Page 53 of Curse the Flame

And I let him. I get the feeling he needs this more than I do, and I let Aiden kiss me and caress me and, like at night, just hold me when he’s done.

My back is still to the railing. For a moment, he looks at me, his black eyes gleaming with an emotion that I rarely have ever seen. In the next, he peers over my head and down before his lips widen into something that is one hundred percent a pleased grin.

“You grew a garden,” he tells me, both his voice and his accent thick.

Releasing me so that I can see it, I turn as I say, “I noticed it earlier—whoa.”

So… he’s right. I grew a garden. I thought he meant the roses and the Narcissus flowers and the field of lavender. All that’s still there, but in addition, there are a handful of trees, even more roses—yellow and white ones in addition to the blood-red ones—and wildflowers sprouting everywhere in that square-shaped space surrounding the two benches.

What was a small garden has turned into a forest of flowers—and all because of one kiss.

I turn back to him. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m glad you did. Blossom’s blossoms,” he muses, his shiny black eyes gleaming. “I told you, Willow. You make the Underworld better.”

“But that was your place to go and think⁠—”

He takes my hands, squeezing them with his. “I want you to have it. It’s yours now.”

“Mine?”

Once upon a time—or a little over two months ago—all I wanted was to be around nature. Somehow, I ended up in the Underworld, and now Aiden is giving me a small botanical world of my own to enjoy in the realm of the dead?

“Don’t you remember? I said that, too. How I’ll give you everything your heart wants,” he reminds me. “And your heart wants its blossoms.”

My heart wants him.

And I don’t know what to say about that.

Because if I told him that I’d love to do the same and give him what he wants, that’s giving up everything I’ve ever known and loved to stay here with him forever. Am I ready to do that?

I don’t know.

I just… I don’t know.

CHAPTER 14

THE PORTAL

WILLOW

Two weeks after I kissed my husband for the first time, my new garden gives me a pomegranate tree.

I should’ve expected it. A few trees appeared after that kiss, but none of them bore pomegranates. No. They were olive trees, and I had the strangest reaction when I realized what was growing on the branches.

And then, about a half an hour ago, I walked into my garden, looking forward to spending a few peaceful moments among my patch of nature in the Underworld, and I saw it.

It’s not a sapling. Not a hopeful little branch pushing through the soil. A full-grown tree stands in the center of the garden as if it has always been there, its dark leaves glossy beneath the strange, eternal twilight of the Underworld. Heavy red fruit hangs from every branch, so ripe that several bow toward the ground beneath the weight.

I’m staring at it now.

For the past two weeks, the garden has continued to grow around me. Roses have climbed the palace walls, tangling through the black stone until the thorns frame the windows. The lavender field has grown to the point that it spills over into the main garden. Trees that take years to grow appear suddenly…

None of it surprises me anymore.

The pomegranates do.

I haven’t seen one since the day I arrived in the Underworld, when I joined Aiden in the dining room for supper and found the fruit waiting for me beneath a covered dish.