Page 69 of Where Shadows Bloom

“Five years,” Lope spat. “Five years I have been at your side, and you have neveronceasked me what I wanted.”

My heart lurched inside of me, something breaking apart. Had I really been so selfish? All this time—did she see me as a horrible, wicked friend?

“Whatdoyou want?” I could only ask, even if I was nearly too afraid to hear her answer.

Instead of looking at me, she closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I want you to believe me. I want to protect you. Iwant you to run away with me. We’ll go by night.”

Run away. Go.

She wanted to leave Le Château. She wanted me to go with her.

But I couldn’t. Not after I’d fought so hard for this small piece of happiness. And not when she was asking me to cast it aside for what could only be suspicion or superstition.

“Is there nothing I can do to make you stay?” I asked.

Finally, her gray eyes climbed up to mine, but the agony in them made me freeze. “So that’s it?” she murmured. “You’re... you’re going tostayhere?”

No. No, I couldn’t bear this; we couldn’t be parted.

“Please don’t leave,” I whimpered, my shaking hands clasped tightly together. “I love you, I, Iachewith how much I love you, and I want us to be togetherhere. I will ask the king to give you a title, and we could marry—”

“Gods above, I don’t care about a title,” said Lope. Her voice was tired and frayed, like she had aged decades over the course of this one conversation. She rubbed her brow. “I don’t care about any of this nonsense. How can you,anyof you, dance over the Underworld? Take picnics in the same garden where Shadows roam? Your father made some bargain with theking of Shadows, and now they roam our world, killing freely. Becausehelets them in, in exchange for immortality. I’m certain of it.Hecreated a door.”

This sounded like some dark fairy tale, not reality. Notthe man that I knew. “He wouldn’t,” I said soothingly. “Lope—the king may seem strange and aloof, but it’s only because he’s lonely, as I was at the manor! He’s so kind to me, he wouldn’t—he wouldn’t do that—”

“While that portal remains, monsters enter our world.Livesare lost. Peoplewilldie. Does that mean nothing to you?”

I frowned. “Of course I care. That is exactly why you are so important to everyone. We need the knights.”

She exhaled, long and shaky. “I cannot ignore what I know, Ofelia. I cannot stay here and sit idly by, letting others be hurt.”

I cannot stay here.

The silence stretched. I kept my gaze to the floor. I couldn’t bear to see her eyes.

It was as if she hated me.

Hated everything about the palace that had brought me so much happiness.

Perhaps we were just too different.

Her battle would never ever end.

“You say that you cannot stay here,” I repeated softly. I swallowed back tears and took as deep a breath as my aching lungs could manage. “If you are so unhappy here, perhaps you should just... just go.”

“Is that an order, my lady?”

My mouth fell open at the ice in her tone. It was as if yearsof tenderness and warmth between us had been stripped away in less than an hour. “Lope!”

“Is that an order?” she repeated, her gaze pointed and direct as an arrow, daring me to look away.

Tears dripped down my chin. “You’re breaking my heart,” I whispered.

I waited for her to say something.

I waited for her to change her mind.

Instead, she rose, striding toward the wardrobe. The oak doors banged open as she grabbed her greatcoat and her tricorn.

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