Venia Quotes

“The crystal flacon was cold and empty, but it had a surprising weight to it. It had to be real gold on the vessel, caging the clear glass in a lavish pattern of vines and thorns. I stroked the edges of the rose crowning the stopper so lifelike in full bloom that I had to remind myself it would be impossible to dip flowers in molten gold.
That rose— that sweet rose. I brought the flacon closer, inhaling the scent, begging it to reveal its secret. It was honeyed, almost like a centifolia rose, and yet there was an indescribable effervescence to it.
In my mind’s eye, a primeval garden spread before me, the golden outline of a woman rising from the tangles of rosebushes unscathed, as delicate and beautiful as any of the blossoms around her. Not a woman, an ancient goddess— Venia, mother of the fairies, who saw to love, beauty, and healing.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Immortal Rose

“If this is not the poisoned perfume in question,” I began, setting the flacon down on the bedside table, “what is it?”
The King peered up at me the way one would regard a small, muttonheaded child. “Immortal Rose.”
I let out a shocked laugh— but I was the only one. The faces around me were deathly, irrevocably serious.
“As in the old fairy story?” I clarified. “About Queen Titania?”
“The very same,” Foxcourt drawled. “There is a thread of truth in every legend that keeps it alive.”
“What about that story could possibly be true?” I challenged. “That King Augustine’s wife was a fairy after all? That she was saved from an adder’s bite by breathing in the scent of a golden rose that had been born from a drop of Venia’s blood?”
As I said the words, that strange dream came over me again, of the golden figure in the garden. The flower was said to have been the goddess’s final gift before the ancient fairy gods had receded with the coming of the new faith.
“While Queen Titania was not a fairy, she was restored by a perfume your ancestor created, named after one of Venia’s many epithets, the Immortal Rose,” Eleanor said. “I believe that’s where your family name was derived from, was it not? The myth of Venia being born amid the roses in the garden of the gods.”
My mind took in the information layer by layer, the way I would unravel the scent trail of a perfume.”
― Alexandra Bracken, Immortal Rose