The Garden

by Emily Shore

  Neil drops his arms to his sides. “Oh yes, I may have forgotten to mention one little thing. See, Force changed his will after meeting you for the first time. Once he’s dead, you inherit the Temple. He’s left it in your name. Congratulations.”

  28

  T h E P r o g R a m

  Shortly after Neil unearthed his revelation, I exited the room and returned to mine. It was simple because all three men had started arguing, two presenting their biased reasons why this is a ridiculous, horrendous idea. In some ways, Neil knows me better than either Luc or Sky. Perhaps he can recognize the resolve in my eyes. Part of me fears where that resolve comes from. Aching, I hope it’s from my mother. I buck at the thought of facing Force again. My hands tremble.

  “I won’t allow this.”

  Startled, I wince from my position on my bed. Even after all this time, he manages to arrive without a sound.

  Luc places his hands on my arms. Pivots me around to face him. “Do you understand me?”

  I almost pull back, but I give him this much. Luc is not accustomed to losing control. “We’re not in the Aviary. You can’t punish me anymore. You can’t stop me.” I shake my head.

  “Yes, I can.”

  He seals his mouth onto mine, plunders his way inside. I taste nothing but dark water and cologne. There is no sense of earth anymore. Nothing to keep us from floating away. So unlike Sky. Luc’s touch is the frost slipping past the thin barrier of my skin. And his artisan hands with their delicate fingertips bearing the gunpowder stains of his past capture my neck, then my curls. They journey from my neck, tugging at my blouse so he may thumb the feather on my shoulder—he kisses his own brand, yanking a slight gasp from my mouth. My body rises ever so little once his lips rub my neck, travel to my mouth as he slowly, carefully dips me onto the bed. With my elbows supporting me, I close my eyes, flushed when Luc devours my mouth again. He sucks on my lower lip. I gasp when his fingers travel to the strings of my blouse. Opening my eyes, I meet his gaze. He reads the war in my eyes. Still, he risks one step onto the battlefield by tugging on the strings, undoing them in the breath of a second.

  “Luc…” I whisper, struggling to control all the delicious feelings inside me. My fingers flex when he toys with the neckline. “Please!” I arch my neck, almost whimpering when he edges the fabric down ever so little so he may kiss my bare cleavage.

  Too much fire in my skin, and he’s creating more with every kiss. Ironic because he’s still ice. Ice and fire at every turn. No choice but to moan when his ravenous hands slip the blouse even lower just before he lulls me back onto the bed so my spine flattens against the sheets with him just above me. He removes his shirt, tosses it to the floor, then pins his naked chest to mine.

  “Luc.”

  I start to breathe an interruption, but he swallows it instead, mouth so hot it brands me. For one moment, I try raising my hand, but my nails don’t make it to his skin. Instead, he jerks my arms above my head and presses against me even more. He gives no relief to my already-swollen mouth. With his other hand, he jerks my leg up so fast my skirt crumples to my hip so his hand may cup my bare thigh. And then, he coils my leg around his hip, urging me even closer just as my peasant blouse falls around my elbows, exposing more of me. He’s more insistent than ever, more possessive than any other night, and anyone who saw us would have no doubt I belong to him. But another force, more powerful than this one, erupts in my heart with the reminder that while I can belong to Luc, he can never belong to me.

  Desperately, I summon up my lightning. Feel the force of thunder and raging water deep inside me. It supports me, granting me what I need to break his hold.

  He tries harder, too hard. Kisses me deeper.

  “Stop,” I whisper-gasp. I press my hands against his chest, creating a barrier, thin but enough.

  Luc pauses but still hovers above me, not ready to release me. He eyes my swollen mouth, gaze venturing lower to my bare, quaking chest, my shivering hands, one of which rises to cup my forehead. I shake my head once. Tears come. They caution Luc, and he restrains from kissing me again. Just watches as the drops slide along my cheeks.

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” I utter, tone meant to dissuade him. “You know I won’t go if you do this. Don’t use it as the perfect excuse. You don’t get to do that.”

