Azalea
Ican’tbelieveIhadn’t realized it before. Although, in my defense, my brain is still trying to sort through the myriad of memories flooding it. It’s making it hard to tell what happened now, and what has happened that doesn’t matter anymore.
From what I’ve been able to sort through, I’ve met Dianthus four or possibly five different times, which isn’t much, but makes it confusing on what is the present and what was the past.
While I was in the dungeon, and Dianthus was droning on about her great evil plans to lure Braxton here, I remember seeing her lock up a small cabinet. I wasn’t able to glimpse the object that she put inside of it, but I had seen that it had this kind of lavender glow surrounding it that matched the essence of Dianthus’s magic that she was shooting at us through her fingertips. I didn’t piece together how they matched until she literally tried to kill me with it.
“Where’s the cabinet now?” Braxton asked, pulling my focus back to him.
My face pales as I think about the last place I saw it. “Back in the room she just had us trapped in,” I murmur, swallowingheavily. “We were right there. It was right there, and we all but ran away from it.”
“That makes sense,” Braxton sighs.
“It does?” I ask perplexed. Nothing about tonight makes sense to me.
“I’ve noticed her magic fading. That’s why there were cracks in the curse, and she’s started aging. I figured whatever she had her magic tethered to, she would need to be keeping it close by.”
My ears prick at the sound of silence. The chaotic noise from the crashing furniture has ceased, which I quickly take as a bad sign.
“I’m growing tired of these games, you two. It was fun when you were scared, but now you’re just scheming, and it bores me,” Dianthus calls, her voice echoing through the expanse of the house. “When you two are ready to come out of that little closet, you’ll know where to find me.”
My eyes bulge, and I look at Braxton in a panic. She knew we were in here the whole time.
“What are we going to do?” I whisper, hoping she might not be able to hear everything we’re saying.
“It’s okay.” Braxton caresses the back of my palm with the tips of his fingers. The gesture is oddly soothing, leaving me with an indistinguishable sense of familiarity. I try to find the memory linking me to this feeling, but come up short. Regardless, I have to fight the desire to lean into him and let him comfort me.
I’m still torn on how to feel about Braxton. My heart loves him too much to let him die, but my mind can’t come to terms with what I believe he did to bring me back to life. So once again, I find myself stuck between my head and my heart when it comes to this man. And for the love of all the stars in the sky, I am sick of feeling this way.
Braxton’s expression morphs, and I watch him sort through something in his mind.
“Braxton, no.”
“I have a plan.”
“I drew that conclusion on my own, and I’m saying no.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
I blink at him, dumbfounded. “I think between the two of us, we can agree that you aren’t the first choice in coming up with plans.”
I can see in the subtle wince that pinches his features that my words landed heavier than I intended.
“Fine,” I concede through a bated breath. “What’s your plan?”
I’m making a lot of discoveries today.
One: I was a part of a curse that really was for Braxton that tortured him by forcing us both in a castle together when he was devotedly in love with me while I hated him.
Two: that same curse made me forget about how he is the love of my life and subsequently made me want to kill him.
Three: Braxton is a complete idiot who comes up with terrible ideas.
Four: I am also a complete idiot because I go along with his terrible ideas.
That’s how I find myself currently crouched low to the ground, waiting for Braxton to cause enough of a distraction for me to sneak back into the dining room through the other door that leads to it.
“Back so soon?” Dianthus taunts. I poke my head around the doorframe, and I see her sprawled out on the same chair she sat in when we began all of this.
