The Rose Bargain

by Sasha Peyton Smith

Genres: Sword & Sorcery; YA Historical Fiction; YA Romance; Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; YA Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

The Cruel Prince meets The Selection in this captivating duology opener brimming with heart-pounding romance, vicious competition, and beautiful, cruel fae, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Witch Haven, Sasha Peyton Smith.

Every citizen of England is granted one bargain from their immortal fae queen.

High society girls are expected to bargain for qualities that will win them suitors: a rare talent for piano in exchange for one’s happiest childhood memory. A perfect smile for one’s ability to taste.

But Ivy Benton’s debut season arrives with a shocking twist: a competition to secure the heart of the Queen’s fae son, Prince Bram. A prize that could save Ivy’s family from ruin… and free her sister from the bargain that destroyed her.

Yet every glittering fae deal has a rotting heart—and at the center of this contest is a dark plot that could destroy everything Ivy knows.

Sweepingly romantic and deceptively enchanting, this alternate history romantasy will enthrall readers of Holly Black, Stephanie Garber, and Adalyn Grace.

Release date: February 4, 2025

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 400

Sample

1471
The War of the Roses

King Edward’s face was streaked with mud and blood when the woman first appeared at the tree line. His sword hung by his side, limp, in a single moment of pause, and then he fell to his knees.

There had been rumors of the Others’ involvement in the war from the first moment a sword plunged through the belly of a banner knight from the Midlands, but denial goes down easy. Surely there were plausible explanations for the sudden turns in weather or the flocks of sheep found skinned and headless. But those whose grans taught them never to go into the woods without a sprig of holly in their pocket knew. They’d known for months, for decades, for generations.

Like the gods meddling in the affairs of men in the Trojan War, the Others too played with mortal conflicts for fun.

That’s what they were called back then. The Others.

The Lancasters and the Yorks both believed themselves to be the legitimate successors to the Plantagenet line. But a country cannot have two kings, and as neither side was willing to concede to the other’s claim to the throne, banners were raised and blades were sharpened.

The war was brutal, as all wars are, pointless and cruel. Within the first year, the soil of England ran wet with blood. But the war did not end. Like the beat of the drums that led farmers to slaughter, it marched on.

It wasn’t until the Battle of Barnet that the tide truly turned. Every schoolchild on the island knows the story. It’s carved into marble stones outside Buckingham Palace, set upright for all to read. The story of the day Queen Moryen saved all of England.

It went like this.

The battlefield was burning, and Edward was desperate.

Whether it was the scent of desperation or blood that called her is still some matter of debate, but what matters is she came.

They say the entire battlefield went still as she strode out into the fray. Her bone-white gown trailed gauzy behind her, catching the leaves and pulling them along in her wake. She had onyx hair and eyes even blacker than that. Her skin was ghostly pale, her sharp features so beautiful that looking at her felt like a physical blow. Some men bent over and retched, unable to take the sight of her.

She walked across the battlefield on slipper-clad feet, slowly, like she knew they’d all wait for her.

Edward dropped to his knees before her.

“Stand,” she commanded, and he did. “I come to help.”

Tears streaked tracks through the dirt on his face as he nodded in wordless, profound gratitude.

She leaned into him, her perfect profile silhouetted in the ashy smoke of the battlefield, and whispered into his ear.

The conversation wasn’t long; whatever she offered, he readily agreed to. Then she pulled a dagger from her belt and slashed his palm. The bargain was made.

On the other side of the clearing, Henry VI dropped dead.

Britain had a new king, decisively. Edward IV.

The Lancasters went home, and the York camp torches burned all night as the victory celebration raged.

But the strange woman didn’t watch them. She was already on the road in a carriage pulled by snow-white horses. With a coronation to plan, there was no time to waste.

Twenty-four hours and one minute later, Edward IV was dead as well. He closed his eyes and fell to the ground as if a string had been cut.

She had promised Edward he would be king, but she never specified for how long.

And so Queen Moryen of the Others took the throne at Eltham Palace, a serene smile on her face and a crown on her head.

