“I didn’t really get a chance to ask.” He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to settle the ache.
Silence filled the room like the slow creep of smoke.
Finally, she asked, “Are you alright?”
He shrugged. “I mean, I’m still dying, so no, not really.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Would he know when it happened?
It was the question that haunted him the most.
When August was fourteen, he ventured past the copse of trees at the far end of the castle grounds to find a secluded garden, much smaller than the sprawling, manicured one near the cemetery. This one was overgrown, bursting with vivid pinks and yellows and reds. He never wandered that far from the familiar paths, preferring the safety of what he knew, and he wasn’t sure what drew him away that day.
In the garden was a woman in a maid’s dress, crouched to study a rosebush, her grey face set in a troubled frown. August had gone still at the sight of her.
Don’t look up, don’t look up.
But she did.
A ragged gash, like a grotesque smile, split her throat.
August took a step back, his stomach twisting. He wasn’t sure how far her tether would let her wander, how far he’d have to run.
But she didn’t come for him. She stood, her expression brightening with recognition.
“Erynda,” she called. His mother’s name. “The state of this garden is unacceptable. Does your mother know?”
August took another careful step back.
His grandmother died when his mother was young. Assassinated with the rest of the family during the attack on the castle twenty-some years prior to the latest war. His mother was the sole survivor.
“She loves this garden,” the woman continued. “If she finds out Howard let it get to such a state, she’ll be heartbroken.”
He didn’t know who Howard was. A gardener, maybe? But clearly, this place hadn’t seen a gardener in years.
The anchored woman waited a moment for a response, then crouched again, eyes back on the rosebush, clicking her tongue in disapproval.
She was trapped in a lonely garden, oblivious to the fact that she was dead, that decades had passed, leaving her behind.
That night, August had dreamed it was him in the garden, dreamed of his own ashen skin and clueless grey eyes, of the world moving on without him.
Was that what would happen when this darkness finally drained the last bit of life from him? Maybe he would move on, past the Hollow Dark, and have a peaceful afterlife in Naethara.
No, with his luck, he’d end up in one of the hells.
“We should leave,” Lottie said.
August slanted a look at her. This cottage was the only constant left in his life. He wasn’t eager to give it up. To start over. Again.
“I’m not leaving.”
“Felix knows you’re close by. What if he followed you?”
He thought of the two lost in the park, the gunshot, the blood beneath Felix’s fingers. He would have gone for a healer.
