16. Lope
16
Lope
The poets write so sweetly of the night,
But I prefer the daylit girl,
Safe upon the grass,
Making memories and making freckles
All for me to count.
E glantine locked the library doors. We pushed together two tables, and she effortlessly fetched the entire stack of books I’d been poring over. After setting them on the table with a loud thump , she left and then returned with more documents: letters, leaflets, journals.
“There isn’t a curious soul in this wretched palace,” she muttered. “They’re too afraid. Too afraid to seek answers or to push back against what the king calls the truth.” She wagged a finger at me. “You’re what I needed. A reader and a knight. Curious and brave.”
“You... needed me?” I repeated.
She sat down, plucking a quill pen off the table and drawing open an empty book. “Yes, dear. But my story comes later. First, I want you to tell me all that you know.”
For a moment, I was gripped by that very same fear she had described. Did the king have a spy hidden somewhere between the bookshelves? Was Eglantine to be trusted? And what did His Majesty do to those who doubted him?
“How do I know I can trust you?” I asked softly.
She raised a brow. “You’ve still got the knife, haven’t you?”
I did.
“Then you’re the one with the upper hand.” Eglantine dipped her pen in the inkwell. “Go on.”
I remained standing, resting my hip against the table. I wasn’t sure where to start. “First,” I murmured, “I’ve searched the ledger. I looked back through last month’s record. I found no evidence that the singer, Francoise de la Valliere, ever left this place.”
Eglantine nodded. “I noticed this as well, almost as soon as she’d disappeared. It was curious, almost as if it had been missed... but then when Mademoiselle Ofelia came to me with her mother having vanished under similar circumstances... I began to wonder if something darker was at play at this palace.” Her gaze met mine. “Go on. What else have you found?”
For once someone wanted to hear my thoughts. My theories. All my efforts, finally heard. It was almost too good to be true.
“It is my belief,” I said, “that all the Shadows plaguing our land come from one origin point.... If they are spawned in the Underworld, then they must have a way to enter this world. A door, or a portal.” I watched Eglantine closely for her reaction to my next words. “I believe such a thing to be here, at Le Chateau. In the gardens. Where I was just attacked by Shadows that are said not to exist here.”
She stopped scribbling down her notes with a deep sigh but said nothing. No shock, no surprise—her silence almost read as resignation.
“It’s public knowledge, then?” I asked. “That there are Shadows in the gardens?”
Eglantine pursed her lips. “No, not public. But available for anyone who would choose to see, which the court does not. In the daylight, the nobility may roam the gardens, but when night falls... well, there are many parties to draw one’s attention from such unpleasant things.”
With a pang, I thought of Ofelia. How she would prefer a life like that. Dancing the nights away, surrounded by gilded treasures, sweet morsels, and joyful music.
While monsters bounded through the gardens, into the fields, farther and farther, to find lives to claim.
“Go on,” urged Eglantine.
“It is my understanding,” I continued softly, “that there have been more Shadows than ever before since the Hall of Illusions appeared. Before that, their numbers increased when the opera singer disappeared. And ten years earlier, they multiplied during the funeral for the queen mother. It seems too great a coincidence.”
“Precisely,” whispered Eglantine. The golden reflection of the candle flames made her spectacles gleam. She shakily removed her glasses from her face, setting them on her book. She wiped at her eyes, and I procured a handkerchief for her in an instant.
“There was one other time before that, too,” she said. “Just before King Léo was crowned. We were at the old palace, then, the one before Le Chateau existed. The king’s father and then his brother had both been claimed by the pox. Yet they couldn’t even have a proper funeral because the monsters appeared mere days after. They were relentless. The royal knights had to fend off the creatures for three long months.... Then, a miracle occurred. The king told us that the gods had provided him with this palace out here in the countryside, a sanctuary. It was an answered prayer.”
Eglantine’s lip trembled. “I believed it. I believed in this . I was a child, then. And my mother had just gone missing. Growing up, I assumed that the Shadows must have—” Her voice broke, and she pressed the handkerchief to her mouth. After a moment, she collected herself and continued at a whisper. “But as I grew, I began to doubt.”
She went silent for a moment, before continuing. “Before the Shadows ever appeared, before Le Chateau, before everything, King Léo hired my mother to help him with some secret project she could not name. She kissed me farewell, and said she’d be gone for a fortnight traveling with him. Yet the Shadows came, and only he returned.”
“Sagesse?” I murmured. Eglantine’s mother had changed her name, she’d said. She’d called herself wisdom . My mind had clung fast to this fact, this little bit of poetry.
Despite everything, fondness sparkled in her eyes. “That’s right. That was her name.”