All who raised a hand or sword against her found themselves suddenly unable to move, as if the act itself was forbidden.

The war was over, and Britain had a new queen. Immortal. Uncrossable. Inevitable.

 

Chapter One

London, February 1848

Lydia has been missing for eight days, and I’m beginning to fear that our parents are going to wake up in the morning and find my bed empty too.

A noise in the dark alley to my left makes me jump, but it’s just a rat tearing through a pile of rubbish.

I’ve shivered my way through the city for miles, ignoring hecklers and stepping over half-dead beggars. Usually, my parents say to pay them no mind, that they’ve had the same opportunity to bargain with the queen as the rest of us, but they’re harder to ignore tonight.

My freedom is usually limited to turns around the park arm in arm with Mama or safely ensconced within the velvet walls of our family’s carriage. What I lack in experience I make up for in confidence. That confidence feels a lot flimsier now, lost, and cold down to my bones.

I thought it would be safer to stick to the main roads rather than risk traipsing through the ink dark of Hyde Park alone, but one wrong turn down a serpentine side street has me hopelessly turned around. Even the flicker of the gas lamps is weak. The biting February air is thick with coal dust, blotting out what little light the flames throw off. I pull back the hood of my cloak and tip my head to the sky in an attempt to get my bearings. Cassiopeia should be north, but the twinkle of the stars is too dim to be sure. An errant tear flows out of the corner of my eye and into the hollow of my ear.

I’ve been searching Lydia’s room for days, praying fruitlessly for a clue about her sudden disappearance. It’s as if she vanished into nothing, but I refuse to accept that.

Tonight, after Mama, Papa, and our skeleton crew of staff had gone to bed, I pulled on my cloak, wrapped myself in Papa’s thickest scarf, and took off into the night.

Maybe I was being brave, like the knights in the stories Lydia and I read as little girls, noble and driven by love, or maybe I just wanted to feel something other than the maddening terror I’ve felt since my sister disappeared.

The police say she’s either eloped or dead, but I don’t believe them. She’d have told me if she planned to elope, and I’d be able to feel it if she were dead. There’s no possible universe in which my sister’s heart stops beating and I keep on living, unaltered.

My breath comes out in puffs of vapor as I cut down another alley. I sigh in relief as I finally recognize where I am.

The gates of Kensington Palace loom like a mouth in the near distance, the dark shadows of the Queen’s Guard beside them.

I thumb over the cool surface of the necklace sitting deep in the pocket of my cloak like a talisman. I’ll have to be clever, circle around Hyde Park again maybe, and sneak in the back way. I don’t need to get too near the palace, only to the trees surrounding it. My feet are numb in my boots, but I must keep walking lest I look suspicious to the guards, now in sight.

When Lydia and I were small and our family still owned the country house in Oakham, we spent our summers in the woods, catching frogs or making little houses out of leaves for the ducklings. Our legs scraped to ribbons, twigs in our wild hair, we’d only come inside once the moon rose and the bats emerged. We’d enter through the kitchen to avoid getting scolded by Mama, and there we’d be attended to by a particularly indulgent old cook named Mrs. Osbourne. Mrs. Osbourne was the oldest person I’d ever known, and as she bandaged our legs and snuck us lemon ices, she’d tell us stories. We loved the ones about the Others best of all.

She read to us from an old book that was wrapped in fraying sage-green fabric and dented at the corners. I was particularly taken by the concept of a faerie door. As the stories went, the Others could be compelled to open the door between our worlds, usually hidden in gnarled old trees, for clever humans who left objects of great significance at their thresholds.

I begged Lydia 

to try it with me. We found a squat ironwood tree, and in the divot of its roots we left our matching baby necklaces, one strung with a small pearl L charm and the other with a matching I. They were too short to fit around our big-girl necks, but they still hung on the posts of our beds. I was giddy with anticipation for the rest of the day, peeking through windows, desperate for a glimpse of one of Them.

