Roses and Thorns *EDITING IN PROGRESS*

Chapter 2

Ezra

We'd been out there for weeks, doing nothing except searching through towns, taking the Roses that we found. Everybody got to have fun, going on raids and pillaging through towns. Not me. Platoon Captain is a "fun" job, for the people that like sitting at desks and telling other people what to do. Yes, you heard me correctly. This is a "fun" job.

Kai and I were sitting in the big tent, sorting through letters from all the other lucky souls that had been given the "fun" job.

I yawned and stretched back. "How many letters left?"

Kai sighed. "Between thirty-two and three hundred and four." He smirked.

All this reading was giving me a headache. "Remind me again why I wanted you to help me read these letters?"

"Because, Mr. Sir Captain, sir. You said 'Somebody has to do it with me. Ba ba bar ba bar bar bar.'"

"I do not sound like that." I said indignantly.

Kai didn't say anything, he just stared at me with a goofy grin on his face. "No, SIR." He added with a mock salute.

I pushed myself off the floor and went behind the big desk where all the "fun" happened. On it are more boring papers and even more boring paperwork and things that bore my mind too much to even think about. I slid my gloves back onto my hands.

While I was putting my gloves on, and Kai was mocking me, one of the search party leaders, Matteo, came in. He looked exhausted. Frankly, we all did. We'd been stuck out here for weeks and weeks, waiting for the day when we'd be called back to the Thorne fortress in the north, where we were to find out if a prince walks among us. In the meantime, we spent hours and hours in Scavenging Platoons, nabbing Roses from this forsaken land and hauling them back up to the fortress.

Remember: This is "fun".

Matteo cleared his throat. "We found a few Roses -- a Blue and a Silver. The Silver was old and didn't put up much of a fight; but his son, the Blue, said that he wouldn't go willingly and died in the aftermath. We expect him to become a Crimson any day now."

I sighed internally. The last thing I needed right now was another Rose Turning on me. Just when I was about to scream my head off at Matteo for letting a Rose start Turning, Kai piped up.

"You said there were a few Roses. What happened to the third one?"

Matteo looked down at his feet. "Yes. We had some trouble with the third one."

"What happened?" I asked. "Surely this wouldn't have to do with the missing princes from the Rose Court?"

"I don't know. We found a girl -- not even eighteen by the look of her -- who tried to persuade us that she was a farm girl, that her father had sent her on a late errand. We had been hunting out Roses in the area, when Tristan had spotted some sort of spyglass peeking out a hole in a silo wall. When we got there, we found this girl. Our Crimson claimed he smelled something, another Rose we didn't catch. When he got the chance to smell this girl, he confirmed that she was indeed the Rose that we had been looking for."

"What kind of Rose?" Kai asked, his eyes wide.

I don't know what, but there was something pulling at the back of my neck, something that wanted the answer that Matteo gave me. But above all else, there was something dangerous about Matteo's information.

"She's a White Rose."

"Ezrin" The man sat on throne, which in turn, was placed on a raised dais, far above all else. He was cold, but not harsh. Warming but not inviting. I had see people like this before. This man could only be one person.