Chapter 19
HADRIEN
Lilia stared at the poppy and the color drained from her face.
“What is this?” she repeated, her voice even softer.
I paced across the library, each heavy footstep amplified in the silence, even as I stepped on the rug. She’d found my secret and it stared at us, open and unveiled. What I’d dreaded anyone discovering.
And yet…
Deep inside me, thoughts whispered and questioned. Maybe I’d wanted her to find it. Maybe the deeper, darker secret was that I didn’t want to bear this curse alone. I longed for someone to share my fears, and my fate.
She turned to me, wonder and confusion in her expressive eyes. Waiting for my answer.
I swallowed and straightened. “A reminder from Queen Mireille.” Just saying that name soured my tongue.
Lilia tipped her head and stared at me, with both confusion and dread on her face. “A reminder about what?”
I sank into one of the chairs, the weight of the past three years pressing down on me. “Never to disobey her.”
Lilia stepped across the carpet, her light steps all but silent, and sat across from me. “Will you tell me what happened?”
I propped my elbow on my knee and leaned forward, dropping my forehead to my palm as I tried to sort through where to begin.
“Three years ago, I was a commander in her army, stationed at the northern border. The queen ordered us to push into other territories and seize them. To kill anyone who protested, for any reason, as a warning to show what happened to those who resisted.”
A soft sigh fell from Lilia’s lips, followed by a whispered, “Why?”
I grimaced. “War is always caused by selfish reasons.” I shook my head. “Exploiting others to claim more land, more riches, more power, more control.”
Lilia exhaled. “Yes, that sounds exactly like her.” Her voice soured and she turned her gaze to the distance, as if remembering her own encounters with the queen.
“I questioned her orders. No sane reason was given. My soldiers and I didn’t understand the need to push into other lands like mindless, destructive monsters.
” I huffed. “I confronted her about it. That threw her into a rage, for anyone to question her wishes. We argued. I refused to follow her demands. She came to Valgarde with those closest to her, those like her who don’t just dabble in dark magic, they cloak themselves in it, so much so that it encompasses their entire being.
They killed soldiers on the way. And others—” I swallowed, my tongue as dry as parchment.
When I didn’t finish, couldn’t, Lilia gazed at me with sympathetic eyes. “The statues,” she added gently.
I nodded. It was easier to do than agree.
“Are they…”
Lilia didn’t complete her sentence this time, and I summoned the courage to do so. “Gone. No life remains in their stone. Their eternal tombs placed there for me to watch over them every day, a reminder of what happens to those who defy her.”
“Oh, Hadrien.” Lilia raised her hands to her mouth and then lowered them. “What a vicious, vindictive, heartless woman! She took a poppy, a symbol of peace, of remembrance, and twisted it into something dark.”
I nodded, swallowing a thickness in my throat. After a few breaths, I revealed more about what had happened. The anguish I heard from my soldiers before they fell, the scent of death spreading through La Forêt de Veillepierre, and the dreadful silence that followed.
“That day, she’d sensed the old magic that runs deep through the grounds of Valgarde. I knew she’d return to try to claim it. I was able to strengthen the wards with my magic to keep her out, but as you know, they’ve been weakening. And so am I. Her curse has been slowly draining me.”
Lilia’s hand flew to her heart. Her expressive eyes revealed a calamity of emotions—horror, sympathy, pain.
When my gaze slowly traveled toward the encased poppy, hers followed.
“When the last petal turns to stone,” I admitted, “so will I.”
Lilia gasped. “No,” she whispered.
“I’m afraid it’s the truth.” I faced her.
Her lips parted. Her jaw worked as she appeared to think. “How much time do you have?”
I shook my head. “Not long.”
She shook her hands at her sides. “There must be a way to stop it.”
I wish I could share her hope, but that had died in me long ago.
“No.” I stepped over to her and cupped her soft cheek. “Her magic is too dark, Lilia. I’ve accepted my fate.” I stroked her jawline but kept my thought to myself.
I just wish I had more time with you.
Although I felt lighter after revealing what happened to my curse to Lilia, she grew quieter over the next few days. We’d continued as we had been doing—dining together, repairing the wards, ending the night in my bed—but I sensed something had changed.
The next day, while she worked in the garden and I watched, perched in stone, she moved more slowly, with her shoulders slumped. She sniffled and then wiped her eyes. Was she—crying?
Every instinct I had pulled me toward her, yet I couldn’t move and I howled inside my damn cursed prison. I couldn’t call out to her. Couldn’t fly down to her in the garden and cradle her to me as she wept. Couldn’t do a single damned thing but watch while she wept.
