’Twas a year after the thorned vine first bloomed that seed pods appeared upon it.
Those blood-red blossoms had endured all that spring and people had come from far and wide to look upon the marvel of Airdfinnan’s walls. The enchanted vine itself grew no more, much to Angus’s relief. It cloaked the great walls as if ’twere armor and made it impossible to surmount those walls without suffering a dire wound.
After Esmeraude and Bayard’s nuptials, and after the pair had paused at Airdfinnan en route to France, both flowers and leaves had fallen of one accord. The vine gleamed silver through all the autumn and the winter, as if it had been wrought of pewter.
Jacqueline had thought ’twould change no more, for Esmeraude and Bayard were in France, at Villonne, and almost certainly too far away