  “Serenity—”

  He leans toward me again.

  “No,” I exclaim, my voice rising, but I lower it to a whimpering plea. “Don’t do this, Luc.” I almost whisper the strained words, summoning more of my willpower no matter how thready it seems in this moment.

  He lets me rise slowly, lets me cover myself with my blouse again as my voice comes out almost broken, shattered like the swan statue at the Aviary, “I shouldn’t have to fight my body this much.”

  Caught off guard by the statement, Luc raises his brows once. “I never believed—I…” Shaking his head, he kneads his temple.

  “What?”

  This time, he moves slowly, cautiously, toward me with one finger raised. I hold my breath when he touches my blouse strings, but he only ties them this time. It takes just a moment, but he doesn’t hesitate to cup the side of my neck and kiss me one last time. Just a brushing of his lips against my upper one. And then, he slams one fist against the bedpost to my right. A force so great it rocks his knuckles, bloodying them and splintering the wood.

  “Damn your fight, Serenity!” Luc screws his brows so low, but it doesn’t frighten me like it used to. “Damn your heart, your will, and your mind! And damn me…because I thought I could convince your body to give them to me. It was too perfect an excuse. A perfect excuse to give me everything I’ve ever wanted and needed. And by tomorrow, it will all be gone. Once you step foot in the Temple, I’ll lose you forever. Goodnight.”

  I want to say something, stop him somehow, deny his words, but their potency is all too present. If I don’t succeed, Force will win. If I do succeed, he’ll win in another way. Because the Temple will be mine. Swallowing me no matter what I do.

  I’m still panting in the wake of Luc, cheeks flushed, feeling splintered the way the wood has suffered under the former Aviary director’s aggression.

  I turn to the window. See Sky walking along the grounds. Hands in his pockets, eyes on the ground. How he gets when he’s thinking.

  Scrambling out of the bedroom, out of the castle, I take the route he did until I find him by the river or the seaway, perhaps both. His pants are rolled up to his knees; waves ransack his feet. Water is a welcome relief, and I find it’s still warm after I’ve made my way to the rock-spackled slope to the shore. Pushing my skirt up so it collects at my thighs, I soak my legs in the water, close my eyes as it laps at the skin there, and sigh.

  “Serenity…”

  I don’t look at him, just murmur his name. He settles beside me, reclined on his hands, feet bare and ankles crossed in the water.

  “Something you want to tell me?”

  He shifts to his side, propping his elbow and leaning on his hand before touching one finger to my cheek. I flinch at the touch. But not because of Luc. I’m almost there. Almost sure. But I still can’t get over the cauldron of memories between myself and Sky. Some I don’t want to revisit.

  I stir the pot anyway. “When you were in the Shed, Sky, when I had to…the first time.” I don’t say it. “Did you ever…” I can’t seem to find the right words.

  Sky gives me one blank stare first before answering. “Jade isn’t completely wrong. Some men stretch themselves to the breaking point. Her method is one way they cope just as it’s a coping mechanism for her. But for me…what hurt more than the whip was seeing what was going on in your eyes.”

  He exhales, turns to the side, and then looks up at the night before rubbing his face and tugging out the leather strap holding his hair. His waves are strips of dark crushed velvet.

  I remain quiet until he’s ready to say more.

  “I won’t deny you’ve got some of your father in you. I
won’t deny that’s part of who I saw in the Shed. But I still remember how hard you fought. Not just Jade. But yourself.”

  “That’s just it.” I shake my head, tilt it up to the stars again. “I don’t want to fight it. It’s overwhelming—everything I felt in those moments, seeing you like that. I left parts of myself in that Shed. Traded them in for someone new. A new Serenity.”

  At hearing him collect a breath just to let it go, I face him again, watch as he takes my hand in his, traces the bare curve of my arm before kissing my palm. “We all walk through seasons. You’re in one now just like I was in the Shed. Even when I saw nothing but fire in your eyes, I still believed in the girl beneath the surface. The one holding onto her magic in this screwed-up world. She’s not her mother, and she’s not her father. She’s just Serenity.” He kisses the back of my hand, mouth drifting across every single one of my knuckles. “And I’ll love her through it all. Even when she’s in a fog. And I’ll do whatever it takes to bring her out of the haze.”