The next morning, Lydia and I ran across the dew-damp lawn and dug our chubby little hands into the dirt at the base of the tree. The necklaces had vanished. I jumped and hollered with joy, so loud that my mother stomped out into the garden and demanded to know why I was giving her a headache. I told her everything. Without another word, she marched to the kitchens and made Mrs. Osbourne burn her faerie book. I was only six then, and I didn’t understand that owning something like this was illegal. I wailed for days.

A year later, I found Lydia’s necklace shoved in the back of her wardrobe. Two years older than me, she placed her hands on her hips and told me I had to leave babyish things like magic behind. It was the first of her three great betrayals.

She sauntered out of the room before I could ask her why we never did find the second of the matching necklaces—or if she also saw the silhouette of the man by the trees that night.

An icy wind whips down the street, sending a swirl of dead leaves scattering. My blond curls whip around my face, and I pull the cloak tighter around my neck.

The stories from Mrs. Osbourne’s books were of an England where Others ran wild. Queen Mor would have us believe that she and her son are the only ones of their kind who live here now, but they came from somewhere, and even locked doors can be opened again. I can’t get up north to our old home in Oakham, nor to the memorial battlefield from the Battle of Barnet, but if a door exists in London, wouldn’t it be in the trees surrounding the queen’s residence? I can’t not try.

I double back toward the public entrance of the park, to where the bargain lines form on Sundays. The trees stand like specters in the dark, indistinguishable from one another. There’s nothing remarkable about any of them, I’m just going to have to choose at random. I clutch the necklace in my pocket.

A shadow moves in the dark. “Who’s there?” shouts one of the Queen’s Guard.

I curse under my breath, drop my sister’s necklace at the base of the nearest tree, and run.

I sprint down the path and across the wide lawns, then make a sharp left, turning back onto the street and off palace grounds.

From out of the silence comes the sudden clatter of wheels pitching over cobblestones.

I jump back, hoping to hide in the shadows, but I don’t see the loose stone until it is too late.

My boot catches on the edge of it, and I trip and fall, my temple colliding with the curb. My body splays out like a rag doll in the dirt.

At first there is the

 blinding, sharp sting of pain, and then there is nothing but darkness.

 

I blink back to consciousness, unsure of how long I’ve been under, to find a shadowy figure sitting beside me in a carriage.

“I’ve got a knife,” I whisper, terrified. I don’t mention that it’s a kitchen knife shoved in my boot, too dull to cut through anything and too difficult to reach now anyway.

“Are you going to stab me?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

My vision obscures as something warm pours over my left eye. I reach up to wipe it, and my hand comes away sticky with blood.

The figure swears and shrugs off his coat. “Take this. You can stab me later.”

He presses his coat to my temple. It’s still warm with his body heat, and I resist the urge to sigh in relief at even the smallest reprieve from the cold.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“You hit me with your carriage,” I reply weakly.

“I didn’t hit you, you tripped.”

“I tripped to avoid getting trampled by your—” I pause to look around. The carriage is massive, at least a six-seater, with thick velvet upholstery and polished brass fixtures. “Behemoth,” I finish.

“I wasn’t the one skulking around in the dark.”

“I wasn’t skulking. I was lost.”

“Where were you headed? Maybe I can help you?” The stranger taps on the window to the driver’s seat and it slides open.

“Where to, miss?” the driver asks gruffly.

Even I can admit when a mission has failed. “Belgrave Square,” I answer, giving him my home address.

The horses whinny, and we’re off with a lurch. As we make a wide right turn onto a main thoroughfare, a beam of yellow lamplight streams in through the carriage window.

The boy brushes his unkempt hair from his forehead, and recognition hits me like a blow. I’m dizzy from the trauma to my head, but that’s not why it feels as if the world has suddenly tilted.

Sitting opposite me, concern sketched across his fine features, is a face I’ve seen in portraits and across crowded concert halls my entire life. He looks younger tonight than any time I’ve seen him previously. He’s usually in stiff cravats with well-coifed hair. Tonight it falls in dark waves over his forehead, partially obscuring his hazel eyes, but the high cheekbones, sharp jaw, and sullen mouth are the same. Prince Emmett.

“It’s you.” I blink.

A bemused smile crosses his face. “Who?”

“You’re Prince Emmett.”

