Chapter 14 The Gift in the Gardens
At the far end of the ballroom, beyond the podium where the quartet played and past the chairs where winded dancers sat, was an exit. A set of double doors stood open beneath a marble archway, which led to an outdoor veranda that spanned the back of the building.
Overhead, the silver light of the Kinder Moon gleamed like a shined coin on the horizon, while the diffused glow of the Maddening Moon filled the grounds with an orange ambiance.
The twin moons illuminated the castle grounds better than any lantern or bonfire—so well, in fact, that Celise could see her shadow on the ground as she followed Katrina outside.
She passed from the crowded dance hall through a stone archway onto the veranda behind the Gravenmere ballroom.
"Katrina! Wait!" she called, her voice strained.
Her younger sister did not look back.
The red skirts of Katrina's taffeta gown swayed and rippled as she dashed blindly across the raised terrace. The patter of her footsteps echoed off the hard ground. She ran down a sweeping stone staircase, across a flat pavilion, and through the entrance of the garden maze.
As she disappeared behind the hedges, Celise heard a single, broken sob emit from her younger sister’s throat.
Oh, Katrina.
Celise wasn’t a heartless person. Katrina was obviously upset. She hesitated on the veranda, glancing over her shoulder at the glowing ballroom, wondering if she should go back inside. But she didn’t want Katrina to get lost. Somehow, she knew the blame would land on her.
Determined, Celise started down the sweeping steps that led to the garden maze.
The scent of climbing jasmine filled the fragrant night air.
A flagstone path, lined with glowing lanterns, cut through rows of boxwood hedges and climbing roses.
A sky full of stars glittered overhead like a bucket of spilled diamonds.
The dim, purplish glow of skydust rimmed the horizon like a veil.
The walls of the garden maze were almost eight feet high.
Celise couldn’t see above the hedges. The path twisted left, then right, then left again, following a weaving pattern through the hedgerows.
It probably wasn’t a very large maze, she reasoned, and the path was well kept.
She imagined many guests must have walked through it the day before.
She tried not to worry about getting lost as she ran blindly forward.
Celise wove between bushes and under trellises covered in ivy until she found her way to a little garden room within the maze.
Katrina had collapsed on a marble bench beneath an arbor of pink clematis at the center of the garden room.
A little stream of pale blue water trickled past the arbor, and a footbridge crossed over the stream.
It was all very picturesque: the perfect place to find respite from the crowded, noisy ballroom.
Katrina looked up as Celise approached, her eyes puffy and her cheeks streaked with tears.
“Oh no, Sluggy, what are you doing here?” she choked.
“I just wanted to check on you,” Celise said, trying to keep her voice neutral.
She didn’t point out that Marcella would probably beat her to death if she let Katrina get lost. But her reasons were more personal than that.
Despite her younger sister’s bullying, Celise felt some sympathy for her.
She knew what it felt like to be humiliated in front of her peers .
. . and she knew the risks of disappointing Marcella.
Katrina carried her own burdens as her mother’s “favorite.”
“Why don’t we go back to the Moongazer Tower?” Celise suggested gently. “Dasha can make you a nice cup of tea.”
“I don’t need comfort from a dunslug,” Katrina started to sneer, but a racking sob cut her off. After weeping for another minute, she whined, "He danced with her! That vulture, Verabon. He danced with her twice as long. And she smirked at me."
Celise knelt beside her, placing a comforting hand on her sister’s knee. "That doesn’t mean anything, Katrina. He danced with you first."
"He ran to her the moment she batted her eyes in his direction."
"You still have your dignity. You won the Teacup Tournament; surely that means something? Your beauty turned heads tonight. The whole ballroom was looking at you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t go back now. My makeup is ruined.”
Celise tried not to sigh with impatience—comforting Katrina was proving harder than she first thought. “Well then, perhaps we should retreat to the tower and try again tomorrow?”
“You think I should run off in shame? How pathetic. I can’t just leave the ball halfway through. What about the fireworks? The Bratzian twins said there would be fireworks at midnight, when the duke announces his bride. Oh, I just know it will be Ambrosia!”
Celise’s patience slipped. “Katrina, get a hold of yourself. Just a few weeks ago, you were mocking the Mad Dog and laughing at every article you could find in The Lady’s Letter.
