In the distance, lightning crackled across the horizon, followed by the deep, low rumble of thunder. A storm was brewing, purple and bruised against the sunset. I hoped it’d hold off until after the coronation, which was to be held on the garden terrace.
Rounding the garden wall, I followed the golden glow of lanterns through the trees—and found that a shadow stood by the wall, staring at the stones before them. I felt the back of my neck prickle. No one was allowed back here, and all the servants were busy tending to the guests.
“Who’s there?” I called.
The shadow glanced back at me, though darkness obscured its face. Then the torches lining the pathway flickered—and the figure was gone.
I hesitantly made my way up to the archway where the person had been, looking to see where they might have run off to. It didn’t make sense that they would just vanish into thin air. . . . Maybe it was just a trick of my imagination; the stress of the day getting to me.
But then I inspected the stone the stranger had been looking at, and there were names carved into it. Time had worn them away, but I knew what they said. My thumbs traced the letters, spelling out the names of a prince and his guard, long dead.
“Cerys!”
I jumped at Papa’s voice and spun around. He came up behind me, down the dimly lit stone path, looking dapper in a brown suit and a matching bowler hat tipped back on his head, a lily stuck in the ribbon. He grinned at me. “You look as beautiful as a sweet pea in bloom! Put your old man on your dancing card, would you?” He did a quick jig, and I couldn’t help but to laugh.
“You’re so odd.”
“I’m not the one hiding behind the garden wall.”
“I’m not hiding,” I tried to argue, but he waved me off because of course he knew I was lying.
“The fairest lady seneschal talked to you, too, eh?” he said, and my cheeks burned with embarrassment. The seneschal had even confronted my father about Anwen wanting us to be a part of her coronation? When I didn’t respond, he had his answer and sighed. “I figured as much. So you’ve decided to seclude yourself back here, then.”
“I like it back here—and the fox doesn’t seem to mind the company,” I added, waving over to the creature, who slunk into a nearby bush with a bone one of the kitchen staff must’ve given him.
Papa didn’t look quite so convinced. He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, his rough hand lingering on my cheek. In the soft lantern light, he looked old and wise, with a dirt smudge on his cheek and his wild gray hair sticking out from underneath his hat. He said tenderly, “Never let anyone make you feel unworthy. You deserve the moon just as much as anyone else.”
“Yes, well, only if the moon is made of cheese. It doesn’t do me any good otherwise.” I licked my thumb and rubbed the dirt off his cheek. “Now go out there and find yourself someone to dance with. I saw Gregor over near the endover lilies.”
“G-Gregor!” he sputtered. “That son of a— He owes me thirteen shills and three glades after our last gambling night!”
“Mm-hmm,” I replied, slinging my arm around his shoulder, and led him toward the entrance to the garden. “I think he also might owe you a dance.” I playfully nudged him through the honeysuckle vines that disguised the archway, and into the party.
He spun around and called, “Sprout?”
“Yes, Papa?”
He stood taller, his chin held high, and said, “You’re a daughter to be proud of.”
My bottom lip wobbled, and I shooed him away. He melted into the crowd of lace and satin, and when he was gone, I let the vines fall back over the archway and turned away. The music was softer on the outside of the garden, but I could still hear the kingdom’s most beautiful waltzes. I’d heard them my entire life, watching dresses of licorice and sunflower and marigold blend together in picturesque bouquets.
I sat on the grass beside the fox, who was now curled up, his nose buried in his tail. I leaned back against the ancient wall, humming the song. “I know it’s silly,” I told him, “but I always wanted to dance at a party like that, in a beautiful gown, with the right partner.”
The fox cracked one eye open. His nose twitched.
“Oh, don’t give me that. I know I can’t waltz. . . .”
The fox closed his eyes again.
“But perhaps with a talented partner . . .” I got to my feet and picked him up before he could squawk a disagreement, holding him against me tightly. I began to hum the song gently, my feet shuffling along because, unlike Wen, no one had taught me how to waltz. I pretended I was in the middle of all those supple silk skirts and rustling bows, the song bright and achingly familiar in my throat.
I understood why I could never leave Aloriya. My father could make the late king’s beloved endover lilies bloom year-round, but I could grow a forest in the name of Anwen. When Papa passed, he would hand the mantle to me, and I would prune the lilies and plant the new seeds in spring and trim the wisteria trees in the fall.
And it was safe. I was safe.
