Or was this just another trick?
Had his plan succeeded, with her as Souverain and his father under their control, they would’ve spent their evenings in the quiet kitchen of a château. He could’ve grown lavender and sketched to his heart’s delight. All while he had her mother’s blood on his hands.
It was a dangerous line of thinking, because somewhere, deep in her heart, she still loved him.
She flopped back onto the mattress.
No more lavender tea.
No more midnight meetings.
Just… no more.
For comfort, she reached for her mother’s recipe book beneath the pillow.
It was gone.
No. Not gone.
“No.” She shot up. “No. Nononono.”
She fell to the floor, knees crunching glass and debris as she scrambled to collect all the ripped pages.
“Please,” she begged. “Please. I’m sorry.”
A knock wrenched her to her feet. She dropped the papers and faced the door, unwilling to let anyone in this hell see her weak. Quickly, she removed the chair and peeked through a small gap to find a particularly nervous-looking servant.
“Come in.”
A woman in a sage apron carried a tray of café, bread, meats, and cheeses that she almost dropped. Her face paled as she took in the room, lingering longest on Elara, who must’ve looked every bit the rabid Restes mongrel everyone here believed her to be.
“Souverain Lafontaine suggested a good breakfast to start the day.” She tiptoed around the mess to drop the tray on the only surface left—the bed.
“He also said to give you this.” She produced a pad of paper and a fountain pen from her pocket. “He asks you to make a list of anything you require for this evening.”
“A knife to bury in his heart?” Elara muttered.
An officer shifted into the doorway as a warning.
Elara tossed the pad to the side. “I’ll think about it.”
As soon as the woman left, Elara dropped to her knees and continued collecting the papers, lumping them against her lap as she went. When she finally found the cover, she realized there was no undoing the damage.
She’d ruined the only thing left of her mother, and it wasn’t a mistake. She’d meant to do it. Delighted in every shrill rip of the past being shed.
Elara pressed the cover to her forehead. “I’m so sorry.”
It was then she felt the shift. The cover swelled between her fingers, the quiet shuffle of pages filling the silence.
The book was whole again. She turned it, feeling the edges of fresh papers untouched by time or use.
When she opened it, words inked themselves into the inside cover in a familiar, slanted scrawl:
THERECIPEBOOK OF
Elara Rousseau
She laughed, tracing her mother’s lettering. When had she done this?Howhad she done this?
