He chuckled. “I doubt anyone will recognize us in the courtyard. Not with both of us masked, and just the moonlight and a few lamps to light the way.” He wiggled his fingers. “Besides, I have a feeling anyone out there will be too busy to care.”
My vast imagination filled in what could possibly cause others to be too busy to care.
“You’re such a bad influence,” I murmured as I placed my hand in his.
Hawke curled his fingers around mine. The weight and warmth of his hand was a pleasant shock. “Only the bad can be influenced, Princess.”
Chapter 24
“That sounds like faulty logic to me,” I told him.
He chuckled as he started toward the garden archway. “My logic is never faulty.”
“I feel like that’s not something one would be aware of if it was,” I pointed out, smiling slightly.
Cold night air greeted us as we stepped outside, and my heart kicked up at the familiar, sweet scent of flowers and rich, damp soil.
My gaze bounced around a little wildly as I looked for something to be off, to be different than the last time I had been here. There had to be. Oil lanterns were spaced throughout the main pathway, but the sections that branched off were dark—the moonlight couldn’t even penetrate them. My steps slowed as the soft breeze rattled the bushes and lifted strands of my hair.
Hawke spoke softly. “One of the last places I saw my brother was a favorite place of mine.”
That snagged my attention, and I stopped scoping out every bunch of flowers we passed, looking for what, I had no idea. It was like I expected to see wilted petals dripping blood, or waited for the Duke to finally make his appearance. Hawke’s earlier anguish over his brother had given me the impression that this was something he didn’t want to discuss, so the topic surprised me.
“Back home, there are hidden caverns that very few people know about,” he continued, his fingers still tightly woven with mine. “You have to walk pretty far in this one particular tunnel. It’s tight and dark. Not a lot of people are willing to follow it to find what awaits at the end.”
“But you and your brother did?”
“My brother, a friend of ours, and I did when we were young and had more bravery than common sense. But I’m glad we did because at the end of the tunnels, was this huge cavern filled with the bluest, bubbling, warm water I’d ever seen.”
“Like a hot spring?” Hushed conversations drifted out from the areas full of shadows, quieting as we passed by.
“Yes, and no. The water back home… There’s really no comparison.”
“Where are—？” Glancing down a path where I heard soft sounds, I swallowed hard and quickly looked away. I became even more aware of the feeling of his hand against mine, the rough calluses on his palms, and the strength in his grip. I thought about that heavy, spicy, and smoky sensation I’d felt from him earlier. “Where…where are you from?”
“A little village I’m sure you’ve never heard of,” he said, squeezing my hand. “We’d sneak off to the cavern every chance we got. The three of us. It was like our own little world, and at the time, there were a lot of things happening—things that were too adult and grown-up for us to understand then.” His voice had taken on a far-off quality as if he were in a different space and time. “We needed that escape, where we could go and not worry about what could be stressing our parents, and fretting over all the whispered conversations we didn’t quite understand. We knew enough to know they were a harbinger of something bad. It was our haven.” He stopped and looked down at me. “Much like this garden was yours.”
The veiled Maiden fountain was only a few feet from us, the sound of trickling water surrounding us. “I lost both of them,” he said, his eyes shadowed, but his gaze no less powerful. “My brother when we were younger, and then my best friend a few years after that. The place that was once filled with happiness and adventure had turned into a graveyard of memories. I couldn’t even think about going back there without them. It was like the place became haunted.”
I didn’t need to open my senses to know that the pain was festering in him, and it wasn’t exactly a good idea to use my ability twice on him, especially when it was evolving. But through our connected hands, I dwelled on the all-too-shallow well of happy thoughts and let it briefly flow through him.
I felt his hand tremble slightly, and then I spoke, hoping to distract him. “I understand. I keep looking around, thinking that the garden should look different. Assuming there’d be a visible change to represent how it now feels to me.”