The wood couldn’t get to me here.
And while it would be nice to dance with someone, to make a home with someone, my home was this garden, my house its walls. I’d known it all my life—what else could I want? And besides, how many people out there could love a girl with dirt underneath her fingernails?
There were no stories of gardeners’ daughters. Or bakers’ daughters. Or blacksmiths’. We did not bloom where our roots did not grow. So I accepted that I would disappear into history just like every other gardener’s, baker’s, blacksmith’s, or merchant’s daughter.
And I would never be asked to dance.
I spun across the soft grass, humming the melody, which I knew by heart. One turn, then another, and another—and suddenly I felt my fingers folded into the hand of another, my hand on his shoulder, his on my waist. Golden hair and a sunset smile and eyes like ocher. My breath caught. Because for half a second—for a blink, a moment—it felt like—
But then I snapped my eyes open and accidentally dropped the fox. He gave a yip as he hit the ground.
I blinked quickly and glanced around, but there was no one on this side of the garden wall. I was alone—
The garden was quiet. The waltz had stopped.
It was time for Anwen to take her crown.
6
The Splendors You Stole
Cerys
“SPROUT! THERE YOU are,” Papa called excitedly, poking his head through the vines of the archway. “Hurry! We can’t miss the coronation!”
“Miss it? But I can’t . . .”
He took me by the hand and said, “We’re not missing this.”
“But the seneschal . . .”
“What can she do? Fire me?” He scoffed and pulled me through the garden. I glanced around for the fox, but he was gone, and the ivy vines closed behind me as Papa pulled me into the royal garden of Aloriya.
To most other countries and kingdoms in the greater continent of Vaiyl, this probably looked like a rather quaint affair—charming, I think I heard the princess from the cold climes of Malvok say. But the royal garden was so much more than charming. It was beautiful in the only way Aloriya could be, beauty that could only exist under the auspices of the Sunder crown. Paper lanterns hung from strings, tied from one tree to another, lacing across the sky above us, their warm, golden glow soft on the myriad of flowers and shaped hedges and bushes with flowering blooms. There was a fountain in the middle of the garden that ran crystalline spring water from a stag’s mouth as it stood on the precipice of a mountain, and lily pads grew in the pool beneath it, orange and yellow fish munching on flies that landed on the water. And surrounding us, like ancient sentries, were those old and bent wisteria trees, a spring breeze riffling through their vines, blowing flower petals across the garden.
Papa and I stood at the edge of the crowd so as to not arouse suspicion, but it was still painstakingly obvious how out of place he and I were here. My honey-colored hair was unruly and curly, even after I’d taken a brush to it, and my skin was still fair and freckled even though I spent most days outside tending to the gardens. My hands were callused, scarred from years of pruning bushes and being pricked by thorns. I was not beautiful by any noble standard, but no one expected me to be.
I was the royal gardener’s daughter, and my best friend was about to be queen of Aloriya.
I wondered, briefly, as I looked across the crowd, who Anwen’s late brother would have chosen as his partner if he hadn’t been lost. Who would Anwen choose? A prince, a princess—no one at all?
The seneschal led Aloriya’s finest onto the terrace, their silver armor shining in the lantern light, chests emblazoned with the head of a lion. The first king of Aloriya, King Sunder, had broken ground on the Sundermount with a sword that had a hilt carved like a lion’s head. King Sunder’s portrait looks out over the great hall like an eerie sort of specter, watching over the kingdom and its goings-on. If the seneschal had her way, she would’ve taken the portrait out and propped it up on the terrace, too, but thank the old gods it was bolted to the wall.
The orchestra trilled a soft note, and our princess stepped onto the terrace, as graceful and beautiful as a swan. A soft white mist began to settle into the edges of the garden and made the lights glow.
“Sprout,” Papa said softly, and I glanced over to him. He took my hand gently in both of his. They were tanned and gnarled from forty years of tilling the earth and pruning bushes, never once thanked for his artistry, for a single moment of his labor and love, blown away like petals on the wind. “Is this what you want?”
I gave him a strange look. “What do you mean?”
To that, he chuckled. “This. This garden, this job, this legacy.”
“I . . . I don’t know what else I would want,” I replied, a little at a loss of words. “I don’t know what else I could do. This is my home—of course I want this.”
He pressed a kiss to the side of my head, but I got the feeling that I had said the wrong thing, somehow.