War of the Wilted

by Amber Mitchell

  “Rose, wait!” he says, his grip trying to coax me gently to stop. “Slow down for a second. How are you? Are you all right?”

  It’s like someone set off an explosion just like in Piper’s lab a few days ago, but in my own mind. Anger at the Gardener pulses through me and I can’t keep my mouth shut.

  I swing around, glaring up at him in the soft green glow of the Zarenite. “Am I all right? Really? Why would you even ask that? No, of course I’m not. I explained to you what serving him means and then to let him get away with so little information— It’s humiliating. Especially when I could make him talk with a blade in the gut.”

  His grasp on my arm slackens and his mouth slides into a frown. “I know. I remember what you said in the kitchen.” He rubs the back of his neck. “In truth, I haven’t been able to forget, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the sacrifice you’re making. If there were any way to spare you from this, any way at all, I would take it in a heartbeat.” He places his other hand on my shoulder, meeting my gaze. “But the only thing I can spare you from is doing something you’ll end up regretting. What you’re suggesting is torture, and I won’t let you hurt yourself by doing that. There are some lines that can’t be uncrossed once you’ve stepped over them.”

  Locking my own hands around his arms, I pull them off of me. The weight of him, of his understanding, is too much right now mixing with the guilt of my secret and fury boiling my blood thick.

  “Don’t,” I say. “What happens if this is a trap?”

  He’s quiet for a moment and I can practically hear thoughts racing through his mind.

  “If it’s a trap, then it’s a risk the rebellion has to take,” he says. “But I’m not interested in that right now. All I want to know is why you’re pushing me away. I’m trying to be here for you, Rose.”

  His words do nothing to quell the anger rumbling through me like thunder.

  “Because what the Gardener said about buying information from the skin of my back feels true. I know you didn’t force me to do this, but I can’t get the words out of my head. It feels like I’m the only one giving up something precious for the rebellion, and I don’t want to listen to why I should. I can’t.”

  His soft eyes widen and he takes a step back like I’ve slapped him. He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. I’ve seen Rayce stare down men that are trying to kill him, but my words seemed to have much more effect on him than their death glares. Perhaps because in the middle of battle, it’s not personal. But what I said was. It was an attack on his character. One I wish I could take back.

  The guilt sitting in my gut hardens, watching him digest my words, but it gives me a chance to leave while he processes what I said. I turn and head up the tunnel with my fury fueling every step and decide to let it out in the training room. It should be empty, and there I can’t hurt anyone else with my careless words.

  …

  After beating a wooden target to near splinters and taking a long shower, the only thing I’m left with is the expression on Rayce’s face after I snapped at him to leave me alone. His kind eyes widened with shock, the sea of waves erupting on his furrowed brow, those lips that can kiss away all of my doubts, parted slightly. All he’d wanted was to check on my wellbeing and I’d been so mad at the Gardener, I let him wedge himself right in between us. Even if I was mad, it wasn’t right that I’d directed my anger at him.

  My feet make their way to the kitchen on instinct. I didn’t really even know what I was going to do until I pass through the doors and into the empty room. After lighting a small fire in the large oven to cast a warm glow over the room, I head to the pantry and gather all the ingredients to make honey crisps, which are almost as familiar to me now as the steps of my dance routine were in the Garden. Normally, this is something we’d do together, but Rayce has been so busy lately, he’s barely had time for this tradition of ours. At least it gives me a decent way to apologize.

  Gathering up two large bowls and a smaller one for water, I place them all out on a table in front of me and begin to pour, measure, and mix my guilt into what I’m hoping will turn into sweet, crispy apologies. The smell of honey tickles my nose as I spoon it into the batter, bringing forward happier memories of our time together, the fleeting moments in between when the only thing that matters is finding a way to press closer to him.

  My mind firmly in the past, I don’t notice how hard my hand is pressing on the dough until I feel it go flat. I look down in a panic, watching the edges crumble off, the telltale sign I’ve ruined Rayce’s recipe.

