“No. You were young! How old even were you?”
“Ten, which is plenty old to remember something so crucial.”
“How could you have known your mother was there?”
“I didn’t, which is why I should have been careful.”
“Shao—”
He shook his head, then took deep breaths to calm himself, his grasp around mine loosening. I peeked down and saw slight red on my skin where he’d squeezed a little too tight. They were quick to fade, of course.
“That’s why I was exiled,” Shao spoke through his teeth. “Father loved Mother far more than he loved all his children combined, and he… went mad after she transformed.”
I gripped my elbows, wary about hearing more, but I had to ask; this was a story Shao had to complete. For both his sake and mine. “Mad? How so?”
“He was so doting before—I couldn’t believe he was the same man after. None of us could. He raged for months, throwing and shattering everything in his path… Ha, he almost hit several servants with vases and sculptures, although he missed by a hair every time. I can only hope that was intentional.”
“Is he… better now?” I asked, and I regretted my words.
If he were better in any meaningful way, why would Shao have been stuck here alone?
“He started sobering up within a few months, but not around me. I triggered the worst in him; I reminded him of her loss, and I can’t blame him for that, since I caused Mother’s disappearance. In the beginning, he just avoided me, but… eventually, he realized he had to send me away. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t dangerous or that Mother was the last person I transformed. Father needed me gone.”
“I’m… I’m so sorry.” I repeated, then froze, wanting to slam something against the wall myself. If his words were true, how could I possibly console him after all this time? I couldn’t.
What was I even good for?
“I hated her,” Shao continued rambling, oblivious to my train of thought. Although a digression from the previous topic of his parents, it was clear whom he was referring to.
The Wicked Witch. Aptly nicknamed, albeit unoriginally.
“Past tense?”
“I hated her when she cursed my sister. Wanted her to die when I lost my mother.” Shao collapsed into the gates behind him, barely able to keep himself up. “When she saved me from being mauled by her demonic creatures—and spent weeks at my bedside trying to heal me back to life—I hated her even more.”
Shao looked back up, looking me straight in the eyes with an intensity that burned. My lungs threatened to gallop out my throat.
“Shao…”
“Perhaps I wanted to die,” he said matter-of-factly, and I shuddered. “If I couldn’t save Mother, why even live?”
“But—”
His thumb grazed against my cheek, and I felt dampness there; I realized I’d been crying.
For how long?
When had he even freed his hand from mine?
Everything was a blur except for Shao’s words… and the tragedy ingrained in them. In him.
“I’m glad she saved you,” I said.
“So am I,” Shao replied. “I’m glad I got to meet you.”
Gulping, I took handfuls of my blanket, rubbing the plush velvet against my fingers to calm myself. “… Did she say why she saved you? Why she cursed you to begin with?”
It seemed uncharacteristic for someone to have cursed a child with a murderous spell to have saved that very kid later.
“I already sort of knew why she’d cursed me,” he said. I lifted my brow. “What I don’t know is why my sister was cursed. Me? Oh, that was because I threatened to stab her to death with my crown.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Wait, what?”
This part of the story had been conveniently left out until now.
“My sister was cursed on the same date as me. Based on what I’ve heard, I was four, and our family was celebrating her birth.” He gave a humorless chuckle. “My family and celebrations. Always catastrophic.”
I rolled around the fork in my hand, staring down at it as I contemplated his words. “What happened? Does she suffer the same curse?” Why wasn’t she with him then?
“No, but… None of us understand what happened. We only know what people saw: the strongest magician in Perintas—now called the Wicked Witch—stormed into the castle and cursed my sister to fall asleep forever on her seventeenth birthday.”
I gasped. “Did she reveal how to cure it?”
Otherwise, wasn’t that a death sentence?
“No. Not even when I visited her.” Shao scowled. “She told me only that she was sorry, but there was nothing she could do about it anymore. Like I cared for apologies. As for the curse, I don’t remember any of this, but I ran to the witch and started kicking her and threatening her so she’d uncast it.” He laughed bitterly. “That’s what got the witch to notice me and curse me, too.”
Covering my mouth with my hands, I shook my head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s fine. I don’t regret it, and I’d like to say that if I could return to the past, I’d defend my sister all over again.” He shrugged. “Just hurts that I changed nothing.”
“You were four! How could you have?”
“I don’t know,” Shao said, “But I’ve thought about it a lot. If only I had magic coursing through my veins. If only I’d kicked the witch before she cursed my sister, distracting her from her goal and ensuring I was the only one cursed. If only, if only, if only…” His jaw tensed.
Reaching up, I gently tapped his shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but I wonder—”
“Shao,” I stressed. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He twitched. “I know. I… Thank you.” He covered his mouth with his hands, and I could see his veins pulse and throb and ache with my heart.
Shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts, Shao added, “The Wicked Witch is also the reason the cures are so expensive, you know.”
“What… What do you mean?”
