Born for Silk (The Cradled Common)

Chapter 19

Chapter Nineteen

Aster

“Hello, Aster. You slept in.”

The night was warm, but something inside me felt cold and empty after he left. He seemed to enter my room as a storm, only to exit as a phantom, and leave me wondering which parts of our shadowed intimacy were real.

Paisley brightens the ornamental fire, bathing the room in orange light. “All the lords have left The Estate except for Lord and Warden Turin Two, but he won’t be available.” As she busies herself in my room, collecting the old flowers and ensuring my bathroom is stocked, she says, “He'll be rather occupied. Trade Master Cairo and Sire are both on campaigns, so we have this wing to ourselves. It’s always nice, I mean, I like it when we can relax, and each day we will have a different activity for you. Puzzles. Reading. Dancing. But today is a special day! You have been invited to the aviary.”

Still half-asleep, I sit up in bed and rub my dry eyes. “There's an aviary here?”

“Yes, in the queen's wing.” Her tone is happier than I have heard in days. I smile at that. “You can visit one at a time. Blossom is there now. We have hatchlings, and the mammas can get protective, so it is best to have a very small audience.”

“Wait.” My mind levels. “Did you say the king is away? I mean, Sire. I saw him las— day. I mean, I saw him last—yesterday.” I fumble on my lie. “In the courtyard.”

She stops at the foot of my bed, holding a bundle of used towels and a throw. “Yes, Aster. He has The Cradle to manage, after all. He is not often here. Only for your rite, when the Silk Girls ovulate, which has finished for the month, so you may not see him for a few weeks.”

Her matter-of-fact answer chips at my heart. “Oh.” I draw my knees up and hold them to my chest in case the tiny fragment falls through my flesh.

Tuscany’s words float back to me, along with a sadness I now share. ‘He is always going away. He leaves me here, and I miss him so.’

Nothing lasts forever.

She eyes me, uncaring or clueless, though I prefer the latter. “Are you ready to get up?”

“Is Ana awake?” I ask, accepting she might be the only person to understand my misguided and na?ve emotions.

As I suspect, she says, “No. She's still unwell.” The lie barely makes it to my ears. I don’t believe it. “ You like birds.” Paisley wiggles her brows. “I know you do.”

Sighing hard, I concede, “Very much. They are the closest thing to a dinosaur.”

“Dinosaur?”

“Yes.” I slide from the bed and drop to the floor. “Great animals. Some like giants. Some like crocodiles.”

Paisley watches me amble across the room toward my closet, her gaze assessing my naked skin; I know she sees evidence of him painted over my thighs.

“But they were real?” she asks, genuine interest pitching her voice.

“Once.” I pull my robe on. “Or so the book said.”

“Which book?”

“One I wasn’t supposed to read.” I walk to the bathroom and pause at the door. Sensing the shower will be my salvation to sit in my sorrow, I anticipate bursting into tears between the cool, tiled walls. A small cry in privacy is not so shameful. “I’ll be ready shortly.”

I move inside, close the door, and as I wash, cleaning his cum from my thighs and stomach, I let myself feel.

Feel anger toward my childish heart, regret for my na?ve tongue and wishful utterances under the veil of night when we are alone… And disappointment… Unjustified, unwelcome, disappointment.

Crown-light is nearly over when it is my turn.

Between the queen’s wing and the forest edge, there is a large silvery cage housing hundreds of birds. Birds with bright wings and insects on leaves, flowers in mid-bloom and hidden stony pathways, red-brick bird houses, flapping wings, the sound of freedom and excitement, these things make it difficult not to smile.

Tuscany and I walk a few paces ahead of a member of The Queen’s Army. A brawny, tall woman capable of lifting both of us and rushing us through fire… probably.

The contentment and ease I feel with the queen is immediate, like our brief interaction on the grass.

“I want to apologise,” she offers, “for the other day.”

I shake my head. “Please, my queen, there is no need.”

