Page 41 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

He did it again, and still the door remained shut. “What the–”

“The snow,” Emile said, carefully moving closer. He wasn’t going to sneak up on Eli, he wasn’t stupid, and his cruelty as of late was channeled into delightfully tormenting Bazyli, not young noblemen. “It might have blown against the door. I’ll give it a try.”

Even with the strength he’d inherited from his commoner father, though, Emile couldn’t manage to get the door open. “Ah. Well, Bazyli will come looking in a bit. I suppose we’ll have to wait it out.” He wondered if this was the snow, or someone trying to force them to have a very difficult and painful conversation by giving them absolutely no other option.

Emile hated to do what anyone wanted, and he had a feeling Eli was similar.

“Rey!” Eli shouted, pounding on the door. The horses whinnied at the sudden outburst, but Emile did nothing, simply went to sit on the hay bale so he and Eli were at a bit more of a level height. “Bloody fox.”

Emile gave a soft snort, thinking of Baz’s brother’s troublesome, loveable demon. “Bazyli will keep him fed and warm, don’t worry.”

“She told me about him,” Eli said, jerking his head toward the direction of the house. “Rose told me about Bazyli. That’s why the roses are blooming, right? He’s a mage.”

“He’s not. For a bit, he sheltered the spirit of an ancient goddess. She lives in the garden now and is particularly fond of plants.” At the look Emile gave him, he held up his hands. “Surely a man who was pulled from the grave is willing to believe in a little bit of mysticism.”

“Don’t you—that’s fine, this is fine.” Eli tugged at his hair, a gesture he’d seen in Sabre, and Arthur before him.

I wish you’d known your son, old friend. He’s cranky and a bit of a mess, and how were you friends with me if that wasn’t something you liked?

He wouldn’t say this to Eli—it wouldn’t be fair, not after what he’d done. He did not think this would be like his relationship with Sabre, which had mended as much as it could, anyway, simply because of how entwined they now were in each other’s lives. Sabre was married to Laurent, Laurent’s sister was married to Bazyli’s brother, and Sabre stood beside his son’s throne. There was simply no avoiding each other, and they’d done the best they could to find some common ground between them.

Emile doubted it would go the same way with Eli, and that was all right. Sabre was very much a Starian noble, a man connected to his time and place, but Eli wore that hint of otherness in the same way as the Duke d’Hiver, both men caught between this world and another Emile could not touch nor understand.

“Thank you for what you did, Ser de Valois, in righting the injustice done on my lands.” He gave Eli a short bow. “You might not believe this, but it’s not my intent that the people here should be exploited and mistreated.”

“Just the ones in the capital?” Eli’s mouth quirked, not quite a smile.

“Yes, well.” Emile examined his nails. “They do enough of that themselves, really.”

Eli pushed at the door again, sighing. “I know what I did was wrong. Adrien, I—he’s a good king. I believe that. I really do.”

“So do I,” Emile said, carefully. “So do most people. His reign will be well-remembered.” Unlike my own. They called his son Adrien the Just. They called him Emile the Iron-Hearted, which was perhaps a step up from Ol’ Frosty, which made him feel like a character in one of Victor Owl-Eyed’s books about Lukos. “You were a child.”

Eli whirled on him, voice a snarl of too many tangled emotions that Emile was feeling as well, even if he had more practice keeping it hidden. “That’s not an excuse. I was hateful and jealous and–”

“You were young, and I was old enough to know better,” Emile interrupted.

“I’m not saying this to make you feel better, old man,” Eli snapped. “I’m saying it because I’m not going to wait until there’s gray in my hair to learn how to admit I was wrong.”

Emile nodded. “Good. You’ll have a happier life that way, Ser de Valois. Take it from me.”

* * *

Sometimes, Eli wished he could allow himself to be a little unreasonable.

It would have been easier if Emile was the monster that Eli’s mother had built him up to be, wicked and irredeemable. Isiodore was manageable. Eli knew how to handle the resentment that surged to his throat like bile every time he heard of Isiodore helping Sabre with business at the palace or giving Rose and Hektor flowers on opening nights. Now that Eli was here, trapped in a stable with the man who’d watched his execution, he could feel the boy he’d been raging against his flimsy sense of self-preservation.

“She said you were the one who killed my father,” Eli said, looking down at his hands.

“Did she?” Emile didn’t ask who she was. Eli glanced up and caught something cold and dangerous in Emile’s eyes, the same look he’d worn that day on the gallows.

“She said a lot of things about you.” Eli could still remember the way his mother had cursed Emile with her dying breath while Sabre had only thought of saving them. In the end, hating Emile had mattered more than her own life. “But so does Rose.”

Emile gave Eli a curious look. Rose de Rue was an anomaly in the Starian court—as the sister of a courtesan and a child of commoners with a noble title, she didn’t quite belong anywhere, so she had made herself belong. She’d bullied Eli and Rey into visiting every time they passed Duciel, and Eli couldn’t help but be charmed by her.

So, apparently, was Emile.

“Oh, he’s practically toothless by now,” she’d said the last time they visited, pouring tea while Rey and Flick compared the size of their tails in the garden. “Bazyli’s had time to wear him down, you see.”

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