“Oh, darling, you’re home!” The brunette cried out with a twinkling laugh, but from the tilt of her lips and corners of her eyes, she almost looked… guilty.
Darling? I frowned at the term of endearment but said nothing. The adrenaline was evaporating from my flesh and bones. The woman was strange. From Shao’s expression—one like he’d stepped on a dog’s excrements—he didn’t like her.
But she wasn’t a threat, at least to the roses.
“We took some liberties with your house, since we assumed you were locking us out,” she explained with a toss of her hair. I stared at her incredulously, then at the red-headed man next to her, and I gasped when I understood who they were.
Shao’s trusted younger brother—the adopted, uncursed one—and the sister who’d betrayed him. The sister who’d trampled all over his heart like a broken toy she didn’t need anymore.
Well, speak of the forsaken devils. Of course, the sister would show up the moment Shao told me about her.
“Isa—” Shao cried. His voice sounded strangled, scared. He was as surprised as I was, and I wondered why his own family members hadn’t given notice of their impending arrival. “We thought thieves had come to steal the roses,” he snapped.
His sister grimaced and averted her gaze. “We assumed you’d be home, so it wouldn’t be a big deal.”
I saw Shao seethe as he stood himself back up.
Ignoring him, the girl’s eyes glimmered as she laid her eyes on me; I felt like a prey who’d been spotted by an apex hunter.
I stood up too and took hesitant steps towards them.
The girl laughed as she rushed over to me. As soon as she was a foot or two away, she took my hands into hers, almost bouncing with excitement.
“Oh, darling,” she said, “you must be Beatrice. I’m Isabella, his sister. How I’ve longed to meet you!”
Before I could react, the girl leaned forward and kissed me on both cheeks, causing me to yelp in shock and flinch back.
How did she know me? How much had Shao told her about me while requesting the cure? Everything about this situation was bizarre. Was this a dream? Was I mad for real?
“You can’t storm in and destroy my property after all this time, Isabella.” Shao’s heavy voice boomed from in front of me, and I gasped, surprised by how close he was.
She narrowed her eyes. “I used to send you letters daily for years, even though you ignored them all. I visit you as often as I can.”
“If twice in my entire life is as often as you can, I’m not much of a priority, am I? Sol spends three months a year with me, and he’s not even—” Glancing at the red-haired boy, he winced. “Sorry. That is, Sol is far busier than you, considering he’s…”
He looked at me now and pursed his lips, clearly hiding something. I’d press him about it later; right now, I had more to glean from their conversation. I’d been lost in their avalanche of a conversation, my head spinning.
“Sol is also not cursed,” the woman said, her voice almost rising to a yell. “He can spend his free time however he pleases instead of being dragged around this way and that in a desperate quest to stay alive past his seventeenth birthday.”
Her voice cracked as she continued. “I’d have visited more if I could. You know that. What am I supposed to do?”
Shao heaved a sigh. “Leave.”
“No. I’m not here for you, anyway.” The woman turned back down to me, and I saw Shao tense, his veins rippling. I reached out to hold his hand. He seized it, then relaxed the tiniest bit. “I’ve wondered so much about you. The mystery woman who somehow convinced beastly Asha darling to save her over and over again!”
What had she called him? I blinked, wondering if I’d misheard. And, wait, he’d saved me multiple times? What did she mean?
She paused, her head tilting. Then she clapped in delight. “Oh, my heart and a half. She doesn’t know?”
“Is this about the cure?” I asked.
“Oh, so you know that one,” Isabella said. “He saved you a few more times, you know. After your father fell ill, you were almost incarcerated for public indecency, attempt at burglary, and harassment of nobles, say… a total of thirty-two times?”
I furrowed my brows. “I was only under threat of imprisonment once, and the judges took pity on me last minute.”
“Yes, yes. Didn’t you ever wonder why they did? Why do you think you were never legally punished for anything you did after that, either?”
