Silver Rose 🌹

The castle of Asteria had never been quiet. Even at midnight, Princess Lyra could hear the guards laughing on the walls, the kitchens clattering as they prepared the dough for morning bread, and her little brother Milo sneaking into her room to steal sweets. But on her seventeenth birthday, it was quiet. Too quiet. Lyra sat in front of her mirror, her dark hair still half-braided. Her mother had given her a silver circlet for her birthday, simple, with a single tiny rose etched into it. "For my little rose," her mother had whispered. A scream shattered the silence. Not a normal scream. It was like vines growing and stone cracking at the same time. Lyra ran. Her bare feet slapped against the cold marble. The hallway outside her room was changing. Black thorns were bursting through the walls, through the paintings, through the floor. They moved like snakes, fast and hungry. "MOTHER! FATHER!" She burst into the throne room. What she saw stopped her heart. Her mother, her father, King Alric, and her 10-year-old brother Milo were standing in the center. They were frozen. Not dead. Stone. Their eyes wide, their hands reaching for each other. Thorns were wrapping around their ankles, their wrists, crawling up to their necks. The stone was spreading up from their feet. And in front of them stood a woman Lyra had only seen in storybooks. The Thorn Queen. Her dress was made of dead leaves, her crown was thorns, and her smile was beautiful and terrible. "Ah, the lost princess," the Thorn Queen said, her voice like dry leaves rustling. "I was told Asteria had a daughter with rose blood. Perfect." "What did you do to them!" Lyra screamed, trying to run to them, but a wall of thorns shot up and blocked her. "A simple trade. Your kingdom took my forest a hundred years ago. Now I take your family. They will stay stone until the Silver Rose blooms again. Which, poor dear, will never happen for you. It only blooms for those who are selfless. And princesses... are never selfless." The Queen laughed and dissolved into thorns. Lyra fell to her knees, pounding on the stone that was now her mother’s hand. It was cold. "Lyra!" A strong hand pulled her back. It was Kael. Kael was 18, the youngest Captain of the Royal Guard in history. Lyra had known him since they were kids training in the yard together. He was always serious, always perfect, always ignoring her because she was "just a princess." And he was, annoyingly, the most handsome person she had ever seen, even with his guard helmet crooked. "The castle is being swallowed! We have to go, now!" he shouted, his sword hacking at the thorns. The thorns sparked like they were metal. "I'm not leaving them!" She cried. "If you stay, you turn to stone too! The only way to save them is the Silver Rose! My grandfather told me about it!" That name stopped her. The Silver Rose. A legend. A flower made of pure moonlight that could cure any curse. It grew in the Dead Mountains, where no one returned from. Kael dragged her as the throne room ceiling collapsed in a wave of thorns. They ran through secret passages he knew from guard duty, out through the kitchen cellar, out into the forest beyond the castle walls. When they finally stopped, panting, Lyra looked back. Where the bright, golden castle of Asteria had been, there was now a giant, pulsing mountain of black thorns. No light. No sound. Her entire world was gone. She turned to Kael, tears finally spilling. "My family..." Kael looked away, his jaw tight. He was trying not to look at her in her nightgown, trying to be professional. "Princess Lyra, I have sworn to protect the royal bloodline. If the legends are true, we have 30 days before the stone becomes permanent and they... shatter. The Silver Rose blooms on the full moon. In 29 days." "So we have 29 days to cross a continent?" She laughed, a broken laugh. "We do," he said. Lyra wiped her face and stood up. The little silver circlet was still on her head. She touched the rose on it. "Then we start now. And Captain Kael?" "Yes, Princess?" "Second mission. On this journey, I am going to make you fall in love with me. Because you are way too serious." Kael choked. His serious, perfect guard face turned bright red. "Princess! That is... highly inappropriate! I have taken a vow!" "Too bad," Lyra said, and for the first time that terrible night, she smiled. "Let's go find my rose." Behind them, the thorn castle pulsed, waiting.