Chapter Thirty-Two
Hazel was still thinking of the shawl when they reached the garden path.
It lay warm and reassuring around her shoulders, carrying with it the faint scent of lavender and old paper. The fact that he had noticed the cold at all unsettled her far more than the kiss had. Men noticed beauty, youth, and propriety. They noticed advantage. But they didn’t often notice comfort.
She walked beside him in silence, with her hand resting lightly on his arm. The closeness made her breath feel oddly shallow, and her heart caught between two opposing instincts. Part of her wanted to pull away, to reassert the careful distance she had promised herself she would keep. Another part, utterly hopeful and traitorous, leaned subtly closer, as though she trusted him to hold the world steady.
Frightened and safe.She had no words for how it was possible to feel both at once.
Greyson guided her along a narrow path bordered by low hedges until the garden opened into a small clearing. At its center stood a white-painted gazebo. Its pillars were softened by climbing vines and shadow. He led her inside, where the wind was gentler and the night seemed to pause around them.
“Here,” he said quietly. “I thought you might like it.”
“It’s lovely,” she replied, and meant far more than the place itself.
They stood side by side, gazing out beyond the garden, where the sky stretched wide and dark, scattered with stars. Hazel tilted her head back instinctively, relishing the sight. She had spent so many evenings indoors, settling disputes, soothing tempers, accounting for everyone else’s comfort, that she could not recall the last time she had simply…looked.
Greyson lifted his hand, pointing upward. “Do you see those two stars there?” he asked. “Close together and brighter than the rest.”
“Yes,” she nodded. “I think so.”
“That is Gemini,” he told her. “The twins. Castor and Pollux.”
“The brothers,” Hazel murmured.
He nodded. “One mortal, one divine, but bound together regardless.”
Hazel listened without interrupting, sensing that this was not a tale meant to be hurried.
“When Castor was killed,” he continued, “Pollux refused to accept a world that did not contain him. He begged Zeus to let them share the same destiny, to live and die together. In the end, they were placed among the stars, bound eternally. Neither wholly alive nor wholly gone.”
His voice tightened on the last words.
Hazel’s gaze lingered on the constellation, but her attention was wholly on him now. “Because he could not bear to exist without his brother,” she said softly.
“Yes.” Greyson’s hand fell to his side. “Some call it devotion, others madness.”
She turned toward him then. “And what do you call it?”
He did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was carefully controlled. “I used to think it was weakness.”
Hazel felt her heart ache.
“Damian was… different from me,” he went on. “He was gentler and more hopeful. He believed fiercely in things I found impractical, like love, happiness, and the idea that life ought to be lived for more than duty.” He silenced a breath. “When he lost the woman he loved, he lost himself. And when he choseto leave the world entirely, he left the rest of us to endure the consequences.”
Hazel’s fingers curled into the shawl at her shoulders. “I am so sorry.”
He inclined his head, though his eyes never left the sky. “For a long time, I told myself that Pollux was wrong, that clinging so desperately to another person could only end in ruin. That Damian proved it.”
“And now?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Now he looked at her.
“I am no longer certain,” he confessed. “Because I see what still remains when someone is gone. And because I see… what it means to be remembered, to be bound to someone, even in absence.”
Hazel swallowed. Being close to him like this and hearing him speak so openly felt like standing on the edge of something vast and fragile.
“Love does not make people weak,” she said after a moment’s thought. “It makes them brave enough to feel. And sometimes… that courage costs them dearly.”
