MY WAY,” ARIS SOON CAME TO LEARN, MEANT “HIS WAY WITH Blythe’s non-
negotiable input.”
“I think Verena needs a national flower,” she said by way of greeting the next morning, the legs of her chair screeching against the stone as she dragged it from the parlor and into the foyer where Aris was rolling up his sleeves. She’d listened, ear pressed to the door, for him to tiptoe through the hall and down the stairs that morning. If his groan was any indicator, Aris had been hoping to do this work himself while Blythe slept. But Blythe was no fool; she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to watch his magic in action.
“I’ve no need for your advice.” His voice was a flat monotone. “Now if you could leave—”
“What about hellebore?” she asked, sitting sideways in her seat and swinging her legs over the arm. “They’re sometimes called winter jewels, you know. They’re hearty against the cold.”
“The cold,” he hissed. “Had you left the imagining to me, Verena could have been a tropical paradise that we’d be enjoying presently.”
He had a point, though it was too late now. Blythe sat on the room’s right side, angling herself so that she could watch Aris work. He looked different today. The collar of his white button-up wasn’t as tight as usual, and she found herself staring at the skin beneath the sleeves he’d rolled over his biceps. His golden hair, too, looked soft and untamed. She wouldn’t say it was wild by any means, as even then Aris’s posture gave him an air of rigidity that made him more formal than most. But Blythe found it difficult
to look away from this man before her, searching for slivers of the relaxed boy she’d seen in Life’s portraits. If anything, he looked eager to work, and perhaps even a little nervous, if the sideways glances he kept giving Blythe meant anything.
“Hellebore,” he murmured as he smoothed his fingers through his hair and surveyed the room. “Very well.”
All at once his threads were before him—thousands of them, gleaming a brilliant gold and weaving intricate lies in patterns too fast for Blythe to follow. The front pieces of Aris’s hair stirred as he worked, more threads joining the others by the second until even his shirt began to billow as if roused by an invisible wind that gusted as his magic took form. Beneath him, the stone floor of Wisteria morphed to an iridescent blue that stretched through the length of the room, shaping itself into something similar to the wintertime lake Blythe had played upon as a child. But the floor held steady when Blythe pressed her boots against it, as solid as stone. She sucked in a breath, fingers winding around the arm of her chair.
Blythe had always known that Aris was talented. She’d seen the proof of it through his various wonderscapes and in the ease with which he used his magic, as if it was an extension of his very soul. But watching him create something of this level felt wholly new.
Aris was an artist at his very core. The universe was a canvas he molded like clay between his palms, shaping it to his will. Imagination was given life as golden-framed portraits that spanned an entire lineage filled endless halls, and banisters twisted to mirror the crystalline floor. At the base of those banisters sprouted delicate hellebore sculpted from ice, their edges as smooth as if they’d been real. The flower was woven around the staircase balusters, too, its petals flourishing the higher the staircase rose.
Rather than his signature gold, a silvery sheen was cast over the foyer, making Wisteria look as though someone had taken a chisel to the moon and carved out this home. It was a palace spirited straight from the pages of a fairy tale, kissed by the stars themselves.
Blythe’s heart forgot how to beat as she rose, drawing tentative steps toward the banister, as if one wrong move would cause the world to crumble beneath her. She trailed a trembling finger down its length, then let out a startled breath—warm. Somehow the ice was warm.
Aris must have heard her. Everything from the gleam in his eyes to the
delight that sharpened his lips turned wild.
“Impressed?” he taunted, surely expecting a cutting response and the banter they’d grown so accustomed to.
Instead, Blythe whispered, “Yes,” as she smoothed her thumb around the edge of a sculpted hellebore. Beautiful. It was all so delightfully beautiful. “Aris, this is outstanding.”
His face twisted as if waiting for her to laugh or mock him for believing it. But as he watched Blythe’s skirts drag across the floor as she circled the banister, captivated by the smallest details, the tension in his shoulders loosened.
What must it be like, Blythe wondered, to be able to weave an entire world from one’s fingertips? What must it feel like to let one’s imagination run rampant, knowing that every impossibility was within reach?
It was wondrous. And for a sliver of a moment, as the barest hint of a smile crossed his lips—not a smirk nor any hint of smugness, but a true and proper smile—so was Aris.
But Blythe didn’t care for that thought and was eager to rid it from her mind. “One room is simple enough, but surely you cannot manage the same grandeur throughout an entire palace?”
“Grandeur?” Still mollified by her earlier admittance, Aris smirked and rolled his sleeves up farther. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Have a seat, love. We’re just getting started.”
 |
Blythe had known that fooling her father would be a feat, and yet still she’d underestimated even the early stages of the work involved. Aris’s magic worked as quickly as his imagination. Six hours later, however, Blythe learned that it was not his magic that consumed the majority of their time, but the forethought needed to craft a believable lie.