“You must have 

hit your head rather hard,” he replies. There’s a crackle of fragility in the edge of his voice.

“I know who you are. There’s no point in hiding it.”

He narrows his eyes at me. “We’ve met.” It isn’t a question.

We haven’t, not really, but I’ve seen him from a distance at enough events to be certain—and then there was that thing with Lydia.

“Lady Benton.” I nod my head in some semblance of a bow, but he senses the sarcasm in the gesture and his mouth quirks up in a half smile. “Second daughter of the Marquess of Townshend.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be missing?” Emmett asks. “I’ve heard the rumors.”

I shake my head. “No. I’m the other one. I was looking for my sister, that’s why I was out.” I feel the sharp stab of failure as the carriage carries us farther from Kensington Palace. I’ve just tossed Lydia’s necklace into the dirt for nothing.

“Ahh, yes, the younger sister.” He gestures vaguely to my face. “The resemblance is uncanny. You’ve got the same eyes.”

“I’m surprised you remember her,” I answer tensely.

“You think she’s out there somewhere?” he asks, pointedly not addressing my remark.

“Yes. I can’t explain it, but I’d be able to feel it if she were gone.”

Emmett looks at me, unnervingly still. “Feel it?”

We jolt as the carriage rounds another corner.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I have a brother,” he says. “I might understand better than you think.”

I’m surprised to hear him refer to Prince Bram as his brother.

Emmett’s status as prince is still a lightning rod for gossip, nearly two decades after his birth. He’s the human son of Queen Moryen’s husband, Prince Consort Edgar, and his first, human, wife, who died in childbirth. The queen legitimized Emmett on his eighth birthday, though whether it was a favor to his father, an act of love, or something else entirely, no one knows.

His name is whispered in drawing rooms across town. A rake of a prince, why can’t he be sweet like Bram? There are always new rumors about who he is spotted with at whatever social events he deigns to attend. There was the scullery maid scandal in Lord Tremaine’s rose garden last season. Only a month later, he was caught wrapped up in the curtains of Duke Cambere’s study with the family’s middle daughter. Just last week, I heard my mother mutter something about a ballerina. And my face still burns with anger when I think about how he was with Lydia during her first season. I wasn’t there, but she told me all about it when she returned home in tears.

When he’s not sullying someone else’s reputation, he’s causing an uproar over his refusal to begin his studies at Oxford—or his hunting trips with his friends, other lords, and second sons that sound

more like bacchanalia.

Emmett turns to me, the full force of his gaze hitting me for the first time. I’ve never seen him about town without a surly frown on his face. But he doesn’t look anything like that now. His eyes are a peculiar shade of hazel, lined with dark lashes and glinting with fire. This close, I can see the spray of soft freckles across his nose. I never recognized the refined, handsome face behind the pouting. But it is handsome. He’s so handsome it nearly knocks the breath from me.

The carriage clatters through the night, down the still streets of a sleeping London. I tilt my head against the back of the seat and wonder how I’m going to get the blood out of this dress without Mama or the maids finding out.

“What are you thinking about?” Emmett asks.

“Stabbing you,” I reply, eyes closed.

“That’s not very polite.”

“Running me over wasn’t very polite.”

“Again, you tripped.”

There’s a sudden flood of heat, and I open my eyes to find Emmett crowded into my space, peering up at me intently. I’m still holding his coat against my bleeding head, and gingerly, he raises his fingers and peels away the edges of the wool. It’s gone sticky, half dried, and it pulls at my hair as he tugs it away.

“Ouch.” I resist the urge to jab him with my elbow.

“Stop squirming. The bleeding has slowed,” he declares. “But you should keep the pressure on it.”

With the hand that isn’t holding the coat, I salute.

He tilts his head slightly, still staring at me. “You know, you’re really quite pretty.”

An infuriating blush rises in my chest. “Are you trying to seduce me right now? I know your reputation, but I didn’t expect the nerve.”

“My reputation?”

“Being seen with you would ruin me.”

His eyes narrow. “You don’t seem like the kind of girl to worry about things like that.” Men never do understand. The slow death of being cast out of society is a fate few are strong enough to bear.