“Those cures are processed from plants that only grow in the Briar Forest—they’ve been warped into monsters, like the animals. The kingdom only has half a dozen left, which they’re hoarding in case any of their relatives fall to the misfortune.”
Mulling between a hundred rising questions, I gnawed my lip before settling on the one that I felt confident Shao would answer.
“Then why even have a price tag for it? Hide it away.”
“People are more understanding of obscene prices than unattainability. Price tags give people hope—and keep the wealthiest, most powerful nobles from waging a civil war if they fall ill.”
Frustrated, I tore off a branch of the blueberry bush. The Wicked Witch had caused everything: Shao’s curse, my father’s enduring illness, our suffering. Though despair had become my regular companion, I’d never known true hatred until now.
“Can’t she be defeated?”
“Few witches are strong enough to survive against her—and they’re all too busy ruling their own empires to care.”
Disgusting.
It was all so disgusting.
“And you nobles hid that from us to keep your power?” I asked, because although my heart ached for Shao—although I’d grown to care for him, at least a little—I still cared about myself. About my family.
I felt as blindsided as I felt hopeless and furious at the witch. I couldn’t very well threaten the witch thousands of miles away, and the only nearby target to my wrath and sorrow was… Shao.
He lifted my head by my chin to get a better look at me, but not before wiping away more of my tears.
“Perintas is a kingdom of mortals, and it has seen peace for centuries, which makes for kind men—but also men who are ineffectual at combat.” Shao drawled. “Nothing can be done about the witch right now. Widespread knowledge about her and what she’s done to the forest would only cause national instability and dead men. They�
�d be foolish, thinking if enough of them gathered, they could defeat the creatures and the witch—but they’ve never seen a lick of conflict in their lives, much less magic. How could they combat it?”
His words deflated me because they were right.
“Trust me,” he said. “If the witch could be defeated… she would have been. A long, long time ago.”
There was an edge to his voice that could have been considered deranged. Broken.
Yet, to me… it was beautiful, and I wanted to snugly hug it with the rest of him.
I opened my arms, bracing myself for rejection.
Instead, Shao pulled me into a tight hug, readily accepting my cue. Feeling his heavy, exhausted, pained breaths against my shoulder, I pat his back and whispered empty consolations.
Words I wished I’d received from my family—my friends—anyone—when my father fell ill.
As if reading my mind, Shao echoed my words to me, and I bit my lips to keep down a desperate laugh.
“Will… you tell me more about your family?” I hesitantly asked. I wanted to know more about them—about Shao.
“There’s not much to say,” he said, and I shrugged.
“I still want to know,” I said. “Anything. Everything.”
I felt Shao inch sideways to think. “Well, I can’t very well refuse a chance to gush about Mother. I’ll tell you as much as I can.” Though he gave me a soft smile, his lips were pursed, and his eyes were distant. “On one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You tell me about your father, too. No, your whole family. Your life back home.” His pupils dilated so fractionally I only noticed because I was staring so intently at them.
Again.
Since when?
My cheeks burning, I lowered my gaze as I continued to listen.
“I’ve always wondered about you,” he said, “and now you’re here. I no longer have to fill in the blanks with my goldfish-tier creativity and my limited knowledge about anyone other than my family.”
“I’ll bore you to death with my incessant prattling.”
“If boredom could kill me, I’d have died within a month of being sent here.”
“You didn’t have me then.” I winked.
Granted, I’d been a lot more talkative before, to the point many classmates had pretended to run away from me teasingly whenever I so much as opened my mouth. I wasn’t like that anymore. I wasn’t sure where that part of me had gone, but I supposed it wasn’t missed.
“Try me.”
I would.
Oh, my heart and a half, I would.
After all, we were broken. Both of us.
And, until now, we’d had no one to share our troubles and innermost thoughts with.
It was possible we’d never heal, but we could find small threads of solace in each other—and we had no choice but to seize it.
Chapter 13
True to his word, Shao regaled me with numerous delightful stories from his childhood over the next few days, most of them involving his mother and adopted, red-headed youngest brother. I happily returned the favor.
“Oh, Constance and I also tried boiling a frog at some point,” I said with a guilty giggle to hide my anxiety as I dangled two reed baskets in the crook of my arms, waiting for Shao to grab the talismans from his room.
“You what?” Shao cried. “And I thought I was supposed to be the beast here.” He reemerged from his room. I gave him a small nod and a smile, which he promptly returned despite his concern with my past acts.
“I mean, we were seven, and we weren’t quite cold-hearted enough to go through with it,” I whined as I handed Shao his basket. We were about to go berry picking. Finally. “We wanted to see if frogs really wouldn’t notice the water getting hot, and, um. All’s fair in the name of science…?”
Shao shot me an incredulous look as he walked out through the dark hallways. His pace was slow and steady enough that I could follow him from behind without too much trouble, despite my slight remaining nausea.
“How far did you get?” He asked, stopping to let me catch up after I distracted myself with an ornate family crest drawn into the frames of one of his childhood paintings.