  Yun’s beard. The one thing I wanted to do for him. The one thing I could do for him.

  The countless hours we’ve spent near each other in this very place, his chest supporting my back, his hands cupped over my own massaging our creation in a steady rhythm, flashes through my head, and I grab the spoiled dough and throw it away from the light dusting of flour on the table. It lands on the wood with a plop like it’s mocking me, and I rub my temples, trying to stop frustration from taking hold again. And Rayce says baking is relaxing.

  A soft chuckle sends me spinning around. Rayce is leaning against the far wall, his arms crossed over his chest, an amused smile on his lips. I have no idea how long he’s been here, but he looks settled. My hands grasp the edge of my apron and I look down at my feet like a child caught with their finger in the batter.

  “I’m fairly certain I’ve told you plenty of times just how carefully honey crisp dough should be kneaded.” He pushes off the wall, moving across the kitchen slowly. “But I’m sure I’ve also told you how often I’ve ruined it myself.”

  I sigh, letting my fingers loose one at a time and motion over to the ruined dough. “I was trying to make crisps for you. You’ve been busy lately and I…wanted to apologize for snapping at you after seeing the Gardener. I was frustrated at the things he said.” I grit my teeth, turning my gaze toward the table. The next words well up painfully in my throat. His hand touches my arm, breaking the words free. “I let him get to me, and I shouldn’t have. We might not agree right now, but you’ve done nothing but tell me that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do and it was wrong to imply, even for a second, that you hadn’t. You haven’t pushed me into anything.”

  His grasp tightens slightly and he pulls me toward him. I crash into his warm chest, white flour exploding into the air behind him as I wrap my arms around his back and press into him, shutting my eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he whispers into my hair. “I know how difficult the last few days have been. It’s why I came in there tonight. I couldn’t stand the thought of sending you in there alone any longer. You’ve been so brave, so selfless.” His arms tighten around my back. “I can’t tell you how proud I am of you, watching you face him without even flinching.” His voice lilts with playfulness. “I really could’ve done without you stabbing him, though.”

  The things he whispers here in this place that has always brought us together light up my world. Despite everything that’s happened, a smile slips onto my lips and I let the scent of spice and honey wash over me. The tension in my shoulders loosens and I fall into the way our bodies fit together, how he instinctively seems to know when I need him to hold me up and how he lets me do the same. For a moment, all of the walls the Gardener being alive have forced us to build crash down in a spectacular cloud of flour.

  “Where’s the performance in that? He wanted a show, I gave him one.”

  He chuckles, and I relish the way it rumbles through his chest. This nearness, I’ve missed it. The fact that I’ve been poisoning the Gardener, the guilt that comes with it, pulls on the back of my mind, but I stomp it back down. Nothing can ruin this. Nothing.

  “I can’t argue with that. It was quite a spectacle. I still don’t agree with your methods, but I understand why you did it.” He holds me closer for a moment more, seeming to breathe me in. He pulls back so we are staring at each other. He swallows hard, licking his lips nervously. “Rose
, can I…can I kiss you?”

  Instead of answering him with words, I lift up on my tiptoes, pressing my lips softly against his. I close my eyes, falling into his kiss as he shows me stars even though we’re locked underneath the earth.

  He holds me to him, one arm looped around my waist while his other threads through my hair until he stops at the back of my head, his fingertips pulling me closer to a mouth I don’t plan on escaping. My own hands find his face, one tracing up the puckered scar on his left cheek. The other roams through his thick black hair.

  The minutes pulse by in the feeling of our lips dancing against each other, in each shared breath, the way our bodies mold to each other like water over rocks, the explosion of fire in my stomach as his hands feel around my skin. Everything else melts away and we’re trapped in each other’s embrace, in not having to answer to anyone else but our own desires.

  Finally, he pulls away, leaving me breathless.

