I hadn’t spent much time in the palace gardens since visiting as a child with Mareena. She would let me climb the trees lining the wall, and the wall itself, as long as I was young enough that such play wasn’t considered improper. When I stepped outside, I appreciated the beauty of the landscape and felt nostalgic to stroll through a piece of my childhood.
A network of paved walkways stretched across the garden, plotted out in a grid-like shape. They snaked around the various plants and bushes, providing a space for people to walk without ruining the perfectly trimmed grass. The pathways flowed parallel with the main attraction of the garden: a stone fountain amongst a rectangular pool, which continually sprayed a stream of water and produced the only noise you ever heard there, a constant burble.
The patches of soil housed multitudes of bright flowers that sprung up from the ground. Bright, velvety petals reached out of the shadows to grasp the sun. Most of the flowers were roses, probably chosen because of their color: dark, scarlet red.
I stole a glance at Crevan who strolled calmly beside me observing his new surroundings. Does he think I’m purposely intimidating him by taking him to a place with the color red? After all, that’s the color of our kingdom. I don’t know how anything is supposed to work anymore. If he does think that, this will be very awkward.
If those were his thoughts, I couldn’t tell. His expression didn’t easily betray the emotions he experienced. His face was placid and expertly hid anything he might be thinking. It had been almost twenty minutes of walking, and neither of us had spoken a word. Well, if this entire experience is going to be me walking around with a quiet, absent-minded prince, then it’s an incredible waste of time. I have questions, and I don’t want to wait for them to get answered. I guess I must say something to disrupt the silence and get him talking.
“Are you . . . enjoying the garden?”
He nodded but offered no verbal response, which sent a flash of irritation through me. Nope. That didn’t work. Don’t ask yes or no questions he can answer by simple gestures. I want actual words to come out of his stupid mouth! Please! Talk to me! I want to know what’s been going through your head for the past couple of days.
I tried again. “Do you have a garden in your palace too? What’s it like?”
“Yes, but it’s smaller than this one.” He laughed to himself, startling me. I hadn’t heard him laugh before. It was a pleasant sound, similar to the way Davin laughed. “In the wintertime, it gets so cold that all the plants will die, so it’s horrible work to maintain. I applaud our gardeners because they have to keep the plants alive in a wintery climate. I’m sure they’re not getting paid enough.”
Good. He’s talking. Not exactly the topic I want, but still. “Is it quite cold there?”
“Very. It always snows. If you live in my kingdom, you’d better like snow because we get way too much of it. The animals hibernate, the trees turn bare, the lakes all freeze over. It’s pretty harsh. I think my father purposely suggested the idea of the marriage alliance in winter so he could get away from the blasted weather.”
“What’s your opinion on the weather at this moment?”
He glanced up at the sky, the cloudy, dreary, freezing sky. “It’s a bit chilly but definitely not as bad as if I were home right now.” He smiled again, and I wanted to mirror his expression, but my necklace wouldn’t allow me. All I could do was stare blankly at him.
Crevan’s face grew a little pained. “Can you, um, if you don’t mind . . .”
“If I don’t mind what?”
“If you don’t mind taking off your necklace, I would very much like you to do that, please,” he suddenly spat out. “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to this. It’s like talking to a brick wall. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like for you to remove your stones while you’re with me. I’m terribly sorry if that’s disgraceful to your culture or something, but I absolutely can’t stand talking to you while you’re like this.”
I was grateful for the request but puzzled at the same time. That’s the same thing your father asked of me earlier, which is innocent enough. But you haven’t asked anyone else to take off their stones—just me. Why me? I tried to file those questions away and focus on the task at hand. Slowly, I unclasped the necklace and bundled it up neatly in my palm. Crevan physically relaxed.
I tried to brighten up a bit as if suddenly gaining access to my emotions. “That was a lot of talking at once. You’ve hardly said anything to me during your entire visit. Where did all of those words come from?”
He chuckled. “I apologize. I wanted to wait to talk to you privately. My father would probably eavesdrop on every conversation we’d have in the palace.”