  I was afraid he would say something like that. I’m not ready yet. Not ready to feel the love I have for him. Too afraid it will bring the lightning again. I don’t want to use it against him like I did in the Shed. I zero in on those scars again. Just their edges. My eyes descend lower. The Shed awoke a lot of feelings in me. It’s the first time I’ve ever lingered on my thoughts, wondering what it would feel like to rake my nails, gentle, across every curve, every sinew and muscle, everything that makes Sky—Sky. Noticing my wandering eye, Sky smiles, but he does nothing more than chuckle and squeeze my hand.

  I deadpan because there’s one last thing I need to know.

  “What are you going to do, Sky?”

  He blinks but seems to register I’m talking about mine and Neil’s plan. For me to walk into the Temple.

  “Say what you need to,” I urge.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t have to say anything. By now, I’ve learned you’re an unstoppable force.”

  “But you’ve always been an immovable object,” I point out.

  One side of his mouth turns upward, but this time, Sky weaves one arm around my shoulder, careful but nurturing. “I’ll be the immovable object behind you this time. All you need to do is look back, and I’ll be there.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’ll be there, Serenity,” he whispers the promise. “I’ll always be there.”

  “What are you talking about? Just tell me.”

  Sky shakes his head with a smile creasing the corners of his mouth. “You know it doesn’t work like that, Ser. I’ll show you. You’ll see when you need to.”

  After a moment, he leans over to say, “You’re shaking. Come here.”

  He doesn’t summon. He doesn’t command. He coaxes me. Lets me crawl into his lap. His arms don’t devour me but cradle me instead. Like the thunder he is, they rock me and safeguard me. A million microscopic sentinels from his skin slip right into mine, marching through my blood vessels and lining up to form an unbreakable defense around my heart. Sky’s sentinels make friends with my butterflies.

  “Don’t you want to stop me?” I ask as I nestle closer into his chest.

  “No.” He cups a hand around my head, fingers wading in my hair. “I just want to love you. Want to love you through everything. No matter what storm you choose to stand inside, I just want to stand in it with you.”

  “It’s you, Sky.”

  I knot my hands into his clothes because I’m just not close enough. Huddled into a tiny ball in the shield of his arms, closer than the hairs on his arms, I’ll never be close enough. When this is all over, I know Sky will be standing beside me. And that means more to me than anything Luc can ever do to my body.

  “It was always you,” I whisper before kissing his neck right above my head.

  He leans down and kisses my mouth once before correcting me, “It will always be us.”

  I remember his scent like the raindrop-speckled moss. Remember his sweat and scars and thunder and earth grounding us together. Remember his callused hands as his thumbs circle my cheeks and he changes the angle and depth of the kiss, sinking deeper with me. By the time he finishes, my mouth is swollen and my nails have dug crescent marks into the back of his neck. A few strands of his hair stick to my fingers. Too winded for much movement, I lick my lips.

  For the first time, I ask him, “Why do you stop?”

  He knows its curiosity—not a signal.

  Sky surrounds, his assurance rough. “Because I know you. I know all your weaknesses, and I won’t take advantage of them. I know how hard you work against your own body. If I don’t put in my fair share of effort, then where will we be?”

  “Like the rest of the human race?”

  Sky smiles at me. “Exactly.”

  29

  T h e T e M p l e

  “You’ll blow them away,” Neil murmurs behind me, twisting around to plant a light kiss on my jaw.

  The procedure didn’t take as long as I believed it would. Within a couple of weeks, the prosthetics will begin to wear off and this new face will peel away to Serenity. For now, she is Sera Verity. Just close enough to my mother’s name to pique his interest. Close enough to my name to remind him. She is beautiful in her own way. Alien to me. I miss the intensity of my stare, but my eyes are softened in favor of carrying my mother’s gentle grace more than my haunting one. My cheekbones are plumper—face a little rounder and nose more curved. My lips are thicker but not as wide—more heart-shaped. Nothing has changed about my body.

