WHEN BLYTHE CAME TO NEARLY AN HOUR LATER, IT WAS TO A cacophony of
familiar voices arguing over her.
“Hasn’t Thorn Grove seen enough parties in its days?” Aris spat. “It’s not as if any of them have turned out well.”
“What would you have me do? Bar my doors and ostracize my family further? I will not be the widower who’s shut away in some haunted old manor.” The second voice was Elijah’s, and its contempt had Blythe straining to open her eyes.
“None of that matters.” Signa spoke louder than the others, a sharpness to her tone that snapped the men to silence. “We don’t know that anything’s happened. It’s not been even a year since her recovery. Her body is still frail.”
“Perhaps she would recover faster if she was to return to Thorn Grove permanently,” Elijah suggested.
This was met with strident protest from her husband. “Is there something wrong with our home?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you that very same question. Blythe arrived here barefoot and without so much as an escort. It’s no wonder she’s fainted; she could have caught her death out there!”
“She’s not a porcelain doll, Elijah. Your daughter isn’t going to shatter if she’s not carried on a palanquin.”
The room dissolved into so much bickering that Blythe couldn’t make out what was said next. Every voice was fighting to be on top of the next, and all she wished was for them to cease their arguing so that she could
drift back to sleep. Then Blythe heard a fourth voice. A watery one that spoke low into her ear.
“Wake up,” it said, soft among the bickering. Eyes weighted by exhaustion, Blythe struggled to crack one open. Death peered down at her, his eyes as silver as the stars. For once, Blythe did not find his presence unnerving. Rather, there was a familiarity that squeezed her heart. A comfort that had not been there days ago.
How many times had Death looked at her with those eyes? Fleeting memories teased the edges of her mind. Ones of him laughing as they sat beside each other beneath the bend of a wisteria tree. Memories of him and Aris quarreling over whatever her husband felt like quarreling about that day and joking together once they’d reached a truce. Memories of the two of them sampling new liquors and of being dragged across the world whenever Aris was excited for them to see a new piece of art, or to try something they’d never before eaten.
So warmed was Blythe by the memories that there was no controlling the tear that fell down her cheek. Death startled at the sight of it until understanding dawned. The severity of his shadows lessened, growing brighter in the face of her recognition.
“Tell me it’s not time?” she whispered.
His touch was tender as he brushed one gloved finger across her cheek to swipe away the tear. “It’s not your time. Not yet.”
Once, Blythe would have cowered beneath his presence. Now, the touch had her lips cracking into the smallest smile before she gave his hand a gentle squeeze. There was so much more she wanted to say to him—so much more to discuss—but there before Aris and her father was not the time.
“Then I suppose I should wake up.” Her chest was tight as she stared at the wallpapered ceiling of her bedroom at Thorn Grove, tracing outlines of blue-and-silver whorls the same as she’d done so many times before. How many months had she lain in this spot, her body aching with exhaustion just as it was now? How many days had she filled with only her own mind for company as maids wandered the halls, whispering about the dying girl they thought too weak to hear them?
With every whorl, Blythe’s heart pushed higher into her throat, threatening to suffocate her. She hadn’t noticed that the voices around her
had gone quiet until someone—her father, she thought—sank against the edge of her bed.
“Are you well?” he asked at the same time as Signa demanded, “What happened?”
Blythe opened her eyes to find Signa’s face contorted with a familiar look. One that meant Signa had found herself another puzzle and was in desperate need of solving it. Blythe eased herself upright, trying to keep her attention pressed forward and far away from the ceiling. Even the weight of the blankets reminded her of a being trapped in a spider’s web, awaiting her death as she suffocated upon a bed of silk.
“I’m fine,” she managed, though the sound was ragged. “Perhaps I’ve exerted myself too much over the past few days.”
Or perhaps it was Solanine making good on her threat.
There was tea at Blythe’s bedside, the scent wafting up in tendrils of steam that made her nauseous. The walls were too close. Too cramped. The scent too familiar. And the wallpaper… God, the wallpaper. She wished the fire in Thorn Grove’s library all those months ago had spread down to her room just to have burned it.
Each breath was measured, and each as desperate as the last. It wasn’t until Aris stepped forward that some of the tension in her belly snapped, automatically more relaxed as he came to Elijah’s side and took hold of her hands. Her fingers curled around his, desperate to escape this room and free herself of its memories. One shared look between them, and recognition sparked in Aris’s eyes. Suddenly his arms were slipping beneath Blythe and lifting her from the bed.
“We’re going home.” He didn’t take the time to sort it out as a discussion. Given that Blythe was distracted by the thundering of her own heart, she didn’t hear Elijah’s argument. Only saw Death take hold of Signa’s hand and draw her back, and heard when Aris whispered, “Sitting in the room she almost died in will do her no good. With all due respect, I’m taking my wife home.”
Home. For so long Blythe had envisioned Thorn Grove when she’d heard that word. Why was it, then, that she wished only to return to the comfort of Wisteria Gardens? The comfort of a place where she had felt like an outsider since the moment she’d arrived?
“I will check in with you tomorrow,” Aris told his arguing father-in-law
as he swept toward the door. “You all will be welcome to visit, should you wish that.”
As much as Blythe wanted to assure the others that she was fine, she couldn’t manage to get the words out. She could only turn, eyes pleading with Signa, whom she still needed desperately to speak with.
“I’ll be there,” Signa whispered, understanding the look. “As soon as you’re well enough to have me, I’ll be there. I swear it.”
Blythe was too tired to nod, relief crumpling her frame. She held tightly on to Aris, shutting her eyes as she curled into his chest.
