SEVEN

DELIA’S CHOICE

Delia liked the garden. She had always wanted one, ever since she was a little girl. And if someone had bothered to ask that little girl what sort of garden she’d wanted, she would have described something much like this—not the large garden in the central keep, but this much smaller courtyard, hidden away in a less-traveled part of the castle, with high walls and a small fountain in the center. Creepers with white and purple blooms climbing the stone; maples, weeping willows, gingkoes, and chestnuts with golden foliage spreading their limbs from terraced beds, and spider lilies crowding around their roots. Spider lilies were her favorite flower. At home they didn’t last long. Here, they bloomed each day.

It would be nice to have some honeysuckle, violets, peach blossoms, magnolia, roses. But those were in other gardens, where spring and summer held sway or at least passed through. Perhaps one day she would see them again, but until then, this would do.

She’d tried to have a garden behind the house she’d shared with Scott. She’d bought bulbs, a hoe, a trowel—even a hat. He’d gently made fun of her about it, referring to her as “Candide” or “Mrs. McGregor”. Over time she came to realize that the gentleness was an illusion, just contempt dressed up in fine words, poetry, and literary allusions. He thought he was better than her, smarter than her, better bred than her, and for a long time she believed it too.

Even now, it was her first reflex—to blame herself for him leaving, even though she ought to know better.

But Scott’s new, younger wife had a garden. Delia had seen him helping her in it, along with their beautiful little girl. Confronted with that, she remembered the things her mother had told her when she was little—about not setting her sights too high, how she wasn’t pretty enough to pull off the fairy tale, how she needed to keep her mouth shut—preferably in smile form—and be prepared to weather disappointment, because God knows that was all she had ever known.

She wondered, sometimes, if her mother had ever realized that complaining to your only child about how your entire life and everything in it was at best third-rate could possibly affect that girl’s self-esteem. That telling a six-year-old to expect a disappointing life might set a self-fulfilling prophecy in motion.

Probably. And just as likely, she wouldn’t have cared.

Another reason Delia liked the garden was that almost no one ever came to it but her. In the years since her marriage dissolved, she had come to value her solitude. The reading chair on her porch, the tub with lion’s feet, her kitchen table set with a very simple meal and almost no mess to clean up.

But now someone was here. And not any someone.

Him. Kostye Dvesene.

She had first met him as Aster’s father, years before, an enigmatic man with a strange accent and a mysterious, possibly dangerous past. She had found him surprisingly handsome despite his red hair, which she did not think suited men very well. Kostye pulled it off, somehow. He had flirted with her, which she liked just enough to feel bad about it, because she’d still been married, then. She had decided, on reflection, that he hadn’t been serious, but had merely been trying to get into her good graces so she would admit his daughter to the school without all the necessary paperwork.

After that, she hadn’t seen much of him. If he showed up at all for conferences, he often seemed a little out of it. Eventually he stopped coming entirely. Aster did well in school, but Delia began to suspect her home life wasn’t good. When she’d gone to his house to confront him, she’d gotten far more than she had bargained for.

And now she was here, in some other world, staring across the garden at him.

He didn’t look happy. Did he suspect something? Did he suspect her?

“Hello,” she said. “It’s a nice surprise, seeing you here. What’s the matter?”

“The girl. The one who claimed to by my daughter. She disappeared.”

Play dumb, Delia. She realized how much her own inner voice sounded like her mother. How had she never noticed that before?

“Dusk, you mean? But that was weeks ago.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said. “There was another, just now.”

“That’s unusual,” Delia said. “Not to mention suspicious.”

“Yes,” he said, putting his hands behind his back and meeting her gaze directly. “It is.”

“What?” Delia said. “Why are you looking at me? Wasn’t I the one who told you Dusk wasn’t your daughter, once you got that damned necklace off me?”

“You did. But I’ve lately been reminded that you also insisted that although Dusk was not my real daughter, I did have one.”

She’s hoped he had forgotten that, as he had forgotten many things in their early days here. She had tried to convince him of the truth, but she now saw that as pointless and even dangerous. Especially since the chancellor, Vilken, arrived. That had changed everything.

So, she lied.

“I was wrong,” Delia said. “I assumed that if Dusk was pretending be your daughter, you must have one.”

“You also said we all once lived in the Reign of the Departed. This girl made the same claim.”

Delia stood up and frowned at him. “Are you accusing me of something?” she said. “If so, please get to the point.”

“Do you know anything about this girl?”

“I don’t,” she said.

“Did you help her escape the oubliette?”

Something caught in her chest, and panic threatened to climb out of her throat and sit on her shoulders, but it was too late to admit to anything now. Her mother had always said that once you started a lie, you were married to it, and if you divorced it you would end up with nothing, or worse.

Her mother hadn’t been wrong about everything.

“I not only did not,” she huffed, “I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”

“Don’t you?” he was frowning dangerously, now. “I’m told otherwise.”

“By who?” she asked. “Vilken?”

His glower deepened.

“I am not new to power,” he said. “Or to the court. Or intrigue. You speak against him, he speaks against you—it is how things are. Each of you wishes to sway me. Do you flatter yourself to think you can control one such as I?”

“I’m not trying to control anyone,” she said. “When you ask for my opinion, I give it. That’s all.”

“You once said that the curse has robbed me of my memories,” he said. “You did claim I had a daughter. I remember that.”

“I told you—” she began.