“You don’t know anything about the kind of girl I am.”

“I know you snuck out in the middle of the night to search for your sister.”

The carriage slows. I pull back the curtain to see my family’s town house, the white limestone and soaring columns lit up with gas lamps.

I tap on the window and ask the driver to drop me around the back. I stand less of a chance of being caught if I go through the service entrance in the basement.

“Thank you for your assistance,” I say as I take the driver’s hand and hop down from the carriage.

Emmett leans out the door, a calling card clutched between his knuckles. He reaches out to me. “Please. Can I see you again?”

“Absolutely not,” I reply.

“I beg of you, consider it.”

I take the card out of habit and am a few steps away, nearly to the back staircase,

when Emmett’s voice calls from the darkness.

“You can keep the coat.”

I turn back to him. He’s enveloped in shadows, but his smirk is visible even from here. “No, thank you, I’ve got plenty of my own.” I chuck the coat back in his direction, and it smacks him square in the chest. I’ve always been rather proud of my throwing arm.

He waits until I’m inside to pull away.

The fireplace is cold, nothing like Mrs. Osbourne’s kitchen, where the bricks by the hearth were always warm. I’m not six years old anymore. There is no one waiting to tend to my wounds, no big sister’s bed to crawl into.

I climb the limewashed back staircase up to my second-floor bedroom like I’m a ghost haunting this house.

I peel out of my bloodstained dress and am pulling my arms through the warm flannel of my dressing gown when I hear a commotion down in the foyer.

Someone is pounding on the door. For a minute, I freeze with terror, mortified at the thought that perhaps Prince Emmett has come back for me.

Then I hear footsteps. Someone shrieks.

I race out onto the landing just in time to see Lydia stumble into the marble hall, leaving a smear of muddy footprints in her wake.

 

Chapter Two

Three Months Later

The doors to the atelier are thrown open to the street, bursting with so much activity it’s impossible to keep it all inside. Girls and their mothers spill out onto the sidewalk in a crowd so thick we have to elbow our way in.

The seamstress has been slow to let out the hem of my sister’s gown to fit me, and I know well enough it’s because we haven’t spent enough money in recent years to make us priority customers. My mother knows it too, but she just keeps on smiling in that pinched way of hers.

I wish I could have done this some other day, when there would be fewer people to hide from, but tomorrow is the first of May, and there is no time to waste.

All of London is whipped into an absolute tizzy. The start of the season—the moment for the debutantes to line up to make their bargains with the queen—is all anyone can talk about.

Most of the citizens of England will make their bargains on some other date. The queen’s throne room is open every Sunday from noon until midnight, and anyone who wishes to bargain with her may do so at this time. Some make their bargain as soon as they come of age; some wait well into adulthood, until they find something they want desperately enough to make a deal.

Those from the Midlands say it’s luckiest to make the bargain on the first Sunday of the month. Girls from Bristol always make their bargains sporting two left-footed shoes. People from Liverpool arrive at the palace wearing necklaces of their own braided hair. Counties and villages and families all have their own superstitions about the practice, entrenched now for over four hundred years.

Some never make a bargain at all.

But for girls like me, girls with titles or money enough to buy influence some other way, it is expected that we make our bargains on the same day we come out into society, officially available as merchandise on the marriage market.

Our clever bargains for shinier hair or prettier feet are just another line item on our wifely résumés, proving that we are good girls. Rose Bargains, they’re called. Bargains to make us beautiful, fragile, sweet—perfect English roses.

The official debutante coming-out is always on the first of May. Such is the fanfare around the aristocratic girls in their finest lining up before the queen, it’s been called the Pact Parade.

The bell to the shop chimes as we enter, barely audible over the chatter.

The Alton sisters drop their gazes as I approach. The little one turns away so quickly she trips over the edge of a rug. Our shame is contagious, and no one can afford to catch it, especially not now.

In the corner, with her sour-faced mother, is Greer Trummer, my former closest friend. I let out an anxious breath, turning my mother by the elbow so she doesn’t spot them, but it’s too late.

