Just to prove how incomprehensible the male mind was, Jon fell madly in love with Rosa after the day she punched him without punching him. It was puppy love, and Rosa knew for a fact that he would grow out of it--and was glad of it, too. But it was the first time a male looked at her with adoration in his eyes, and she discovered that she liked it--even if it was coming from a grubby kitchen boy who'd been tormenting her for years.
Even more surprising was when she found herself looking back.
She did her best to disguise it by telling herself that it was just because he had at last grown into his looks, and had indeed become very handsome. Half the girls in the palace were swooning over him, and he was still only fourteen--why, think how much more handsome he'd be when he was fully-grown!
But the fact remained that, despite all her efforts to the contrary, Rosa had developed just as much of a crush on Jon as he had on her.
It was entirely frustrating, and made absolutely no sense. But there it was.
She managed to distract herself from her adolescent woes with study of the book on sorcery. She found, to her delight, that she was a sorcerer of the ancient blood; she had inherited the gift from her mother. All the spells in the book worked when she tried them--although she didn't try all of them, of course. Some of them she couldn't picture anyone using. There were spells to stop a person's heart, to break bones or mend them, and even one that was supposed to cause some sort of unspecified torture to its victim--accompanied by pictures of several people, their faces twisted and screaming in unbearable agony. She had shuddered at that one, and moved on as quickly as she could turn the pages.
Some of the spells were written in a language she couldn't read, some language of symbols that had nothing to do with the letters she knew. She had tried to squint at the tiny symbols and figure out what some of them meant, but had had no luck so far. Instead, she had vowed to search the entire library if she had to, to find a book that would teach her to read the language of symbols. After all, they had books on everything else in the library; why not on this?
The book taught her everything she ever learned about sorcery. It taught her how to master her powers and bring them under her control, rather than having them respond to her unconscious will; she memorized all the useful spells in the book, and marked the pages of those that she might want to use one day. There was one section she found particularly interesting, regarding the power of mirrors:
Mirrors are one of the most powerful tools a sorcerer can have. It is believed that in days past sorcerers were able to do many incredible things with mirrors; spying at long distances, seeing the future, seeing the past, etc. However, the knowledge on how to perform these spells has all been lost, and the spells should therefore never be attempted due to the possible consequences (see pg. 923).
The one thing it is still remembered how to do with a mirror is how to imprison a person within. This is very rarely done, for once it is, the only way the person within the mirror can be freed is if the person who set the spell dies--and if the mirror is shattered, the person trapped within will die.
Consider yourself forewarned as to the possible consequences of this spell. If you should still wish to do so, you will first need a mirror--size and dimensions matter not, as long as it is a mirror. Mere reflective surfaces will not work--in other words, you could not imprison a person in the blade of a sword. It must be a mirror.
Second, you will need the blood of the person you wish to imprison--freely given or forcefully taken, it matters not. In sorcery, blood is power; blood is more binding than any other bodily fluid. When used wisely, it can enhance the power of a spell more than many people think possible; when not careful enough, it can end up being the destroyer of a sorcerer's life (see pg. 923).
She found the possible uses of mirrors very intriguing, perhaps because she had always liked mirrors--especially when using them to look at her own reflection. She'd known since she was just six years old that she was astoundingly beautiful, and since then, had especially loved to compare her own reflection to Snow's. If only she wasn't so short! Damn Snow for being so tall and skinny, anyway.
She was highly tempted for a moment to see if she could manage to perform some of the forgotten spells the text had mentioned; she secretly cherished the notion of being able to spy on anyone, anywhere, at anytime, without them knowing she was there. But she had flipped to the twice-mentioned page 923 out of curiosity--the first page of the final chapter, aptly named Warnings for Sorcerers--and after reading that chapter, would never have been foolish enough to attempt the spells without prior knowledge.
The final chapter was twenty whole pages of nothing but warnings. Never use your own blood in a spell except under extreme caution; if the spell was forcefully shattered, the binding power of the blood could serve to seriously harm or even kill the poor sorcerer who had set it. Never attempt a spell without complete prior knowledge of how to work it; the consequences for a mistake when working magic where so dire that Rosa didn't even want to think about them. Never push yourself beyond your limits; at the best, you would end up with a splitting headache, and at worst, you would end up dead. Never try to work a spell around iron; there was something about cold iron that magic just didn't agree with. And most importantly of all, never allow your body to be pierced by iron when working sorcery. The results of that were the reason why sorcerers very rarely participated in battles.
By the time she was fifteen, Rosa had the entire book memorized (including the spells in the mysterious symbol-language--she had found a dusty manuscript in the library that translated from Torlemontian to every other language in the known world) and was searching in the library for anything she could find that had even the slightest thing to do with sorcery. She thought about binding Snow in a mirror, but decided that petty vengeance wasn't anywhere near worth the risk involved; instead, she plagued her sister's life with any number of other small annoyances, from sudden cases of measles to a spell carefully designed to make her slip at the tenth step up on the Grand Staircase (that had resulted in a leg broken in three places). It was infinitely satisfying to know that no one could ever trace her back to these small annoyances; instead, Snow merely became known for her klutziness and bad luck.