  He blinks a few times, pushing his hair off his forehead. His voice is gruff. “Let me help you make honey crisps.”

  He lets me go, cupping my cheeks in his hands as his gaze combs over me. He grins widely, dipping his hand into the water bowl and wiping the flour off my forehead before pressing his own forehead to mine. I can read what his eyes lament, that these few seconds we steal for ourselves don’t change anything. We are still at odds. In fact, he doesn’t realize the half of it. But right now, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is the way our hearts beat for each other, the safety we can find in each other’s arms.

  I almost speak, but he moves before I can, forcing me to grip onto the table to stand as he starts to clear away the mess I made and refurbish the ingredients. After I’m mostly confident my knees won’t give out on me, I grab the water bowl and toss the old out, replacing it with new.

  He ties his hair into a short bun on the top of his head. “Come on, we’ll do it again together.”

  My feet move slowly, and I take my place in front of him in a space that feels completely natural and terrifyingly foreign in the same breath. He wraps his arms around my waist, just under my own arms, and begins to mix the ingredients to make the dough without even having to think about it. I busy myself pouring the milk, but it’s even harder to concentrate after that kiss and how close we still stand.

  His words flood through me in a steady stream of heat, how he made light of the fact that I’d stabbed the Gardener. Curiousity sends my gaze to his profile, to the long scar twisting down his face, a constant reminder of whom we are fighting against. He’s told me very little about his uncle in the time I’ve known him. He doesn’t agree with his ideals and it was crystal clear when I met the emperor that he will never surrender to Rayce. Will Rayce have the resolve to kill his own uncle, though?

  If he can’t find that strength, then the war will never end, because the emperor will not show his nephew the same kind of mercy.

  There is really only one way this is going, and if Rayce doesn’t have the wherewithal to avenge Oren’s death, then this war is even more hopeless. A tiny part of me wants that to be true so things can stay exactly as they are, so I can be buried among the other guards instead of shoved up in the front and expected to lead. But how can I even think that? How can I want to condemn all of the people I’ve gotten to know to a life of endless war and oppression under the emperor’s rule?

  When I shut my eyes, the emperor standing on the battlefield the day he killed Oren comes unbidden into my mind. The way his silver armor shone in the blossoming sunlight, his cold, steely gray eyes staring out over the carnage as if it were nothing more than a minor annoyance, not people giving their lives to ensure he spends another day on the throne. Demanding that his citizens follow his orders to the letter, right down to deciding what jobs they will work, who they will wed and how they live their lives. He’d rather see people starving in the streets from the drought that has plagued Delmar than spend a copper of the imperial treasuries coin or go help them himself.

  I make certain to keep my voice steady. “What does the ending of the war look like to you?” I hesitate. “Because, if the rebellion is going to create the world you dream of then our entire society has to change.”

  He looks down at me, his hands stilling. Some of the tighteness around his eyes slips back into his gaze. “What’re you asking me?”

  I swallow, my parched throat fighting against me, and my skin already shuddering at the thought of being parted from his warmth. Will my words end this momentary truce we’ve found in each other’s arms? “When the time comes, and we find a way to win this war…what are you going to do then? Will you be able to”—the words snag against my insecurities—“kill the emperor?”

  My hands tighten around the dough and I hold my breath, waiting to see what he’ll do next. Silence hangs in the air around us, almost heavier than the feeling of panic I get walking out on a battlefield, knowing my sisters look to me for direction.

  Please don’t pull away from me.

  I hate that we’ve gotten to this point, where a simple question balances our fate, but the last few days have led us here.

  He rests his chin on the top of my head, leaning more of his weight onto me as if to say that he doesn’t plan on going anywhere, and moves our hands together to massage the dough.