“I know what you said,” he replied. “But this plot involving my imaginary daughter . . . It baffles me. Yet it keeps coming up.”

“A lot of things baffle me,” Delia said. “Why do you collect every girl over the age of eight and send them off with Vilken?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Then you should be able to explain them,” she said. “I think you do not have any reason at all. I think this comes from him. You are doing his bidding.”

“The Chancellor believes it is necessary to end the curse.”

“Really? Has he explained how that works? How it will end the curse? Because I see no rhyme or reason in it. Unless he doesn’t need every girl—maybe he only needs one—one particular girl. But to find her, he must search through all of the others.”

“Why?”

“Now you’re asking for a reason?” she said. “I don’t know. There is one person who knows the answers to these questions, and it is not me. Ask him.”

“He is traveling,” Kostye said.

“Wait,” Delia said. “When did he leave?”

“A short time ago.”

“Before the girl showed up? The one claiming to be your daughter?”

“No,” he said. “After.”

“I see. And who took the girl to the oubliette?”

He didn’t answer.

“I see,” she said. “You have the nerve to come here and accuse me, when the truth is as plain as an old maid?”

“I accused you of nothing,” he said.

“That is a lie,” she said. “You absolutely came here to accuse me.”

He stepped forward. It was a simple motion but had so much potential violence in it that she took an involuntary step back.

“You dare speak to me like that? Who do you think you are?”

She was frightened. She had seen him set an army on fire, break the back of a demon with horns, summon a storm that would make a hurricane slink off in shame.

But she was also furious.

“You know,” she said, “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been asked that, one way or another. Who do I think I am? And what they mean, these men—and it is always men—is who am I in terms of who they are. Am I a plaything, a girlfriend, a woman who doesn’t know her place, a girl talking out of turn? An enemy or a friend, a ring on your finger or a rope around your neck? Who do I think I am? I’ll tell you who I am. I’m Delia Fincher, and I don’t give a good goddamn who I am or aren’t to you. So just—the hell with you.”

She was preparing to walk defiantly away when he suddenly turned inside-out, his head and feet folding through his belly and coming out as wings from his back, a face full of teeth erupting from his chest as he exploded into something far larger with claws and fire and smoke. A talon wrapped roughly around her arm and another around her waist. Then the courtyard was receding below them, the castle itself shrinking with incredible speed.

She tried to scream—she may have—but if she did, she could not hear it. The roar of the wind was deafening.

Delia closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was on a roller coaster, that it was all perfectly safe, that he would not drop her to her doom.

It took her a little while to understand that they had stopped, because her inner ears kept spinning, telling her she was falling even though she could feel the stone beneath her.

She cracked open her eyes.

They were on a mountaintop, surrounded by more mountains. Valleys swamped by shadow lay below and all around. The sun was still a bloody stain on the horizon. Kostye stood before her without a stitch of clothing on. He was panting and his eyes were wild, as if he was watching a battle of some sort. Then his gaze focused on her.

“Something is missing,” he said. “Before the curse came. Something happened. I don’t know what. I don’t know, and it drags at me. Sometimes, I feel trapped, but I cannot see the snare.”

“You scared the hell out of me so you could tell me that?”

“I—I am sorry,” he said. “The rage, it overcomes me sometimes. I was born with it. It is part of me. The rage. It is the source of my power.”

“That’s really too bad,” Delia said.

“You know I have enemies,” he said. “Many enemies who would destroy me. I cannot be passive. If I leave them be, they will come to me, and bring my doom. So you understand, if one of my enemies is already here, near to me—”

“You’re going to drop me off of a mountain, is that it?

“No,” he said. “Look around you.”

“Yes,” she said. “I might find it beautiful under other circumstances.”

“The Kingdoms are many,” he said. “And they are wondrous. And they are ill, infected by this curse. I believe there is a reason that only the three of us have somehow escaped its grasp. You, Vilken, me. It may be that he has . . . needs that do not pertain to my goal. As you enjoy your garden and your books, the chancellor enjoys—other things that have nothing to do with me or my designs.”

“Oh my God,” Delia said. “What is he doing with those girls? What is happening to them?”

“That isn’t your concern,” he said.

“Vilken, then. Who is he to you? Why do you trust him at all?”

“I have known him for a long time,” he said. “We were young together, fought together.” He looked troubled. “He has changed, I admit. His face is familiar, but I do not always know him. Time is an anvil, Delia. We are shaped on it, we are broken on it. It may be Vilken took the girl. It may be that he wanted me to think you did it instead. I see that now. I have been lied to before, and no great harm came of it. A lie or two is acceptable. Betrayal is not. I will sort this out. If the chancellor has betrayed me, he will regret it. Very much.”

But Delia also heard what he didn’t say. That if he learned she had betrayed him, the same applied to her. Rage or not, that was part of the reason he’d brought her up here like this. To show her what he could do if he wanted. Any time.

“You said you do not care what you are to me,” he went on. “I understand your anger. I admire you, Delia. But I need to know you’re on my side.”

“That depends on whether you’re on mine,” she said. “Are you?”

He stepped closer, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Something in her belly caught fire.

Then he kissed her. It was rough; his hands clapped to the back of her head, and she felt fear that nearly matched her lust. But after a second, he grew gentler, although his breath was quick and hot.

He hadn’t answered her question, and what was now happening was certainly no answer—just because a man was on you didn’t mean he was with you, her mother always said.

But she had her desires, her needs, and answers could wait.