Tainted

Chapter Forty-Five - Rogue

Rogue pushes his way through the crowd. He tries not to look at any one person for too long in case they recognize him.

He didn't want to tell anyone he was a Lodenstone. Mostly because he was afraid they would take that fact back to his family, and his family would come looking.

But, if Rogue is honest with himself, he didn't want the people of Haven to see him as a noble. He wanted them to see him as a scrappy Ill-Fated who's had to make his own way in the world, just like them.

Esmeralda hadn't cared what back story they told the early members of Haven, she had just wanted to put as much distance between herself and their family as possible. She hadn't wanted anything to do with them after Baleon.

Rogue comes to a stop before the Lodenstone tent. Though he's never been here, he would recognize it anywhere. It's exactly his father's taste. It's ostentatious to the extreme. Valuable tail feathers are stitched into every seam of the sea-blue satin tent. The feathers have the same blue hue toward their base, but then they widen out, turning purple and green with massive eye-like spots at the ends.

Gold thread keeps the swaths of fabric together, and a flag bearing the Lodenstone crest stands tall over the doorway. Rogue swallows as he counts the figures by the pool. There used to be five, sewn in dyed silk thread around the edge of the shimmering pool, five white horses standing behind them. Now there's only three. Rogue's two parents, and Baleon.

"We've been cut out, Ez," Rogue whispers. He smiles sadly. She would've loved to see that.

Servants in white bustle around the exterior of the tent, tending to thorny rose bushes and the agitated white mares trying to move about in the tight space between tents. A breeze blows past, fluttering the tent flap entryway, and the smell of sage and rosemary wafts out, tinged with a hint of ginger.

Rogue stands stock still. He can hear her voice; words with that same soft beginning and sharp end. His mother. She's there, just inside the tent, instructing a servant to move a vase a little to the left. She's right there.

Move, Rogue tells his feet. They don't listen.

She speaks again, and suddenly he's walking, stepping over the threshold and through the flapped entryway.

She's wearing a pale pink dress. It's made of a gauzy material and seems to ripple over her like water. It's tied tightly at the waist with a deep purple sash. This matches the color of the gemstones draped around her neck, and the ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Her hair is up in its customary bun, but it's greyer than it was four years ago. Or was it five? She looks older than Rogue would've thought possible, and the sight almost makes him cry.

"Savarin," she breathes. His name sounds foreign, he's been Rogue for so long.

He rushes to her, and throws his arm around her middle, crushing his head against her cheek. She smells minty and floral all at the same time. It was the perfume she insisted on wearing day after day even though Esmeralda told her it was nauseating. To Rogue it always just smelled like home.

His mother's hands lightly touch his back, but she doesn't hold him like he's holding her, and he let's go, backing away.

"Hi," he says, his voice rougher than he wants it to be.

"Savarin," she says again, her eyes wide. They roam his face, taking in the man he's become.

"Why are you here?" she asks. There's no warmth to her face. Her hands fall back to her sides.

Rogue's shoulders sag. He doesn't know what he was expecting. An "I'm sorry"? A "We were wrong, but we still love you"?

In all the times Rogue had tried to get back home, Esmeralda had always stopped him, telling him that their parents didn't want them anymore. Maybe she was right.

"I have to tell you something," Rogue says.

The other servants pretend to ignore them, but Rogue can see them glancing over and turning their heads to listen.

"What?" his mother asks.

Rogue clenches his jaw. He tells himself not to be disappointed if she doesn't cry.

"Esmeralda's dead," he says.

His mother stares at him, her green eyes matching his. She sniffs, then turns away.

"She was dead to me a long time ago," she says. She grabs at something over her chest. A necklace of some sort.

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, Rogue tells himself. He bites his lip and taste the iron of his blood.

"As were you," his mother says, not looking at him.

All the breath leaves Rogue's body. His hands shake at his sides. He squeezes them to make it stop.

"Oh," he says. He swallows. "Well goodbye then."

His mother holds onto the edge of a gilded, pale pink couch. "You stole from us," she says, still looking away.

Rogue remembers. "Wake up," Esmeralda had said. "We're leaving." He hadn't believed it at first, but then Esmeralda had started shoving everything of value she could find into a huge burlap bag. They'd taken coin, candlesticks, jewels. Rogue hadn't known what they were doing, he was just fifteen, but he'd followed her blindly. They'd taken two of the horses as well, and they'd ridden as far as they could go before needing to stop for food. They'd traded everything they'd taken for coins and lived off it until they could put it toward Haven.

"You stole my baby from us," his mother says quietly, and Rogue realizes she hadn't been talking about the coin.

Tears cloud his eyes as he turns, walking blurrily toward the door, but not before a piece of paper catches his eye. He swipes it from the table, and pushes out into the hot and sticky morning.

Mira, he thinks. I have to get back to Mira.