19. Ofelia
19
Ofelia
W ith Lope’s hand in mine, I whirled into my bedroom. From my pocket, I procured the long golden key to my chamber and locked it, my hand trembling all the while.
Lope, Lope, fighter of Shadows, calling upon the king of monsters?!
I leaned back against the door and held my spinning head. Lope’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes gleamed in an almost hungry way, the way I’d seen when she was ready to dive into battle.
She was serious. Her plan to find Shadows in the king’s garden—she wasn’t going to give up on it. To the point where she was now inviting trouble.
“Lope, this must end !” I begged in a scratchy voice. “Gods, the king of the Underworld ? Think of what he could have done! He is the creator of the Shadows. He could have killed you if he felt so inclined!”
“I do not fear such a thing.”
It was as good as if she’d said, “I want to die.” The very thought was like a spear through my chest, and I clutched at my heart like the wound was real. “ I fear it, Lope! You fling yourself into the arms of death so carelessly! What is it for ?”
“You,” she said.
My bleeding heart was clawing at itself.
No. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want her in danger, I wanted her safe, I wanted her to rest . I wanted to dance in the king’s ballroom and see her sitting in a chair beside my throne. If she wouldn’t dance with me, at least she’d stop for one moment. Stop fighting, stop worrying... so I’d find some measure of peace in her lovely eyes.
“What you do,” I said, voice trembling, “it isn’t for me. Why do you keep looking for danger, looking for some sort of sadness where there isn’t any? There need not always be some sort of tragedy, something to rescue me from.”
With a sigh, Lope said, “I’m sorry. I cannot blot out such things, my lady.”
“Stop calling me that.” My lady. My lady. Such distance between us. Even during a conversation as important as this one. Even when I was pleading for her to show me her truest, deepest self.
Lope squeezed her eyes shut. “The... the Shadows and the missing women. I do not know how they are connected, but I do know that your father is a dangerous man.”
“He’s not,” I insisted. I smiled, remembering the wonder I’d witnessed, the fact that by magic, by the enchantment of the gods, I’d seen my mother again. “He showed me the Hall of Illusions today, Lope, and do you know what I saw? Dozens and dozens of mirrors. And within was my heart’s desire. I saw a vision of my mother. She looked so real. It was impossible. It was magic. The gods really did bless him.”
Lope frantically shook her head. Her expression was a mirror of my own: desperate and pleading. “The god of Shadows says otherwise. He says that King Léo made a bargain with him!”
Confusion, shock, anger, tightened my muscles. “Lope, why would you trust the word of a monster ? Surely he speaks in lies!”
“I believe him,” she said, her knuckles turning white. “There have been three women in the king’s circle who’ve gone missing: Francoise de la Valliere, Eglantine’s mother, your own mother—and yes, I know it is said that she is in Lantanas, but—we only have his word of it. What if she ended up wherever the others did?”
My mother. Just when my anxieties about her were starting to heal, Lope was tearing open the wound. And for what? What did she gain from this constant search for trouble and danger?
“I cannot account for Eglantine’s mother,” I whispered, “but as for Francoise—she did not disappear. She received an opportunity to sing in an opera company in another kingdom! She left on her own accord—”
“Do you have proof of this?”
I dropped my hands to my sides. “Be reasonable! What other explanation could there be?”
“A violent one,” said Lope coldly. “There is no record of Francoise leaving this palace. And as for my theory, there is precedent for violent disappearances. The king was second in line for the crown and his father and brother happened to pass at the same time—”
“Lope!”
My outburst made her freeze.
I rubbed my temple. Why couldn’t she let this go? “I’m safe here at Le Chateau,” I whispered. “I’m happy here. Can’t you see how happy I’ve been? My family is here, and I know you do not care for the court life and the dancing—”
“This isn’t about that; it’s your life I fear for!”
“I am not in danger!”
“Just hours ago I battled Shadows out in the garden. I saved the life of another soldier. The monsters are here , Ofelia. Right beyond your window.”
Hours ago? Shadows in the garden? Cold fear gripped my heart. But I had never seen such Shadows. And Lope... with each day, she was jumping at corners. Digging for secrets. More and more desperate for something that didn’t seem to be there.
I had always feared for her. Feared that either the Shadows or the unbearable burden on her shoulders would claim her. But now I feared something else entirely: that this dogged pursuit of danger would pull her from me completely.
“I haven’t seen any Shadows, Lope,” I whispered, my voice trying to soothe and instead coming out raw.
Lope flinched, like my words had been cruel. Her shoulders sagged. “You don’t believe me,” she murmured.
The heartbreak in her eyes made me want to turn back time, to fix everything, to paint over the entire conversation in gold. “You’re tired,” I told her, soft and sweet. “You’ve been so brave. Fighting Shadows for years . And we’ve been traveling for so long. You’ve never once gotten to rest , Lope, and all this peril and bloodshed, it can affect you—”
“ Affect me?” she breathed. As she blinked, her eyes were glossy, and my stomach plummeted within me. “So you think I saw nothing? You think I’m mad ?”
“No, Lope, that’s not what I—”
“I have protected you for five years,” she said. “Please... don’t you trust me?”
I clung to the bedpost for support. Trust , after all we’d been through. I was so tired of fighting. I was so tired of reaching out so desperately for her and her never taking my hand. “Lope, I have trusted you endlessly. Endlessly. I am asking you this one time to trust me, to come find refuge with me. I am inviting you into my heart, but you don’t even let me into yours. You have written poems of love for me, you’ve loved me, and you’ve said nothing, for how long now? Years?”
