Page 85 of Where Shadows Bloom

I had traveled so far. I had missed her for so long. For many horrible days, I feared she was gone forever. This fate of hers was even worse. But we were together again.

She threw her arms around me, and once again I was enfolded in the smell of lilacs and oranges. I wept, laying my face against her heart, her fingers curling in my hair, her chest heaving with sobs of her own.

“She is your daughter? The one you feared for?” asked the monster.

Mother’s voice came out small and choked, “Yes.”

She let out another sob, and my chest ached like someone was twisting my heart in their hands. Mother pulled back from me, sweeping a strand of hair from my eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” I whimpered. “You are only here because of me. If I hadn’t begged you to go to the palace—”

Mother silenced me with a kiss to my forehead followed by another tight embrace. “You are so brave, my love. You faced monsters just to find me again.” She took my hand. “Come, I’ll take you to the others.”

“Wait,” said the king of Shadows, his voice like therushing of the waves behind us. He slipped soundlessly closer to us, moving like a cloud across the sky.

My mother wrapped her arms around me. “Leave her be!”

“I’ll not hurt her,” he said again.

He knelt onto the ground, the darkness in his robes blending with the black earth, and took my foot in his hands. His brow furrowed. “The other mortals came here with coverings on their feet. You do not have any. Why is this?”

“Shoes, you mean?” I murmured.

“Shoes,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Why don’t you have them?”

I laughed softly—as strange as it was, as much as looking at the god made my insides turn, he spoke in an almost childlike way. “I—I think they fell off,” I said.

Mother tugged on my arm. “Please,” she said. “I have not seen my daughter in so long. I wish to speak with her—alone. I beg you.”

“Only a moment more.” He let out a long, slow breath, and out of the black nothingness around us, the ends of my pale stockings were covered up by new shoes, identical to the ones mother wore. These, however, were made of black glass. They sparkled in the dim light, and when he set my foot back to the earth, I realized how very comfortable the shoes were.

“There,” he said.

“Thank you,” I replied, barely above a whisper.

He inclined his golden-crowned head, like he was agentleman greeting a lady. “You’re welcome, Ofelia.”

I stared at the creature’s face, vacant and changing and so much like the monsters that had nearly killed me and Lope not long ago. It was not difficult to imagine this beast opening its jaws and letting out the horrible, rasping scream that haunted my nightmares.

Lope had faced these Shadows. She’d risked her life every night at the palace, if only to protect me. Now she was gone. Now I would never see her again.

I’d at least make her proud. Even if she would never know. I wanted to be brave because she’d taught me how.

I held out my hand toward him. Mother gasped and grabbed at my arm, pulling me back from the creature. “We—we’ll be off now, Your Majesty—”

“What is your name?” I asked him.

A ripple ran through him, and he bent his head away from me. A crack formed in his face where a mouth should have been. “We gods do not have names,” he groaned. “The beloved of King Léo call me the king of Shadows. Or the creature. The monster. The beast.”

“Why do you not have a name?”

The god twisted his head back toward me, his whole body at a tilt. “We gods cannot be known. That is the way of things.”

Amid the fear beating in my throat, there was a pang of sadness in my middle. “That sounds very lonely,” I said.

He did not speak.

Mother’s fingers wove between mine, prompting me to look at her. Her blue eyes were as clear and beautiful as I remembered them. She was here. She was real. “Come with me, darling,” she said. “There is much I must tell you.”

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