It took me a moment to connect the dots. Did she mean Shao had something to do with it? Was his family that well connected?
“Darling, he threatened us to free you, or else he’d find his way home and turn all of us into roses.” Isabella cackled. “He didn’t need to do that. We’d give him the moon if he asked.”
“The only thing I’ve ever wanted is to return,” Shao said quietly. Isabella folded her arms, her lips twisting.
“You know that’s impossible, darling,” she said. I lifted my chin at her repeated use of the endearment. What an interesting sixteen-year-old girl to call everyone that, including her older brother. Was this common among nobles these days? “We’ve tried often enough, but Father refuses to budge.”
Shao bit his lip, and the words he suppressed were clear as crystal to me. You didn’t try hard enough. What good are a few offhanded whispers of support?
She turned back to me. “When you somehow found yourself in trouble again, he realized how reckless you were, and he made us give you diplomatic immunity for anything you did related to your father in the next three years.”
I sucked in a breath.
Glancing down at her nails, she added, “You should know, he doesn’t keep in touch with anyone other than Sol anymore. Hasn’t in over five years. His only exceptions have been when he needed us to help you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, not listening to her. My mind was blank. I looked up at Shao, but he was staring away at the wall, revealing nothing. “I thought he was excommunicated. Why does he have so much sway? How powerful is your family?”
And why had he done all of that for me? Just how high of a pedestal had he put me on, and how far had his opinion of me fallen as result?
Isabella’s eyes widened into saucers, her lips parting. “You don’t—”
“Isabella,” Shao said gravely, and her eyes darted to his.
They gazed at each other for an eternity, a silent conversation occurring between them that neither I nor Sol were privy to, before Isabella broke her gaze, biting her lip.
She shook her head, and with it, whatever conflicting emotion she felt; her expression returned to a jubilant smile a moment later as her eyes turned to mine.
“Dearest Beatrice,” she said, “Give me a tour of the mansion, will you? Where will we be staying?”
“Why do you need a tour?” Shao interjected with a scowl. “You’ve been here before. How long will you even stay?”
“Oh, not long,” Isabella replied, twirling her hair. “Only a day or two.” She winked. “Lead me to the bedchamber where you found that dress, won’t you?”
“I’d love to,” I replied, tilting my head. My eyes narrowed with suspicion—and fear. Isabella was smaller than me, and I was sure she’d been as tall as a bean sprout when she’d last visited years ago. She’d never have fit into this dress, so why was she acting like she knew it?
Could this be one of the dresses she’d brought to bully Shao with?
Had I been prancing around all this time while wearing such a visible reminder of his painful past?
She simpered but gave me no answers yet. I squeezed my elbows.
“Don’t follow us, Asha,” she said instead of any explanation. “Go discuss politics with your beloved Sol. I’d like some alone time with your esteemed guest.”
No doubt that was the true reason she’d requested a tour. Understandable, considering how much Shao had requested from them for my sake. I’d be burning with curiosity—and quite a lot of irritation—if I wer
e her.
Well, I’d have questions for her, too. She seemed kind, but I didn’t trust her. Not after what Shao had told me. I wanted her to be kind and caring; to have a secret, guarded heart of gold. Nothing would have made me happier than for her to reconciliate with Shao, filling his own heart with happiness… but I didn’t have much hope for her.
The way she’d approached the roses without regard for her own brother, followed by the way she’d simply burned down his door… It all reeked of shallow entitlement, and I loathed it.
Shao deserved better.
Gesturing me to follow, Isabella glided to the hallway, her footsteps so light as to be inaudible despite her stilettos.
I shot Shao one last glance, and we exchanged nods of acknowledgment before I trailed after Isabella.
Chapter 17
“So,” Isabella said as soon as we were indoors and out of Shao’s earshot. “How has… your stay at the mansion been?”