The angry flush from her cheeks drained away in a second. “You,” she said, her voice quaking, “you read my poems?”
Shame and horror made my whole body flood red-hot. No. No, no, no.
“It was an accident,” I said through trembling lips. “I only took a little peek.”
Lope dropped onto the bed, her eyes vacantly staring at the pale wall before her. “How long have you known?” she croaked.
Truth was the only balm I could offer. I hid part of my face behind the bedpost like a frightened child. “Since... since we first came here.”
Her fingers trembled as they dug into the satin of her breeches. “Those were mine,” she whispered. “Those were mine . My words, just for me. They’re all I have.”
Another lance to the heart. “All you have?” I asked in a small voice. “You have me . We could—we could forget all of this and start anew.” I held out my hands for her, desperate for her to free herself from this dark haze of sorrow and let our love story play out. “Our feelings are out in the open now. We can put aside pretenses and just... be in love! Let everything else fall away.”
She did not take my hands. She did not even look my way.
She’d never been like this. Acting like she didn’t care for me.
I drew my hands back, holding them against the cold spreading through my heart. “Lope, I’m truly sorry. I’m... I’m certain Father could appoint you as court poet if you wanted. If I talk to him, I’m certain he’ll—”
“Your father is a wicked man,” she said, her voice low and dark as storm clouds. “What intentions could he have, lavishing you with gifts and drawing your attention from anything monstrous?”
I flinched. “Is it so impossible to believe someone would love me?”
Lope trembled, wrapping her arms around her middle as if she were going to be sick. “Is that love? Someone who will wait on you and give you anything you want?”
“No! No, what I want is family and home and comfort and beauty!” I gestured at the glorious room around me, each golden ornament twinkling in the light from the window. “This is all I’ve ever desired, and my heart is broken to think that you don’t want the same for me—”
“Five years,” Lope spat. “Five years I have been at your side, and you have never once asked me what I wanted.”
My heart lurched inside of me, something breaking apart. Had I really been so selfish? All this time—did she see me as a horrible, wicked friend?
“What do you want?” I could only ask, even if I was nearly too afraid to hear her answer.
Instead of looking at me, she closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I want you to believe me. I want to protect you. I want you to run away with me. We’ll go by night.”
Run away. Go.
She wanted to leave Le Chateau. She wanted me to go with her.
But I couldn’t. Not after I’d fought so hard for this small piece of happiness. And not when she was asking me to cast it aside for what could only be suspicion or superstition.
“Is there nothing I can do to make you stay?” I asked.
Finally, her gray eyes climbed up to mine, but the agony in them made me freeze. “So that’s it?” she murmured. “You’re... you’re going to stay here?”
No. No, I couldn’t bear this; we couldn’t be parted.
“Please don’t leave,” I whimpered, my shaking hands clasped tightly together. “I love you, I, I ache with how much I love you, and I want us to be together here . I will ask the king to give you a title, and we could marry—”
“Gods above, I don’t care about a title,” said Lope. Her voice was tired and frayed, like she had aged decades over the course of this one conversation. She rubbed her brow. “I don’t care about any of this nonsense. How can you, any of you, dance over the Underworld? Take picnics in the same garden where Shadows roam? Your father made some bargain with the king of Shadows , and now they roam our world, killing freely. Because he lets them in, in exchange for immortality. I’m certain of it. He created a door.”
This sounded like some dark fairy tale, not reality. Not the man that I knew. “He wouldn’t,” I said soothingly. “Lope—the king may seem strange and aloof, but it’s only because he’s lonely, as I was at the manor! He’s so kind to me, he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t do that—”
“While that portal remains, monsters enter our world. Lives are lost. People will die. Does that mean nothing to you?”
I frowned. “Of course I care. That is exactly why you are so important to everyone. We need the knights.”
She exhaled, long and shaky. “I cannot ignore what I know, Ofelia. I cannot stay here and sit idly by, letting others be hurt.”
I cannot stay here.
The silence stretched. I kept my gaze to the floor. I couldn’t bear to see her eyes.
It was as if she hated me.
Hated everything about the palace that had brought me so much happiness.
Perhaps we were just too different.
Her battle would never ever end.
“You say that you cannot stay here,” I repeated softly. I swallowed back tears and took as deep a breath as my aching lungs could manage. “If you are so unhappy here, perhaps you should just... just go.”
“Is that an order, my lady?”
My mouth fell open at the ice in her tone. It was as if years of tenderness and warmth between us had been stripped away in less than an hour. “Lope!”
“Is that an order?” she repeated, her gaze pointed and direct as an arrow, daring me to look away.
Tears dripped down my chin. “You’re breaking my heart,” I whispered.
I waited for her to say something.
I waited for her to change her mind.
Instead, she rose, striding toward the wardrobe. The oak doors banged open as she grabbed her greatcoat and her tricorn.
She was slipping away. She was leaving. My worst nightmare was unfolding before my eyes.
“Don’t go,” I cried. “Don’t go, please!”
For an agonizing moment, her eyes met mine. I could see her every emotion flickering there: hope, misery, fear, betrayal, resignation.
My darling poet, the girl whose words made my heart sing, said nothing, and slammed the door behind her.