Page 128 of Better in Black
I hurried back to my chambers, where he now had a little room all his own. “All right, little one, it’s time to play!”
But he was not there. Not in his room, and not in mine, where he preferred to spend his time.
Not in my closets or under my bed. Not in my antechamber. Not in the kitchen, curled up beneath the stores of food or digging into the secret cake. Not in the rooms for washing up or dressing. Not even in his mother’s chambers, where he was forbidden to go but sometimes, against all caution, ventured anyway.
My heart began to thump in my chest, as I ran out of places to look, began searching again, again. I could not call out for him, could not reveal my dawning panic—I could not let word be spread through Court that I had lost sight of the Queen’s heir, for how could she continue to leave him in my care if I could be so careless? She might not have loved him, but he was still hers, and what was hers, she guarded fiercely.
What if he had somehow found his way outside, alone, into the wild? What if someone had taken him, someone who meant him harm, someone who wanted the heir to the Seelie throne for themselves?
I could barely breathe. If harm had befallen him, if he was lying, still, unmoving, beneath a toppled shelf, if he had stumbled into the Queen’s menagerie, and been swallowed whole by a ravenous beast—
And then I returned to where I had begun, my own chambers, and in the room where I concoct my healing draughts, I spied a cabinet I’d thought was locked, and pried it open, and Ash blinked up at me, oblivious to my panic and relief.
“Why are you hiding here?” I took his little hand in mine and helped him climb out.
He blinked his big green eyes. “Because I wanted you to find me, Nene.”
He wrapped his arms around my legs, and squeezed so, so tight. I lowered myself to the ground, and looked into his face. So clear it was, so trusting.
“I got scared,” he admitted. “That you wouldn’t come.”
“I would always have found you,” I told him, and it was a promise to both of us. “Even if you hid somewhere very far away. I wouldneverstop looking for you.”
I knew the truth of the words only as they slipped off my tongue.
I would never have stopped. Not because I was afraid of getting in trouble, but because I could not lose him.
“But why?” he asked.
My heart sank.
My heart sang.
I had made a terrible mistake, but the mistake was made, and there was no unmaking it.
“Because I love you,” I said.
And I cannot lie.
So I knew it to be true.
—
Once upon a time there were six sisters who suffered terribly in love, and a seventh sister who believed herself too wise to love. But she was only too foolish, and too afraid.
Foolish, because she thought if she avoided love, she could spare herself suffering.
Foolish, even more, because she thought love was a choice, and that she could choose against it.
—
I loved Ash.
This was not my choice, this was not my plan, it simply was.
I chose to accept it, rather than flee. I chose to open thefloodgates of love, to invite more of it, and more of him, into my heart.
And I discovered a heart is a wound that can never be sutured. Once torn open, it only grows.
