Chapter 28
Vesta tried again with Mimi, then Russ, then me.
The result was always the same—she held our hands and closed her eyes, and after a long silence, she’d open them with a sigh and a wow and an I can’t get through.
Which was why I had the feeling she insisted on trying again, because she wanted to feel what she called the most intricate memory magic in the world—she was that fascinated by it. She respected it—you could just tell by the look in her eyes.
And when she felt all that she wanted, she insisted we followed her to her yard for tea, and Master Talik eagerly accepted. I didn’t know their story, but he seemed very fond of Vesta.
Outside in her yard, she brought tea and cups for all of us, and before long she was telling stories the way some people breathe—constantly, naturally, without seeming to notice she was doing it.
Like maybe she liked talking to people.
Like maybe she’d been all alone for too long.
I resisted the urge to ask her why. It was too personal.
She told us about a Heart boy who once tried to bond his memories to a tree because he was too shy to give them to the girl he loved. The tree accepted them, apparently, and grew glass fruit for a season before the magic faded.
She also told us about the Red Queen’s teacher—a legendary woman named Harla who could read an entire life’s worth of memories through a single handshake. I hardly believed it, but she told it in such a way that by the end I could see the woman in my mind.
Everyone listened like they hadn’t been told stories for too long, too.
The table was small, so we were all spread about. Mimi sat at Vesta’s feet. Cook leaned against the wall of the house. Levana had just accepted her third cup of tea. Master Talik, even Silas who sat at the table with Vesta looked perfectly content to be there. Perfectly calm.
I was sitting on the grass near the edge of Vesta’s garden, half listening, half watching a bee flying among the wildflowers.
March came and went, sometimes talking to the others, sometimes coming to sit beside me.
Meanwhile, I constantly reached for the rose in my pocket, and my heart did strange things any time my fingers brushed against the petals.
I smiled and smiled—a different smile, a brand-new smile my lips were used to, even if I was sure I’d never discovered it before.
I noticed him watching me from the other side of the garden where he talked with Russ and Erith.
I always noticed—his eyes felt like a touch when they were on my face, as senseless as that might sound.
Even so, I couldn’t contain the smile, not when my hand was around the rose, so I just looked back at him and shrugged. I was only a girl, after all.
March grinned, too, widely, shook his head like he could hardly believe his eyes before he came to me. He didn’t sit, just stood there, close enough that his shadow fell across my lap.
“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious—had I looked like an idiot, sitting there, smiling at him like that?
“You like it here?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes.” It was lovely, indeed.
An arched brow. “You like gardens?”
I was grinning again. “Why, yes, I do.” I loved the gardens he was in.
His eyes glistened as his smile widened, like he was thinking of something.
But before I could ask, he offered me his hands, and the way I automatically put mine over them was so natural.
He pulled me to my feet like I weighed nothing, and then we were face to face, and the garden and the yard and the world fell away little by little.
“If I asked you to follow me somewhere, would you?”
Yes. Absolutely, undoubtedly, twelve-hours certainly yes.
But I said, “Somewhere?”
“Yes. Somewhere.” That boyish grin on him was something else. It made the gears and cogs in my gut turn all the wrong ways.
“Alone?” I breathed.
He nodded and dragged me slowly deeper into the garden, farther away from everyone else.
“Alone. Just you and me,” he confirmed.
My heart slammed against my ribcage to say—do it, go, go, go!
“Okay,” I said, unable to look away from his face at all.
“Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.” I’d actually go all the way to the Spill with him, the very edge of our realm, without a word of complaint—but I didn’t say as much.
“Good. Be very silent and follow my lead.”
I glanced at the others. Vesta was deep into a story about a Diamond merchant who’d tried to buy a Heart’s emotions in a jar, and March was pulling me even deeper into the garden, and nobody was looking our way.
Nobody except Silas.
He was sitting on his chair at the side of Vesta and Master Talik, his cane across his lap, a cup of tea untouched on the armrest. His gray eyes moved from March to me, and my breath caught.
