Seventeen

Slowly but surely, Rosamond regained her strength. The garden bloomed as happily as she did. More than once, she had overheard the servants talking about it, but she refused to be deterred by idle talk. When she saw her father again, she wanted to appear as hale and healthful as the day she departed for King Erik and Queen Margareta's court.

After four weeks of spending every day in the garden, Rosamond decided it was time. On the morrow, she would don her finest gown – or at least the least faded gown in the chest of old clothes Draga had foisted on her – and proceed up to the palace, where she would seek an audience with the king and queen, and explain her plan for the future.

The best of intentions rarely survive until morning, especially when illness sets in. Rosamond's improving appetite disappeared overnight, and what she did manage to swallow she only threw right back up again. She felt dizzy and weak, as she had when she had first arrived.

Rosamond had no more time for weakness, she decided, as she dragged herself outside to the garden. Reaching deep into a bramble bush, she let the thorns pierce her skin as she commanded the plant to help her heal herself.

Her heart beat loud in her ears, as it always did when she attempted magic on herself, deafening her to all other sound. Or it should have, but for an eager thrumming she had never heard before. What was it? she asked the plants as she searched for the source. The answers she received sounded like saplings and seeds, which made no sense. No plant she knew sounded like a rapidly beating heart.

And then she knew. Reaching deep inside herself, Rosamond found the sound's source. A heart so tiny she could scarcely see it, but a human heart nonetheless. Within her, she carried Warin's child – and, after her, the next heir to the throne.