Francoise. The countess. Eglantine’s mother.
“What sort of work did your mother do?” I asked.
The candle flame whipped and flickered, like a moth beating its wings. The sudden movement startled me. Eglantine clutched her shawl against her heart. Her gaze was locked upon the flame.
“My mother was a favorite of the gods,” said Eglantine. “She could pray to them, and they’d answer her. Every time. Sometimes she would read fortunes for a bit of coin or ask the gods to send blessings upon people in their times of trouble.”
My heart leapt. I had only heard stories of people like that, favored people—people like the king. But I hadn’t expected this, what courtiers called impossible. Eglantine had no title—her mother wasn’t a noblewoman. She was ordinary. Like me. And yet the gods heard her prayers.
Eglantine saw my shocked expression. “Yes, her abilities made her quite famous. In demand. But not well liked.” Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. “She was not of the... status that people expected for one so favored. The king’s blessing was much better received.”
“Then that’s how the king was blessed?” I asked. “She interceded on his behalf?”
“I believe so. The gods did not listen to the king—or the prince, as he was at the time—before then. Only after my mother had disappeared did he become prosperous.” She looked up at me, a determined set to her face. “So days ago when Lady Ofelia appeared, saying her mother had vanished in much the same way... And I never believed that Francoise de la Valliere would leave this court for another kingdom. Her friends are here, her career was here; she was a singer at the most splendid palace on the continent, and she had the favor of the king. It made no sense.”
She pivoted in her chair, pointing at me. “So then. The king, shrouded by darkness that he adamantly denies. And a door to the Underworld. On these grounds that are supposed to be holy.”
I rubbed my forehead in thought. “Why would the king allow a door like that to exist? Why would the gods allow for such a thing to exist?”
“One god would.”
My blood ran cold. I gripped the table harder. “The king of the Underworld,” I murmured. All I’d learned was slowly fitting together, piece by piece creating the skeletal remains of some hideous beast I’d thought was only fantasy. “King Léo hired your mother to speak to the gods. What if—what if he hired her to speak to... him ?”
“It’s possible.”
“How?” The question felt foolish for an instant, before it suddenly thrilled me and sent my pulse galloping. “Can anyone communicate with the Shadow King? Can anyone ask him for his favor or—or create a door to his domain?”
Could I ? Could I finally have the answers I’d been searching for my entire life?
Eglantine chose a volume from the pile of books on the desk, this one bound in stark contrast the others, with simple, plain leather. She placed it in my hands.
“I’ve kept it for thirty years. My mother’s journal. She recorded nearly all her conversations with the gods.”
I flipped through the delicate pages. A supplication to the god of abundance—April 18th. A conversation with the god of forests. An answer from the god of the stars. The book fell open to a threadbare bookmark, next to a page titled A strange interaction with a new god.
“Have you... have you tried to replicate these rituals?” I asked softly.
“I was unsuccessful.” She slipped her glasses back onto her face. “It seems whatever aptitude my mother possesses has skipped over me.” Eglantine clutched the book. “Perhaps you will have more luck.”
All my life I have offered to the gods and never received an answer. Yet here was a chance I had never expected, answers I desperately needed. I could not help but try, even to appeal to the monstrous god that haunted us all.
“I fear I’ll have no more success than you’ve had,” I warned her.
Eglantine pressed her lips in a sad smile. “Mademoiselle,” she said, “I have looked in vain for my mother for thirty years. I don’t know if this god has any answers. I don’t know if this god will speak to anyone. But my mother... if she’s alive somewhere, she’d be over eighty years old. I am running out of time. I am running out of hope.” She extended a hand, laying it against my wrist. “I have given you the greatest treasure I have: knowledge. You are a knight. In this godsforsaken place, I have only seen you pursue justice and truth . I am begging you to help me find her. Or at least try .”
“I shall,” I said.
Despite her plea, she had seemed to expect my denial. At my words, she clapped a hand to her mouth, muffling a sob that seemed torn from her. Far away, bells clanged, making us both jump. The signal that the night’s festivities were to begin. A siren’s call to the ballroom.
Eglantine rose from the table, sniffling and gathering up her books. “You should go,” she said. “I don’t want anyone to think we’ve been conspiring. The king hates private meetings.”
I tucked the journal under my arm and carefully placed the penknife back on the table with a little click. When Eglantine caught sight of the blade, she laughed and said, “Wait! I do have something to repay you with.”
