Mercedes Lackey - The Fire Rose

Or broken hearts? Oh, I expect he's well acquainted with paying for broken hearts. There. I've admitted it. I'm in love with him. She sighed, and stared into the eyes of her reflection with resignation; her reflection stared back at her through the lenses of her quite unmodish spectacles. If this had been her first love affair, she probably would have been in tears at this point. But it wasn't, and the fact was, she had never really forgotten the vast social gulf that separated herself and Jason. That gulf was bridged only by the fact of his appearance, and there had never been any illusions on her part that when he got his old self back, the bridge would disintegrate.

And even if he actually proposed to her against all logic, it would probably be out of a sense of duty, of what he owed her. And perhaps out of a notion of avoiding possible scandal-which would not hurt him, but could ruin her. If she accepted, he would be chained to an inappropriate wife, and she would be aware, and resentful, that he had offered her marriage only because he felt he had to. The resentment they both felt would sour everything good that had ever happened between them.

So what does a woman in love with a werewolf do at this point?

The heroine of some popular romance would probably dissolve into tears, and be perfectly incapable of thinking. This would put off any need to plan whatsoever, since she would not be able to face the prospect of such a bleak future, and would live helplessly from day to day. And of course, romantic novels being completely divorced from reality, when Jason did return to normal, like the Prince in Cinderella, he would declare that no matter who or what she was, he would love her forever.

And pigs will doubtless fly before that happens.

But she was not the heroine of a silly romance; her mind seldom stopped working just because her emotions were involved. This was not a fairy tale and even in the originals of the fairy tales, the ending was not guaranteed to be "and they lived happily ever after."

Well, the brave heroines of quite a few fairy tales sacrificed everything for the happiness of the one they loved. She thought about the Little Mermaid, dying so that her prince would never know that it was she who had rescued him, and not the princess he had come to love. Or the half-human, immortal Firebird, giving up Ivan so that the mortal Tsarina could have him. The thought of Beauty and the Beast occurred to her, but she was no Beauty, and her love for him would be no cure for his condition.

Very well, then. I shall be the Little Mermaid, and walk upon legs that stab me with a thousand pains, and in the end, fling myself into the ocean with a smile so that he can have his life again. I will still have my work, I will have a lovely wardrobe, and I shall have the financial means to complete my degree and pursue an academic career. I believe that I will make a fine Professor of Literature in a won-tan's college somewhere. I shall attempt to wake the intellect of silly young girls, most of whom will be occupying space until they marry men like Jason, and I will treasure and nurture the intelligence of those few who are different. I will be mysterious and enigmatic, respected, if not loved, perhaps a little eccentric, and I will continue to have Magick.

She practiced the bright smile in the mirror, until she was certain that she had gotten it right. At least she would do better than the poor Mermaid out of this. In the end, she would have a well-fattened bank-account and someplace to go.

And she would have Magick. Perhaps among those silly young girls, she would find another with a spirit like her own, to pass the Magick on to.

Jason's Master had never needed anything more than the Magick to make his life complete. Perhaps she could learn to feel the same.

Her throat closed over tears she refused to shed. And pigs will surely fly the day I do....

Jason brought Sunset back into the paddock at a walk; the stallion was sweating from a good run, but not foaming, and his unstrained breathing told the Firemaster that his wind had not suffered in spite of his long idleness. For being confined to the paddock for so long, he was in remarkably good condition; better than Jason had any right to expect.

That he had accepted Jason, changed as he was-it was nothing short of a miracle, and it was a miracle that would never have happened if it hadn't been for Rose. It had never occurred to him to get Sunset used to the changed scent by bringing shirts down to the stallion's stall. It had never occurred to him that the familiar scent could overcome the unfamiliar sight.

Once again, Rose had given him a gift that he could never repay. What a woman she was! Compared to her, the daughters of his business peers were as shallow and empty-headed as the brainless horses they rode, or the idiot little spaniels they carried about with them.

Once, he had taken it as a matter of course that he would, in due time, marry one of them. He would, of course, continue to have an expensive courtesan discreetly kept in town for his real pleasures-a woman of wit and amusement, who would entertain him in more ways than the amorous. If the girl he married, as was all too likely, found her marital duties a burden, he would perform his duty just often enough to produce a family. He probably would have chosen the prospective bride on the basis of whether or not she showed any potential in her family for Magick; if he had children, he wanted them to be magicians if at all possible.

Frankly, now that I have come to know Rose, I would rather marry one of the spaniels. Fortunately, I don't have to marry one of those brainless debutantes if I choose otherwise. I am a self-made man, in a city of self-made men. I have no well-bred parents with familial expectations of my station. This is no monarchy, where I must wed for the sake of the country. There is no reason why, when all this is over, that I cannot marry Rose. There is no one I have to placate through marriage. I have a fortune of my own, and I do not need to wed another. And I need not explain my choice of bride to anyone. She is a Magician, of a Discipline compatible with mine. She will not need to be sheltered from anything, nor will I need to keep any secrets from her. And-I do not believe she will find the sensual side of marriage at all distasteful.

He had to laugh at that, after a moment. Her? The woman who told me crisply that she had read The Decameron in the original? She might well force me to prove my mettle!

But as he dismounted, and pain shot up his legs from his cramped feet, the reality of his situation came home to him.

He was still trapped in the body of a half-beast. And there was no real evidence that he would be able to reverse that condition any time soon. No matter what his dreams and plans, that was the current reality.

He led Sunset into the stable, and with the help of his Salamanders, removed the tack to be cleaned and began to rub him down and groom him.

Such a purely physical occupation gave him plenty of time for reflection, although his thoughts were far from pleasant ones. He was being very confident in her presence about the matter, but the fact was that they were no closer to finding a solution than they had been when he first hired her. And he had a shrewd notion just who owned that manuscript the Unicorn referred to.

Beltaire has it, I'm sure of it, and he'd burn it to ash if he thought there was even a chance that I might get my hands on it. He is the only person I "know" that I have not asked about it, and if he had any inkling of my condition, he is probably gloating over it. What could he possibly offer her, trapped in this state as he was?

She was being very brave and very controlled, giving no obvious sign that she found his bestial form repugnant, and in fact, he thought that now and again she actually managed to forget the form he wore, at least as long as she was not looking directly at him. But how could any woman look at him without shrinking away? He was hideous, a nightmare, and he would be a fool to think otherwise.