Chapter 51
CYRAN
“What are you talking about?” Elora demanded, her voice gone shrill behind me as I stared up at the Highclere family portrait. “She died when I was little. How could she possibly?—”
“I don’t understand either, min viltasma . A child fetched me, and when I went to the shack she called a home, I found her ,” I said, pointing up at the Highclere matriarch. “She was certainly rather haggard compared to this likeness, but it was her.”
Her dark hair had gone silver, and the sun had not been kind to her skin. But the woman in the painting was the same woman who haunted my gods damned nightmares. Because everything I’d done to Elora was at this woman’s urging, her face was the one I laid blame to even if my hands had been the ones to harm her.
“You’re lying,” Elora said, her footsteps growing quieter as they carried her away from me. “She is dead. She’s been dead for a long time.”
I spun, trailing after her. “What do I have to gain from lying, Elora?” When she didn’t respond, I moved faster, using my long legs to catch up to her with haste. “Nothing! The answer is nothing! Despite having a brain in your head, you’ve chosen to forgive me already! Why bother lying about this?” I hissed, grabbing for her hand as she marched away from me.
She stopped, wrenching her arm out of my grasp. “I don’t know, Cy! Why would you do any of the daft things you do?”
“I hardly think that’s fair, Elora.”
She shoved me, and that was when I saw the tears in her eyes. Elora believed me, and that was the reason for her pained expression. Because if I spoke the truth, that meant something far worse.
“Nothing is fair!” she shouted, before stumbling back into the wall. Sliding down the wainscoting, she landed in a heap on the hallway floor. “Nothing is fair,” she whispered.
Carefully, as if approaching a wild boar, I sat down beside her. The butter-yellow of her dress matched the patterned rug beneath us, and I thought to distract her with a clever insult about her styling choices being better suited to carpeting. But the absolute despair emanating from her slim frame stayed my tongue. She didn’t need distraction; she needed comfort.
And despite knowing I needed to stay away—to protect her—I put my arm around her instead. This poor girl had been hurt by so many people, myself included. This was another name added to the long list of those who had betrayed her. Desperately, I wished I could cross my name off it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Thyra at the end of the hall. She hovered, but I was grateful she didn’t come marching towards us and force me to move away from Elora.
“What did I do to deserve it?” she asked, so frightfully quiet. Gone was her blistering confidence and in its place was this meek and timid version of the girl I knew.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, tugging her closer. She shifted, resting her hand on my chest as she began to cry. The sound nearly killed me. First Faxon, then me, and now her grandmother. She might have included her mother in the list of people who betrayed her, thanks to keeping secrets and not saving Theo, but I didn’t want to put Emmeline with the likes of us—the people who had really betrayed Elora.
“I don’t remember her. She didn’t even know me,” Elora said, sniffling. I pulled her closer, wishing I could make her forget all the bad which had happened to her in such a short time. In less than a year, Elora’s life—and the truths she’d known—had completely fallen apart.
Her family was supposed to love and cherish her. Her family was supposed to protect her. Yet her grandmother had sent me to kill her. Had the woman seen the future and known Emmeline would bring her back? And if so, why hadn’t she told me?
A worse betrayal was the father who raised her. He loved her until she became a tool for his revenge against Emmeline. He’d used her for his own gain, and left her in the hands of the enemy.
He’d left her with me .
As I breathed in her summer scent, I thought perhaps I was the worst traitor of all. I’d loved her because of who she was rather than some familial obligation, and I betrayed her anyway. I killed her, without any assurance that she’d come back from it. And yet, here I sat, wishing to rip the throats out of every person who caused her to feel this way.
Fleetingly, I thought perhaps I should start with the easiest target—myself. With Faxon and my brother gone, the list was far shorter. But as our bodies grew warm where we touched, I knew such a task would be impossible. Because I couldn’t leave her.
I couldn’t leave her even if I tried.
“Perhaps I was evil in a past life,” she murmured, voice thick.
I snorted, unable to stop myself. “If there was any version of you that was evil, the Three Kingdoms would have fallen a long time ago.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, pulling back, but I didn’t allow her to get very far. She scowled at me, beautiful blue eyes gone a bit crossed at our proximity. Her plush lips tilted downward in a frown, and I used my free hand to drag my thumb across her skin. Wiping the tears away, I silenced the racing commands of my conscience, and I willed the frantic beating of my heart to still. She didn’t breathe as I traced my thumb over her lower lip.
