Chapter Twenty-Six #2
I managed a polite smile. I didn’t think he’d sought me out to offer a warm welcome.
“How charming,” he said lightly. “I never suspected Daziel would find humans so amusing.”
Irritation surged through me. “That’s a little patronizing.”
His brows arched. “A bite to you, is there?” he said, which I also considered patronizing.
He smiled, and this time it was full of sharp teeth.
Unlike with Daziel’s sharp smiles, I genuinely found this one alarming.
“You think you’ll do well on top of the Shuddering Tower, girl?
” he asked. “You’ll wear mud-colored clothes while everyone is wrapped in rainbows.
How will you keep Daziel’s attention when he’s surrounded by glittering gemstones who can sing the winds into silence? ”
I didn’t understand half of what he meant, but I knew he meant to insult, and so I fought back. “It’s not my job to keep Daziel’s attention. I don’t exist to entertain him. We’re together because we both want to be. If you’ll excuse me.” I turned, ready to go.
He was in front of me. “He’s old enough to take up his responsibilities. You’d be a distraction.”
I remembered what he’d said early on. Previous obligations. Though I knew I should leave—he was clearly baiting me—I couldn’t help myself. “What kind of responsibilities?”
“It’s time for him to marry.”
“We’ll marry when we’re ready.” I wanted, as I’d joked long ago, a very long engagement and a wedding long after my own graduation. “Our betrothal should be good enough for now.”
“Not you, girl,” he said, and his laugh hollowed me out. “He has been expected to marry Kaisa all his life.”
For a moment, the words didn’t make sense.
“You did not know?” He looked amused. “Yes, Kaisa del Amara. They will make a good pair.”
“He’s—no. He’s betrothed to—” Me, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t make myself.
“Oh, did you think he would marry you? You darling human child. No. Daziel is meant for greater things than…Well. I’m sure you have some good qualities.”
My hand went to the ring on my finger. “We’ve completed the betrothal.”
“Have you?” He looked peeved. “An irritation. But nothing that can’t be handled with time and effort.
Anyway, not to worry.” He patted me avuncularly on the shoulder.
“I’m sure he will give you something nice in return.
A rosebush that flowers year-round. Drinkable gold—or is that fashionable in one of the other human realms? I can never keep track.”
With a sly smile, he vanished.
When Daziel found me a few minutes later, I was sitting on a garden bench, staring numbly up at the pink-and-white almond blossoms. I shifted my gaze to him. “You’re betrothed.”
We knew each other so well, we’d spent so much time in each other’s presence—there was no use in him pretending he thought I meant to me. I couldn’t even try to hide the betrayal in my voice. I didn’t want to.
Daziel’s shoulders slumped. “My father told you.”
“Have you hidden anything else?”
He hesitated. “Did my father mention who my mother is?”
Oh no. No, this was like storm clouds on the horizon, and I didn’t want to unleash their rain. “Is it important?”
“Ah—you might think so?”
“If you say,” I ground out, “your mother is the queen of the shedim, I will smack you.”
He winced. “Then I should not say it.”
“Daziel!” I cried out, jumping to my feet. “No!”
“It’s not my fault.” He held his hands up. “I didn’t pick my parents.”
“You can’t be a prince.” I groaned, turning from side to side as though seeking solace that refused to come. I sank back to the bench, shaking. “This is impossible.”
“No, it’s not.” He knelt at my side, taking my hands in his own and kissing them. “It’s not impossible.”
“I can’t be with a demon prince.”
“Why not?”
“Because! I’m a human girl! I don’t know anything!”
“You know me. I know you.” He leaned forward and kissed me.
But I knew Daziel, the boy who had lived with me for half a year, wide-eyed and delighted by small things and funny and outgoing. I didn’t know Cathmeus. I didn’t know anything about him, this prince from the wilderness, and panic started to flare in my chest. “You’re betrothed.”
“To you. Kaisa and I were never officially bound.”
“But you can be unbound to me and bound to her.”
He looked stubborn. “It’s not what I want.”
I let out a sharp laugh. “What if it’s what I want? Daziel. I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You can. I’ll come back. In two months. We’ll talk then.”
And what would we talk about? I wasn’t cut out to be a princess of the shedim. I wanted to be with Daziel, and I’d like to see his home, but I wasn’t born for royal courts and their intrigue. And Daziel was.
He must have seen my unease, because he brushed his fingertips against my cheek. “We’ll figure it out. I swear.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how. I just know—if we both try, we can do it.” He lifted his wrist to show me a red threadbare string wrapped around it. “Do you remember this?”