“Rome…” She sighs. “Never mind.”

I blink a few times, thinking. “I wonder why birds survived when so many other animals became extinct.” I change the subject. “It’s the Redwind that makes The Cradle so uninhabitable.” I look at her profile, her expression soft and quietly filled with contemplations. “I hear the Horizon is thousands of miles of nothing but Redwind and desert ground.”

Gazing ahead, she says, “I have never seen it.”

“No one has seen the Horizon.”

“The Redwind,” she corrects.

“What?” I stop in my tracks, inadvertently touching her shoulder, though one should never touch the queen. I retract my hand instantly. “Sorry. What do you mean?”

The Redwind is everywhere, outside The Estate, outside the towers, the aviaries, it is the atmosphere that cloaks every inch of The Cradle.

She peers over her shoulder, eyes meeting the woman behind us as she says, “You can wait by the entrance. I am in no danger with Aster.”

“But my queen?—”

“Leave,” she orders.

I press my lips together under her tone, a strong, curt cadence that somehow has just as much enchanting melody as her softer-spoken words.

She waits for our privacy.

When she continues to stroll onward, I follow by her side. “I have never left The Estate, Aster.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

How is that possible?

I frown, gazing at a large brick archway ahead, veined with the lost green fingers of nearby trees. Just like in the Silk Aviary, they appear to be reaching for something, seeking. True beams from the sun, I always presumed.

“What about when you were a babe?”

The curated breeze gently moves her honey-swirled brown hair around her dainty features, carrying her unique scent of sweet oranges. “There is a hidden nursery in The Estate. It is where Rome and I were both raised. All the babes born for his Collective will be raised there.”

Under The Estate—the thought comes unbidden. Like in the tunnel with the flickering overhead lights, the one I was never meant to see.

“You are the queen,” I say. “You're everyone’s mother. You visit the Common?—"

“Rome will not allow it.” His name and her declaration threaten to awaken the torment I left as salty tears over the shower tiles this first-light.

I swallow. “Do you want to visit them?”

The aviary goes still as she slows her step, the question almost paralysing her and the birds.

“In theory.” Her voice is detached for a blink. “He may be right after all.” She returns to her steady, graceful pace, and I mirror her. “I may not cope. I may break into tiny pieces and lose my mind… all over again.”

I knew she had experienced something awful; I could feel her suffering low inside my stomach. Maybe she will tell me one day, or maybe not, but her sorrow doesn’t seem the kind you ask questions about. It is the kind you merely cradle so it is not so lonely.

“Or maybe you heal.” I shouldn’t have said that. “Through your Purpose,” I add quickly.

“Purpose.” She breathes.

“I’m a na?ve Silk Girl,” I dismiss. “I couldn’t possibly understand your great Purpose, but… imagine the smiles on everyone's faces when they see you.”

“It has been too long,” she whispers, stopping to pluck a small flower worming up between two silvery stones. “What if they do not like me?”

Turning to face me, eyes only inches away from mine, she tucks the little, yellow floret behind my ear.

I smile. “What if they do?”

A small pause circles us, and then something pulls her attention over my shoulder. “Look.”

Spinning around, I follow her gaze to the split between two branches that cup a wooden platform bedded with tangled leaves and twigs.

“There is a nest with three baby birds inside,” she says.

They are all chirping to the sky. They are big… eagles, I think. Where is their mother? Close, I imagine.

Three babes…

Maybe two boys and a girl. It doesn’t matter to their mother. They are all beautiful and… hers.

I find myself standing in The Circle, outside of Ana’s door, willing myself not to knock. Not to disturb her while she grieves. It’s such a strange feeling—loss. I knew what Rome was, what we were and what we would never be, and I fell in love with him anyway. If I feel this sick, yearning for him, then Ana’s suffering must be unbearable.

