Rosalind Meadowstride's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The morning after the hall went quiet, Rosalind found a gift waiting at her door. A set of tea jars sat under a flowered archway, each jar bright and lovely, each label promising a kindness. A small card rested on top in careful script. From Frocklin, with courtesy. Rosalind did not touch the jars. She knew a trap dressed in ribbon when she saw one. While she stood thinking, a letter arrived in the other hand of the morning. Shelldon's seal. She broke it and read. He wrote plainly, as he always spoke. He had heard about the gift before she had. He warned her that refusing it loudly would be called rudeness, and accepting it would be called proof that hoofed kin could be bought. Either road, he wrote, would be twisted into a fresh insult against him for standing beside her. Then the letter turned, and the page grew heavier in her hand. Her sister had been found at the edge of the woods. Lauren now wore hooves. A small white horn had risen on her brow. Frocklin's work, clean and quiet, done in the night. Rosalind sat down on the step. Her tail went still. For a long moment she did not breathe. The cruelty had reached past her and taken someone who had never asked for any of this. Lauren came up the path before noon, walking carefully on new hooves, her pink hair loose, her mouth set. She looked at the tea jars under the archway and did not cry. "She sent these too," Lauren said. "Of course she did." She lifted one jar, then another, reading the labels with a flat eye. "A cure, this one says. Sleep, this one. Calm. Take your pick." Her voice was dry. "I am not drinking anything that woman left at a door." Rosalind stood. She had her answer now, and it belonged to neither road Frocklin had drawn for her. She would not refuse the gift. She would not accept it. She picked up the jars one by one and set them back inside the archway, neatly, untouched. Then she wrote a short note in her own hand. Returned, unopened. Thank you for the thought. She placed it on top and left the whole arrangement standing there, a quiet display any passing noble could see. Not insulted. Not bought. Only declined, in full daylight, with witnesses. Lauren watched her work and gave a thin breath that was almost a laugh. "She will hate that more than a slammed door." Rosalind nodded. She took her sister's hand, hooves beside hooves now, and felt the new weight of what they shared. The gift was answered. But Lauren's horn caught the light, and Rosalind understood that Frocklin had moved the war onto her sister's body, and that was the next thing she would have to undo.