BLYTHE WONDERED IF THERE WAS A WORLD IN WHICH SHE MIGHT have enjoyed
having a wedding. Was it possible that she’d have gotten misty eyed as she looked upon the faces of loved ones waving her off? Could she have laughed with her beloved as they ran hand in hand toward a gilded carriage, dodging rice and flowers thrown by cheering guests?
She wondered, too, how quickly her thoughts might have wandered to the honeymoon. Customary though it was for a bride not to know what her new husband had in store, Blythe imagined she would have spent weeks sleuthing for answers, determined to uncover where they were traveling and how to best pack.
She supposed she should have been glad to have never wanted to get married, for she had no preconceived notions or idealistic fantasies as to what she should expect as Aris pushed her into the carriage and slumped in after her. He wore his smile until the very moment the door shut and he drew the velvet curtains closed. Only then, as their carriage took off down the hill, did Aris throw himself into the seat across from Blythe, drawing his legs close to avoid having to touch her. God forbid.
She scoffed, choosing to listen to the vengeful little voice in her head that told her to stretch her legs and take up as much space as physically possible in the confines of this carriage. She propped her feet onto the leather seat beside him and bent to touch her toes.
“What’s wrong, love?” she teased as he shifted away. “Afraid I’ll ruin you?” They were the same cloying words that Aris had thrown at her the day she’d barged into Wisteria Gardens and demanded his help saving her
father, and they made his lips twist. If he wanted to scowl and bemoan their situation, Blythe had no problem letting him. But the carriage was much too small and oppressive for her to do the same. She swept fallen strands of hair off her neck, mulling over ways to make this trip at least moderately tolerable.
All the while, Aris rubbed the band of light around his finger as if trying to pry the thing off, glaring at the drawn curtains as though they were the source of his immense dissatisfaction. Blythe barely spared him a glance, aware of how futile the effort was. She’d tried removing it herself too many times to count.
When the toe of her slipper brushed his thigh, Aris looked half ready to burst from his skin. “You are a filthy, deplorable abomination—” He paused, brows pressing toward the sky. “What on earth are you doing?”
Blythe was bent forward at the waist, hands behind her as she stretched her fingers back to try to tug the fastenings of her corset. “Surely you don’t expect me to sit here for hours, hardly able to breathe. Your temper is making this carriage so unbearably hot that I will perish if I cannot cool myself. Besides, we’re married now. You should be the one tearing me out of this infernal thing.” She sighed her relief as one of the laces finally came loose, giving her enough room to wiggle an inch or two in the corset. She’d have pried more free if she could reach them, but for now this would have to do.
All the while, Aris observed her straining with flattened lips and brewing annoyance, but that was nothing new. “Why would I expect you to sit in here for hours?”
Blythe made a gesture to all that surrounded them. “We took off in a carriage after our wedding reception. What else am I to assume but a honeymoon?”
Aris’s bitter laughter slithered over her, making Blythe’s loosened fastenings feel like snakes gliding across her skin.
“I would sooner drive a stake through my chest than travel anywhere with you. Honeymoon.” He scoffed, eyes flashing a dangerous molten gold. “You have lost your mind. We’ll be returning to Wisteria once our guests have dispersed.”
In the blink of an eye, golden threads shone from every direction. No longer did they seem like distant gossamer things, but slick as metal and so
sharp that a single touch threatened to break skin. Blythe pushed to the edge of her seat and threw open the curtains, craning her neck to see that, in the distance, guests were filing out of Wisteria Gardens. One after the other they shuffled forward, silent as they ducked into their carriages.
Aris was controlling them. Of course he was controlling them, because why wouldn’t he be?
“You have all the power in the world and this is how you choose to behave?” She leaned back before she caught a glimpse of her father or Signa, tempering herself. It wasn’t worth making a fuss; that would only encourage him. “The least you could have done was take me to the sea. I wouldn’t have said no to a safari, either.”
“I would rather chew off my own arm” was his only reply.
“People will ask questions if they know we’re still here,” Blythe argued. Ten minutes in the carriage and already the horses were circling back to Wisteria Gardens.
“No one will ask questions if they can’t find us,” he said. “I’ve had enough of your friends pestering me. We’ll leave town for the length of a honeymoon, return when the timing is appropriate, and then we’ll say our goodbyes—”
“To each other?” Blythe perked up. “To this town, you cretin.”
At first, Blythe thought he must have been joking. She waited for him to laugh or for those smug lips of his to twist into a smile that would confirm he was only trying to rile her. Yet Aris kept all composure as the palace came back into view.
Blythe stared at it, her mouth dry as she thought of her father’s warning. “Excuse me?”
“This entire town believes me to be a prince,” he said with a flourish of his hand. “Surely you did not expect that we would remain here.” Though he wasn’t asking, Blythe made it a point to answer him.
