13. Ofelia
13
Ofelia
A fter a day full of parties and more food than I’d dreamed of, I collapsed onto my new bed. My head was spinning, and all of the day’s dancing didn’t help.
Lope drifted into the room behind me like a ghost, quietly shutting the door. As soon as she did, I shot up, jumping off the bed and rifling through my bedside table. “Lope, I’ve hardly gotten to speak with you today! I’m sorry, I’ve just been rushed from one thing to the next!”
I removed the envelope with Mother’s letter. But first I gently set aside the pale pink shell she’d included, no bigger than my littlest nail.
Crossing the bedroom, I placed the letter in Lope’s hands.
“Here,” I said. “Mother’s note.”
I stood behind her as she pored over the letter for the first time. I knew what it said:
My dearest Ofelia,
I write to you to assure you that I am safe and well. I shall feel better each day I spend here at Lantanas. His Majesty’s staff take excellent care of me.
Sometimes the doctor permits me to sit and paint the waves. The colors here are so beautiful. I wish I could send them to you. This shell is the best I can do—its color made me think of you. This soft pink is just like that of the peonies in our garden back home. I love that you wanted all our flowers to be pink. It’s like this color belongs to you now.
Until I hold you in my arms again, I know that the king will show you all the kindness a father ought to. Forgive me for not sharing our story sooner. It is difficult to speak of the past.
Soon, we will all be together. We can be a family at Le Chateau—how wonderful that shall be!
With a kiss,
Your Mother
The pen-strokes, the curves of the M, just like how she wrote them as she signed her paintings. The writing was hers. It wasn’t the same as seeing her again, but all the same, holding this small part of her in this letter, it was a balm to the wounds of my sore, tired heart.
“She wants you to live here?” Lope murmured.
I nodded. “Yes, won’t that be exciting?”
“She was so opposed to the thought only a few weeks ago.”
“Things were different then,” I said, taking the letter from her grasp. “Since then, she reunited with Father, and they’ve overcome whatever squabble they had, and when she is better, we’ll all stay here. Safe from the Shadows, like we wanted!”
“But that was a lie,” Lope said. “We know there are Shadows in this place, even if they don’t speak of them here.”
My hands flopped down to my sides. I had not seen a single monster, but I did not wish to vex Lope or make her think I doubted her. I did not doubt her. Even if each day without Shadows convinced me more of the king’s assurance that we were safe here. “Well... we lived with Shadows at the manor. We endured them. You kept me safe. All I mean to say is that soon I’ll be reunited with Mother.” I pointed at her, and an idea sprang into my head. “And like you mentioned before—from here, you can continue your research into the origin of the Shadows. I bet they have more information than we could dream of!”
Lope leaned against a wall, folding her arms. Her silence and her stoic expression were grating against me.
“Why are you angry?” I asked.
Her eyebrows lifted. “I’m not angry.”
“Something else, then. You’re—you’re unhappy. You’re keeping something in.”
How I wish she’d open her heart to me. That she’d finally confess whatever marvelous secret was doubtlessly hidden inside of her. Maybe it was her love! Maybe she’d finally give up on her stony exterior and would let it crumble away so she would fall at my feet and recite a thousand sonnets. I wanted it more than anything, to hold her close, to have her lips beside my ear, whispering poetry, and saying, You, you, they were all about you .
But Lope’s gaze dropped. “A few hours ago, I... I heard something. I cannot explain it.”
My heart leapt in my chest. Heard something? Had something frightened Lope ? I sat upon the foot of my bed, my eyes wide. “What? What did you hear?”
She rubbed her temple. “It’s going to sound mad.”
“Tell me!” I exclaimed, anxiety rumbling within me from head to toe.
Lope sighed, her eyes closed. “While you were eating, I wandered the halls, and I heard... singing. A woman singing. I followed the voice, and it led me to the Hall of Illusions. As if some woman were behind those doors.”
My heart skipped excitedly. “Were you able to go inside?”
“No. The door remained guarded. They said no one but the king could enter. They heard the singing, too, but they said that everything in that room was just an illusion. An enchantment, a trick played by the gods.”
For some reason I couldn’t quite place, gooseflesh tickled my arms. I rubbed my skin and frowned at her. “Do you think there’s another explanation?”