“Why?”
The prince threw his hands up in defense. “I don’t know! He’s very interested in you.”
“Why?” I questioned.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you’re marrying his son.”
“Yes, but his son doesn’t know how to carry on a conversation anyway.” I said with a smile.
“Hey!” He laughed. “I just don’t like talking to people that often. I’d rather be by myself and sit in the background. Does that make any sense to you?”
That made perfect sense, but I pretended I didn’t understand. “No. You’re the prince, for goodness’ sake. You were born into a position of attention, and you’ll never get out of it. Don’t you have a lot of stuff to do? In fact, what’s your life like? Just . . . in general.”
He shrugged. “It’s the same as yours, I guess.”
“I bet this weird marriage alliance messed up all of it, right?”
“Yes. Absolutely. This is so strange! This has thrown my entire life out of rhythm. I mean, I’m the prince, but it’s not like I have much control over my life. My father usually runs everything.”
“Do you have any idea why he suggested this now?”
“He’s been toying with the idea for a while, but I only got snippets of information. He wanted to get all of the facts straight before he suggested it to your family. Everyone wanted to end the war, but nobody knew how. I guess this is the quickest solution.”
“What’s your family like, exactly?” I asked, daring to press a little harder. “Princesses can’t be heirs, right? How do your sisters feel about that rule?”
Crevan shrugged. “I don’t talk to them that often. Everlee is young, and she doesn’t ever say anything. Ellison is older than me, and she would be the heir if she could be, but I don’t really know if she holds that against me or if she’d actually want to be the queen of our kingdom. She seems quite shallow; the only thing she cares about is her appearance and reputation. Political and diplomatic meetings bore her, so I don’t think she’s very interested in having my position.”
I risked another specific question. “What about your mother? How do you feel about her?”
“Um, she’s a little disconnected from the family. She isn’t involved in any of our lives, especially my father’s. She seems to hate my father for some reason, which doesn’t make sense because she definitely agreed to marry him. She never spends time with him and doesn’t speak to him at all. Something must have happened between them, but I guess I’ll never know.” He shrugged. “It took quite a bit of convincing for her to come here in the first place.”
“Your mother’s name is Emerald, right?”
“Yes. A while ago, someone decided to give all the girls in our family names that start with the letter e: Emerald, Ellison, Everlee.”
I laughed alongside him. “Yeah. That’s pretty weird.”
“What about your family? It must be pretty weird too.”
“Weird how?”
“None of you can feel emotion when you wear the stones. Your entire kingdom is like this, right? How does it feel not to feel anything? How do you function as a family?”
“We don’t function as a family,” I replied, avoiding the other two questions.
“But you don’t know where the stones came from.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, but I answered anyway. “No. We don’t.”
“Do you have any clue?”
“Ha! Nobody has any clue. We were digging in one of our mines when one of the walls collapsed, and we found a hidden chamber with chests inside. They held thousands of gemstones, even amber. All of them sparkled in the torchlight. It was like a miracle. We don’t even know who made them or who put them there. It’s not like you’re supposed to find ancient treasure in a silver mine.”
“That’s strange.”
I glanced upward at the late afternoon sun, feeling the warm rays of sunlight that brushed across my skin. The sun was a signal of how much time had passed: almost an hour.
I should be back at the palace by now. I turned to Crevan. “Maybe we should stop for today.”
“Okay.” His face didn’t display any negative emotions, so I assumed that the agreement was genuine.
I stumbled over my words. “Um, thanks for talking with me.”
“Yes. I enjoyed it,” rang his cheerful response.
I observed him confidently stroll back to the palace as if he already knew the layout. He stepped across the gardens and located the entrance with ease. I found myself shaking my head in disbelief.
That boy is an enigma. I don’t know what to think of him. The words from the conversation trailed through my head again, my mind recounting them and storing them away. He seems friendly. Quiet. More of a passive communicator like me.
I studied the necklace that curled inside my palm. For one thing, he’s not afraid to freely express his emotions—unlike everyone else who surrounds me and unlike me, who can’t decide whether to embrace them or throw them away.