  His gruff voice slices through the thick air of the kitchen. “I don’t really know.” More silence, but this silence is because he’s trying to decide. This time I can feel him trying to move forward, trying to break down the wall we were attempting to kiss away. “I don’t want to kill my uncle. I know that sounds ridiculous after everything he’s done.” He takes a deep breath, his hands falling away from mine onto the table before us. “I should focus on the horrible things he’s done, but he wasn’t always the way he is now, and sometimes it’s hard to separate those parts.”

  Abandoning the dough myself, I twist around in his arms to face him. His gaze holds mine, whispering a thousand regrets. He’s slipped into some place I can’t follow, the corners of his mouth tugged down in a frown. I reach up and brush my hand against his stubbled cheek, causing his brow to furrow as he fights his way back into the present. His arms wrap around the small of my back and he holds my gaze almost defiantly.

  “Tell me about it,” I whisper. “Just because things have been tense between us, I’m still on your side. I will always be on your side.”

  His eyes slide closed and he leans down, pressing his forehead against mine. “When I was younger, after my uncle realized he would bear no heirs to inherit his throne, he sent for me to come live at the palace with him. There was a lot of pressure on me to succeed. I don’t think he ever had any intention of giving up his crown, but he certainly trained me like he did.”

  I lift up on my toes, kissing the tip of his nose to encourage him to continue, hoping he can’t feel my heart racing at our nearness.

  “He took me everywhere for a few short years,” he says, chuckling, “into the vault my grandfather almost spent dry because of his lavish parties and taste for expensive things, to the training grounds to teach me how to fight, even though he was advised to let others train me, on his walks through the garden where he would catch and cage insects, explaining to me everything he knew about them in detail.”

  He keeps his eyes closed and as he does, I can almost picture a younger version of the man before me darting from bush to bush, looking at the bugs hiding under the leaves. But every time I try to picture the emperor, my mind goes blank. I can’t reconcile these two different ideas into the same man. He is either the ruthless emperor willing to kill anyone to save his crown or the caring man that took Rayce under his watchful gaze.

  “I’ve never seen my uncle more relaxed and almost happy than when we would walk the gardens,” Rayce says. “Sometimes Oren would join us as we made our rounds and they would discuss different theories on politics. I think they were hoping I’d be listening, but I was too interested in trying to find my uncle his next bug.”

  He
opens his eyes, a tiny smile slipping onto his lips. “There was this one time I found a caterpillar caught in a spider’s web. I tried to get it out before my uncle saw. Spiders were always his favorite, but he came over before I could free it. I thought he was going to tell me to leave it be, but he didn’t. He helped me untangle it from the web and we brought it back to one of the glass cages in his office. I would visit it every day, watched it turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly.” He smiles softly, caught back in the moments he whispers to me. “It was the first life I’d ever taken care of, my first real responsibility, and the way he smiled at me when it changed, when it thrived. I liked that feeling, of doing something to make him proud.”

  He shakes his head, his voice cutting off then, but in these few seconds, he’s revealed everything. Even after all the emperor has done, the countless lives lost, the scar he put on Rayce’s face, Rayce still wants him to live. The sentiment is sad enough to break my heart, leaving me raw, bleeding for him. A wound neither of us can heal in each other.

  “I know it seems strange, but moments like that give me hope,” he says. “If he could change his mind about that caterpillar, then maybe he can change his mind about this war. If he could just show remorse, even a hint of it, maybe then we could reach some kind of agreement.”

  But that’s not the man that killed Oren. He looked us straight in the eyes and let the blade fall on Oren’s neck. Every time the emperor has had a choice to save the caterpillar, he’s let the spider devour it instead. Perhaps there might have been kindness in him once, but years of venom have poisoned that out. My grasp on his chin tightens, my eyes dancing across his face, up the long scar across his left cheek and eye.

  “Rayce, the person your uncle was…” I say. “He isn’t that man anymore. You can’t seriously be considering letting him live.”

  He sighs, his entire body growing heavier, and he drops his gaze like I just stole his will to stand. Maybe I did.