  “It’s time,” Neil reminds me.

  All I must do is walk across the skyway from the Centre where Neil used his connections to sneak me in under the radar. Now, it’s time to pass through security to the third level of the Temple where the auditions will take place.

  “Thank you for everything. We couldn’t have done this without your help.”

  I insisted Luc and Sky remain behind. Not confident in my ability to accomplish this with them nearby. Besides, someone would recognize them if Force has any sort of warrants out for their arrest.

  “By tomorrow, I’ll be in the penthouse with you. We’ll drink afternoon tea and poke his corpse. Go on, Serenity.”

  After I progress through security and announce I am here for the auditions, they sweep me for weapons. I gulp when their hands linger in places they shouldn’t. Quite common for Temple security.

  First, they direct me down a long hallway with nothing but glass walls on my right-hand side, extending a view of the streetways. My first step in the Temple reminds me of the Aviary. So much glass everywhere. But where Luc’s taste adheres to clean and modern, my father’s penchant for the abstract echoes everywhere, especially when I round the hallway corner into the lobby where hundreds of glass balls in every shape and size hang from the ceiling, along with glass sculptures embedded in the floor like stalagmites that depict digitized moving art of abstract nudes. At a desk in the center of the room sits a young woman with blonde hair, well-groomed and polished, quite becoming, and it both puzzles and encourages me. That a woman can have a career other than the common one.

  “I’m here for the audition,” I announce.

  After she takes one look at me, she pinches her lips together. Her eyes are a pearly gray, but whenever she moves her head, the shifting wisps within them betray digitized contacts. “You’re early.”

  “I know.”

  She rolls her eyes, the fog inside vaporous, and groans a little before motioning behind me. “I’ll set the program up. On the screens behind you, you will find a series of questions as well as a form to fill out. Once you’re finished, I’ll notify the nurse practitioner that we have an early candidate. Perhaps they can squeeze you in.”

  She resents the extra work my presence demands. Showing up early was Neil’s idea. Even if it’s an entire day early. If my profile hits Force’s desk first, he won’t bother with any other candidates—at least, that is my brother’s prediction.

  “You realize if
you leave the building or even this vicinity, we won’t hold your space,” the blonde woman notifies me.

  “I understand. I’m not planning on leaving.”

  It’s not like I’ll be able to stomach any food in the next twenty-four hours anyway.

  “I’ve met quite a few ambitious candidates in my time. I am one of them. I admire your resolve,” she commends me just before I turn around to occupy my time on the screens. I wonder why they aren’t volumetric screens or at the very least holographic, but I suppose Force saves those for the higher levels. Cutting costs where he can.

  The form itself is more difficult because I have to summon memories of my forged background. With Sky’s Sanctuary connections and hacking skills, he navigated his way into the Temple system to create a false profile for me. All my answers must line up with that profile.

  Birthplace: Augusta, Maine. Parents: Orphan—with my father’s penchant for lost girls, it’s a safe option. My background is simple but untainted. A girl with an orphan’s smile coming to try her chances in the big city. No other job prospects. Desperate and lonely with just a touch of bruising. That is what my father likes. The ones who are fragile enough to fracture without breaking completely—the ones who will endure. Like my mother.

  Now, for the questions.

  I take my time, but I don’t have to. My answers aren’t even rehearsed, even though Sky showed me the application questions beforehand. I know my father too well. Questions like: Why do you wish to meet Director Force? What will you look forward to most during your visit? How will you please Director Force?

  The answers come naturally to me. First, I appeal to his sense of pride and ego but with a tint of longing.

  1. Why do you wish to meet Director Force?

  As the director who achieved the most fame to the Temple overnight, Force must wear his power like his cologne—not heavy but just enough to lure even the most unconvinced skeptic to his success. I can only hope to bask in the scent of him.