Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
EZRA
The royal garden was all order and symmetry: tiny hedges, prim fountains, and swan ponds lined with marble tiles.
I always felt like a guest in it, not a gardener nor an owner.
The roses here didn’t bloom wild. They obeyed.
There weren’t even any native plants here–no plumerias, hibiscus, ti leaves, not even a gardenia.
Tavo had put together this garden, because he wanted the foreigners to feel like home when they came to our palace.
I glanced behind me at the terrace garden behind the palace, waterfalls pouring out of crevices in the mountain, and the lush, chaotic forest that came from it.
Just yesterday I was there, planting koa trees.
And after that meeting with my father, the council had been intense.
I somehow persuaded them to let the armies hunt the coqui frogs.
They’d gone out last night, and reported killing hundreds of frogs. We burned the frog remains that morning, and I grimaced at the thought. I hated killing things, but this was a necessary step. If there was ever a bad time to be a frog in Kaiora Kingdom, it was now.
My attention turned to the clicking of my companion’s slippers on the stone ground.
The princess of Windmere had spent the night at the palace, but now we were officially meeting.
Cressida held my arm, her parasol in her other gloved hand, her eyes focused on the path ahead.
She was the picture of restraint: her pastel-blue gown cinched at the waist, its corseted bodice boned with pearl-studded seams. Pale blonde hair glinted like polished silver under the sun, and when she looked up at me with her icy blue eyes, they had a distant look to them.
We had strolled through the garden for a while, and neither of us could seem to find any words to speak. My meetings exhausted me that day, and her journey seemed to exhaust her. Yet here we were, fulfilling our political obligations.
We had just signed betrothal papers. But I didn’t even want to think about our marriage. She probably didn’t want to think about it either. It was awkward, really.
She was the youngest princess in the Windmere family, a spare.
Just like me. That should’ve helped us find some solidarity, but I couldn’t help feeling her bitterness. She had visited twice and courted Tavo, not me. But with him gone, and her being the “spare” princess, her father quickly sent her here to sign new betrothal papers to marry me.
I thought about declining to sign the papers but my counselors advised me otherwise. “This is the role of a monarch,” said one of them. “Marriage alliances strengthen foreign ties, open doors to new allies, and improve our political and economic trade.”
So, with no thought of myself or my feelings, I signed the papers.
I’d never imagined a romantic marriage–never really allowed myself to think of it anyway… because I was the spare. I’d do whatever Tavo ordered me to do when he became king.
Cressida let go of my arm to pull something from her dress.
A golden ball? It glinted like sunlight trapped in metal, a perfect orb that didn’t belong here. I frowned. “That’s new.” The first words spoken between us.
She turned it in her palm, her expression unreadable. “I bought it from a woman in Windmere. She said the person who retrieves it for me is a true prince.”
I raised an eyebrow. Was she going to throw it and expect me to chase after it like a dog? The idea was quite offensive.
“Can I see?” I asked, and she handed it to me.
I read the writing around the center band of the ball.
“A kiss from a true princess will break any spell.” I frowned.
What was she implying? Was she suggesting that her kiss might break some "spell?
" Then my stomach tightened. Was the “spell” her feelings for Tavo?
I turned it around, finding more writing. “Beware. True magic always takes something in return.”
Magic. I handed it back to her. “There’s no magic in Kaiora,” I said. It wasn’t illegal to use magic, as there were some who practiced kahunaism and witchcraft. But magic just wasn’t at work here.
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Why’d you get it?”
Her fingers tightened slightly on the orb and I felt a strange pressure in the air, like a charged, quiet moment before a lightning storm. Nervousness flooded me as she glanced at my lips.
Did she want to kiss me? Is that why she got the ball? To instigate a kiss?
I hadn’t ever kissed a girl, and I wasn’t quite in the mood to kiss Cressida. She was agreeable, but I had never viewed her as, well… my companion. My wife.
Might as well start now, I told myself, but I couldn’t do it. Not when I’d seen her and Tavo all over each other in the past. I suppose marriage, to me, was going to be nothing romantic. Just a duty for my people. This whole situation was making me rather nauseated.
“I know this wasn’t what either of us expected,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “Tavo was supposed to marry me. We had so many plans together, and now…” She shook her head. “He…” She paused and I thought she would say, “Die” or “was killed.”
Instead, she said, “He never came back.” She sounded more angry at the fact he never returned than that he had died, which was strange. “You were supposed to do your own thing, Ezra. You weren’t ever supposed to be the heir.”
My fist clenched, and my jaw tightened. What was she getting at? Did she see me as inferior to Tavo too?
Probably.
We reached the side of the garden, which connected it to the terrace garden. Ponds glistened in the sunlight, and blossoms floated across their surface. Cressida’s reflection hovered in the water.
“I’m not Tavo,” I said. “Though I’ll try to be more like him.”
“No.” Cressida finally looked at me. “You’re not Tavo. But I don’t think you could ever be like him either.” For the first time, I wondered if there might be some truth to her words.
Father said it.
Cressida said it.
Was I putting too much pressure on myself to be like him, when that could never be a reality? It made me sick with worry.
But Cressida watched me with curiosity, and I wondered, maybe even allowed myself to entertain the idea of becoming friends. She’d always been obsessed with Tavo, but now that he was gone, could I put myself in that position? The position that was once his?
“I’m sorry you and Tavo couldn’t be together,” I said.
“Me too.” She pursed her lips, then added. “But I can carry on his legacy in my own way.”
People grieved in their own way and I figured this was her way of grieving Tavo.
But what legacy of his did she mean? Tavo hadn’t even been king yet.
Had never made any laws or decrees. He often seemed indifferent to the whereabouts of the kingdom.
So what legacy of his was there to carry on, besides his dominating and powerful personality?
Cressida held up the ball, but instead of handing it to me, it slipped from her fingers and fell into the pond. Her eyes flicked towards it, then to me.
“What a loss,” she said, the golden ball invisible in the deep pond. Did she expect me to get it? I wasn’t afraid of getting wet, but… something seemed off.
“I can get it,” I finally decided before I changed my mind. Before things got too awkward. I took my shoes off, and as soon as my foot touched the water, something happened. I could see the ball from here, at the bottom of the pond, with bright orange and white koi fish swimming back and forth.
The ball pulsed once, then glowed bright as lightning.
And suddenly…
Cressida screamed. I didn’t understand; the world around me grew larger and larger. A burning sensation waved through my chest. My muscles wrenched. Everything spiraled. I dropped–no, collapsed, my limbs curling inward, my hands gone.
I hit the pond, and water swallowed me. Breathing felt impossible. Moving felt unnatural. The garden above warped and shimmered.
The last thing I saw through bulging, panicked eyes was Cressida’s silhouette above the water, one hand over her mouth, and the golden ball, with drops of water sparkling on it, in the other.
Then she ran away.