He’d refused to give her paints and an easel, but Blythe had convinced Aris to magic her a sketchbook to draw her ideas, wanting to participate. “We’ll need people,” she reminded him as she sketched a crude city full of figures, exhausted from the arduous role she’d assigned herself as the
director of this project. Aris hadn’t agreed to giving her that role, of course, but when she’d persisted through the first few hours of his scowling, he’d eventually given up and allowed Blythe to dictate. Or at least she had tried to—Aris had not listened to so much as half of her grand ideas, often scowling about how she needed to practice her drawing strokes.
“Of course we’ll need people,” Aris huffed as he eyed her work. The pair sat across from each other on the crystalline floor, Blythe cross-legged, bowed over like a prawn with the sketchbook in her lap, while Aris sat with one knee drawn to his chest and his elbow propped upon it. Tea and sandwiches had been served on magicked plates between them. Blythe was on her third helping. As was expected with the food Aris gave her, it was one of the best things she’d ever tasted. Who would have thought that a chicken sandwich coated with toasted almonds could be so delicious? Aris, too, had eaten several and had silently replenished the plates when they’d gotten low.
“And we’ll need a town,” she said, speaking between a mouthful and wagging her sketchbook at him.
Aris frowned, but Blythe made no correction in her manners. “I already have one in mind.” He turned his face from her, quieter than usual, his vitriol waning from exhaustion.
They—because Blythe had decided that she, too, would be sharing in some of the credit for this masterpiece—had made superb work in mere hours. Around them, what was once the palace of Wisteria had given way to their new temporary quarters, Verena. It was twice the size that Wisteria had been, and more than once Blythe found herself wondering how such magic could be possible. In the end, she knew it wasn’t worth her musings. No matter how hard she tried or how many years they’d have together, Blythe doubted that she’d ever come to understand Aris’s magic.
Not everything he’d created was ice, of course. The suite her father would be staying in was filled with dazzling stained-glass windows and vaulted ceilings adorned with white-and-silver crown molding. Fantastical figures of griffins and unicorns had been carved into it, so well embellished that it would take weeks of scrutinizing before someone would be able to spot each design.
There were ornate rugs and gold-leaf chandeliers with candles that sprouted from flowerlike buds. Every gilded portrait frame was over-the-
top, and several of the rooms on the lower level displayed grand paintings on the ceilings. She couldn’t tell for certain what all of them were—some looked like angels, some of them were floral, and others were of strange and mythical monsters that had Blythe wondering just what went on in Aris’s mind. There were statues, too. Busts of men with wings that covered their eyes, and a giant bronzed stag head. There was even a curious bust of a boar that held an uncanny resemblance to the one on her doorknob, and though she wondered whether Aris was baiting her with its existence, Blythe said nothing. She didn’t need to.
The palace that Aris—and she—had constructed felt lived in. Like a real place that had stood for centuries, collecting bobbles and expanding its royal splendor. Verena was a wonderland she wanted to get lost in. One where she could spend a week investigating a single wing of the palace and still not be convinced that she’d seen everything.
Aris had planned his creation down to the finest sliver of a detail, and it was a masterpiece. Watching him pluck away at his threads—crafting and then recrafting a painted ceiling several times until he got it right—taught Blythe more about Aris than the couple of weeks she had spent with him.
Whether it came to food, painting, music, or even sculpting, Aris expected the finest. At first, Blythe believed that he was just particular about what he consumed, but given the looks he’d sneaked her way or how his chest had swelled whenever something he did earned Blythe’s delight, she soon realized that it wasn’t only himself that Aris was concerned with.
Perhaps that was why he shared his meals and kept the dining room so impressive even when the rest of Wisteria had been left to ruin. Yes, Aris wanted to impress her with his magic and to maybe even scare her a little. But if Blythe didn’t know any better, she would have guessed that what Aris really wanted was someone to share it all with. Someone who would delight in the art and the splendor, and who would revel in all the grand things that he reveled in.
Blythe had peeled back one thin layer, perhaps, but there was still so much more to Aris that she’d yet to uncover. He was particular and precise, and as she inspected the smallest detail of dust between two of the frozen hellebores, she was fascinated.
“Do you love your magic?” Blythe couldn’t say what drew the question out of her. Perhaps it was how struck she was by all she’d seen or the fact
that they’d gone several hours without arguing. There had been some bickering over his choice of paint color, but overall they’d been doing remarkably well.