Perhaps it’s a good thing His Grace chose someone else?
Do you really want to live with that man? You haven’t seen him without his mask.”
“And you have?” Katrina scoffed.
Celise bit her lip. The fact that she had seen Elias’s face seemed like a pointless piece of trivia at the moment. “What about his past fiancées? They all fled from him. He has a foul temper—”
“Don’t pretend like you know the duke better than me. He danced with me three times! You don’t know what it’s like to be held in his arms. He was so . . . close.” Katrina sighed with longing.
Celise decided not to point out that the fellow on the dance floor might be an imposter duke. That would probably be a bit far-fetched for Katrina.
“I didn’t mean to mock him!” Katrina continued. “All of that was before we danced. He’s not the man I expected. I think I love him, Celise. I’m in love with the duke! I must marry him! How can I live now, knowing I’ll never belong to him?”
Celise glanced up at the Kinder Moon. Oh my.
She searched her mind for something helpful to say. Obviously Katrina was caught up in the romance of the evening. Her younger sister was only eighteen, her feelings fickle and fleeting but very powerful in the moment.
Summoning every last bit of willpower, Celise patted Katrina’s hand again. “You’re strong. You’ll get through this,” she said. “Ambrosia Verabon doesn’t hold a candle to your beauty. You would be the perfect duchess. If the duke doesn’t marry you, then he’s a fool.”
“You really think so?”
“Of course.”
Katrina sniffled and said nothing, but when Celise caught her eye, she saw a glimmer of gratitude on her tearful face. For a fleeting moment, a fragile thread of sisterhood formed between them.
Then the night darkened.
A cloud passed over the moon, and Celise felt a strange shiver run down her spine.
A sudden pressure thickened the air, and the night seemed to grow colder. A branch snapped somewhere out of sight. All the frogs and crickets in the garden fell silent.
Celise felt a terrible sense of foreboding. She found herself rising to her feet, her eyes darting about the gloomy hedges, searching for . . . something.
“What is it?” Katrina asked.
“I think we’re being watched,” Celise said. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
Then, from the shadows of the garden maze, something grotesque and utterly strange slunk forth.
At first Celise didn’t know what she was looking at.
A being staggered forward from a gap between the hedges.
At first she thought it was a man, but as the moonlight beamed down, she saw a dark, oblong body glistening with an oily sheen.
Its limbs were too long, its neck crooked, and its body segmented like a grotesque wasp.
Its front two arms appeared to have pincers like a crab.
Something protruded from the rear of its oily body like a barbed stinger.
A chittering croak vibrated from the beast: something like a bullfrog crossed with a rattlesnake.
Frozen to the spot, her body paralyzed with fear, Celise forced herself to blink. It was not her imagination. The thing was real.
She staggered back a few steps as the monster crawled into the garden pavilion, its gait crooked and uneven.
With a panicked gasp, Katrina leapt to her feet, but her long skirt snagged on the wooden rungs of the trellis. She toppled into Celise’s side, who lost her balance and fell back onto the ground. The two girls sprawled beneath the rose-covered gazebo as the horrid nightmare-beast slunk closer.
“What is that . . . that thing?” Katrina cried.
Celise struggled back up to her feet, ripping her dress in the process, and grabbed Katrina’s hand. “Who cares what it is? Run!”
Having worked with horses all of her life, Celise was much stronger than she looked.
She locked Katrina’s hand in a steely grip and lunged into the garden maze.
She pulled her half-sister along behind her.
Terrified, the two women dashed into the hedgerows as the monster croaked and rattled behind them.
Celise’s feet pounded on the flagstones. She turned blindly through the maze with no sense of direction: left, right, right, left. The corridor curved at an angle, leading them along a spiraling path. She had no idea which direction might lead back to the ballroom.
Behind them, the many-legged beast crashed through the hedges, ripping a large hole in the maze’s wall.
With a shrieking roar, it gave chase, its rambling gait like an aggressive wolf spider.
The horrible scratching and chittering of its teeth made Celise’s hair stand on end.
She was running too hard to utter a sound, while Katrina whimpered between panicked breaths.
“Don’t look back!” Celise yelled when Katrina started to pull away.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Of course not!”
“Look there! A gate!”