Maybe our relationship won’t be so disastrous after all.
As I hurried back to my room for some much-needed alone time, I ran into Akilah. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t mind, but today had been exhausting. I wasn’t in the mood to be interrogated by a hyperactive fifteen-year-old.
“There you are!” she squealed. “I saw you run off immediately after the ceremony, with Prince Crevan of all people. What’s up with that?”
“I . . .” I stammered.
“Please tell me this isn’t one of those times when you can’t speak coherent words. At least tell me something about what happened. Please?”
“Maybe. I want to go to my room and—”
“Great. Let’s go there.” She latched onto my wrist and started yanking me down the hallway.
“Stop. Just slow down for a second.” I ripped my arm out of her grip. “This day has been very draining.”
“Oh, well . . .” Her eyes drifted down to my hand. “Hey, is that your necklace? You’re not wearing it or anything! Isn’t that—”
I made a frantic shushing noise that came out more like a hiss. “Stop it. I’ll tell you about my day if you don’t tell a soul about what I did, okay? Is that fair enough? Now, if you want to go to my room and talk, then let’s do it.” I took off down the hallway without waiting for a reply.
She looked a little flustered but trailed after me anyway.
As soon as we arrived at my room, she turned on me, seizing every second to talk. “So. What did you guys do?”
I selected simple words and simple explanations. “We walked through the gardens and talked. That’s it.”
Akilah wasn’t satisfied by that response, so she pressed harder. “Come on. What did you actually talk about?”
“Just random stuff, like our families, the weather—he said it was so cold up north and that all of the lakes had already frozen over—the marriage alliance, that sort of boring nonsense.”
“The marriage alliance doesn’t seem like boring nonsense.”
I waved my hand dismissively. “It only came up once, and we only spoke a few words about it. He seems to know about as much as I do. His father is hoarding all of the details for some reason.” It seems to me that Raymon’s being very controlling, especially to Crevan, which is weird because he’s been so relaxed and easygoing whenever he talks to me. “I don’t even know when the wedding is going to be.”
She sighed. “I hope it’s soon, though. Then we can get all of this nonsense behind us.”
“Yes, that’s what we talked about: the weather and the marriage alliance. That’s it.” I hoped those words would be the sum of our conversation.
No such luck. Akilah immediately pounced on another topic. “Did you get to know him? Is he an okay person?”
“I don’t know quite yet, but he seems fine. He’s friendly, a little shy, that sort of thing.”
“Like you.”
“Sure, but the difference is—”
A hollow tapping noise alerted me to someone at the door, promptly ending our conversation. The door swung open, revealing a person standing in the hallway. Because of her position in front of me, Akilah spotted the guest before I did.
“Oh, hi, Lady Mareena,” Akilah said.
I sighed with relief. Out of all the people who could be at my doorway, I preferred her most of all. I turned around to greet her.
Mareena nodded. “Hello, Akilah, how are you?”
“I’m doing splendidly. Princess Syona just told me about her talk with Crevan. They went out into the garden and spent some time together.”
Mareena raised one of her eyebrows. “Really? Did she now? How did that go?”
Akilah’s eyes hooked on mine. “Good, I think, according to what she described.”
She smiled. “That’s fantastic, Akilah. Do you want to keep talking with her, or was your conversation finished?”
“I think our conversation was finished.” She glanced at me again, and I nodded.
“Great. Would you mind if I speak to Syona in private then?”
“Not at all, no,” Akilah promptly replied. She bowed her head and scurried right out of the room, a little more quickly than necessary.
After the door clicked behind her, Mareena chuckled to herself. “She’s irritating sometimes, but she truly wants to make you happy.”
I chuckled. “I guess. Why did you come here? Do you want to tell me something?”
“Let me see that necklace first.” She stretched out her arm, palm up.
I opened my hand and carefully transferred the tangled necklace from my hand to hers. She stared at it for a while, intrigued. “The amber color fits well with the rest of the stones. I think it looks very pretty. You’ve had it for a couple of hours, right? How do you feel?”
