The Secret World of Briar Rose(74)
Briar held her for what felt like an eternity. She didn’t let go, even as Corin gripped her arms and wailed. They curled inside the pool, floating between each other’s limbs. This was different from drowning herself in the darkest depths of the ocean or burying herself in soil like a grave. Corin could no longer sink into oblivion and self-hatred, because this time, Briar Rose carried her.
CHAPTER 32
NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO
LILITH DID NOT remember dreams, but she remembered this one like a memory bubbling to her subconscious. The swell of the ocean, the burning light of sun. How the earth carried to shore a dying boy. At twelve years old, she’d already had lungs powerful enough to scream for help. She had already lost her mother. The thought of losing another person, even if it was a stranger, was earth-shattering.
Her arms had hooked underneath his armpits as she’d dragged him away from water and dropped him into sand. He was skinny and pale, and appeared almost the same age as her, perhaps younger. She’d brushed wet, blond locks of hair from his face and crushed her lips against his. He’d tasted like the salt of the ocean and her tears.
She’d switched between pressing her palms hard against his chest and blowing air into his mouth. In those frantic minutes, she’d pleaded for him to open his eyes, waited for air to expel from his lips. A single breath to let her know he was alive.
Please, please, please.
Breathe.
Lilith woke up with his cold breath against her ear.
Moonlight slanted into her bedroom, casting rippling shadows on patterned wallpaper. Satin drapes were left open to reveal a full moon hanging bare in the sky. Parts of Lilith’s room brought her back to reality: red upholstered furniture, malachite candelabras, the cabinet that doubled as a mirror, reflecting her body entwined with another in bed.
She turned to look at the boy from the ocean, grown into a man a decade later. His jaw had become more defined, sharp as the slice of light that fell through the windows. His hair’s white-blond locks were tousled like the blankets. Long lashes swept over pale cheeks, and the gentle breath of his lips fluttered over her face.
He looked so innocent whenever he slept. Soft and ethereal, the light of the moon gently caressing his cheek. For a moment, his expression was the exact replica of the time she’d pulled him from the ocean in Zilar. A moment of peaceful unconsciousness before she’d breathed air back into his lungs.
Lilith untangled herself from his arms and sat up from the bed. The movement made him stir awake. When she was certain he was fully conscious, she said, “I told you not to come here anymore.”
She thought she had locked the door. Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe some part of her pretended to forget. When Amelia accepted Ezran’s marriage proposal, Lilith had been horrified by the news. He’d intruded upon their lives and fooled the kingdom into letting him stay by proposing to the princess. All so that he could be in Lilith’s life again.
Ezran crawled toward her on the mattress and wrapped his arm around her waist, burying his face into her back like a lost child. She fought the urge to take his embrace, but didn’t push him away, either.
“I can’t keep acting like you’re a stranger, Lilith. It doesn’t come as easily to me as it does to you.” His voice was husky and low, muffled by the fabric of her nightgown.
Guilt panged her chest. She whispered, “It’s not easy.”
Acting like she didn’t know the man who arrived at the castle was an act of willpower, a conscious gesture for her to maintain composure and avoid letting too much blood drain from her face. Still, when she warned Victor and Amelia to stay away from him, that he did not have the right intentions in coming here, an edge in her voice had slipped. Like a hidden dagger falling out of her sleeve.
They didn’t listen. She couldn’t give them a good reason to.
No, it wasn’t that. She just didn’t. Perhaps, deep down, she felt relief in having someone she knew and loved close to her again.
Their friendship had bloomed the day she saved him from the ocean. The king and queen of Zilar had thanked her for rescuing their only child and welcomed her inside their castle. Her childhood, once lonely after her mother’s passing and father’s abandonment, brightened with new memories of running down banquet halls, sharing pastries in the kitchens, and feeding carrots to the horse in the stables. She became close to the servants and cooks in the castle, kind-hearted folks that were native to Zilar just like her mother was, and learned about their dreams to move to Gyldan. They’d echoed the sentiments her mother once told her: that this land, once nothing more than barren desert, could be turned into anything. Even a home.
When her father returned to her life with a proposition for her to marry the king of Gyldan, she knew it was only to restore his social standing. After she’d accepted the union, Ezran had argued, “If it’s a life of easy wealth you want, I can give you that.” He couldn’t understand her reasonings because he always had a home, one that was stolen from people like her mother and his servants.
On the day of their tearful goodbye, Ezran had said he would never forget her.
Of course, he was always true to his promises.
Lilith lit the candle on her nightstand, illuminating the bedroom with a warm glow. Her shadow loomed against the patterned wallpaper, and she remembered staring at that same silhouette on a closed door the night she had visited Amelia’s bedroom. She wanted to tell the princess the truth. If Amelia hadn’t been sleeping, if Lilith had only come to her sooner, she wondered if things could have changed.