Page 70 of Where Shadows Bloom

She was slipping away. She was leaving. My worst nightmare was unfolding before my eyes.

“Don’t go,” I cried. “Don’t go, please!”

For an agonizing moment, her eyes met mine. I could see her every emotion flickering there: hope, misery, fear, betrayal, resignation.

My darling poet, the girl whose words made my heart sing, said nothing, and slammed the door behind her.

20

Lope

Give me monsters. Give me gaping wounds.

Flay my flesh. Steal the breath from my lungs.

A pain I can ask for. A pain I can anticipate.

King of the Underworld, reach into my ribs,

Tear out my heart.

Feed it to your Shadows.

Istrode out of Ofelia’s bedroom and down the hall, my pulse like thunderclaps in my ears.

Ofelia. Ofelia. Ofelia.

The strange, delicate balance between us had been shattered, and now I was falling through open air.

Icouldn’tbe angry at her, not at so sweet and so lovely a girl, and yet I was. Rage pumped through my veins with each thrum of my aching heart. My body felt like it was buzzing, like I needed to run, run anywhere.

Had she always been like this? So naïve, so willing to overlook all darkness in favor of ignorant happiness? All these years I thought she was like the sun, but now... my eyes burned and my vision blurred.

I’d leave this palace. I’d leave the excess and the complicity and the wickedness behind and never look back.

I staggered against a wall, collapsing onto a nearby settee.

Emotion strangled me. Sorrow. Betrayal. Bitterness. Fury. Fear. Loneliness. They each gripped my throat and dug their talons into my brain.Feel!they commanded. I clawed my fingers against my skull.

How could she toss me aside like that?

Did she ever care for me at all?

We were supposed to be together, always. Her hair blowing in the wind as we rode on horseback to a new adventure. Her heart pressed against me as we faced life’s troubles.

I wanted to be numb. I wanted to be a machine. I wanted to be a knight again.

My mind dug into the thought.

This was all Ofelia thought I could do. Being a knight. Destroying Shadows.

Perhaps it was.

So I’d do it. I’d fight these Shadows with every ounce of my being.

And the Shadows were in the gardens.

Ofelia and the king, they could carry on without lookingat the monsters prowling outside.

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