The question confused me. “How do I feel? Really?”
“Answer the question, please. Use as many adjectives as you like.”
“I feel suffocated, degraded, barred, powerless, constricted—”
“Okay, I think that’s quite enough. Nice vocabulary though.” She smirked at me then placed the necklace back into my hand.
“It’s so hard! I hate it!” I pounded my fist against the mattress. “It’s another emotion I have to pretend I can’t feel. I can’t show love to others anymore without danger of being punished. And how can I not experience love? Love is the most ingrained of all of our emotions. It’s the feeling that comes most naturally to humans. At least, the feeling that should come most naturally to people. Right now, everyone thinks it’s a liability.”
“I know. It’s very hard, and everyone expects so much of you— including me, I suppose. No matter how distant you think I am, I know exactly how you feel right now. I have empathy for you.”
“Hey. Be careful about using any word ending in the suffix pathy,” I jokingly said.
“Fine. I know what it’s like to feel your humanity is being taken away from you, that you’re being robbed of the privilege to experience life and all of its shortcomings, the emotional highs and lows, which are what makes life so fulfilling and enriching. But I do have one piece of advice for you.”
“And what’s that?”
She brushed one of her fingers against my nose. “Don’t bottle up that side of yourself. I know it’s slightly counterintuitive, but hear me out. The worst thing you can do is to pretend your emotions don’t exist at all. That is not the right way to deal with this problem. If you do that, you’re just as bad as everyone else. Cherish your emotions. You may not be able to show them but cherish them anyway. Take private moments by yourself to laugh, cry, get angry, and think of the people you love. Try to accept feelings are a part of who you are.”
Mareena smiled and continued, “I know it’s not going to be easy, considering that in public you’ve always swept your emotions under the rug and hidden that part of you. I know you sometimes don’t like to express yourself anyway—public or private—but that’s truly the only way to find balance and peace with yourself: accept your emotions.”
Hmm. I guess that’s sound advice. Advice that’s hard to keep but I’ll try to work on it anyway.
“What did you really come in here to tell me about?” I asked. “Or did you come to give me a motivational speech?”
She laughed quietly. “I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to spend time with you. We might not see each other as often once you’re married, but I came here to inform you that your father and King Raymon have decided some of the more important details of the wedding. It will take place in the evening on the last day of the winter season.”
“That’s only a couple of months away.”
“Is that bad? I thought it would be plenty of time for you to prepare.”
“No, it’s plenty of time. It’s just . . .” I closed my eyes, covering them with my hands. “I feel so young. I’m only seventeen.”
“Well, you’ll be eighteen by the time the wedding takes place.”
She was trying to be reassuring, but it didn’t improve the situation. “It’s not just that.” I removed my hands from my face and stared down at them. “I don’t feel ready. I don’t feel mature enough to go through with all this. It’s happening so fast.”
Mareena lifted her hand off the blankets and rested it on my arm. The sudden touch startled me as she rarely showed physical affection. “Syona, you’ll be ready. We’ll both be ready. We’re in unfamiliar territory, but we’re in it together. Just one step at a time, I promise. Malopaths will always and forever stick together.”
I stared into her soft brown eyes. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for what?”
“For . . . being my mother, for taking care of me so well when others wouldn’t. I am so grateful for you. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
She smiled, but layered within her smile were years of remorse and sorrow. Her eyes glistened. “Your mother was an amazing woman.”
“I know.”
Her voice was tender, fragile, like the thinnest branch on a tree. “I wish you could have met her.”
“Me too.”
Then, in that emotional moment, for the first time in my life, Mareena gently embraced me. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t even squeeze her back. I just sat there on my bed, soaking in the warmth of her skin and the steady rise and fall of her breathing.
Right then and there, it didn’t matter that I was a Malopath. I couldn’t have cared less that I was a princess arranged to marry a boy I hardly even knew or that tomorrow I would have to go out and face the world—alone this time.
Because there, in those few precious seconds, I finally felt safe.