“And whose fault is it that they believe such nonsense? If you hadn’t felt the need to inflate your already monstrous ego, we wouldn’t have this problem.”
Aris’s knuckles whitened as he clenched his hands against the seat. “If you hadn’t ruined my bargain with Miss Farrow, then we wouldn’t have this problem, either.”
She folded her arms, ready to rip the stifling lace sleeves from her gown. They were only feet away from Aris’s palace now, and every inch that the carriage crawled forward had Blythe pushing back in her seat, trying to create distance between herself and Wisteria Gardens.
She’d always known that she’d made a rash decision in taking Signa’s place. It hadn’t ever been one that she’d regretted, though. At least not until that moment, when the prospect of building a life away from her father loomed before her.
“I’m not leaving.” Blythe kept her voice void of the emotion that threatened to make her sick.
“Of course you are. Everyone expects that I’m taking you to Verena—” “Verena isn’t a real place!” she hissed. “It doesn’t matter what they
expect. You have the power to placate their minds, should anyone question me staying.”
The courtyard they approached was a ghost of what it’d been less than twenty minutes prior, all signs of the wedding eradicated as though it had never happened. If only she could be so lucky.
“I may have that power,” Aris said, “but that doesn’t mean I intend to use it for you. My home was made to move; I will not remain here a second longer than necessary.”
Blythe’s mother had died, and it hadn’t taken long for her brother, Percy, to follow. Byron Hawthorne, too, had gone away with his new bride so that she could give birth to Blythe’s nephew without anyone analyzing the timing of their union.
That left Elijah without a familiar soul, and after all he’d been through, the thought of him wandering alone through Thorn Grove was too much to bear.
The carriage rolled to a stop on the pristine path of the courtyard, and while Aris hurried out, Blythe remained seated.
“I won’t leave.” Though the words were a whisper, the ferocity within each one was unrivaled. “Should you try to take me, I will tear my nails across your eyes and crawl back here if I must. I will tie myself to the forest trees and bite every hand that tries to drag me away.”
“You are a demon in human flesh.” Aris tugged a hand through his hair, turning his dissatisfaction toward the sky before he blew out a breath. “Where do you even come up with this nonsense?”
Blythe braced herself against the carriage, both heels pressed against either side of its door as if pushing herself deeper inside. She clutched the seat, fingers curling into the leather. “I will not leave this carriage until you agree that we are staying.”
Aris looked plainly upon her defiance, hands held behind his back as he studied her. “Is that so? Very well, then, let’s see if you mean it.” Without missing a beat, he slammed the carriage door shut so hard that Blythe had to draw her feet back at the last moment so they wouldn’t be caught. She fell to the carriage floor, clawing her way back up in time to see through the window that Aris had given one of the horses a slap on the rump. Whoever their driver was, they were clearly magicked and not in their right mind, for the carriage once again took off down the hill.
Blythe’s mouth hung ajar as she tried to find the words to convey her rage as she watched Aris’s figure shrink in the distance. He waved as she journeyed onward, and the last thing she saw of him was the infuriating, satisfied smile etched across his lips.
 |
Blythe hadn’t the faintest clue where the carriage was destined for, nor did she care. She’d spent the past hour cursing her wretched husband with every foul word she’d ever overheard, still in her bridal gown with half of her corset laces loosened and her hair strewn about. She was too lost in her own thoughts—concocting plans on how she might commandeer the carriage and run away to Foxglove to spend the winter with Signa—to notice when they stopped moving.
She froze at the sound of a horse’s weary huff, only then pulled from the happenings of her own mind.
“Why have you stopped?” Blythe called to the driver, the hairs on her neck standing. She was met with no reply.
Peeling apart her fretting hands, she bent to peer out the window.
To anyone else, the trees that surrounded her might have looked the same as any other forest. But Blythe had spent her entire childhood among these trees and recognized with a single glance precisely where the carriage
had taken her—to the woods behind Thorn Grove. To the woods that housed her mother’s garden.
All at once, the tension left her body. She stepped out of the carriage, heedless of the threads of fate that wound around her, guiding her through windswept trees that bowed as if to greet their forgotten ruler. Their beauty came with great greed as they swallowed up every ounce of warmth and sunlight, leaving nothing but darkness and a bitter chill that bit through her slippers. Blythe braced herself against the cold, wondering with each step forward why Aris would bring her here of all places. It took several minutes before she stopped looking for him behind every tree, half convinced that he intended to jump out and surprise her only to laugh at his own cruel joke. But the deeper into the woods she traveled, the more Blythe realized that Aris was nowhere to be found.
She hadn’t visited her mother’s garden since before Lillian fell ill. Blythe had been too sick to argue when her father made the choice to seal it off and hadn’t felt prepared to face it once she’d healed from her poisoning. Then there’d been the fire, of course, and Blythe couldn’t bear seeing her mother’s favorite place reduced to ashes.
