Guilt panged her chest. She whispered, “It’s not easy.”
Acting like she didn’t know the man who arrived at the castle was an act of willpower, a conscious gesture for her to maintain composure and avoid letting too much blood drain from her face. Still, when she warned Victor and Amelia to stay away from him, that he did not have the right intentions in coming here, an edge in her voice had slipped. Like a hidden dagger falling out of her sleeve.
They didn’t listen. She couldn’t give them a good reason to.
No, it wasn’t that. She just didn’t. Perhaps, deep down, she felt relief in having someone she knew and loved close to her again.
Their friendship had bloomed the day she saved him from the ocean. The king and queen of Zilar had thanked her for rescuing their only child and welcomed her inside their castle. Her childhood, once lonely after her mother’s passing and father’s abandonment, brightened with new memories of running down banquet halls, sharing pastries in the kitchens, and feeding carrots to the horse in the stables. She became close to the servants and cooks in the castle, kind-hearted folks that were native to Zilar just like her mother was, and learned about their dreams to move to Gyldan. They’d echoed the sentiments her mother once told her: that this land, once nothing more than barren desert, could be turned into anything. Even a home.
When her father returned to her life with a proposition for her to marry the king of Gyldan, she knew it was only to restore his social standing. After she’d accepted the union, Ezran had argued, “Ifit’s a life of easy wealth you want, I can give you that.” He couldn’t understand her reasonings because he always had a home, one that was stolen from people like her mother and his servants.
On the day of their tearful goodbye, Ezran had said he would never forget her.
Of course, he was always true to his promises.
Lilith lit the candle on her nightstand, illuminating the bedroom with a warm glow. Her shadow loomed against the patterned wallpaper, and she remembered staring at that same silhouette on a closed door the night she had visited Amelia’s bedroom. She wanted to tell the princess the truth. If Amelia hadn’t been sleeping, if Lilith had only come to her sooner, she wondered if things could have changed.
“I can’t stop thinking about Amelia,” she said.
Ten months had passed since Amelia disappeared. The castle fell into a state of disarray over the missing princess, uncertainty and rumors spreading across servants and faeries like wildfire. Her godmothers worried that Malicine had lured her into the woods to ensure she would die at eighteen. But as Lilith organized search parties, neither Malicine nor Amelia could be found throughout the kingdom.
Autumn rolled in, and they had only a week before Amelia’s eighteenth birthday. There was no heir to the throne, no princess to even save from a spinning wheel. Lilith felt pressured to expand her search beyond the country, but Victor limited the expedition with his own journey to neighboring kingdoms. He’d left a month ago to seek women who would give him another heir, insisting that he needed to travel far away from Gyldan so that people would not discover how fragile their monarchy was. As a result, he took away the resources Lilith needed by bringing guards and servants with him.
Frustration twisted in Lilith’s stomach at his decision to find a new heir rather than stay to find Amelia. It was a gamble for Gyldan’s future, and he’d placed the wrong bet.
“She’s not coming back,” Ezran replied.
The affirmation made Lilith’s skin bristle. “She will.”
“She’s not the type of person who can do anything for herself. The pre-wedding jitters, her moodiness, the pressure of either ruling a kingdom or dying from a spindle...she probably couldn’t handle any of it and ran away. Weak-minded girls like her are far too common. They aren’t like you, Lilith. They crumble at any sign of hardship.”
“Amelia is not weak,” Lilith replied fiercely. “If you think dismissing other women is a compliment to me, it’s not.”
Lilith knew Amelia had a tendency to run away, an instinct as natural for her as breathing, but what mattered more was that she came back. She would show up and confront the darkness anyway, even when it felt too consuming. Amelia was capable of that strength, even if the princess herself didn’t know that yet.
Ezran grabbed Lilith’s hand and pressed his lips to the curve of her fingers. “Forgive me.” His voice turned soft, coaxing, an attempt to appease her. “You’re right. She’ll come back, and we’ll figure out the rest from there.”
Lilith yanked her hand away from his lips, still angry. She stood up from the bed and let her distracted thoughts lift her away from Ezran. She approached the dressing table and sank into the cushioned stool. Absent-minded fingers danced over vials of perfume, clouds of powder puffs, porcelain cups of cream. An armoire cabinet made of solid wood sat behind a bowl of ivory hairpins, displaying assortments of jewelry that glinted under moonlight. The tangible objects grounded her back to reality. She didn’t care forsuch luxuries, but these gifts reminded her the duty of being queen and the responsibilities she had for Gyldan.
Then there was Ezran again, a shadow approaching from behind. His arms wrapped around her, the warmth of his skin luring fond memories like soft waves against a shore. He held her as gently as he did when they were caught in summer storms as children or reading old stories by candlelight past their bedtimes. He would smuggle lost history books from every trip because she’d wanted to read stories before they were rewritten by Zilar. He never cared that those archives were banned in his kingdom. That was something she’d always admired about him: He held no loyalty to any country or crown. His priority had always been the people he cared about.
She could feel her initial anger at him melting away under his embrace. Ezran was an arrogant fool, but she had seen the goodness in him throughout their childhoods, had tasted his potential in the very first breath they shared.
Their silent embrace was interrupted by the hitch of his breath. The table groaned as he leaned over the surface, fingers running through velvet cushions until he grasped what he’d seen.
“You kept the pearls.”
They were the only necklace that had not been arranged neatly inside its case because of how often she wore them. Ezran had gifted the pearls on her eighteenth birthday, a reminder of the ocean where he owed her his breath. As she came to know him, she understood how the tides favored a wrathful boy. But there were the rare glimpses of gentleness she would see, his delicate heart soft as seafoam.
“They’re my favorite,” she confessed. “I wear them every day.”
She knew a world didn’t exist where she could tell Ezran goodbyeforever while keeping a piece of him wherever she went. The truth of it was that no matter how her life could change, he would always be the boy who loved her when no one else did.
He gently took the pearls and wrapped them around her neck, leaving a trail of kisses down her nape. Her skin tingled from the touch. She allowed a reckless thought that, perhaps, this kind of love was enough for her to be happy. Maybe something like this could be more than enough.
Like an answer, a flash of lightning tore the sky. Lilith jumped from her seat, toppling her chair over. The sky had been clear, with not a cloud in sight that would have signaled a thunderstorm. Yet the air howled something fierce, the leaves of every tree rustling. Light radiated from the forest surrounding the castle. A hole opened in the sky, and though she couldn’t make sense of the sight, her gut told her this was Amelia.
Ezran called her name, but his voice fell on deaf ears as Lilith bounded for the door, ran across the hall, and rushed down the staircase. The doors burst open to pouring rain. When she scanned the bush road again, nobody was there. No, that couldn’t be. What she’d seen could not have been simply her imagination.
