Free All for a Rose by Jennifer Blackstream Page B

have been better used pulling weeds. Indeed, Maribel couldn’t help but notice that Corrine hadn’t staggered at all on the way to Mother Briar’s…
    The door swung open after only a few moments and Mother Briar peered out at them, grey eyebrows arched.
    “Hello, girls. What a surprise, I didn’t expect you for another—”
    “We have an emergency.” Corrine pulled Maribel to stand closer to her, infusing her voice with an intriguing mixture of desperation and authority.
    “Indeed?”
    “Our father has run afoul of the monster who lives in the abandoned manor. The beast is demanding that Maribel come to him to take our father’s place as his prisoner. We need your help.”
    “Father said himself that the lord showed him kindness,” Maribel insisted meekly. “I’m certain he will not harm me.”
    Mother Briar’s eyes sharpened and she leaned closer to Maribel with an intensity that had her taking a step back. A strange scent drifted from the old woman’s clothes, something metallic and musty. Blood and feathers?
    “The lord of the abandoned manor… What did he look like?”
    “Father said he looked like a dragon.” Maribel bit her lip. “He said that he was half man, half serpent.”
    For a brief second, Maribel could have sworn a message passed between Mother Briar and Corrine, a conversation without words. Mother Briar shuffled back and opened the door wider. “Come inside.”
    Though she’d been inside once or twice in the past, stepping inside the witch’s house was like stepping into a whole new world. Plants and herbs hung from strings all over the walls, filling the space with the dust of yellowed leaves and the cloying scent of dying blooms. The skeletons of small creatures were scattered about flat surfaces, some of them with bits of flesh still clinging feebly to the blood-stained bone. Sharp blades glinted from the shadows, polished but somehow still managing to hint at their gory tasks, as though the blood hung on the steel like a shadow. A thick black cauldron hung in the fireplace, a liquid bubbling inside that didn’t smell like any soup Maribel had ever come in contact with.
    After they were all seated at the small table in the witch’s kitchen, Mother Briar focused her full attention on Maribel. “Now, tell me exactly what happened.”
    Maribel resigned herself to the situation and leaned heavily on the table. “Father received a message saying one of his ships had come in, and he asked Corrine and me what we wanted. I tried to tell him I didn’t want anything, but he insisted. Finally, I remembered a rose I’d seen in one of your books. A Rose of the Mist. I told him I wanted the rose and showed him the picture. I thought he could get it at a florist or an apothecary, or maybe even from the woods—the book said the rose had been found in these forests near here before.” She closed her eyes, her stomach rolling as she forced herself to think of all that her father had been through—because of her.
    “This lord has a Rose of the Mist?” Mother Briar breathed.
    A gleam came into her eyes, a shine that emphasized the darkness of her irises rather than lightened them. Maribel had to fight not to rub her arms to rid herself of the sudden crawling sensation over her flesh.
    “A Rose of the Mist is very valuable,” Mother Briar mused, half to herself. A flash of disapproval lit her eyes. “And if you’d read the book in its entirety, you would know that it does not occur naturally. The Rose of the Mist is created from an ordinary rose that has been subjected to intense magical forces—wild, uncontrolled magic. They cannot be created on purpose, only by accident. That is what makes them so rare.”
    Again the old crone’s gaze slid to Corrine as if trying to convey something important. Corrine’s brown eyes remained ice cold, her face set in sharp lines. Maribel opened her mouth, ready to ask what was going on, what the two women weren’t telling her.
    “I’ve heard