Even in a bitter winter, her mother’s garden had always been a spectacle. Lillian had donned her thickest coat and walked there every afternoon to ensure the resilient hellebore and pansies that took their turn in the spotlight were tended to. Elijah had once asked why Lillian wouldn’t let him send one of the servants in her place; she hadn’t believed any of them could properly care for the garden. Not like she could.
For the majority of her youth, Blythe had gone with her mother, enjoying her time watching the tiniest sprouts bud into spectacular flowers. As she got older, though, Blythe’s visits became less frequent, for she was distracted with tea and lessons or with books that seemed so much cozier to read inside by the hearth.
Footsteps soft so as to not disturb the garden’s silence, she made her way around its edges, tiptoeing over char and toward where her mother’s grave sat at the edge of the pond. It’d been cleaned recently, though even a scrubbing could not conceal the havoc the fire had wrought. The headstone was a fragile thing, one corner cracked and crumbling and another section discolored, making the words upon it difficult to read. The earth was overtaking it, too, moss from the pond’s edge climbing its way up the stone.
But that was only nature, and Blythe didn’t think her mother would have minded. She probably would have enjoyed the idea of having her body taken by the earth she so loved.
Blythe pressed her hand against the stone, feeling the sting of heat behind her eyelids as she curled her fingers into Lillian’s engraved name.
“Hello.” Blythe’s voice was little more than a breath as she sank beside the headstone. “I’m sorry that it’s taken me until now to visit, but I bet you never believed that I’d get married, did you?” Blythe’s smile was small as she leaned her head against the stone, listening for a response that would never come.
What she would have given to go back. To have set aside whatever it was that had felt so important at the time and joined her mother on her journeys to the garden. Even if Blythe could have gone just once more— even if she could have made a single new memory with Lillian—she would have bent the world to make it so.
She pressed a kiss to the stone, chest aching. It was a feeling she knew would never go away—one that dulled with time, perhaps, but also one that spawned from the absence of something that could never be returned. As if someone had reached within her to pluck out a piece of her very soul, and had left her fumbling as she learned to live without it.
How cruel Aris was to bring her to this place. Every day she felt her mother’s absence like a knife between her ribs, and on the day of her wedding it was worse than ever.
But Lillian wasn’t the only one who had taken their last breath in this garden.
Blythe rose from the headstone, not bothering to lift the hem of her dress as it dragged through ash she wished would have disappeared by now. She hated wondering whether it belonged to the flowers that once filled this garden, or to her brother’s corpse.
Percy had never loved the garden as she and her mother had. He’d accompanied them numerous times over the years, though mostly so that he and Blythe could chase each other through the trees. She could still hear his laughter in the wind and her mother’s gentle chiding in the birdsong that slipped down her skin and made her shiver.
Percy had changed over the years, but never would she have suspected him capable of harming their family. The pain of his betrayal was worse
than any poison, and she understood why Signa had kept the secret from her for so long. It was the same reason she wished to keep the truth from Elijah.
Never, not in a million years, would Blythe have hurt Percy the way that he had hurt her. Not even now, knowing all that she did.
“I wish things had turned out differently.” Standing on the barren soil where so much once flourished, Blythe sank to her knees. “I wish you had told me what you were going through. We could have faced it together.” She kissed her hand and pressed it to the ground. Burnt twigs littered the earth where Blythe had once spent days inhaling the scent of rows of hyacinth. She had eagerly awaited the spring bloom of wolfsbane and the sight of frogs emerging from hiding to perch atop lily pads.
Now, there was only silence. No frogs, no wolfsbane or hyacinth, not even the hardiest hellebore. The fire had ravaged the garden she had cherished, and Blythe doubted it would ever regain its former splendor. Each scorched tree was a reminder of how much had changed over the past two years, and how much she had lost.
But there was no going back. The weight of that truth and the ache of her loss brought a tear to her eye. As it slipped down her cheek and onto the earth, Blythe forced herself to stand.
That’s when she saw it—a tiny crimson petal beneath where she had been crouched. Certain her eyes were deceiving her, Blythe bent down to inspect it. But before she could get closer, a sharp pain flared in her ring finger, so intense that her vision blurred. The world tilted as a searing heat washed over her skin. She stumbled toward the nearest tree, but it vanished before she could grasp it. One blink, and her vision went black.
Another blink, and Blythe felt as though she was being swallowed whole, as if someone was breathing through a reed and had drawn her up into it.
She clamped her eyes shut to fend off her sickening stomach, and the next time she opened them she was back at Wisteria Gardens, on her knees in the empty courtyard and in the precise spot where she and Aris had separated hours prior.
