Page 156 of Reign

She glances at me. “I know it’s stupid.”

“It isn’t.”

“It’s flowers, Luciano.”

“No.” I hold her gaze. “It isn’t just flowers.”

Her expression changes.

A slight parting of her lips. A softness around her eyes that tells me she understands exactly what I mean.

The cuttings are a living piece of her mother, held in a house Elena still thinks she needs permission to take from.

She looks away first.

“My mother used to say a garden should reward people for paying attention,” she says. “She liked flowers that surprised you. Plain ones that smelled beautiful at night. Delicate ones that survived storms. The ones men ignored because they weren’t dramatic enough.”

“She taught you well.”

Her throat moves.

“She died before she finished.” Her brow pulls together. “Teaching me things, I mean. She died before she finished teaching me things.”

The garden seems to quiet around us.

Men are still working. Stone still scrapes against the terrace. Someone calls for another bag of soil.

I stop hearing any of it.

The hurt in her voice should tell me to leave the subject alone.

Instead, it makes me want the rest.

I want to know what her mother taught her. What she didn’t have time to teach. What happened in that house before Elena learned to turn every vulnerable thought into something sharp enough to protect it.

“I know what happened to your mother,” I say.

“Everyone knows what happened to my mother.”

“Not everyone knows what it did to you.”

She looks down at her hands.

Dirt beneath her nails. Sun across her skin.

A few minutes ago, those hands were buried in the soil of my garden, reshaping it without hesitation. Now she studies them as though they belong to the girl who learned all of this somewhere else.

“It was her birthday,” she says.

I still. “They took her on her birthday?”

Elena nods, her smile sharp and wrong. “Killed her the next day. On mine.” Her voice stays light, too bright around the edges. “Very dramatic of her, honestly. I’ve never been able to compete with that kind of exit.”

She offers the joke as though making the story clever will make it easier to hold.

It doesn’t.

“Elena,” I say quietly.