“You are already the most obstinate, cunning, and beautiful girl I know, so if?—”
She pushed her lips to mine before I had a chance to finish my sentence. Though I’d planned on kissing her anyway, she beat me to it.
It was everything the kiss within her dreams had been—and more.
She adjusted, lifting her hand to my neck. A tiny whimper escaped her, and the sound gave me goosebumps. Her mouth was so soft and so ardent as she kissed me—like she’d wanted to do it for a very long time and didn’t want to let the chance slip by her. I didn’t allow myself to think of the note she’d left. That she’d wanted to hate me, to blame me, that I had ruined her.
That perhaps she had loved me, instead.
I held her face in my hands as I caressed her lips with my own, and I wished so many things were different. I wished nothing bad had ever passed between us. I wished we could just be who we were right now. I didn’t want to be a king; I didn’t want her to be a princess. I wanted this kiss to mean nothing and everything all at the same time. But there couldn’t ever be anything more than this kiss, and the realization was like a strike to the gut.
No matter all the longing and pining I’d been doing, no matter the amends we’d made and the time we shared together—Elora deserved so much more.
And that was why, despite her protestations, I pulled away.
“Cy,” she whispered my name so sweetly, I nearly kissed her again. Her lips were rosy, and as she touched her fingertips to them, I wanted to do it again. Again and again, I never wanted to stop kissing Elora.
“ Min viltasma ,” I said, closing my eyes and pressing a kiss to her temple. I held her against me for a long time, letting my breathing return to normal and my thoughts slow down. My racing heart was the last to calm, and finally, I looked down at her.
“Will you help me figure out why?” she asked, and even if I hadn’t just had the best kiss of my life—the only kiss of my life, as far as I was concerned—I didn’t think I could tell her no.
“She’d gone mad. That’s all there is to it,” I asserted, tossing a journal into Elora’s pile. As her grandmother had seen more and more visions, the thoughts she’d scribbled into her notebooks grew more and more nonsensical. And after her daughter died, there was no order to any of them.
“I refuse to believe you slit my throat because a crazy person told you to,” she said, opening the journal I’d just flipped through.
“I mean, obviously there’s more to it than that. She was a seer. Is a seer, I suppose.”
“Won’t be for long, if I have it my way,” Elora muttered, and a boisterous laugh forced its way past my lips.
“Is it still called matricide if it’s a grandparent?” I asked, and she ignored me, but she pushed her tongue against her cheek to stop her smile. “Elora, I don’t know if there is a real point to this. What do you hope to find? That the same woman ranting and raving about her secret garden orchestrated all this on purpose just to what? Punish your mother? Kill you?”
Elora continued to ignore me.
“Do you know just how little I want to read about a crusty old woman’s salacious urges to ‘visit her secret garden,’ Elora?”
That got her attention.
“Crusty!” she shouted. “Salacious? What ever do you mean?” Elora shut the journal before tossing it on the pile. All it contained were inane ramblings of a woman gone mad over visions of her dead family.
“You’ve read all manner of your mother’s lewd romantic novels, so don’t pretend you don’t understand unchaste euphemisms.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, and delight filled me at beholding their reddened state. “Your grandmother was a randy old woman, wanting to explore her secret garden and make her petals unfurl.”
“Cyran! What in the gods’ names are you talking about?” Elora stood, her cheeks going an irresistible pink hue.
I snagged the journal she’d just read through, flipping to one of the many pages her grandmother had mentioned something I would have much rather not thought about.
“As far as I know, there is no secret rose garden here, and yet...” I cleared my throat, before reading, “‘I tended my rose garden well into the night, and everything is sore. Kennon doesn’t know my secret, but I have to find release somewhere.’” I grimaced at her. “Listen, if I was losing my mind, I know I’d?—”
“Shut up, Cy!” Elora said, grabbing the book out of my hands, before racing from Lady Highclere’s study altogether.
“Elora!” I called after her.