Meanwhile, her crush on Jon merely continued to grow larger. Eight months before her sixteenth birthday, she found herself unable to concentrate even on her book of sorcery without his face interrupting her thoughts, and stomped out to the stables in disgust at herself. It was there that she at last gave in to the inevitable, and made love with Jon in a hayloft.
It wasn't exactly the most enjoyable sexual experience she'd ever have; the hay constantly prickled at her back, and Jon couldn't exactly be described as an experienced lover (when asked, he confided that he'd done it once before, with a kitchen maid--and had been very drunk at the time, and didn't remember a thing). It was her first time, though, and she supposed it should have at least felt special. But somehow, it didn't.
As if that wasn't enough, she and Jon fell completely and totally out of love with each other by the next morning. Maybe they could have retained their innocent affection had they each remained distant and untouchable to the other--but along with her virginity and her childhood, Rosa lost any feeling she had ever had for the grubby little kitchen boy who had helped her discover her magic.
There was one thing that made up for it, though. Along with her change from girl into woman, the powers of her sorcery increased. It was entirely intriguing; in all 943 pages of her book on sorcery, never had it been mentioned that losing one's virginity made for an increase of power. Yet there was no other explanation for how much easier the spells came to her now.
A week later, she quite firmly informed her father that she was never going to get married. She told him she was absolutely certain she was never going to fall in love; men were all well and good, but she was positive there wasn't a single one she would ever want to spend her life with. What she didn't tell him was that there were plenty she would most definitely want to share her bed with. He smiled indulgently and patted her on the head as though she were five instead of fifteen and asked wasn't it about time for her to be heading off to bed? Firmly convinced that her father had no idea she wasn't a child anymore, she headed off to her bed obediently, and tried not to think too much about how depressingly empty it was.
For along with her newfound womanhood and increase in powers had come a most definite liking for men. Oh, she hadn't lied to her father at all; she was certain there wasn't a male born who would ever hold more than (perhaps) a tiny portion of her heart. But that didn't mean she couldn't share her bed with whomever she pleased--and she had discovered that she possessed a certain sort of beauty and natural charm that could lure almost any man to her bed. She thoroughly intended to take shameless advantage of that fact.
The one man her charm failed on was the one who taught her to be ruthless.
Vekua Velar. It was a name that should have belonged to a Prince, or at the very least a Lord--certainly not a common-born stablehand. He didn't look, sound, or act like a common-born stablehand; the identity of his father was unknown, but Rosa was sure, whoever he was, he had been royalty.
Whoever his father had been, Vekua's face was as beautiful as the soft southern accents of his name. Long black hair, sweeping downwards in elegant waves to just below his shoulder blades; soft, sparkling blue eyes, eyes a woman could drown herself in, framed by lashes that many of the same women would have killed for. His lips were full and sensuous, his skin tone pleasantly coppery; he was tall and lean rather than muscular, but that made absolutely no difference. On any other man, his features would have seemed overly effeminate; on Vekua Velar, they were virile perfection.
Every woman in the entire palace was swooning the day he came to work there. Fate would have it that he was engaged and head over heels in love with another of the stablehands--and a plainer, uglier woman Rosa had never seen in her life.
Engaged or not, Rosa knew the first time she saw him that she had to have him.
She tried her hardest. She tried every approach she knew, from so subtle it would have taken a mindreader to decipher her attentions, to flirtation so blatant it sickened her. She exerted every inch of her considerable charm, and all on just this one man.
Nothing worked. Vekua was so in love with his fiancée it was positively sickening.
At last she resorted to the only means left to her--magic.
She set a trap to ensnare him, a spell intended to make him forget all about his hideous fiancée and concentrate entirely on her. And oh, it worked; it worked even better than she had intended.
He came to her just as she had intended, and spent with her one of the most enjoyable nights of her life. The next morning, he broke off the engagement with his fiancée, and insisted upon following her around devotedly everywhere she went.
For a few days, it was rather amusing, having her own private toy that would do anything she asked of him. But it got very annoying, very quickly.
After a week of having put up with his nonsense, she redid the spell, this time to make him fall out of love with her and back in love with his ugly little ex-fiancée. The next day, he was as devoted to her as he had been to Rosa; she was mad at him, naturally, and refused to take him back no matter how much he begged. Rosa didn't particularly care; she was just glad to be rid of him. She never knew exactly what happened to him; all she knew was that the woman who had once been his fiancée never actually married him. For all she knew, he had died of a broken heart--and good riddance.
There were three very important lessons she learned from that little mess. One: Never use a spell unless you know exactly how it's going to work. Two: Be subtle.
And three: Never hesitate to use sorcery; be ruthless.
Her father threw a gigantic party for her sixteenth birthday; it was an entire six months in the planning. It was at that party that she met Prince Rayden of Mossenden.