rough at your edges. You know that.” Her thumb strokes his cheek. Something about them looks good together—looks right. It makes my stomach even more upset. “She doesn’t understand why because you won’t let her. And you aren’t making an effort to understand her, either.
“I admit I had the same shortcomings. I was bitter toward her for hiding and for what her absence caused you to endure this last year. For her to have forced you to expend so much power maintaining the Fade and still see it weakening as Midscape dies.
“But none of it was her fault. I believe that, and I know you do too. You can’t blame her for Midscape’s or your circumstances. I’m trying to know her now, and you need to also.”
“If she only—”
“Don’t make excuses,” Rinni says firmly, dropping her hand. “Get to know her. Alice wasn’t what you expected once you opened up to her. Maybe Luella will be the same.”
Eldas considers it and for a moment his face is soft and thoughtful. A mask of marble has given way to a man. But he retreats behind the walls he’s built the moment he must realize he’s exposed. Eldas shakes his head and pushes himself off his throne. He catches Rinni’s hand in both of his, giving it a squeeze.
“I respect your council, Rinni. You know I do… But Alice was a rare thing. I am not meant for love—”
“Those are your mother’s words,” Rinni says cuttingly.
Eldas ignores her remark. “I was born for one thing: my duty to Midscape.”
“And those are your father’s words.” She sighs.
“Anything else is a distraction,” Eldas finishes, completely ignoring Rinni’s objections. “I cannot give her what she had in Capton. I cannot give her family and community. I can’t give her what I’ve never known. But perhaps I can teach her to manage her magic and navigate this brutal world; I’ll do my best to give her that much.”
Chapter 13
I watch as Eldas departs and then I ease away from the perforations in the wall. My calves have cramped from standing on my toes and I shift my weight from foot to foot. It serves to work out some of the nervous energy in me.
Part of me wishes I hadn’t been privy to that conversation. I don’t know what to think of Eldas now. I find a corner of my heart is already aching to be sympathetic toward him. That is tempered swiftly by the other part of my heart that bleeds for Capton and everyone I miss more by the hour—bleeds from his cruelty.
He was right. Midscape is brutal and it is a world I wish I could have none of.
Your duty, I remind myself on instinct. Whenever times were tough, I would focus on my duty to the people of Capton as their healer. But now…that duty is gone and without it I am little more than Eldas’s puppet wandering the halls of the castle.
I don’t want my purpose to be fortifying his rule with my mere existence. Everything in me yearns to do more. But what can be done? My place here feels shallow and empty.
Slowly, I trudge up the stairs. I don’t know where I’m going, but I follow along the hallway the top step leads me to. I wander from room to room until the scent of peat and earth tickles my nose, stealing me from my thoughts.
The smell is like a lightning strike on a clear day—seemingly out of nowhere. This cold, gray castle is void of life, so any signs of it spark my curiosity. I follow the aroma down a stretch of connected rooms that open up into a space I would best describe as a laboratory.
Shelves packed with jars line the walls above counters filled with colored beakers, bubbling cauldrons, and herb-drying racks. Tall tables flank me on either side, stools around them, tools scattered atop. The far wall is made of glass that steams with humidity. Greenery is blurred by the fog.
Sweat instantly dots my skin as I enter the attached conservatory. The greenhouse takes up the whole width of the castle. There’s stone below, stone above, and glass on either side facing north and south. Plants grow along trellises, arcing up to the ceiling. There are shelves of pots and aboveground planting beds.
Here I smell lavender and dandelion mixing with rose—which nearly makes me gag after the incident in the lunch nook—and the earthy aromatics of sage and rosemary. I spy elder shrubs, valerian, primrose, mint,