The sandwich he’d been about to bite into stilled at his lips. His reaction was so subtle that Blythe almost wondered if she was imagining it—a sudden stiffness of the shoulders and the ever-so-slight straightening of his spine that took Aris from relaxed to once again looking like his typical buttoned-up self.
“Are you trying to imply something?” His words held a defensiveness that hadn’t been there minutes prior.
Blythe flicked her gaze from Aris and stole another sandwich for herself. She took her time answering, pretending that her curiosity wasn’t urgent and pressing or that she wasn’t dying to peel him like an apple and bite into his innermost layer.
“I’m not implying anything, Aris,” she promised. “It’s just that, for once, you looked truly happy.”
Aris wasn’t quick enough at concealing the shadow that slipped across his face. “I find great joy in creating,” he said at last, though his brows pulled close to his nose. “I’ve never known anything but my magic. Using it is just a part of what I am.”
“Don’t you mean who you are?” Blythe corrected. “What you are is Fate, certainly, but you’re more than what you do.”
He exhaled a quiet, splintered laugh. “I’m afraid not everyone feels that way. People fear what they do not understand, and few understand their fate. You cannot fathom how close to their lives I get each and every day. And yet, despite that, you humans resent me. Not that it matters. Even if you didn’t, my brother will one day pluck you all from this world regardless.”
For the first time since Aris had created it, the palace was every bit as cold as it looked. The chill lasted only seconds before Aris turned his face to the floor, and Blythe saw him then—a hint of that man from the portrait, so much younger and boyish despite his years.
Looking at him, Blythe knew she’d been right. Aris didn’t want to be alone; he wanted to share his life with someone. Perhaps that was why Wisteria remained so bare—so that he would not be reminded of the world’s splendor when he hadn’t a soul to share it with.
“Well,” Blythe told him as she licked the almond crumbs from her fingers, “I think your powers are amazing. I wish that I had them myself— not the work that comes with them, of course, but the rest of it.”
It was astonishing how much Aris’s shoulders eased. He looked curiously toward Blythe, welcoming those words as if she was the first breeze on a weary summer day.
“If that’s true, then you’re one of the few.”
There was no saying why Blythe reached forward to set her hand atop his, trying to console the emotion he tried so hard to hide. It was instinctual, and so impulsive that she didn’t realize she was touching him until a flame ignited within her chest. The breath that Aris drew was sharp, but before Blythe could pull away she tore her focus from their hands long enough to look up. Past Aris and his scrutiny. Past the iridescent banisters and deep into the foyer, to where a flash of white hair skimmed the edge of her vision.
“Blythe?” Aris’s voice was distant, muddled through the sound of laughter and the same lilting tune that had plagued her mind. She felt as if she were spinning, her vision swimming as an ache blossomed across her temples. With each passing second the music swelled until it pounded against her skull, and in the corner of her gaze she watched as Life picked up the hem of her ivory dress and twirled.
“Blythe.” Aris yanked away from her, and all at once the world steadied.
No more music. No more apparitions of a woman in white dancing.
“Dear God, what’s gotten into you?” Aris was on his knee, face bent to inspect hers.
Realizing just how close he was, Blythe waved him off. “I’m fine. You need to work on your bedside manner,” she grumbled, trying to avoid his prying eyes.
Aris grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her still. “If you’re fine, then do you care to explain why your eyes were rolling back into your skull?”
She didn’t. Especially not when she thought they’d been open, staring down the foyer at the ghost of his dead lover.
Blythe sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down on the skin, combing her mind for answers. She was hallucinating, surely. But why?
Realizing she had nothing to say and likely growing tired of trying to pin
down her gaze, Aris released her with a weary sigh. “I can finish the rest of Verena on my own.”
“You’ll need my help,” she argued despite how weak those words felt upon her lips. Aris must have felt similar.
“I have it handled,” he told her. “Come tomorrow, you will fall at my feet in tears over how amazing I am.”
“It’s a wonder how you manage to stay on the ground with that inflated ego,” she spat. “I’m fine, Aris. Only a little tired—”
He wasn’t listening. Before Blythe could argue further, golden threads wrapped around her wrists, pulling her toward the staircase. She swatted at them, spitting out curses at Aris so vile that when she tripped backward on the first step, he turned to her with folded arms, his expression caught between offense and curiosity.
“Where do you learn such things?”
“Books,” she snapped, met only by a grunt of acknowledgment before even more threads wound around her waist and ankles. They dragged a resisting Blythe up the stairs, down the hall, and into her room, sealing the door shut behind her. And though Blythe’s tongue burned with the urge to tell Aris she hadn’t even begun to list all the names she had for him, she didn’t dare test the locks.
Because either Mila’s ghost had started haunting Wisteria, or Blythe was losing her mind.
