The Secret World of Briar Rose(80)
“Before I left, she made me promise to protect her treasure,” he said. “That’s the only reason why I haven’t killed you. Show me where it is.”
Amelia furrowed her brows, straining for an answer in the murky depths of her mind. They had never talked about treasures before. Was this another secret Lilith didn’t tell her? “I don’t know what you mean.”
Ezran looked close to killing her, but redirected his anger to the tree beside him. She jumped as his fist cracked against the trunk, splinters wedged in his knuckles.
“You truly are useless,” he hissed. “If only you’d stayed where you came from.”
But that was what Amelia had tried to do. She never wanted to return to reality. Malicine forced her, even though her existence only made things worse for others. Lilith and Ezran had followed her and gotten caught. She had put Lilith in danger. If she was forced to be here, she couldn’t bear to live in a world without the person who’d brought light into it.
“We need to get Lilith out of the castle,” she urged. “I’m afraid of what my father may do to her—”
“You think I haven’t already planned that?” Ezran snapped. “She is mine, not yours.”
His words stung, laced with hatred but also truth. Since the history of time, there had always been a king and his queen, a prince and his princess, Ezran and his Lilith. Amelia merely stood at the fringe of stories, present by technicality of her blood, never truly residing in anyone’s heart.
Yet Lilith had done so much for her. Even if Amelia could never be part of the queen’s past, she could at least salvage something for the future.
“I’ll help her escape with you,” she said. “You can have a better life together, just like you wanted. I want that for her, too.”
Ezran brushed the splinters from his knuckles as he paced around, stewing in thought. A rough palm rubbed his face, as if it could wash away the tired lines and weariness. The clouds fully shrouded the moon in darkness when an idea struck him.
“When do you turn eighteen?”
? ? ?
IN THE OTHERWORLD, it had only felt like a day. In this world, Amelia had missed seasons of leaves changing, snow falling, babies crying, the elders dying. Nine months had escaped her like dandelion seeds from her fingertips with the change of the wind’s direction.
Tonight, midnight would mark her eighteenth year.
Even as she appeared at the castle’s doorsteps that morning, shivering and coated in mud, her godmothers moved quickly to fix her into someone appropriately part of this world. The faeries swarmed around her, both efficient and hysterical, hurrying her inside the castle. They washed her hair, changed her clothes, drew her baths, scrubbed her skin raw. They sanitized her as if they could cleanse any ugly darkness she’d been a part of, covering it instead with pretty bows and sweet perfume.
The godmothers fretted over Ezran, too, but there was an innate understanding that he was a prince who could take care of himself, while Amelia was fragile glass. They were right. Even though Amelia and Ezran agreed upon a fabricated story beforehand, he maintained a straight face as the prince who rescued Amelia from Malicine. Meanwhile, her nerves made it easy to believe she was too traumatized to recall specific details or speak more about the torture she went through.
I’m sorry, Malicine. The apologies repeated in her mind. Casting blame on the demon felt like a betrayal, as if Malicine had been right about her all along. But she glanced at Ezran’s whitened knuckles every time the godmothers spoke ill about Lilith and knew that he, too, restrained himself for the greater good of their plan. The godmothers needed to believe Ezran hadn’t reciprocated Lilith’s attempts to seduce him and remained loyal to Amelia. Ezran needed to return to the castle and help Lilith escape without suspicion of collusion.
As Ezran predicted, the godmothers filled the gaps in their stories with what they wanted to believe. Lilith was a wicked woman who sought power and seduced men, just like the women she helped in the brothels, while Malicine was a demon who kidnapped innocent girls. Of course Amelia and Ezran had nothing to do with this. Handsome men and beautiful girls were always innocent. How unfair it was, Amelia thought, for something as arbitrary as looks to allow someone good faith.
In the dressing room, she drowned in silk and tulle, choked in corsets and ruffles. Her gown spun in changing colors as her godmothers argued over the perfect attire for her eighteenth birthday. Her insistence in having a celebration excited them into nonstop chatter, a background noise she realized people only made to distract from sadder topics.
Several hours later, they transformed the ballroom into a gallery of beautiful people and decadent food. Her birthday cake, painted with buttercream and handcrafted flowers, floated on a glass pedestal as the centerpiece of the crowded ballroom, its opulence matching Amelia’s champagne-hued dress. Both existed to be observed, never cut open to see the messy insides.
While the castle attended her celebration and heavily guarded the event, Ezran used the distraction to slip into the dungeons, where he would help Lilith escape. Amelia simply needed to sit and look pretty, like any other useless thing. As she stared at the empty space where Ezran had vanished, an older nobleman talked to her.
“We were worried sick for you,” the guest said, even though they’d never met. “Thank goodness you’re safe.”
She smiled at false platitudes and brushed the moonflower crown weaved around her hair. It was the only accessory she chose without her godmothers’ input. The touch of its wrinkled petals, yet to bloom, reminded her why she needed to endure this. Lilith told her of real miracles, like kingdoms that could rebuild themselves from sand, and flowers that bloomed every hundred years.