Page 172 of What Blooms from Death

As I went numbly still, her hands moved to the sides of my face. She captured my gaze and held it, her blue eyes shining with emotion. “Five long, terrible days. When they brought you to me, I thought…I thought you were dead.”

Dead.

I should have been focused on hownot deadI was, maybe. Grateful that I’d survived to fight another day. But all I could think about—out of all the terrible things that were happening—was Aleksander.

How he and Lorien were tied to one another.

How he’d been lied to, manipulated, betrayed by the one he thought was hisfamily…

I had to go talk to him. We needed to sort through all of these latest horrors together, andI needed to make sure he was okay, that he was eating, that he wasn’t being tortured for a crime he didn’t commit.

“He doesn’t deserve to be locked in a dungeon,” I said.

“My lady…”

“They’ve got it wrong. Zayn is the one they want; Aleks did nothing wrong.”

“Nothing at all?”

I shook my head as vehemently as I could in my dizzy, weakened state.

Phantom leapt back onto the bed, settling down with his head resting on his paws, watching us and letting out the occasional anxious growl.

Aveline sighed as she rose to her feet, carefully pulling me up with her, guiding me to sit on the edge of the bed. She contemplated my words for a long moment before she asked, “Can you be certain?”

I didn’t answer right away. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because it felt so…big. Like the sort of answer that cleaved a life into two parts. There was the before—before I realized how wrong I’d been.

And now came the after.

My gaze swept over the violin Aleks had gifted me, resting in its case on a shelf. Then I looked toward the balcony, transporting myself into the memory of playing that instrument while he watched in quiet awe, and then everything that had followed after—exchanges of heat, of breath, of words that had settled upon my heart like a vow…

I don’t consider us a tragedy. At all.

I’d seen the truth in Luminor’s blade. But a part of me, I think, had known it long before that. He was not my enemy.

Our worldswantedus to be enemies.

But the worlds had gotten it wrong.

“Yes,” I told Aveline. “I’m certain.”

She again took a long time considering my words, busying herself with folding a basket full of freshly laundered towels.

“Well,” she finally replied, “the Regent had no answers for what he stumbled upon in the swords’ chamber. The Elarithian lord went missing, along with the swords, and you were half dead and in no state to explain anything. You’re lucky your brother insisted on merely locking Aleksander up; the other leaders of Noctaris have been calling for much worse. They’refurious, that lot. Looking for someone to blame. And it’s only going to get worse, what with—”

“I have to speak with him.”

“You have to rest,” she countered.

“Please,” I whispered, my voice strangled and desperate. “Please don’t ask me to sit here and do nothing. Too much is at stake for that.”

She pursed her lips. Folded a few more towels with tense, jerking movements that slowly gave way to easier, resigned ones. “…At least wait a little while longer. Eat something. Drink something. Make certain your strength is truly returning. You woke briefly two days ago, and we made the mistake of thinking you were truly recovered—you ended up fainting again, and worse off than before.”

I didn’t remember waking up at all…which, of course, made it difficult to argue against her point.

Part of me still wanted to make a run for the door, but my limbs felt too heavy and the room spun faster every time I started to stand.

So I sat. And I sat, and I sat, while Aveline restlessly continued her folding, and then she moved on to bringing me one tray of food and drink after another, until I finally managed to stomach some of it.

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