Page 265 of Reign

She nods. “Yes.”

She pushes the marshmallow onto the skewer and holds it too close to the flame.

“I remember the room,” she says.

I listen as my chest tightens.

“I remember being locked inside. The sound of the door. My mother’s voice.” She watches the marshmallow catch fire. “Her necklace lying on the floor.”

“Elena.”

She blows out the flame.

Smoke curls between us.

“I remember the good parts too,” she says. “Her perfume. Her hands in the garden. The way she hummed when she was concentrating. The exact shade of lipstick she wore when my father had guests coming.”

There is nothing useful I can say.

“What perfume?”

Her fingers still around the skewer.

“Primavera Nocturna. It was discontinued.”

“What did it smell like?”

She blinks.

“Orange blossom,” she says slowly. “Gardenia. White musk. Something warm underneath. Vanilla, maybe. Or amber. I was little.”

“You remember.”

Her mouth trembles once before she controls it.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I’ll always remember.”

Orange blossom.

Gardenia.

White musk.

Vanilla or amber.

I place each note somewhere permanent.

“What happened to her things?”

Elena’s expression closes halfway.

“I don’t know. Santo has the journals in his library. Maybe Angelo has her clothes. Maybe the necklace is sitting in a drawer somewhere.” She looks toward the unfinished garden again. “Maybe my father threw everything away because keeping pieces of her would have required him to feel something.”

Her voice stays even until the end.

Then it breaks in one small, devastating place.

“I hate it if he threw them out.”