“Is that mine?” I gaped at him, astonished. “How did you get it?”
“You know the story? If you lose your bracelet, you’re about to meet your true love.”
“An old wives’ tale,” I dismissed.
“I found it before we met. It flew right into my chest. I tried to toss it away, twice, but the wind carried it back. Eventually, I put it in my pocket. I didn’t even realize it was yours until you mentioned yours was gone. Then I did a small spell to check.”
“Oh.” I felt strange and light. “What a funny coincidence.”
“Not a coincidence.” He brushed his fingers against my cheek. “Do you love me?”
I scowled at him. It felt below the belt, to bring up this one irrefutable thing. It also was so upbeat and undeniably Daziel that humor bubbled in me. “Do you love me?”
His lips quirked, and he pressed a quick kiss to my mouth. “Yes. Always. Even when you’re difficult.”
I narrowed my eyes but couldn’t stop my smile. “Fine. I love you too.”
“Then we will make it work. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. I’m not saying you’ll love my homeland immediately—though it is indisputably more beautiful than the human lands—”
“You’re not helping yourself.” I smiled, but it quickly fell away. “Your father said you had to get married soon. That you have responsibilities.”
He cupped my face in his hands, his gaze intent. “I love you. I have responsibilities to my family and my position, yes, but if we’re building a life together, I also have responsibilities to you. One of which is making sure you’re happy.”
“I do like being happy.”
“I thought you might.”
He kissed me. At first it was an easy kiss, but then I pressed myself harder against him, and he wrapped his arms around my waist. We lost ourselves, our bodies crushed together.
When we separated, a bittersweet ache blossomed in my chest, threatening to consume me. I wasn’t ready to go with him, but I didn’t want him to leave, either. It felt like a wound had been opened inside me, a gaping hole it would be too easy to fall into.
“I’ll come back,” Daziel vowed. “In the summer, when school is closed and there is time. We’ll meet each other’s families. See each other’s homes. And we’ll figure out how to be together.”
I pressed my lips together to keep them from wobbling, but I couldn’t keep the tears gathered in my eyes from spilling down my cheeks. Don’t leave, I wanted to beg. Don’t go. Stay with me.
But it wasn’t fair to beg someone to do something they could not. “I’m going to miss you so much,” I said instead, and wrapped my arms around him one more time. We were heat and sorrow and love. And I didn’t want to say goodbye.
When we pulled apart, we gazed at each other, as though memorizing each other’s features. He traced my brow, my cheek, my lips.
“I love you. We’ll see each other soon,” he said, and disappeared.
I slumped, a visceral ache striking through me at his absence. Where he had been, I could see straight through to waving trees and flowers. There was no more heat, no press of his skin on mine. Only the lingering scent of him.
My vision blurred, and I closed my eyes. In two months, the school year would be over. Summer would be here. He would be back. He had promised. He had my red string bracelet, and I had his ring. We had each other, even if we weren’t beside each other anymore.
When I’d recovered, I went down to the Lyceum.
Campus was normal today, people carrying on like usual.
Leah would be in her art history class, which took place in the basement classrooms of the Lyceum’s museum, located on the Arts Quad.
I climbed the steps of the grand marble building and sat, offset from the entrance so I wouldn’t be in anyone’s way.
Before me, picnicking students filled the lawn.
The sky was brutally blue, no sign of the storm from two days ago.
I watched a row of blackbirds feasting upon beetles with almost an obscene zeal.
The bells tolled, the classes changing. When I saw Leah, I called her name, and she came over, plopping down next to me on the steps. “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.
“He’s gone.” I clutched the scarf I was wearing, the one he had made me, burying my shaking fingers in the pink and teal yarn.
“Oh, Naomi.” She wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
We watched the birds swoop, watched how they filled the trees and their songs the air. I would never take them for granted again.
A warm wind danced past me, carrying the green scent of new growth and of fresh soil and of delicate, unfurling buds.
In the distance, a flag I had never seen before, blue with pink-and-yellow trim, was being hoisted up the weather pole.
In the distance, gold glowed on the horizon, the kind of light you only saw right after dawn or right before dusk—a golden light, a magical light, and it was spreading toward us with all the warmth of a parent’s embrace.
I turned to Leah. “Is this…?”
Her face was raised, her chest lifting as she inhaled. I could see the gleam in her eye, hear the quiver in her voice as she answered. “The Maestril. It’s finally here.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back, and we sat there for a while, breathing in the spring.