She disappeared toward her desk, returning after a moment with something in her hands. When she set it on the tabletop, my eyes went round. A dagger, still in its sheath. I hungrily grabbed the weapon, unsheathing it. On either side of the handle, the guard was curved almost like a bow—a perfect parrying blade. After a world filled with riches and excess, I relished something so simple. The sharp blade glowed in the candlelight. With utter reverence, I hid the dagger within my coat.
“Better than a penknife,” she said with a grin.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“The palace confiscates the nobles’ weapons. I happen to have a key to such contraband.” Eglantine nodded at the dagger. “Be careful. If our suspicions are correct... this is dangerous knowledge that we possess.”
“What about you?”
The librarian grinned, lifting a heavy volume off the table with great ease. “I have lived in Le Chateau nearly my whole life, mademoiselle. I can handle myself.”
“Very well.” I bowed to her. “Thank you, Eglantine. For everything.” I glanced at the library doors, back to where the “real world” lay. “I need to share all of this with Ofelia—”
“She’s the king’s daughter.”
“She’s my—” I faltered, because I did not know what to call her. Beloved was what I longed for.
“I know you trust her. I know you care for her. But any secret she slips would easily reach the ears of the king.”
Ofelia was kind and delightful and gregarious. She was sweet and strong and impossible to talk out of a plan she had decided upon. For all these marvelous attributes, even I could admit, discretion was never her strongest suit. Still, keeping anything from her felt wrong.
“I just want her to be safe,” I said.
She rested the heavy volume against her hip and turned to look at me, something piercing and sad in her eyes. “Then choose wisely what knowledge to share with her.”
As I feared, Ofelia was not in her bedroom. I tucked Sagesse’s book of gods under the mattress and knew I’d find her in the ballroom.
Through the darkened hallways, I followed the drifting sound of whining music and loud, raucous laughter. Already the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I prepared myself for the inevitable. Being around so many people. The way they unabashedly pointed and stared at me.
The doors to the ballroom were parted, allowing golden light to spill into the corridor. A single guard stood in the doorway, his halberd firmly planted on the floor.
“Name?” he asked me.
“Lope de la Rosa,” I said. “I serve Lady Ofelia.”
“If that is so, servant, why are you not with your lady?”
They never used to question me like this. I was always following just behind her. We were always side by side—now this guard completely doubted my place in her life.
His words, too, prodded a wound that I so often pretended did not hurt.
As much as I tried to forget it when she was braiding my hair or listening to me recite or spinning sweet stories for me, the difference in our stations had always been a great fracture between us both. Here at court, it was more like a canyon.
“Please—please have someone tell her that there is an urgent message waiting for her. Something she asked me to alert her of.”
The soldier sighed. He took a step back, addressing one of his fellows hidden behind the corner of the doorway in the ballroom. A young man in the blue-and-gold livery of a palace servant crossed the room, slipping through the crowd of people. After a minute, Ofelia emerged, her scarlet skirts in her fists, and ran toward me with a grin.
“My lady—”
She reached past the guard in the doorway and grabbed the sleeve of my coat, pulling me inside. In a whirl, she had us tucked away by a wall covered in equestrian portraits. All of the king.
Ofelia beamed up at me, her hands tangling with mine. Already, my heart was beating even faster than it had with the Shadows. Her cheeks were flushed bright pink. If I held my hand to her cheek, to feel its warmth, I thought it might feel like cradling sunshine itself.
Her beauty trapped all the breath in my lungs. Her dress was the same deep red as the roses in her hair. Her lips, too, were painted red, and around her neck was a necklace dripping rubies. Gray and black pearls were pinned in strands across the front of her bodice. She looked more elegant than I’d ever seen her.
“I hoped I would see you,” she said. “You’ve become a phantom! I scarcely see you anymore.”
My heart ached. She longed to see me. “Forgive me, my lady. I feel the same. I hope that you have not felt unsafe on your own while I have been researching—”
“Unsafe?” She laughed. “Heavens, no. I’ve been at the king’s side. All I’ve been in danger of has been twisting an ankle while dancing.”
My cruel mind whispered, She does not need you . I squared my shoulders and tried to maintain composure. “Then I am pleased, but...” I glanced about the ballroom, to the dancers in a thousand shades of red, crimson and scarlet and vermillion, leaping and twirling like a bloody haze against my eyes. And the king, clad in gold, with his cold stare fast upon me.
“I need to speak with you in private,” I whispered to her.
Ofelia’s smile was doused in an instant. She released my hands and procured a fan from the pocket of her gown. It was black, painted with bright fireworks of red flowers. She fluttered her fan over her heart, that strangely restrained look still upon her face. “What sort of thing do you wish to speak about?” she asked primly. “Is it lovely? Or unpleasant?”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Well, unpleasant, but important—”
“Why must you worry yourself every single night? Why do all your thoughts gather around everything dark and wicked?”