With a wide smile, my mother waves in a large arc over her head. “Lady Trummer, Greer, how lovely to see you here.” My face burns with shame as everyone turns toward us, disdain and pity all over their faces.

“Did you see the ribbons just here, Mama?” I say, trying to redirect her to a display of silk and lace, but it’s too late.

Greer’s mother turns away, as if she hasn’t heard us. Greer offers a sheepish smile, but doesn’t so much as wave back.

My mother, undeterred, crosses the shop, pushing past a dozen people as she goes.

“Please, Mama, she’s busy,” I protest, but she pretends not to hear me.

“Greer, darling, Ivy told me you were nervous for tomorrow. You’re going to do fabulously. I do hope the turn around the park you two girls took this morning did something to quiet your nerves.” 

For the first time in months, Greer looks at me. Something flickers behind her blue eyes as she catches me in my lie.

“The turn around the park?” She’s confused. Of course she is. I’ve been lying for months, going to sit alone in the stables or skulking around the neighborhood with my cloak pulled tight, any excuse to escape the stifling misery of our house. I’ve been telling my mother I was with Greer, like she’s any better than the rest of them. She dropped me at the first whiff of scandal, just like everyone else.

I brace myself, ready for Greer to give me up. She blinks a few times, then turns back to my mother. “Oh yes, the turn around the park. Thank you, Lady Benton,” she says softly. “Ivy is such a good friend. Always so willing to offer an uplifting word.” She turns back to me. We used to be able to communicate with nothing but a glance, but I don’t know what she’s feeling now. The tether between us is broken. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear Mama calling.” Her mother definitely isn’t calling, but neither of us say it.

I let out a sigh of relief as she walks away.

The seamstress waves me over, and I step onto the pedestal in front of the three-way mirror as the final adjustments are made to my gown. I pretend I don’t hear the whispers of the other mothers and daughters in the shop: “Surely she’s not expecting any invitations this season.”

When the seamstress is finished, Mama muscles her way to the counter and pays with a stack of bills I feel guilty looking at.

We return home without discussing the whispers we both heard, as if by refusing to acknowledge our family’s misfortune, we can make it not true.

Lydia made her debut in society—and her bargain with the queen—two springs ago.

She returned that day in her frothy white gown with a confused look on her face. She couldn’t recall what happened in the throne room. She must have given up the memory in exchange for whatever the queen bestowed upon her, but in the two years since, we’ve never been able to discern what the gift was.

Her beauty remained the same, there has been no sudden talent or skill, only a Swiss cheese memory and a failure of a season that ended without a proposal.

Her lack of a match and her secret bargain were embarrassing, a blight on the family. My mother has spent the better part of two years saying I was the Benton family’s only hope, though my slim chances of making a match went up in smoke when the scandal of Lydia’s disappearance broke.

The news that she was missing reached the marble halls of London society before the sun was fully up. All the titled ladies in the neighborhood were at the door that very morning, with baskets of pastries and looks of concern on their faces. They could smell blood in the water.

And those same ladies passed the news of Lydia’s shameful return around like petit fours at a tea party. The fun of grace is to watch someone fall 

from it.

Walking into the foyer of our house, I can’t help but think of the night she returned. Sometimes it feels like I never really left that moment.

It was the constable who brought Lydia home, covered in grime. He shoved her by her elbow through the door with a sneer. “I thought this was a respectable family.”

I was already at the top of the stairs when Mrs. Tuttle shouted to the whole of the house that Lydia had returned.

Mama cried as she burst out of her room wrapped in a dressing gown, and Father caught her as her knees gave out on the stairs.

I raced past them down to my sister. My beloved big sister, the one I’d wept for, feared for, snuck out of the house to search for.

I clasped her face between my hands and found her skin cold and clammy, as if covered with morning dew.

Lydia just stared, silent and still, like she wasn’t there at all, like she was a ghost.

Then she collapsed in my arms.

Papa and Mrs. Tuttle carried her up to her room, but it was I who bathed her, wrapped her in a clean nightdress, and tucked her into bed. ...