She combed her fingers through her black-and-silver hair. “If whatever lies within that room is so magical, so wondrous, why wouldn’t the king share it, like every other marvel in this palace? There must be something within that he does not wish to show the court.”
I thought about the father I was getting to know. The man who found joy in beauty and music and everything bright and loud. He wouldn’t want to hide any splendor. But on the other hand, our first talk was in that quiet orangery. Despite the radiance to him, the golden effortlessness to him, his shoulders had sagged like he bore a great sorrow. He had held my hand so tightly, like he had needed me.
“Perhaps it’s just a room he wants for himself,” I said softly.
Lope pressed her lips, her brows drawn. I liked when I could look at her and see the machinery of her mind whirring like the inside of some magnificent clock. But gods, she must have been tired from all the thinking she did.
“It’s... it’s not as if there’s some woman trapped in there,” I said, making my voice sweet and light. “If she was trapped and unhappy or unsafe, she wouldn’t be singing , would she?”
After a long moment, she finally admitted, “I have no argument, my lady, but... but something unsettles me about the king.”
My brows rose. “I don’t understand, he’s... he’s blessed by the gods—”
“They say that. Again and again,” she murmured, her voice weak and tired. “But I’ve found that when someone shouts about how smart they are or how beautiful or perfect they are over and over again, it’s because they’re just the opposite.”
It made sense. There was a play I’d read once about a man who touted how pious he was, over and over, only to be lascivious and cruel.
And yet...
“Lope he—he’s so young. That must be proof he is favored by the gods. There can be no other explanation.”
“If the gods could give you anything you’d ask for—of all the things you could ask, of all the people you could help, how could anyone noble and good ask for immortality? For youth ?”
I gaped at her. “I—I’ve never wondered such a thing.” It was, perhaps, an odd request for a king. In fairy tales, a king who’d been granted a wish would ask for wisdom. Unless he was a fool of a king.
“Well,” I mumbled, “wouldn’t you ask the same thing of the gods? I certainly don’t want to grow old—”
“I do.” She touched a trembling hand to her chest. “I did not get to see my friends grow old. I thought I would never live past sixteen! That is something I would wish for, at my most selfish—to die gently, wrinkled and gray and beautiful, with my beloved’s hand in mine.”
Her beloved. Was it me?
And then my thoughts snagged upon her other words—she thought she’d die young.
It was not an unfounded fear. It felt like moments ago that I was holding her in my arms, watching the pallor of death creep over her lovely face. I squeezed my eyes shut. No, I could not bear death, and that was why I would want to be forever young. Forever safe from the clutches of such darkness, such cold. If I had my way, I’d bless Lope with that immortality, too. Perhaps she would be happy aging with someone she loved, but even the thought of watching my beloved fade away was too much for me to bear.
I could understand the king in the wish he’d chosen. To be safe from death; to be forever twenty years old, the same age when he was first crowned.
But if I lived at this palace, I’d grow older than he would. Mother and I would age, and die, and he would be left behind.
Perhaps immortality was not such a wonderful gift, after all.
“I admit we know very little about his character,” I said. I lifted the letter in my hand, giving it a little shake. “But Lo, Mother clearly trusts him.”
“Perhaps her note was forged.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Forged? By whom?”
“Does the king have other letters from her? Or any of her writings? A note or a request or something?”
I looked down at the handwriting. It was so clearly Mother’s. And she referred to our garden and the way I’d begged her to have a garden bursting with pink.
He’d kept their love letters, he’d said.
Was this letter only an imitation?
Lope stepped closer to where I sat, standing only a foot away from me. “This letter is the only proof we have that he’s telling the truth,” said Lope, her voice soft.
I was exhausted. By the doubting, by the way she was always in search of some enemy to save me from, even when I had yet to see any monsters here. All my life, Le Chateau was touted as the safest place in the country. The only place safe from Shadows. Everything in me rebelled against the thought that we had traveled here, had been through so much, only to not find that safety.
But I trusted her. She had saved me from Shadows, again and again, even while I slept soundly, carelessly, back at the manor. She risked her life while I dreamed.
It would be far easier to take the king at his word, yes... but Lope’s instincts had never let me down.
“What are we to do, then?” I murmured.
