Chapter 14 #3
His eyes fluttered shut. “I’m so tired of fighting.
I see the Germans every time I try to fall asleep,” the scholar said hoarsely.
“All of them lying around me, in a perfect circle, torn to bits… Some didn’t even have faces.
It’s one thing if a bullet or a blade bounces off, but this…
” Ezra shook his head, as if trying to fling the memory away.
It didn’t work. “There was one soldier with a bayonet tied around his throat like a ribbon—he was half decapitated.”
“You were in a bloody war!” Celia could feel the thorns on the stem in his hand, but she did not let go. “You’re not going to slice off my head trying to do a bit of gardening.”
He opened his eyes and swallowed.
The stem trembled. Celia tightened her grasp.
“You’re not a monster. Do you know how I know?
True monsters don’t care that they are monsters.
Everett didn’t think twice about using that knife on you—but now he will.
The next time we run into him won’t be at a train station.
If you don’t figure out how to wield your magic, we’ll be at a serious disadvantage. ”
“I doubt a flower will turn the tides in our favor,” the scholar said after a moment.
His hand, she noticed, had stopped shaking. “Maybe not. Maybe it will just help you find that fearless boy again. That would be more than enough, don’t you think?”
Ezra shut his eyes again and exhaled. He smells just like his desert, she thought as the breeze from his breath brushed through her hair.
Ezra’s own rugged features stilled; in this lack of light he almost reminded her of the statues in the Egyptian gallery.
Not the sphinxes—he was not a monster—but the pharaohs, holding unknowable things behind those stony faces.
Slowly, though, Ezra’s expression began to change.
Celia couldn’t say what changed exactly.
His lips remained pressed. His brows stayed knit.
But there was an overall softening. Something that allowed her to picture the child who’d once lived here, counting jeweled scarabs in his flat the same way he counted stars.
One, two, three… Mut! What’s that one called?
Celia had a harder time picturing the woman he called mother—the Ageless One.
If she was that. The way Ezra talked about her, it didn’t sound like the woman was heartless.
And the way Lord Blackwood spoke… Well, that was just downright confusing.
Oh!
There was a sudden heat under Celia’s fingers, but it did not burn like the cigarette.
Nor did the light around Ezra’s fist push her away this time.
She watched, mesmerized, as the stem from the rosebush became backlit.
Every thorn sharpened. Magic. It pulsed between them—far more powerful than any relic Celia had ever handled.
The locket and the key had never made her feel this way: as if she was flying, not just through a sky but into something even vaster.
Ezra’s eyes had become stars and they were shining on her with such brilliance.
All the gold in the world could not compare…
Thorns fell away, dropping to the sand one by one.
Petals pushed out of the stem, but they weren’t red like the rest of the garden’s roses. In fact, they didn’t belong to a rose at all, Celia realized. Ezra hadn’t simply made the flower blossom. He’d changed the plant entirely. Into one of the most beautiful violets Celia had ever seen.
It bloomed between their fingers as the glow began to fade.
“See?” she said softly, admiring the heart-shaped petals. “You’re not all that bad.”
“I’m not all that good either.”
“It’s okay. Neither am I.”
Ezra smiled at this. It was a full smile, not one of the many half-hearted grins she was used to.
He has two dimples, she thought as he leaned in.
That intoxicating feeling of magic was gone, but Celia found that she still wanted him close.
Closer. His fingers felt like another breeze as they reached up to brush some hair away from her cheek.
With great care, he placed the violet behind her ear, along with the rest of the imaginings she’d saved from the train.
“Thank you, Miss Sinclair.”
“It’s Celia.”
This wasn’t proper, but it felt right, given how close they now stood.
Society ladies would be aghast at the fact that they were unchaperoned in such a dark garden.
It struck Celia as rather ridiculous, that she and Ezra were still trading surnames after they’d broken into a museum and fled to the desert together.
Besides, it wasn’t as if she had anything more to lose…
But to gain?
Celia Sinclair no longer belonged in Mayfair. She did not belong in the dress shop or that crummy flat or on the Seek and Find’s brutal, glittering dance floor. She’d been moving from one to the other for so long that she’d forgotten what it felt like to stand still.
To be the girl before the brokenness.
Ezra’s fingers lingered by Celia’s ear. She couldn’t recall ever being stared at this way—it made her feel like art.
“Thank you, Celia.”
“You’re welcome, Ezra.”