“So, we did put the cauldron filled with water—and the frog, of course—over a fireplace,” I said, then stopped as I awaited Shao’s flustered reaction, which I was certain I’d get. He’d been spoiling me like that. With validations—in the form of both shock and kindness.
“I thought you said you didn’t go through with it!”
I couldn’t help but grin at his expected reaction. Bingo.
“I mean, it was a part of a science experiment! We couldn’t let something as trivial as ethics get in our way; must I remind you we were seven?”
“Seven-year-olds are supposed to be pure and gentle, Beatrice.”
“Being stuffed in this mansion has kept you ignorant of reality,” I scoffed, trailing after Shao as he passed through a gilded archway of a ballroom decorated with polka-dotted and lime-green walls. “Anyway, we started waiting for the water to boil, but I suspect the frog knew what was happening to it.”
I looked around the ballroom with judgment. It could have doubled as a storage space, since it was devoid of any purpose or furniture other than a giant chandelier in the center of the room, but neither of us had much to store.
“So, you released it?” Shao asked, breaking me out of my reverie.
I waved my hands in the air. “Oh, no. We were going to the moment before the water got hot enough for it to croak—”
“That,” he said through his teeth, “is a horrible pun.”
“You need to appreciate my brilliance more.” I harrumphed. “It jumped out.”
Shao froze, then buried his face in his hands, a drawn-out groan escaping his throat.
“I thought you said you saved it because you guys were too kind for murder,” he grumbled.
“I mean, we didn’t put it back in the cauldron, did we? We took it back to the lake it came from and agreed never to experiment with living creatures again.”
“Remind me never to offend you,” said Shao after a horrified beat.
“Please. It’s not like I can stuff you into a scalding pot of water and expect you to not escape and retaliate.”
“Is that the issue here?” Shao cried. “Not the glaring breach of ethics?”
“Why does the ethics of it matter if it’s impossible?”
“Perhaps because, I don’t know, you’re talking about murdering a man without batting an eye?”
I crossed my arms, but my indignation faded when I came inches away from the dangling silver chandelier that was three times as tall as me and swept down to almost touch the floor. It was shaped like an upside-down birthday cake with layers of beaded crystal branches.
Impressed by how delicate and intricate it was despite its gigantic size, I placed my fingers on it, smiling in surprise at its coolness.
I looked back up and realized Shao had stopped and turned around. Our eyes met, and I fluttered my lashes at him playfully, asking, “Does that mean you’ll forgive me if I bat my eyes?”
He heaved a sigh. “Anyway, I wish I could tell you some impressive story about the chandelier, but I think it was just a reject built for a far taller ceiling back home.” He shrugged, ignoring my obvious irritation at the fact that he’d completely brushed me off.
“H-hey, did you not hear me or something?”
“I heard you fine,” Shao grumbled. “I was ignoring you for a reason.”
“Hey—”
Before I could say anything else, Shao whipped around and began walking back out to lead me to the fruit groves.
My chest surging with disappointment despite the promised mountains of fruit, I chased after him.
A moment later, he said, “I think it’s impossible for me to ever not forgive you,” and a beam erupted on my face, hurting my cheeks.
We remained silent as we passed through the rest of the hallways and roo
ms on our way outside, and the silence unnerved me, because it left me to my own thoughts.
My footsteps thudded against the ground with both eagerness and trepidation.
The fact that I could move around like this—and walk several miles comfortably to the fruit trees and bushes—was a sign of recovery.
A sign of impending farewells.
I was almost well enough to go home. A servant from Shao’s noble house was supposed to come pick me up in the next several days, although we didn’t know the exact date, since there were so many ways for travel to be delayed.
I could have returned home that day, but I’d postponed it by a couple more days than strictly necessary, citing the fact that I was still prone to headaches from too much movement, and my propensity for tripping over my own feet.
Excuses, all of them.
Each of them laced my soul with just a little more self-loathing whenever they were uttered, but that was a sacrifice I’d accepted.
Fortunately—and supporting my decision to stay just a couple days longer—the letters from my parents had been much the same, and it was clear Father would last a few weeks longer yet.
Although I was eager to return home and desperate to see my Father, I also knew that once I left this mansion, I’d likely never return. Too much danger in it—everyone would know I had survived the forest, for which there was only one reasonable explanation. The beast had taken me in.
I wanted to savor my moments with Shao for as long as I could, and I felt sick in the stomach for it.
I gasped at the sight of the golden roses when we finally stepped foot outside the mansion, the chilly wind tickling my skin.
While I’d seen these flowers many times before, it was the first time since I’d gotten well—since after Shao had told me his supposed truth about the roses—that we’d roamed outside his home.
There must have been dozens of them. It felt obscene for there to be so many. They speckled the green of the fields, their colors so vivid and stunning they made the surrounding grass look drab, pale, and lifeless—almost gray.
A Kiss like Roses: Fairy Tale Synergy Book 1 Page 11