Page 71 of Where Shadows Bloom

I could not allow it. I could not leave Le Château until the connection to the Underworld had been severed for good. I had to find the Shadows; I had to follow them. Their nexushadto be hidden somewhere in the gardens. The king would never let such beasts sully his sacred palace.

I leapt to my feet and put on my tricorn and my greatcoat, armor in their own regard. My right hand wrapped against the hilt of Eglantine’s dagger, tucked safe in my pocket.

Instead of turning left toward the main palace gates, I turned right toward the gardens. Courtiers trickled back into the palace as the sun was starting to set. I pushed past them, ignoring their little cries of alarm.

I tore through the gardens. The sun was glowing merrily this late afternoon, almost mocking the misery within me.

My eyes roved about, snagging on any sign of a Shadow. A tree with claw marks. A patch of disturbed gravel. With Eglantine’s blade in my hand, I marched through the allées of the labyrinth.

If a guard caught me, I did not care.

If a courtier glared at me, it did not matter.

Whatever came next—if I found this door, if I destroyed it or if I failed trying—I was certain that I’d be thrown out of the palace. After I acted, my stay at Le Château would end. My time to find the tear between worlds, to stitch it up somehow or to barricade it, was running short.

The Shadows seeped into our kingdom and romped sofreely through these gardens before slipping past the walls and off through our lands. Like wildfire moving too quickly to be contained. Consuming the breaths of hundreds, thousands, without a second thought.

The king had tossed a lit match into our world and turned his back as the flames devoured it.

My every footfall struck against the gravel. I ducked into bosquet after bosquet, looking for something, anything, that could possibly resemble a portal between worlds. All that I found were the wretched statues of the gods. They, too, were like the king, turning their faces from us and our problems.

Playthings of the gods, the Shadow King had called us.

I rocked to a halt in front of the Bosquet du Temple de l’Amour. I looked at the faceless goddess of love.

Misery seeped through the cracks of the stone growing around my heart.

How I longed for Ofelia. How I wanted her to bind up the very wounds that she had opened. I wanted to go toherfor comfort, to tell her about the heartacheshe’dgiven me, and to feel her arms around me and hear her soothing words. An old instinct wanted me to defend her and call her blameless, but...

There was a fracture down the blank space where the goddess’s face should have been.

Ofelia had chosen riches over me. Had chosen a stranger over me.

Our five years together.

Her kind words. My desperate poems. Every gentle embrace.

Had they meant nothing?

What lay before me now, if not a life with her?

I turned away from the goddess of love. I walked down the path and tried to banish the memory of when Ofelia had been by my side.

We’d walked this way, and we had passed another grove, one that was locked away—

Locked and guarded. My heart tightened like a fist. My feet were moving before I could even think. It was as though my body was magnetized now in the direction of that sealed-off area.

I turned a corner and found the locked bosquet. The large grille covered the opening between the two hedgerows. A soldier in silver armor stood with his back to me.

And there—behind the grate, beyond the guard—was that marble rotunda. The black, isolated door at its center was guarded on either side. From so far away, it was difficult to see properly—but the door almost seemed to undulate in the sunlight. Like King Léo’s six silhouettes. Like the Shadows themselves.

Cold crept up the back of my neck, that old, familiar feeling. An instinct that had never let me down. Shadows were close by.

In the depths of my heart, I knew that this had to be the bosquet dedicated to the god of the Underworld. That Léowould keep it locked, hidden away, the barest gesture of respect to the god who blessed him with immortality.

And that strange, simple door.

All the evil in my life was because of that door.

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