I tried really, really hard not to glare at her, but I ended up glaring at her anyway, my dislike oozing out of every cell in my body. Isabella arched her brows but said nothing. She glanced at me expectantly.
“Rather alright,” I replied. Not wanting to waste time on small talk, I looked back around and saw no one. “Is this dress Shao’s?”
Isabella cleared her throat. Her smile wavered for the first time since she’d appeared, although it was soon replaced by an even broader smile and a loud, twinkling giggle.
“Has Shao told you that story?” She tossed her hair back, revealing two sparkly blue earrings dangling at her lobes with a large heart-shaped crystal as the centerpiece. The casualness with which she spoke scraped at my patience. It was as if the incident with the dress, which had torn the remains of Shao’s heart in two, had been just another day for her.
Taking a deep breath to ground myself before I lashed out at her, I mumbled in agreement.
We serpentined through the hallways to my latest bedchamber, where I’d found the dress. Although Isabella had requested my tour, she was the one leading me, marching with a confident gait. She knew the paths well despite the mansion’s spaciousness and took the exact path she needed without a single detour.
I felt like I was tied by an invisible leash.
“What has he told you?” Isabella asked, her voice level and poised. There was a grace and pompousness to her tone severely lacking in Shao’s, and every small movement of her arms and her tiptoe-like steps that had me thinking of a cat.
I wondered how best to respond to her. Was I supposed to lie to her, saying sweet nothings about how much fun he’d had thanks to her pranks? Or should I have been brutally honest?
“That he hated every second of it,” I replied, settling on the latter, because it felt like trampling over Shao’s shredded skin to lie about him. He had been anguished by his sister. Why did she deserve anything but the truth? “That his sister treated him like a plaything and never apologized—or even seemed to care—for the suffering he endured.”
Isabella laughed again. It was in this moment that I decided I hated her.
“Be that as it may seem,” she started, grazing one of the overturned frames of Shao’s art with her fingers, which had never seen a dent of damage and were bejeweled and colored with shiny pink paint.
I cut her off. “I don’t care. Shao cares, but he doesn’t deserve your excuses. He deserves your apologies.” I pointed my finger at her chest, not caring about dignity or politeness. “Why are you even here?”
She licked her lips, but her smile remained etched solid into her features. My fingers itched for purchase of anything—but particularly anything that could shatter—to slam at the ground, at the wall, at the ceiling.
“I’m actually here to take you home,” she said, and shrugged. Even her shrug glided across her shoulders, causing her to look as dignified as a swan. “We came earlier than planned because we wanted to meet you first.”
I scoffed. “Shao and I expected a proper chauffeur, not his family. Maybe his youngest brother has a right to wonder, but you? What’s the point of meeting me, when he hardly even knows you?”
Heat flashed across her dimpled, dainty features. I smirked in twisted satisfaction.
She began, “I—”
I gestured towards the painting she was still stroking, although her movements were the tiniest bit stiffer and more staggered.
“Yes, my lady,” I snarked. “Turn that painting over, why don’t you?”
She snatched her fingers away from the painting as if it had caught on fire. She glanced up at me, doe eyed. Although she didn’t know what was on the frontside of the overturned frame, she’d been curious—and her curiosity had been stomped by fear from my outburst.
I stretched my hand forward to flip it over myself, revealing a painting Shao had drawn later—after Isabella’s first visit, if I remembered correctly.
It was an oil painting. The oil strokes were feathery and untrained, but it was clear what they depicted. A parting sea of nobles’ guards stood on the edges of the paper. Between the two split tides, there stood a young blond boy and a brunette girl drowning in a lacy purple dress. They were tangled together in a tight hug, laughter in their eyes.
“This isn’t the only one,” I whispered to a silent Isabella. “I think a good half the paintings in the house depict the same thing.”
Although I’d been oblivious the first time I saw this painting, it was now clear to me what this scene was—an altered version of the reality of the first visit.
“This was an impossibility,” she murmured at last, her eyes widening.
