Once the leaves were gone the rose buds came. And they didn't come by themselves. Each petal was born with at least a few droplets of blood.
The panic all around the Kingdom set in. If not panic, then gossip.
It was the sort that was hurtful and no one really believed it. Of course, it wasn't true either. Every time, the words were passed around, they were cut with bleach and more cruelty than the last batch. So something like:
"The Queen is spitting up bloody flowers" Would become:
"The Queen is spitting up blood from a disease she got from Gilbert."
And that statement came with weeds and weeds woven out of more gossip. All the village bitches made their own stories about The Queen's unfaithful escapades and her newest pregnancy. They theorized how monstrous the baby would look and when The Queen would die giving birth to it.
As the rumors became worse every day, Elizaveta's apologies became more and more desperate. She would wake up and apologize and apologize before going to sleep, all contained under the heavy royal sheets. The pleas were always peppered with a request to spare Gilbert's life and it all went in circles as she developed a heavy fever.
It all seemed to stabilize until one night.
The woman awoke in a sweat. The entire room around her was still and quiet. The sound of her husband's breathing found a place in her head. But all Elizaveta could focus on was the walls. The walls and the walls and the walls.
She was trapped in a dodecahedron made of brick walls.
Through it all—through the twelve sided dice—Elizaveta found light through the tiny holes in the door frame. From there, she stumbled out of the chamber and into the hallway and down the stairs and past the dungeon and into the garden.
Until she reached her dying paradise, Elizaveta's vision was blurred and her stomach was nauseous. Her bones went rigid like tree bark, but upon being in the garden they went back to being like vines.
The furnace inside her chest went out, and the sweat inside her shorter hair became more like flakes.
Elizaveta collapsed in the snow.
And as her throat filled up with the acid of another bloody rose bud, her pitiful nightgown somehow tore away and ended up a few feet from her natural body.
The sensation in her mouth went away. Instead of the dark crimson flower, she pulled out a pretty pink petal from between her lips.
It was dropped in the snow and her sharp green eyes found the grey walls and the snow flakes, all patted down on top of one another, then the dying vines that used to be so happy in life.
Taking in all of it, The Queen felt a strange kind of joy branch out of her chest. It absolved her throat of the sticker bush inside it and peace came in the form of elusive sleep.
A servant found her the next morning, naked and face down in that blanket of white.
The King tore her away from the ground. He was going to check her pulse, but the woman's violent screams were enough evidence of life.
Roderich wrapped her in a blanket and soaked her in warm water. Then he put that sick woman back to bed and she slept quietly until the next night when the same thing happened again.
Like a cycle, he wrapped her up and bathed her in hot water, holding her hand the entire time.
They spoke to one another as The Queen sat in that steaming bath that cut her skin like a poisonous blade.
"Elizaveta." The King's voice came out gently, but it still filled the room. There was nothing else inside it but his noise. "You can't keep doing this. Don't you know you'll freeze to death?"
The Silence.
The Large, Overbearing Silence.
"I won't."
"Elizaveta, you will."
"No." She said. "I won't. The cold makes me feel better. When I lay in the snow, my petals aren't bloody anymore; they're pink. Didn't anyone ever tell you—" But The Queen stopped where she was. "I'm sorry, Roderich. I guess nobody ever did. I'm sorry—I've done a terrible thing. Please don't kill Gilbert."
Her eyes didn't make contact.
"I think I'll die soon."
To that, there was no adequate response. So Roderich let go of his wife's hand and stared at her.
He wished to say: "I won't let you die!" But even he didn't have that control. So instead, the King ran away in a teary-eyed frustration while Elizaveta spit out another crimson stained petal into the boiling water.
That night, she tried to get up and go outside again, but the door had been barricaded by muscular guards on the outside. The indignant woman pushed and pushed, but her strength was gone beneath the shadow of sickness and the porthole felt like it was welded shut. In a rage, a holler tore through her lungs and she beat her pale hands against the unforgiving surface, shouting like an animal stuck in a cage.
Roderich got a hold of her and restrained her limbs in a sad attempt to calm her down. But that was an unreasonable request. So instead of screeching like a monkey, The Queen began to weep.
With shallow breaths, she begged. "Please—Please—don't kill Gilbert—" Gasp. "Please don't kill him—I promised—I promised—!"
She punched her husband hard in the chest and sank down to the floor, like a ragdoll.
"I won't kill Gilbert! Just get better!" Roderich clutched the place where Elizaveta had struck him. There was a dense pain. "Will you stop this if I promise not to Kill Gilbert?! I won't. I won't kill him! Okay? So please get well now! I'll do whatever you want as long as this stops!"
The Queen was sobbing into the cold wall. Her frail white cheek sank into it without any regard of the points the bricks made.
The sorrow infected her to the core. The entire woman was sore and heaving like a nail beat down by a hammer.
"Elizaveta!"
A small amount of moonlight came from behind a snow cloud and all the microscopic details of her misery were then apparent. The way it twisted her. The beads of sweat rolling along her face. The paper white complexion of her flesh that was a beautiful olive color only about a week or so beforehand.
Roderich felt a lightning strike of horror. And as his blue eyes widened, Elizaveta threw up.
This time an entire rose came out amongst the puddle of blood.
It used to be white.
"Roderich…Please don't kill Gilbert. I don't know if I told you, but I made him a promise. I'm sorry, Roderich. I love you. I never stopped loving you. You believe me, right?"
The Queen's blood soaked into the night gown. Into her kneecaps, where she leaned into the pool she had made.
It was so dark. It looked black.
The King embraced his wife. He held her near as if this could be the last time. Maybe it was. He held Elizaveta with no spaces between them so he could feel her breath and her pulse and her cool beads of warm sweat. Because these were all signs that the woman was alive. Even if her mind was curling into a depraved ball and washing around in her stomach acid.
Her body must have been a thousand degrees.
The King began to weep.
"Yes, Darling. I do believe you. I've never stopped loving you either. You're very precious to me. I'm sorry I made you feel that you had to run. I'm sorry I was so angry—I—"
"Hey, did I ask you? Will you let me see Gilbert before I die?"
The Queen slept unconscious in The King's arms.