Victor stepped up to her a few minutes later. “Lilia.” His voice carried through the morning air. “What’s the matter?”
She startled and wiped her tears. “Nothing.”
“Come now, Lilia. What’s upset you?”
A silent pause.
“I miss my family,” she said just above a whisper, but I heard it.
Words that landed like a pebble dropped into still water. Simple. True. Revealing an ache that I’d caused. I’d add her tears to the long list of things I’d never forgive myself for.
“I understand. Let’s get you inside.” Victor placed his hands on Lilia’s shoulders. “A nice cup of tea should help.”
She nodded and straightened herself, allowing him to guide her into the castle.
The garden turned quiet. The joy from the past few days, all the anticipation of rising at sundown where I could spend the evening with her and hold her in my bed, that all floated away, replaced by the darkest of clouds.
What a fool I’d been to think she would be happy with me—a scarred beast—and the one to keep her from her family, causing her anguish.
My stone burned with regret.
Lilia’s words haunted me over the next few days.
During the day, while locked in stone, I heard her moving through the castle.
The soft fall of her footsteps in the corridor above.
Her voice carried from somewhere I couldn’t reach.
Each sound sliced like a small blade, and I agonized over what to do.
After sundown, we headed out to the last of the seven wards. I traced over the final sigil, my magic threading through the dark, and I felt the ward sealing. The final piece clicked into place, like tumblers inside a lock. Reinforcing the wards was complete.
That meant… I gulped.
The ward hummed beneath my fingers, warm and solid—truly solid, the way it hadn’t been since Lilia had first arrived. Complete. It hadn’t even been twenty-one days, and she’d accomplished what she’d promised.
The relief lasted exactly one breath. I thought of the poppy case on the library shelf, and the single crimson petal I’d last seen clinging to the stem, and the relief curdled into something else. The bargain was fulfilled. There would be no reason for her to stay.
Instead, I said, “Let’s walk the border so I can make sure we haven’t missed anything.”
Lilia agreed with a nod. When we reached the next anchor point, I crouched down and ran my fingers over the sigil. I told myself I was being methodical as I examined it. I’d told myself many things over the last few days.
Tell her.
The thought surfaced before I could stop it. Tell her that three weeks ago this place was nothing but silence and stone until she walked in. Tell her that watching her in the garden made the days feel less like a sentence, how the sound of her humming carried like a song in the air.
Tell her you want her to stay—to stay here of her own free will, not because you’ve forced her to.
I couldn’t do that to her. What would I be asking her to stay for? A dying gargoyle’s comfort. When she missed her family and had done so much for me without complaint.
She didn’t deserve my selfishness.
“You can go,” I said bluntly.
She turned to me. “What?”
“The reinforcements are done. Your bargain complete.” I kept my voice even.
Measured. The tone I used in command when I needed soldiers to follow orders.
“It will take time for the magic to weave strong enough to protect Valgarde, but your work here is done.” I couldn’t look at her face.
It would be too hard to continue. “You can go home, Lilia. See your family.”
“You’re letting me leave?” she said gently, as if she was working out if she’d heard correctly.
“Yes.”
“But it hasn’t been three weeks,” she questioned with furrowed brows.
“There’s nothing further that you need to do,” I said, as though it were the most straightforward thing in the world.
As if her leaving was a matter of logistics rather than something I’d been dreading since the moment I realized it was the right thing to do.
“You miss your family. I’m not going to keep you from them any longer. ”
When she didn’t say anything for what felt like a full minute, I turned to her and the questioning look in her eyes almost undid me on the spot.
I broke eye contact to regroup. The forest had gone fully dark around us, with just the faint glow of a pale crescent moon and stars overhead.
The wind moved through the hawthorn. From deeper in the woods, an owl called.
I held myself very still and bit back saying the one word that burned to erupt from my lips: stay.
“All right,” she said at last. So quietly, it was almost a whisper. “I’ll leave in the morning.”
I braved a glance at her once more.
“But I’ll return, Hadrien.”
What? I leaned back. Had I heard her correctly? I’ll return.
“I’ll visit my family and come back,” she added.
My heart pumped full of hope where dread had hardened it to near stone for days.
Would she return? Questions warred within me, optimism clashing with despair, hope and dread pulling in opposite directions until I felt cracked straight through, like stone that had taken one blow too many.
She had no reason to return to me when she could be back with her family. I had to brace myself that this was our final night together.