Page 53 of Where Shadows Bloom

Something was slipping out of my grasp; something I couldn’t name.

A tear dripped down my cheek.

The king reached out, brushing it away with his thumb. I leaned into his hand. I wished it were Mother before me. I wished for her sensibility and for her embraces. But I wasgrateful, in this moment, not to be alone.

“Please remember, Ofelia,” he said. “There are many young ladies at this court who would be honored to be in your company. Ladies who would not be so slow to assure you of their affections.”

I wanted to let go. I wanted to drink until I was dizzy, to dance until my feet ached.

A ballroom in the middle of a monster-filled garden. Or simply a ballroom, music and beauty enjoyed unabashedly under the warm glow of the sun.

You cannot look away from trouble, Lope had said.

For one day, I turned from thoughts of her, and I danced.

15

Lope

The night is all I know.

It is an old friend with her blade upon my throat.

It is a warm blanket and a shroud.

When the cricket song dies, so, too, will I.

Each day, I went to the king’s gardens, searching for what Iknewmust be there: Shadows. The maps I’d drawn indicated that the Shadows had come from Le Château, and we had fought so many just beyond the gates. Besides all that, I trusted my senses. When I walked the gardens, I found all the things I had kept watch for at the countess’s manor—scratches in trees, the faint stench of smoke and rot, the lack of any birdsong. Iwantedto find a Shadow, to hold up its hide to the king—if such a thing were possible—and say,How do you explain this?But my searches were fruitless.

After several hours in the gardens and then in the library,I finally returned to sleep, each night hoping dearly that I’d finally see Ofelia. We seemed never to cross paths, save for in the dead of night, when she’d rouse me from sleep as she crept in from a party, her hair mussed, her gait clumsy. She’d drop onto her bed and let out a contented sigh before falling fast asleep. I’d take comfort in her presence for a few moments before sleep overtook me, too.

And here I was, still, wandering the gardens in my endless search. Above the tall, neatly trimmed trees lining the horizon, evening light burned gold. I kept my hand against the hilt of the penknife in my pocket.

That second day, when the guard had stopped us in the garden, when we had gotten too close to some secret... she and I had been near a bosquet to the gods. The strange one—the one with only a door standing alone within a pavilion. I rounded a dozen twists and turns to find the bosquet, or any landmark, but I only came across rose gardens and groves, the canal, an obscene number of fountains... I’d lost my way. Again. I sighed and turned back onto the main gravel drive, following a long, skinny path flanked with trellises and hedges.

What I wouldn’t give for someone beside me, to help me with my search. If Carlos were here...

Chevaleresse Beautemps back at the barracks had always warned me that wounds of the heart were very, very slow to heal. That some never did properly heal.

I tried to imagine Carlos beside me. What he’d say.

He would laugh. He’d lean his head against my shoulder and watch the setting sun above us.The pain won’t stop, but it’ll change. And even so, you’ll remember me. I am indelible.

Then I smiled, in spite of myself.

No, I could hear him say,I would never use the wordindelible. Butunforgettable, certainly.

But the space by my side was still empty. My heart ached. With Ofelia gone, the only conversations I held were with ghosts.

A loud scream split the summer air. The voice of a man I didn’t recognize.

With a flick of my hand, the penknife was drawn. To my right came the sound of crunching gravel, a hissing sound, and metal clanging against rocks. Sounds I knew.

At a run, I followed the direction of the voice, the dying sun casting strange shapes through the hedgerows. In a small grove near a row of marble statues, a knight was on his knees. And there, out of my nightmares, the sign I had been waiting for—three Shadows, taller than I was, surrounded him, their claws wrenching his arms and head backward. The man weakly tried to bat a rapier at the creatures, but when a Shadow’s claws twisted and pierced through the gap in his armor at his shoulder, he let out a cry, his hand seizing and sending the blade clattering to the earth.

My chance.

I sprinted across the drive and first drove the penknife into the head of the Shadow inhaling the soldier’s breath. Themonster wailed and disappeared in a cloud of dark vapor, and the penknife fell. In the next blink, I had swept up the rapier. I reveled in the feeling—that I was complete again.

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