I thought for sure he’d call out, he’d ask us where we were going, as we were clearly moving away and away, but…
Something passed across his face. Not surprise, not curiosity, and I could have sworn he gave half a nod before he turned away from us and looked at Vesta. As if he hadn’t seen us at all.
My hand was in March’s, his fingers threading through mine like they were meant to exist like that all along.
He led me behind the trees and the vines, over the rosebushes that had swallowed the low fence whole—and straight for the thick hedge that surrounded her yard.
I looked back and I realized I couldn’t even see the house from here anymore nor the others, and I was so excited I had yet to stop smiling.
March let go of my hand only for a moment, to push the branches aside and create a gap in the hedge big enough to barely fit me.
“Go!” he whispered, and I didn’t need to be told twice.
The thought that someone was going to call our names any second now was right there in the back of my head.
At least Damon—but last time I saw him, he’d been lying on the grass on his back, chewing on a straw, staring at the sky with his hands under his head.
He couldn’t have seen us sneaking away, and Silas was not going to tell on us, that much I knew for sure.
Just like that, I was on the other side, and then March pushed himself through the gap, too, small leaves clinging to his hair and clothes. I laughed as I took them off him, and he laughed when he heard me laughing—then grabbed my face in his hand and kissed my lips. Once. Hard.
That my knees didn’t give was a miracle.
“Let’s go.”
The path on the other side was narrow and overgrown, winding downhill through tall grass and wildflowers.
We walked fast, like we were kids sneaking out past bedtime, and neither of us spoke until we reached the road at the bottom of the hill.
I didn’t think it important to ask where we were going—no, I was perfectly content to never know, so long as I was with him.
That’s how strange my life had become so quickly.
The road ahead was cobbled, lined with hedgerows, wide, and there were carriages in the distance, too. March took us down to the middle, then slipped through a break in the hedges, which led us to the yard of another house, twice the size of Vesta’s.
I had my other hand in front of my mouth to stop from laughing as we shot across the neatly trimmed grass, and all the way to the other side—while people inside the house saw us.
A woman had been by the window, and she’d been talking to someone, and she’d stopped and stared at us when she saw us running with her mouth open, but we didn’t wait around to see if she’d come out.
We ran through another two yards like that, and I was starting to suspect March had no idea where we were going—and I had no trouble with that at all, mind you—but then we jumped over the wooden fence of the last house, and we were on a wide cobbled road again, different from the last.
This one had larger buildings to the sides in the distance—and carriages in front of it. Lots of carriages being pulled by single horses, most white.
“What is that?” I finally whispered, only because I was curious.
“Delivery carts.” March pulled at my hand. “I knew they would be here somewhere. Let’s go!”
He took us past houses for a little bit until we noticed one of the carriages was coming our way.
Then March stopped again, pushed me back against the tree near the gate of someone’s house.
I laughed—how could I not? So unpredictable, so intense, and I adored it. Especially when we were chest to chest like that, and he was looking down at me like I was all the wonders of the world combined.
We were like different people, March and I. We’d changed so much in the handful of hours we’d spent alone in that room with the glass floor. We’d made something new, something that was mine. And his.
Us, right now, right here, nobody else’s.
“What are you doing?” I breathed because he just kept looking at me like that, and my toes couldn’t curl more than they already were, and my heart couldn’t beat any faster without breaking out of me for real.
“You have forty-eight freckles on your face, and I can’t seem to decide which is my favorite yet,” March said.
The carriage was already close, and the sound of the hooves hitting the ground and the driver whistling filled my ears, but all I could really hear was him.
Forty-eight. Something about that number.
Now I wanted to run to a mirror and count them myself.
My mouth opened, but no word came to mind.
March leaned in a little closer. “You ready?”
I didn’t get to ask what for. I didn’t even get to understand what he was asking me properly, not when he was standing so close to me like that. But the next moment, my hand was in his again, and the carriage had just passed us, and March pulled me after it.
My other hand was over my mouth again as we jogged behind it, and there were more carriages behind us, but they were too far away to see (I hoped). Because by now I knew what March was going to do.
I knew even before he grabbed the back rail of the cart and swung himself up onto the bed in one smooth motion, letting go of my hand.
Then he reached down for me.