Page 87 of Charming Artemis

Artemis closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to fall anew.

“A time arose when she was injured, not physically but emotionally and, in her pain, was convinced that she needed to prove how very stalwart and independent and able she was. She shot one of her legendary arrows at a target far in the distance, knowing that should she hit it, everyone, including herself, would be alleviated of any doubts as to her strength and independence, something she insisted she valued above all else.”

“She hit her target?” Artemis asked quietly.

“She always hit her target,” Linus said. “This time, however, the target she hit with such deadly accuracy was, unbeknownst to her, Orion.”

Artemis did not remember that. She swallowed against the thickening lump in her throat. “She killed him?”

“In her determination to prove her strength and resilience, she lost the man she loved. Do not repeat her mistake, my dear Artemis.”

“It isn’t the same,” she insisted, pulling away from his embrace.

“It is though,” he said. “He has touched your heart in a way no one else has been permitted to.”

She shook her head as she stood. “I don’t love anyone. Iwon’t. My heart cannot endure it. Not again.”

Linus didn’t follow when she left the room. She didn’t want him to.

No one could make this ache go away. There was no light left to keep to, and she would rather endure the darkness alone.

Everything was easier when she was alone.

Everything.

Chapter Thirty

Artemis was utterly unreachable. Shekept entirely to herself. She spoke to no one and did not emerge from their bedchamber, except at night when the house was still. Charlie’s concern only grew when Linus said he had also failed to chip away at the walls she had so firmly re-erected. He’d been hopeful about the future ahead of them. All of that felt lost now.

Fortunately, his brothers had provided him with a welcome distraction. Sorrel had reached the point where she needed the aid of a wheeled chair. She had, however, adamantly refused to accept the aid of a Bath chair. As Philip had explained it, her objections arose from the fact that Bath chairs provided the user with almost no true independence. They were large and cumbersome and could not be used without a second person being involved.

The task had been set to all the brothers to sort the matter of a wheeled chair that was a blessing rather than a curse. The lot of them had navigated any number of tricky puzzles over the years, including lowering a soon-to-be sister-in-law out of a window using ropes. They were determined to sort this latest quandary as well.

Charlie was seated at a table with Corbin and Jason, the three of them bent over a stack of parchment, sketching out various ideas for a wheeled chair better suited to Sorrel’s needs.

“Bath chairs are designed like pony carts,” Corbin said. “Pony carts aren’t meant to be self-operated or agile.”

Jason nodded. “Its elongated shape is a significant part of the problem. If it were more like a proper chair without the wheel in the front...”

Charlie shook his head. “Without that wheel, the chair would constantly tip over.” He made a quick sketch as he explained. “It’s like an unbalanced equation: it will defy sorting until symmetry is achieved. The front wheel of a Bath chair prevents the chair from spinning forward on its axis, while the weight of that front extension prevents the chair from spinning backward. Having only the one axis leaves it unbalanced.”

“Perhaps small feet in the front?” Jason suggested, using his lead pencil to add little feet to Charlie’s one-axled sketch. “Short enough that if she leaned back a bit, they’d be off the ground and the wheels could move.”

“She would tip all the way back,” Charlie said. “It cannot be stable with only one axle. That is the reality of physics.”

Corbin rubbed at his chin. “Cabriolets tip when not hitched up.”

“Precisely,” Charlie said. “So long as our design has only one axle, Sorrel’s chair will tip as well.”

“But putting a second axle in front, like in a Bath chair, renders the contraption too cumbersome to navigate the house and corridors and rooms filled with furniture. She would be limited by it, not liberated.”

“There is an answer. I know there is.” Charlie looked to his brothers. “The missing variable is there somewhere if only we can identify it.”

Corbin dropped a hand on his shoulder. “None of us will abandon this orher.”

“Of course we won’t,” Jason added his determination. “We are the Jonquil Freers of Prisoners. No one is abandoned. No one is forgotten.”

The deeply familiar motto, one adopted by the lot of them in childhood and recited whenever they came to one another’s rescue, proved both a reassurance and a bit of sadness in that moment. They were helping Sorrel, and Charlie was glad of that. But Artemis was so very alone. She felt entirely abandoned and forgotten. Charlie wanted to help her, but it was more than he could do alone.

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