Though he made a show of bundling her into a blanket and easing her into a carriage Blythe was quite certain was not theirs, the moment they were inside with the curtains drawn, Aris pushed the carriage door open once more. Only this time it did not open to the alarmed faces of her family, but into Wisteria.
A very warm, very festive Wisteria.
Aris helped Blythe into the palace, which curled itself around her in greeting. It was well furnished now, not with ice and sculptures like when it had been masquerading as Verena, but as it had been the very first time Blythe had laid eyes on it, back when she attended his ball. Marble pillars stretched toward a ceiling of red, draped in ivy that was adorned with red and gold ribbons. Holly dangled from the mantel, woven around towering candles that bathed the room in a haze of amber light. Three stockings hung above the fireplace—one blue and adorned with a silver B, one gold and adorned with an A, and a final red stocking that Blythe had to squint at to see that it also had a B, though beside it was a small paw print with golden stitching.
“You gave the fox a stocking?” Blythe asked, incredulous.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Aris’s neck retracted, as if he found the question distasteful. “Beasty is a part of this family.”
“Beasty? That is what you chose to name her?”
“I thought you’d appreciate having her named after you.”
For perhaps the first time, Blythe found she had no immediate retort. From the corner of Beasty’s favorite chair, curled and warming by the hearth, the fox snored so contentedly that Blythe couldn’t help but laugh, bested by them both. Grasping the arm of her own chair for support, she eased herself onto the cushion and let warmth sink into her bones. No
longer was the fire gasping or struggling to maintain life. It blazed, proud and powerful, as she stretched her feet toward the flames. She could understand why the fox enjoyed the spot so much.
“You’re the most ridiculous man I’ve ever met.” It was perhaps the greatest compliment she could give him, and Aris soaked it in. He settled a blanket over her shoulders and shifted into the spot beside her, moving a touch slower than his usual. Less assured.
A cup of tea appeared before them each, and Aris stirred several spoonfuls of honey into his own. Unlike the tea at Thorn Grove, this one’s scent was wonderfully mild to her unnerved stomach.
“I want to know whether you’re all right,” he told her as he tapped his spoon against the side of the porcelain to dry it. “A true answer.”
“I’d rather discuss anything else.” Leaving her tea alone for now, Blythe burrowed deeper into her blanket.
“I would rather never discuss how I’m feeling,” Aris said, “though unfortunately we are married and obligated to such conversations.”
She frowned, wishing to disappear into her cocoon. If she was to bare her soul, it would not be for free. “Then tell me something true and I’ll do the same.”
“Something true?” Aris relaxed in his seat, cup and saucer floating before him. No longer did Blythe have to squint to see the golden threads that held them up. They were so apparent that she wondered what might happen if she were to reach out to touch one.
Aris ran a hand over his jawline, one leg swung over the other as he leaned back with a casual grace that had Blythe’s chest aching with familiarity. She instantly recalled a dozen more times he had sat just like this, his neck exposed as he propped an elbow onto the top of his seat and tipped his head against his fist.
“I’ll agree to that deal,” he said. “But only if you go first.”
Blythe had been trailing her eyes down the length of him, taking in the leanness of his frame. The veins of his forearms and the delicate hollow of his throat. It took far too much effort for her to pry her attention away. She shifted in her seat as a traitorous heat stirred in her low belly.
Why in heaven’s name was she like this?
“I remained living in that room at Thorn Grove even after my recovery, but I’m beginning to wonder whether I actually despised it all along,” she
began, surprised by how easily the words slipped free. “After we came here, I believed that I missed my home, but now I realize I miss only its people. Stepping back into that room was like returning to a nightmare I’ve only just escaped. Lying sick in that bed, staring up at that ceiling and then at so many worried faces of people wondering whether I might die… I am glad you brought me home, Aris. I’m glad you got me out of there.”
She took the cup of tea in her bare hands, clutching her fingers around the porcelain just to have something solid and warm to focus on. Something real.
Aris took one look at how tightly she clutched her cup, and suddenly the hearth burned stronger, its heat sinking into her tightened muscles. “I’m done trying to run you out of Wisteria. When you left this place, I was relieved. I thought I was glad to no longer have to care for you or wonder whether you’d be outside my door ready to terrorize me as soon as it opened. But to my surprise, a larger part of me felt your absence in ways I do not yet understand.
“I have made thousands of deals in my life,” he continued, lifting his hand so that the band of light on his finger caught the hearth’s glow, “but none of them have ever manifested themselves to such an extreme. As many fates as I have woven, I have never seen my own. But I do not believe in coincidence, Sweetbrier, and after all that has happened I am not so foolish as to believe that you aren’t a part of my story. I have watched humans fight against their fates for a millennium, and I have no intention of doing the same to my own. We are bonded, you and I.”
Blood rushed in Blythe’s ears, making her head fuzzy. They were more than just bonded, but as far as Aris knew, it was Signa who’d exhibited Life’s powers. Blythe was weak. She was frail and soft, and so incredibly human. So why would he ever expect the torrent of power that brewed heavy in her chest even then?
“I’m done running,” she told him, setting her teacup aside. If she wanted answers—about who she was, and whatever it was that Solanine demanded she fix—then being at Wisteria and triggering her memories was likely her best shot. And of course there was another much larger reason that Wisteria felt more comfortable to her now than anywhere else in the world.
A smile drew across Aris’s lips, and he rose to his feet. He extended his hand to her, palm up. “I’m glad to hear it. Because there’s something I’d
like to give you.”
