Page 55 of Where Shadows Bloom
I exhaled heavily. “Everyone dances around the truth here, and I’m asking you, soldier to soldier, to be honest with me. We have a common enemy.” I pointed down the allée, back toward the scene of the attack. “For decades we soldiers have been bandaging a wound that will just keep bleeding unless we find a reasonwhy. These monsters have been around since your childhood, haven’t they?”
Guillem gave a stiff nod.
“I cannot allow another generation of children to grow up fearing them.”
“Caballera,” he said, his voice soft, exasperated, “if you swear on your life to repeat none of this, I will tell you everything I know.”
I bowed low, offering my neck. “I swear it.”
He tapped his hand against my shoulder, accepting my vow. “All right. They come at night, every night. They vanish by sunrise. I was hired in 1650. The queen mother’s funeral was to be held at Le Château, and they needed more guards in the garden. The place was swarming with monsters then. They didn’t let the courtiers outside at all.” Guillem squeezed his eyes shut, like I did when I tried hard to remember. I wondered if his memories were painted in red, like mine.
“The past few months have been the hardest. There was a flood of them a couple of months ago. The king was out of sorts. He wouldn’t let anyone into the garden. He had us patrolling round the clock. It was around the time that the king’s favorite singer had fled the court. The king tried to keep things calm, but people were worried for her.”
The singer. “Her name was... Françoise?” I asked, remembering what Eglantine had told Ofelia and me.
“That’s right. She went missing, and we were suddenly patrolling the gardens night and day. If you ask me, it’s almost like the king hoped he’d find her wandering the gardens instead of acknowledging that she’d left to be an opera diva.”
“And since then?” I prompted.
He gestured back to where the Shadows had attacked him. “Well,now.Things have been unusually mad. Started around the time the Hall of Illusions appeared. The king demanded three soldiers in rotation to guard the new hall, even though we’ve been swarmed out here.” Guillem nodded toward me. “We could always use another knight among our ranks. I can recommend you to the king.”
A lump rose in my throat. I wanted nothing to do withhim.
Besides, my head was spinning. My heart was yearning for quiet. For answers.
“No, thank you,” I said, and a beautiful, honey-sweet thrill swept through me at the word—no. A decision, my decision, all my own.
How strange. Freedom, choice, used to be so impossible and so frightening, sobig. For just a brief moment, I got to grip the reins of my life and pull in the direction I wanted to go.
It feltgood.
With a final bow, I left him standing, speechless, in the golden circle of torchlight.
I had a suspicion about the king’s favorite singer.
I barreled into the library, marching directly for the ledger that Eglantine had shown us. The last drops of orange sunlight trickled into the library, leaving only small pocketsof warm, golden candlelight.
Bringing it to my desk, I flipped through the pages, past the reference of Ofelia’s mother’s arrival. And then further back in time, back and back. The rumors had mentioned that Françoise had vanished about a month ago. My finger ran down the column of names starting from the first day of the past month. I scanned each one.
LeNotre, Gonzales, Villiers, Moire...
Dozens of names, but no “Françoise de la Valliere.”
I searched the list one more time. But I did not doubt my senses. My heart quickened.
Her departure had not been noted. She could have left in secret, I supposed, but the king’s guards at every gate made that near impossible. The other possibility... she had truly vanished.
“Mademoiselle Lope?”
I whirled around at the sound of my name, my penknife already drawn.
Eglantine, the librarian. She had largely kept to herself each night I was here, busying herself with a novel or by tidying up her papers over at her desk.
She stood a few paces between me and the double doors now, a wry smile on her lips as she observed me. “I’ve been looking for my penknife,” she said.
I breathed again. “My apologies, madam. I—I am not used to being defenseless.”
“I understand.” She kept her gaze upon the knife—which I had yet to relinquish. “This evening, I peeked at the books you studied so voraciously. I thought I’d find poetry and plays and sonnets, but no. Books about the king. Books about monsters. Books about the Underworld.”
