I stand too, averting my eyes.
“I should go to the celebration,” I say, regretting being here. Regretting everything.
She was drunk on wine. She didn’t mean to invite me here. She didn’t want to spend time with me. This was all a lie. And now, it’s over.
“You should,” she says, and she has the nerve to reach up and touch my crown.
As if we are familiar. As if any of this was real.
“Two more places on Moon Isle,” I say, my voice flat and perhaps cruel. Our focus is our people. Anything more is selfish. Ridiculous.
“Tomorrow, we’ll go to one. The next, the other. Then we’re done.”
“Good,” she says just as curtly, telling me everything I need to know.
As soon as I’m out in the gardens I am filled with even more regret.
For speaking to her that way? I could have sworn, when she turned away from me, there was a hint of something. Hurt?
No. Impossible.
I regret being in her room. I regret thinking for a moment that we could ever be anything more than partners in this game, this game that we are currently losing.
At least the island seems in higher spirits. Haze is being drained from wine glasses. Some empty goblets litter the lawn my mother used to walk on.
I sigh and begin picking them up, one by one. Attendants rush to help me, but I tell them not to worry. I tell them to enjoy their night. I end up far into the gardens. Distracted, I take a wrong turn in the maze. When I turn around, I see an ancient, crumbling stone bench.
And I realize where I am.
It’s the place my mother’s golden rose bush used to grow. She used to sit on this same bench and look at the delicate flowers.
“Careful,” she said, when I was a child and got too close. “The most beautiful roses have thorns. You’ll get hurt.”
“Why do they have thorns?” I remember asking, after pricking my finger on one of them and watching a droplet of blood form.
“It’s like armor. It’s their protection.”
I sit on the stone bench and gently run my hands down its crumbling sides. “I’m sorry it never grew back,” I say quietly, into the night.
I wait, as if there could ever be a response. Of course, there isn’t. There never is. I place my hand in the center of the bench, where she used to hold mine.
“I hope there are golden roses wherever you are,” I whisper into the darkness. “I hope you duel every day, and drink tea every night. I hope there’s always enough honey. And I hope ... I hope you’re happy.”
Wind hisses past my ears. I lean back, staring up at the sky.
“I wonder, sometimes, if you can see me. If that flicker in the hearth sometimes is you, telling me to find my fire, even though I’ve lived for centuries in darkness.” I swallow, my throat tightening. “And sometimes ... sometimes I wonder if you’re with Egan. Then I get jealous. I get jealous that you’re all somewhere without me.”
I take a shaking breath. Pain ripples up my arm, all the way to my shoulder, the blue spreading once again. “Maybe soon, I’ll join you,” I say, and, for the first time, that thought doesn’t fill me with dread.
I stand—
And a scream pierces the night.
Then, another.
Another.
I rush forward, confused, trying to find the path through the maze.