“Then why didn’t you apologize in the second visit, instead of trying to bully him as if nothing happened?” I asked, and she hugged herself.
“That… wasn’t my intent—” She started, but I cut her off because her lips were still curved up into some sort of a smile. Because I couldn’t bear to look at the girl who seemed so complacent despite all the hurt she’d inflicted on her own brother.
“You broke him, Isabella,” I snapped. Mentally, I willed myself to calm down and lower my voice, but my mouth refused to listen. “Why did you come back, if not to apologize? Why didn’t you stop after your first visit, when you snatched his heart out? Why did you have to return and stomp all over it with your stiletto heels?”
She smiled harder, and I clenched my fists so I wouldn’t punch the wall and only hurt myself.
Perhaps this was a mistake—she had every grace and entitlement of an upper blueblood, and she had every right to use the full force of her privileges to punish me and my family. Her father held my own father’s life as hostage, and it was in my best interest to suck up to her, I duly realized.
But seeing her smug simper—and the disdain with which she handled everyone else—made me seethe and burn and seek nothing but the destruction of her ego. I wanted to tear her down, so she’d understand Shao’s pain. So that she’d empathize with him, apologize, and persevere to mend her tattered family rather than crushing it down even more.
“It wasn’t my intent to hurt him,” she began yet again, and I took a step backwards, my hand rushing to my forehead. “It’s true he may have been hurt, but it could not be helped, and I do intend to make it right—”
“How?” I cried, squeezing my fingers against my temples. “Did you have any plan when you came here, or did you expect to snap your cute fingers and tell him to forgive you?” I rolled my neck and crossed my arms. With a sigh, I added, “Because he would forgive you—and hate himself more in the process when you betray him yet again. Neither of you deserves that.”
It looked as though she was puffing air into her cheek, her lips forming a tight line. Was I finally getting somewhere, or was I simply hurting my own chances at happiness?
“I was thinking of requesting your help,” she explained, and I laughed.
I laughed because I couldn’t bring myself to cry.
“You think I’ll help you ruin him?” I snapped, and she sucked in her lips.
“That’s not—”
“Please explain, then, what you do mean,” I snarled. “Typical of a freaking noble—you expect everyone to do the dirty work for you while you giggle at your throne of riches and privilege. You spout meaningless words to achieve your whims while internally scoffing at everyone you deem beneath you. Which—” I paused to point at her once more, hitting her shoulder with my index finger. “That list includes your own brother, doesn’t it?”
She bounced away. A beat later, her chortle crashed against the silence of the air.
My arms drooped to my sides. I had nothing more to say, and I didn’t know how to comprehend her. Could anyone be so cold-hearted? So brutal in their conceit?
“Do you have any right to speak like that to me?” She cried, crossing her arms, and I bristled. “You, the commoner who only started living with him for a cure that costs more than your life could ever be worth. You, the girl who plans to leave him the moment he gives his heart to you.”
“I plan to come back—”
She laughed. “Oh, and how? Will you sacrifice his safety to assuage your guilt?” Her voice remained quiet and gentle, which I loathed her for. No trace of emotion pierced through her words.
“I want to be with him,” I snapped, “and I plan to try my best to do so, unlike someone—”
“That someone you speak of has far more responsibilities than a jobless common girl—”
“I was taking care of my dying father!” My scream was loud enough to echo against the distant walls, and I realized our voices had been escalating for quite some time. “What in heavens were you doing that was so important?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Isabella finally, finally, yelled back. “Maybe I was trying to save myself first, so I’d have time to apologize to him. Did you ever think about that? Did you ever wonder about how reconciliating with him was meaningless without time to spend with him? What was I supposed to do, put my own short life on hold to spend the entire thing with one out of three of my beloved brothers while the rest of my family—my friends—were trapped back home?”
A Kiss like Roses: Fairy Tale Synergy Book 1 Page 14