A deep pain sliced through my chest, as though her words themselves had cut me. “I know it is distressing, but I only speak out of concern for you.”
“Can it wait until the morning?”
“My lady, you are occupied most every morning—”
“No, you are occupied!” Ofelia snapped her fan shut and folded her arms. “When I rise, you are already gone. I do not even get to wish you a good morning.”
“I am seeking the truth. In the gardens, in the library, and that is what—”
“I am doing what you asked of me. I listen for gossip, and I gather up stories. I cannot do so with a dour expression, refusing to dance, refusing to participate!”
I flinched at the bite of her words. Perhaps she was anxious; perhaps so much mystery and doubt and all this chaos around her was making her irritable. I made my voice softer and sweeter. “I understand. Have you discovered anything, then?”
“His Majesty has no family left. He mentioned taking me to the Hall of Illusions someday, but I did not press the matter.” She shrugged, letting her fan slap into her hand. “That is all. He is lonely.”
Lonely. It seemed a paltry excuse for what I now knew. Three missing women. The sudden deaths of the king’s father and brother. The Shadows, blooming into existence around the same time. All I wanted was to tell her this. To warn her. To protect her.
But there were a thousand eyes upon us. A thousand ears pricked up, hungry for more gossip.
“Please,” I whispered, “I just need a minute to speak with you. But we must be alone. It’s not safe.”
“I don’t want to leave the fête.”
From behind her, a tall, slim figure appeared, carefully touching a hand against Ofelia’s bare shoulder. My fingers itched for the dagger in my coat, until I saw who was standing behind her.
“Leave the fête?” said the king. “Oh no, you must stay. There will be a fireworks show, and then some folk dancers from the south are going to perform for us.”
“No, Your Majesty, I do not intend to leave,” she said, smiling back at him. My heart ached. My lungs refused to fill.
King Léo’s eyes met with mine. “Who is this vexing you, my pearl? The servant you mentioned?”
The servant. Was that all I was to her?
“Yes, this is Lope.” She offered me a kind smile, melting away a bit of the frost between us. “All I want is for her to join me, yet”—her expression shuttered—“she does not seem to care for dancing.” Ofelia looked at me quietly once she finished speaking, some question in her eyes.
I imagined myself among the nobles, performing their silly, regimented dances while a portal to the Underworld existed undisturbed in the gardens. Even if it would make Ofelia smile, the image felt so dissonant that it made me squirm. “I—I—”
“There are plenty of other ladies who would love to partner with you,” the king interrupted, tipping her head forward to kiss her forehead. The king whispered something in her ear, and she shook her head adamantly.
Ofelia wiped a stray tear from her cheek, that strange, immovable smile still upon her face. “It’s fine, Father. I just need a minute longer.”
“As you wish.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders in a quasi-embrace. He raised a brow in my direction but did not even deign to look at me, only at Ofelia. “Doesn’t my daughter look beautiful tonight, mademoiselle?”
She did. She was blossoming, thriving, glowing. My stomach tied itself in knots.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, my voice dry and hoarse.
He patted her back in a quick farewell and then reentered the crowd, back toward the throne.
I had completely destroyed the conversation, but I could not quite determine how to correct things. I meekly touched a hand to my heart. “Forgive me—truly, I did not mean to vex you—”
“Yes, you did.” Her voice was so small, so defeated. “You came here to speak of monsters and villains and foes to battle. You don’t listen when I tell you we are safe .” She gazed up at me, her brown eyes a warm glow against the gold and red around us. “Give me a sweet word. Tell me something kind. You have poetry running in your veins. You always have!”
If only she knew the sort of nonsense I’d written about her . She wished for me to conjure beautiful words out of thin air. And what was I meant to say? My heart was beating the rhythm of the truth, and that is all I wanted to say to her, Danger , Shadows , gods , deception , but she wanted sweetness.
And now that she had asked for it, so suddenly, here in this ballroom, with beasts running wild outside... all my words dried up.
“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I—I can’t.”
Ofelia took a step back from me. There was a coldness in her eyes that convinced me, for the first time, that she really could be the king’s daughter.
“Then good night, mademoiselle,” she said. “I am going to dance until sunrise. I will try not to disturb you when I return.”
She turned on her heel, her red skirts flaring like a rose in bloom, and then wove back into the crowd.
I’d not felt a pain like this before.
Claws against my arms, the nick of a sword upon my cheek, air burning as it left my lungs in a dying breath—
What a fool I was.
A worse fool, too, because I loved her still.