I slipped off the bed and set aside the letter, letting my fingers graze over the seashell, over a silver mirror, over a new ruby necklace. I remembered sitting by the king’s side in the sunshine and how he spoke so fondly of my mother. So reverently. He said they would sit by the canal together and that he could watch her sketching for hours.
When I was with her, I would forget that I was king at all , he’d said.
All of his beautiful words—could they really have been lies?
Then everything, all the beauty of Le Chateau, all the promise of Mother’s safety and my marvelous, welcoming future—it would all shatter. I did not know if I could bear that.
And tomorrow, I’d have to act like nothing had changed.
“I cannot avoid the king, Lope,” I said.
“No.” Her eyes glinted. “But you can gather the truth about who he is. Not from him. From other courtiers. From exploring the palace, its paintings, its books. If we are trapped here, let us set a trap in return. Let us learn its secrets.”
“Like the garden,” I murmured. “With the guards and the way it’s closed by night...”
She nodded. “I’ll continue to search there. I have tracked the Shadows for years to this place—they must be somewhere on the grounds of Le Chateau, and I know that the king wouldn’t dare let the Shadows inside to feast on his courtiers. I am certain their origin point is in the gardens. I feel their presence with every step I take. These creatures would have been born of the Underworld itself. If I can find Shadows out there, then I can find how it is they’ve entered our world.”
The Underworld. Mother never read me stories of that place. I’d only heard whispers from the knights. That all the evil in the world came from that place. That the god that resided there, lord of all monsters, was so horrifying that a single glance from him or a word from his lips could make a grown man fall dead. That he was so unlike the gods, he must be some other kind of creature altogether. Something dark and powerful.
Creator of the Shadows.
I had avoided thinking of that place; I had hoped it a tale used to frighten naughty children into obedience.
“You think there’s some... portal, or veil, to the Underworld? Here, in the palace?” I whispered.
“Everyone here believes the gods themselves touched this palace and blessed the king,” Lope said softly. “Would it be so impossible for another god to have influenced this place?”
A shiver rushed down my back at the thought. “Please don’t speak about this. It frightens me.”
“You cannot look away from trouble forever,” she said, her voice desperate and pleading. “This involves you, too. If the king forged that letter, it means that your mother is still missing!”
Tears burned in my eyes. “No. No, that’s not the story that I want.”
She clutched my hands in hers. Looking into her eyes again, the familiar, stormy gray, I remembered her looking so sweetly at me back home. So attentively. Why did she feel so far away now?
“My lady,” she said, “seek the truth. If the king is trustworthy, then we are safe. We’re home.”
“We’re home,” I repeated. It didn’t sound quite right. Even a palace was just a hollow, heartless building if Mother wasn’t there. But when Lope said it, we’re home , like she and I were a home, the two of us—it soothed the ache in my heart, lifted it into hopefulness.
“No matter what, my lady,” said Lope, her gaze firmly locked with mine. “I will protect you with everything that I am.”
Her devotion. Her chivalry. It made my heart sing . My right hand carefully slipped out of hers, up the length of her arm, firm beneath her coat. I laid each finger delicately against her elbow. A gentle request I hope she’d understand. A question I hoped she’d answer.
When I looked up, her gaze was fixed upon my lips. My breath froze in my lungs. Her lashes were so long, like dusky shadows against her cheekbones. She bent close just a little bit. I tipped my head, and one of my curls swayed in front of my eye. Her cold fingertips tickled against my left cheek as she brushed it aside. Her every gesture was the epitome of tenderness.
A thrill rushed through me, bracing as a waterfall. So I wasn’t a fool. She must feel the same; I wasn’t overly confident to imagine that her poems had been about me—
Her shoulders squared, and with a deep breath, she stepped back from me. “So then,” she said, her voice measured, emotionless, “tomorrow we’ll split up, that we may cover more ground. I’ll investigate the gardens, and you’ll investigate the palace.”
By the names of all the faceless gods.
“Excellent plan, caballera,” I said, smoothing the front of my skirts, willing my hands not to shake. “Would you please step out for a moment? I’ll undress myself tonight.”
She bowed and marched out of the room with the rigidity of a walking suit of armor. Once the door clicked shut behind her, I whirled around, leapt onto the large bed, and screamed into the nearest pillow.