Her voice grew thinner with every word. She swallowed hard once, and then again, but the lump would not clear, and her voice would not come.
She had so few moments of her own with Selma. Hearing about her, unearthing things she’d never known, was like being given a handful of the memories she hadn’t had the chance to make for herself. It was a balm to that ragged wound at her centre; it fucking stung, but it soothed, too. Just a little bit.
When she didn’t recover her words, Eleni went on, nudging her forth through the small meadow as she spoke; slowly now, as if to allow Adeline the time to stop her should she need to.
“Silas insisted on pitching in with the gardeners. Wanted to ‘build her something with his own two hands,’” Eleni said, in a passable impression of her brother that made Adeline’s ribs ache. Goddess above, she missed him. Eleni snorted then, arms crossed as she glanced around the little meadow. “Quite the romantic, your father.”
“I can’t imagine them like that,” said Adeline, a little hoarsely.
“Young?”
Yes,she thought,but also—
She hesitated; the words just out of reach, even within her own head.
“In love?” she said finally. She hadn’t meant it to sound like a question, but perhaps it was. “My mother, happy anywhere thatwasn’tthe Silver Palace.”
Eleni sent her a sideways glance, too soft.
“Well, to your first point—how could you come from anything but thedeepestlove, Adeleni?”
Perhaps Eleni sensed that this was too much, because her tone turned buoyant just as Adeline bowed her head against the creeping threat of tears, that stinging at the back of her throat. “Anyway, she wasveryhappy here. Your mother. Annoyingly so.”
They rounded a broad cherry blossom, and Eleni swept a bough of its white petals aside to reveal a small rock pond, frozen surface shimmering like an earthly mirror beneath the cloudless sky. Adeline followed her Aunt, who swept her embroidered skirts up in one hand and bent to sit on the stone wall of the pond.
“They were almostobnoxiouslyhappy,” she went on, wrinkling her nose. “I’m fairly certain you were conceived right here, in fact.”
Adeline froze in a horrified half-squat, saving herself just a split second before her backside could settle on the wall. Eleni threw her head back with a hearty laugh.
“Notright here,” she amended. “But in Dhalias, certainly.”
Adeline made a face, but settled the rest of the way to her seat on the wall. “Not sure I wanted to know where I was conceived, full stop.”
Eleni hummed out another small laugh. “No,” she conceded. “Few would.”
The Empress leaned back, hands planted on the rocks behind her, and tilted her face to the sky, letting her eyes close under the blazing caress of the sun. The reprieve from her Aunt’s stare was welcome; Adeline felt she could breathe. Could take her fill of the garden her father had tended, the flowers her mother had loved. The glittering frost and the quiet, constant sway of the cherry blossoms; this place that was somehow made of them both. Without Eleni’s eye on her, she could swipe freely at her face, using a thick sleeve to dry the sticky residue of sweat and the few warm tears she hadn’t noticed spilling down her already flushed cheeks. For some reason,realisingshe’d been crying made her eyes prickle all the more, made her throatache. Her slight, laboured gasp drew Eleni’s attention again, one eye cracking open to peer sideways at her. Adeline wished she wouldn’t; the pressure behind her own eyes grew hotter, cheeks burning with a fresh flush that had little to do with her stupid woollen dress.
She wanted to be home. She wanted to be sitting snug amid the swirling snow, sharing a cask of spice wine with Ger, comfortedin companionship and withzeroacknowledgement of the tears on her face.
She sniffed and glanced up at the crystalline sky, still swiping at her eyes with one cuff.
“I hate this,” was all she said. She gestured at her own puffy face for context, but Eleni seemed to understand anyway.
“It will pass,” she said. “In time. And believe it or not, moments like this will onlyhelpit pass. Collecting little pieces of the person you lost … it fills the space they left. Not entirely, perhaps, but enough to get by.”
Adeline said nothing more; she couldn’t. Her throat was so tight she was half resigned to living her life breathless. Her aunt’s insight was far too precise, and she flinched away from its knife-sharp edge, the way it cut close to the wound she’d been nursing so clumsily.
Eleni straightened, leaning over to catch her eye until Adeline could avoid it no longer.
“Pick a flower,” she suggested, bobbing her head toward the cherry blossom. “A little piece of her to keep.”
And so Adeline rose.
She didn’t muchwantto disturb the peaceful stillness of her parents’ garden, but her Aunt’s attention so often bordered on intense, and in this particular moment, with the mess of emotions strewn around her insides and fighting to get out, she would take any excuse for some distance. She rose, tugging at her skirt when the wool caught against the rock wall, and crossed to the tree. Adeline took her time choosing, sifting carefully through their glassy, frosted blooms until she found a flower with five perfect petals.
The Goddess and her Daughters, her father had told her once, when she’d brought him another little flower on a Dhaliaan beach all those summers ago. He’d taken the small blue thing in his palm and smiled, gently touching the tip of each petal with a fingertip.Mother Goddess, he’d said,here at the crown watching over us all. And around her, like the arms of a star, who do we have?
Aera, Lasra, Tala, and Isa,she’d chanted back to him, endlessly pleased with her own great wisdom.