“Mr. Carson!” Elora was shouting by the time she got to the top of the grand staircase. I ran my fingers through my hair, hoping I didn’t appear disheveled. I’d only kissed her, and Thyra had been nearby the entire time, but still. Elora was angry, bright red, and stomping down the stairs like a wild, brutish animal. I couldn’t blame anyone if they thought it was my fault.
“Yes, Your Highness?” Mr. Carson hurried down the hall from the kitchens. Eyes wide, he appeared apoplectic as he took us in on the stairs. “Are you all right?”
“Did my grandmother have a rose garden? One she might have been secretive about?”
Mr. Carson’s ears went pink, and he started fiddling with his waistcoat.
“Oh gods. Perhaps he was the one tending her garden,” I hissed in her ear from the step behind her, and she swatted me away.
“Don’t make me add regicide to my to-do list,” she gritted out.
“How do you know about it?” Mr. Carson asked, clearing his throat. He looked at the ground, and his eyes had gone glassy.
“She wrote about it,” Elora said, holding her grandmother’s journal up.
“You read those?” he asked, hanging his head low. “So, you can see how bad it was before she—” He swallowed, wiping a tear from his eye. “Before she left us.”
“She’s not dead,” I blurted, and Elora reached back, grabbing my wrist and squeezing.
“What he means to say is her memory lives on, Mr. Carson,” Elora said, soft and gentle. “Now, can you take us to her garden?”
Mr. Carson took his position as caretaker of the Ravemont estate very seriously, so I wondered why he hesitated to say yes. Had it fallen into disrepair and he was afraid to show us? Or was it something more insidious? I supposed we’d find out, because within a half hour, racing against the approaching night, we rode on horseback to our destination.
The rose garden wasn’t as secret as much as it was hidden away. Toward the southwest, into the woods and away from the path, Mr. Carson brought us to a stone wall.
“Does the door need key?” Thyra asked, stepping forward to brush at the vines covering the old wooden entrance.
“There was once a key, but I don’t know what happened to it.”
Elora slid down from her horse, gathering her skirts as she traipsed through the brush. “Why did she keep it a secret?” Elora asked, tossing the question over her shoulder, not bothering to watch his reaction.
But I did.
Mr. Carson told her that he didn’t know, but the harsh swallow and twitch of muscle at his temple told me there was more to it.
“Why did you keep her secret?” I asked, quiet enough that Thyra and Elora couldn’t hear me over the racket they made with the decaying door.
“Lord Kennon didn’t approve. She always came back from tending the garden a bit...different,” he said.
“She was a seer,” I said, and Mr. Carson only tilted his head to the side.
“I know.”
If I hadn’t seen the portrait of Kennon, I might have wondered if this man was Emmeline’s father, given the apparent love he had for the woman who had faked her death and caused another.
“She thought this place was god-touched,” he murmured, and as Elora and Thyra pried the door open, I could see why. The sun broke through the canopy above us, shining down on just the door.
“Cyran, come here,” Elora said, and I used my shadows to create a ramp over the weeds and bramble. I walked across it with ease, and Elora glared at me.
“Show off,” she mumbled, and then grabbed my hand.
“I expect you to check me for ticks after this,” I said, using my shadows to untwist the vines and clear our way forward into the walled garden.
“Of course,” Elora cooed. “Would you like some warm milk and a story before bed too, darling boy?”
I merely grunted as I ducked beneath the branches. She followed after me, and Thyra was close behind. The warrior woman muttered a curse in her language, and I couldn’t blame her.
The four stone walls weren’t visible behind all the brush and vines, and I could barely make out a stone bench beneath the twining plants. But it wasn’t the overgrowth which inspired awe. My mouth dropped open as I took in the hundreds of roses in bloom.
Because this wasn’t an ordinary rose garden, whose plants would bloom closer to summer. These were winterfrost roses. With their deep red petals and silver tips, even I knew they were a rarity. And here, Lady Highclere had grown more than I’d ever seen in my life. Than anyone had likely seen in their life. And even without her presence over the last decade, they’d thrived. Wild and untamed, they’d reclaimed the earth, creating this storybook secret garden.
I didn’t hear Elora’s whispered words at first, until she repeated them, squeezing my hand for emphasis.
“Bloom of the betrayer.”