Chapter 12 #2
No way to pry open the past and find what got us into this mess.
And it’s not as though I can ask the king.
Pfft… Even getting him to drink a sip of water is like wading barefoot through nests of thorns.
The idea of asking about things that might flare his already volatile temper seems like suicide. Premature suicide.
What else then? What?
“There’s a grand room with a veiled mirror,” I all but mumble, grasping at straws, but what are my alternatives? “Drapes on a large bed. Perfume in the air that went sour.”
“The royal chamber,” he says. “Yes.”
“He doesn’t sleep there.”
“No.”
“Because it reminds him of something?”
Vale looks at my hands instead of my face. “This curse left no inch of this place untouched by grim memories.”
“What happened in that room?”
His teeth grind just as the hearth pops, as if the fire were deciding it would rather be a tree again. “I cannot say. I was not there.”
He rises and reaches forward. Sets a bit of wood at the right angle. Tucks in the coal. Makes a small order out of heat and habit.
Is he…is he evading me?
“I find it interesting,” I say, “how you seem to know everything…except that.”
“And I find it interesting how you seem to want gruesome details on events that are horrendous even in the mere state of the concept. Whatever it was that happened in that room, it is older, from a time before Ophelia’s coronation, and therefore irrelevant.
Now come.” Waving me off the stool, he juts toward the kitchen door.
“The hour is late, and we don’t want to be found here once the kitchen staff starts on the morning porridge. ”
We walk the dark corridors, the ghosts of laughter suffocating in the still air as we pass cold fireplaces, threadbare chairs, planters with nothing left but dirt. When we turn into a long gallery, walled with glass that extends into a room I haven’t seen before, something inside me sits up.
“A greenhouse!”
Behind a glass door, moonlight makes ribs of the iron that crowns it, paints the panes silver, and lets the night sky sink down on it in all its glory.
Within, a geometry of tables and trellises holds what was once abundance: leaves like the ears of starving hounds, stems gone black at the joints, rose bushes cut down to stalks, soil caved in where something gave up in the night.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, because it still is. “Even dead things manage it sometimes. Can I go in?”
“Forbidden.” The word is quick and unadorned. “King’s order. The lock is Miss Hampshire’s. She only brings a gardener at first light on odd days.”
“Hmm.”
My nose squeaks when I press it against a pane, trying to get a better look against the mist my breath leaves on the glass. I rub it clear with my sleeve and blink. A small bronze plaque blinks back—oval, riveted into the column like a law.
A GIFT TO THE QUEEN
ON THE BIRTH OF
HIS MAJESTY, THE PRINCE,
KING MERRICK’S SON AND HEIR.
The letters catch the moonlight, clean and proud despite the corrosion around them. My breath fogs the glass again before I even realize I’m staring. If this was his mother’s, then why lock it away? If he loved her so dearly, then why let the place she likely enjoyed rot to bone?
Maybe because he loved her.
Maybe he couldn’t stand the sight of her touch living on when she didn’t. The roses that dared to bloom would’ve bled red like her last day. Easier to cut them all down than let them remind him of what he lost. Reminders of what the curse took from him.
“It’s cruel,” I say. “Not only having to kill the person you love, but also the mother of your child.”
Vale is quiet for a moment. “Presume it is.”
Beyond the plaque, the gardens open: paths silvered with light, hedges trimmed by someone who appreciates order, even in ruin. A fountain glimmers in the distance, its hooded statue looming over the spill of water.
It’s pretty. It’s…perfect?
A flicker stirs low in my chest. If I can bring him here—let the king breathe air, feel light—then maybe his mood will ease. Maybe he’ll talk. Maybe I can trace the thread of his madness back to its source and cut it clean.
“On the next clear night, I’ll bring him here,” I say more to myself than Vale. “The moon’s not bright enough to hurt his eyes.”
Vale’s spine snaps straight. “Don’t.”
I peel my face off the pane and look at him. “Why not? He’s listless, grumpy, and impossible to reason with. His mood would be easier to stomach if something as simple as the moon touched his soul once in a while.”
“And what if he uses that improved mood to strengthen his resolve further? Have you thought of that?” His voice cools to stone. “Besides, you’re rushing this, which might very well ruin this plan of mine for good.”
“Without him opening up, it’s ruined already,” I snap. “I need—”
“What you need, Elara, is patience.”
“Patience?” The word bursts sharper than I mean it to. “Daron rots a little more with every day that I waste time tiptoeing around the king’s mood. You want me to sit on my hands while the king broods my brother into the grave?”
Vale exhales through his nose, slow and deliberate. “You don’t understand the mechanics at play. You’ve known the king for days; I’ve known him for years.”
“And what did all those years earn you?” I throw back before I can stop myself.
“Failure. That’s how you ended up at my door, remember?
” The air between us crackles with anger, defiance.
With something hotter tangled between us that I don’t dare name, so I just turn away.
“I’m not going to sit around here, waiting for—”
His hand finds my forearm, fast, firm. “Elara.”
The world tilts.
I pivot straight into him, shoulder striking his chest, breath knocked from both of us.
The cold pane kisses my spine. He’s close enough that I catch his scent again, dew and carnations, the greenhouse glass humming with the night.
Between us, heat threads taut and bright, a wire drawn through silence and sparked at both ends.
My palm finds his vest to steady what pride refuses to call a stagger. “You’re hurting me.”
His fingers loosen, but don’t leave. His green gaze slides to my mouth, then climbs back to meet my eyes. “Follow the rules,” he murmurs, voice low enough to make the air shiver. “Do as I say.”
When he sidesteps around a gleam of moon, giving me room, giving me an opening, I rip my arm from his grasp and stomp back into the familiar corridor. “Keep your stupid rules.”
I’ll keep my plan, even if it kills me.
Especially if it kills me.