dominion."
"I seek what is mine," she hissed. Her reflection trembled in the black water, eyes wild with hunger. "He was sworn to me before gods and crowns. If love will not bind him, then desire shall."
She took a step forward, rain dripping from her lashes. "Give me something to make him remember what is his ; a potion, an elixir, a spell. I care not. I want him to burn for me. To ache in my absence. To forget her name."
Her hands clenched, voice cracking with venom. He still dreams of her.
The Oracle tilted its head. The lake stirred again, darker now, thick with iron and the scent of blood.
"You would steal love with poison?"
"I would secure my throne," she whispered. "And if his soul burns with it… so be it."
The words slithered into her ears like serpents. For a heartbeat, her reflection smiled though she hadn't.
The Oracle raised its hands, and between its dripping fingers, a small vial formed , glass so dark it swallowed the moonlight whole. The queen's lips curved into a trembling smile that didn't reach her eyes.
But the Oracle was not done. The water quaked, and its voice rose like thunder, echoing through the trees.
"Two roses from one stem shall bloom beneath divided moons.
One shall be born of love, the other of power.
One shall be dawn, the other dusk.
The prince of wolves shall choose the dawn,
And the dusk will envy her light.
Their love shall unite empires,
Their hearts shall forge a crown stronger than steel.
Peace shall reign and kingdoms shall bow,
For through their bond, power shall be reborn.
But beware, O queen
Where love and envy share a stem,
Envy turns to sorrow, and love to ash.
Until the light forgives the dark,
And the dark protects the light,
The rose shall bloom only to bleed."
The prophecy slithered through the air like smoke. The queen's smile faltered.
"What trickery is this?" she demanded, voice trembling between fury and fear. "Speak plainly!"
But the Oracle only laughed a hollow, echoing sound that crawled beneath her skin.
"You have sown what shall be reaped, daughter of Vaelir. Even roses bleed when watered with envy."
The mist thickened, swallowing the figure whole. The lake stilled.
And from its depths, two roses emerged, one pale as bone, the other red as blood ... bound by the same stem. Their petals dripped golden ichor that hissed as it touched the earth.
The queen reached out. For a moment, the petals gleamed like promise. But when her fingers neared them, they withered. The stem blackened. The air turned to rot.
The vial weighed heavy in her hand as she fled the lake, the prophecy ringing in her ears like a curse.
That night, two women one cloaked in velvet and jewels, the other in linen and longing lay beside the same man beneath different moons. The same seed of fate took root in both their wombs.
And far away, in the unseen realm where prophecy slept, thunder rolled across the heavens.
The library was silent, the kind of silence that hummed beneath the skin.
Cal Rivers closed the ancient book with a soft thud. Dust spiraled upward, catching the faint glow of the reading lamp that flickered above him. He sat hunched at a corner table, surrounded by forgotten tomes and the faint scent of parchment.
His round glasses slid slightly down his nose as he leaned back, running a hand through his mess of brown curls. Beneath the soft light, the lines of fatigue etched under his hazel eyes deepened, the look of someone who had been chasing shadows far too long.
By day, he was a medical student.
By night, the university's quiet archivist.
And yet, what drew him most wasn't medicine, it was this: the old, brittle histories of Elarion, a fallen kingdom that no one remembered and every record tried to erase.
He told himself it was curiosity.
But every time he touched the inked pages, something inside him stirred.
Today was no different. The book he had found bore a crest embossed into its cracked spine a rose cleaved by a blade. He traced it absentmindedly, feeling an inexplicable ache bloom in his chest.
He didn't know why, but the name whispered within the text 'Otherlyn' always made his pulse falter. It was as if the word itself recognized him.
Cal shut the book and exhaled, unaware of the faint shimmer that passed beneath his skin a pulse of light, gone too quickly to see.
Far from the library's safety, deep within the ruins of Elarion, something answered.
Where marble once stood, only stone and silence remained. Yet at the heart of the ruin, encased within a crystal chamber, a single rose bloomed, one half white as bone, the other red as spilled blood.
Its stem trembled once, as though waking from a long sleep.
And though Cal Rivers could not know it, his heartbeat had found its echo.
For in another age, another name,
he had been called something else
and the roses of Otherlyn
had waited centuries for his return.