Page 82 of Where Shadows Bloom

The creature—the god—bowed its head like a tree snapping in a strong wind. It steepled its long fingers together. “Lope de la Rosa,” he said, his voice just as soft as before but strangely...warm.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

“I have come to know you by your poems. Their longing and their desperation and their beauty. You have sent me many. I thank you. I am a great admirer of your art.”

The whole conversation felt so odd, so impossible, halfway between a nightmare and a dream. “You—I never sent you other poems, just one—”

“‘To any god who will listen.’” It was my own voice he echoed back at me, cracked and fervent. It was my sameprayer, night after night after night, a cry into the darkness.Will anybody listen?

“Oh,” I whispered.

He laughed, a low, rattling sound. “I was not what you expected, was I?”

Certainly not a giant Shadow with a taste for poetry.

“Well, I—I am grateful that you like my words—”

“The girl you wrote those lovely words for”—the voice interrupted, his silhouette creeping across the floor, as if the god was standing behind me—“who was she? Did she never receive any of your poems?”

My heart shuddered.

“She read some. She read them too soon. I wanted to share them with her someday, but...” My words faded off into nothingness. I folded my arms around my middle, gazing into the flame. “Her name is Ofelia de Bouchillon—or Ofelia de Forestier.”

“Ofelia?”

The recognition in his voice made ice pool in my veins. “Do you know her, sire?”

He curled in on himself and then, in a blink, the silhouette on the wall before me—it washers. Her short, full figure, her curly hair, her hand reaching out. I knocked the chair backward, pressing my palm against the shadow of her hand upon the wall.

“Ofelia!” I cried, tears leaping into my eyes. “Ofelia, I don’t understand—”

Her silhouette flickered and then grew, unfolding like the wings of a butterfly until the former appearance of the Shadow King returned. Without thinking, I swept a hairbrush off the vanity, throwing it at his shadow. “Bring herback!”

“My dear poet,” said the king, his voice pitying and mournful. “Why are you unhappy? It was only her image. I thought you would like to see her. I did not intend to upset you.”

“Have—have you seen her?” I asked, angry tears spilling down my cheeks. “Please speak true to me—I fear for her. You are a god; you know more than I do. Please tell me if she is well.”

“She is safe here. If she asks for anything, I will provide it to her. She will not die or grow old—”

“‘Here,’” I repeated, my heart louder than musket fire. “Wherein the thousandfold names ishere?”

“In my kingdom. The realm below.”

I sank onto the floor, my hands over my mouth.The Underworld. The Underworld.

“That’s impossible,” I breathed. “How could she have entered—”

But I remembered. The reason I had called upon the Shadow King in the first place.

If there was a door in the garden that let Shadowsout... surely it could let mortalsin.

And I hadleft her there.

“How can she return to our world?” I begged.

“She cannot. She was given to me as a part of your king’s bargain. Regardless, I cannot form doors from my realm. Only your kind can. And only the god-favored one, Sagesse, was ever able to.”

Sagesse. Eglantine’s mother.

---