“Ana?” I call softly through the door, rapping my knuckles gently along the wooden grain. With a sigh, I press my forehead to it. I know you’re not sick… Let me comfort you. “I have a puzzle,” I say it as the idea strikes me. Lifting my head, I decide to put my entire heart into this.

I leave The Circle, go to the activity room, retrieve a two thousand piece floral puzzle, and return in haste.

Knocking again, I say, “I have a small puzzle, and I think we should do it together." I test the knob; it turns with ease.

It’s open. Shit.

Of course it is.

Our doors don’t lock.

Don’t do go in, Aster.

It’s none of your business.

She needs her rest.

Holding my breath, I gently push the door open and peer inside, seeing an identical room to the one I sleep in and an unmoving human-shaped lump beneath a gold sheet on the bed.

My throat tightens. “Ana?”

The ornamental fire on the wall emits a glow of deep yellow and warm, cosy waves.

I step inside and close the door, the puzzle clutched in my hand. “Ana?”

“Go away.”

I exhale audibly hard. “Oh, my. I was so worried, Ana.”

I walk over to her bedside and peer down at her. The golden sheet is pulled up to her chin, her fingers curled over the top, holding it there. There is a little tendril of her dark hair laying over her face, and I want to sweep it aside for her.

“Are you sedated with Opi?” I ask.

She blinks and shakes her head—no.

A long unbearable silence circles the room.

As she stares at the fake yellow flames, I slide down to the floor and press my back to the mattress.

I empty the puzzle on the carpet and begin organising the pieces by colour. “I know we are meant to make the border first,” I say quietly. “But I like to make smaller pictures first, and then fit them all together at the end to make a larger image. The Silk Wardeness used to say this was because I wanted immediate satisfaction and was impatient. But that’s not true. It is because when I make the border first and simply fill it in, I don’t get to appreciate the smaller details as much.”

I sigh. The small details of Rome and I and our intimacy don’t create a greater picture. Accept it, Aster.

Tears sting the back of my eyes as I work on the puzzle in silence on the floor beside her bed until the fire turns a deep red and I know I have to leave her room.

Despite trying to be quiet, the next first-light Ana wakes to the sound of me clearing my throat. Or maybe it’s the steaming scent of honey that lifts her lids.

“Your Watcher allowed me to bring you oatmeal in bed,” I say, looking at the bowl on her nightstand. “They are worried, too, and I don’t think they know what to do.”

Thumbing a puzzle piece into place, I slide the second completed flower aside and get to work on the third. Jumbling and sorting the puzzle shapes together.

She groans. “You’re not going away.”

“You were nice to me,” I mumble. That is not something I will forget. I know you feel awful, Ana.

“I will never be a Sired Mother.”

She means, ‘I will never see him again.’ Her softly spoken words are choked with sorrow, but I cannot help but feel relief in hearing her voice. I don’t know how to respond, to not scare her voice away with the wrong thought. Blossom would give her hope. Daisy would state the facts.

We can work on this together, just like the puzzle. I’m sure she is worried she will never have two boys and a girl. No other lord will take a Silk Girl who has been opened by another man. It just isn’t done.

I start to talk with a lie on my tongue, about how she may still be given a chance, but instead stop. “You have Meaningful Purpose, Ana,” I offer. And I will, too. “You have to appreciate the smaller pieces, like with this puzzle.” And maybe I can, too. “You have a bowl of oatmeal and honey, a swollen belly, this puzzle, and me. The whole picture comes later.”

“That one goes there,” she says by my ear, so I peer over my shoulder to see her eyes open and scanning the puzzle. I smile. Her gaze is present, not miles away like it was yesterday.

“This one?” I point.

She nods once. I pick it up and fit it into place with a smile. Then I continue sorting.

Over the next two days, between meals, mineral baths, and Silk Girl checkups, Ana helps me connect many pieces, and eventually, she joins me on the floor by her bed.

By the first-light on day three, we have connected over one thousand five hundred pieces, Ana has eaten a few small meals, and a spark has returned to her eyes.