Page 92 of Where Shadows Bloom

For a moment, I pitied him. Forgotten, feared, and thenexiled to this place. Exiled from the gods’ own kingdom.But his final words gave me pause.

“You ask your Shadows to give you stories?”

“Yes.”

I frowned. A great coldness was seeping through me. “They... theykillpeople. They steal the breath from our lungs. They tried to kill me, tried to kill Lope!”

“When your kind die, they go to the Kingdom Above to live with the gods in peace and happiness.” He strode to the bookshelves and stroked the books’ spines. “I know the lives of your kind. I know the sorrow you endure. Perhaps the end of a life is not as tragic as you may think.”

“Yes it is!” I marched over to his side, glancing at the books that held his attention. On the spine of one was the wordNoémie. On anotherVictoire. On a thirdJordi.

I gasped, covering my mouth. The beautiful, jewel-colored books around me now meant something so different. Each one a life. Each one a life stolen by Shadows, whispered into the ear of the Shadow King, stored forever in these books.

The bookshelves went up and up and up. I spun to take in the whole room. So many, lining every wall. Looking at all the books and the names on their spines, I thought of how close Lope came to becoming one of these stories. And how her friend Carlos must be here somewhere.

“There’s a book I want,” I murmured, my heart thundering in my ears. “Show me the one for Carlos. Carlos...de la Vega, I think it was?”

The Shadow King stretched out a hand, pointing to a book shelved high, high above me. It loosened itself off the shelf and plummeted down, right toward me. I yelped and leapt backward, but the king of Shadows intercepted it and then held it out to me. I snatched it from his grasp.

The book was dark blue like a sapphire.Carloswas written in gold on the spine and the cover. And I wondered,What would my book look like?

I could not let his story go unread. I did not have the chance to know this boy, this boy Lope adored, when he lived on the grounds of my own home.

I opened the cover and stood, reading his story. Every page I turned a moment of his life, passing by. He was an orphan. He had a sister, but she was adopted by another family. He spent a few years training to be a knight before he joined the mercenary company my mother had hired.

And I saw Lope’s name.

There was a girl named Lope, Carlos said in his account.I was assigned to be her mentor, and I chose her as my new family from the start. She was not very good at saying so, but I knew she loved me fiercely. She gave me extra rations. She played chess with ferocity. She listened to me cry over my lost sister. She taught me how to read. She laughed at my jokes. She was my best friend. Out of everything, I miss her most of all, more than sunrises or crickets singing or chocolate religieuses. I hope she lives a long, joyful life.

Tears dripped onto the pages, and I closed the book fast before I could do it any damage. How I wished I could send this book to Lope. I turned to face the Shadow King, who watched me silently with his head at a tilt.

My hand shook as I held the book aloft. “He was just a boy,” I said, my voice trembling, my jaw clenched. “He had so much life to live. He had friends, people who loved him—youstolethat from him.” I pointed at the bookshelves. “From all of them!”

He just... stared at me. Saying nothing.

“You want to know so much about humans,” I whispered. “Can you evenfathomwhat it’s like to lose someone you love?”

“I cannot,” he said.

“Have you not feltlove?”

The lights of his eyes dimmed. “I have not.”

“Do... do you feel nothing when your Shadows die?” I whispered. “I—I’ve seen them disappear.”

“They reform in the darkness. It takes time, but no, they do not die.”

“So you don’t understand,” I whispered. “You don’t understand that when you take a person away, you are ripping the heart from the chests of their family, their friends... the world, it stops turning, and meaning and light and hope, they just... fall away.”

“You’ve told me your story, Ofelia,” said the ShadowKing. “Nobody you loved has died.”

“Iam the one who has died,” I spat. “Thanks to you, I am trapped here below. I will never ever see sunlight again. Or walk through a field of flowers. Or taste fresh fruit. And—” I had to stop to catch my breath, trying and failing again and again. The most painful loss I could not speak. In my mind, I pictured Lope beside me, offering me a handkerchief, that sweet, concerned little notch in her brow. The words were wrenched from me as more tears fell. “I’ll never see my beloved again.”

“That isn’t so.”

I lifted my head, frowning. “Are you mocking my pain?”

“No,” said the Shadow King, his voice soft and, somehow, a little mischievous. It felt absurd in the face of what I had just told him, and rage began to bubble up inside me. “Tell me, little Ofelia, what is it called when one human withholds truth from another one?”

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