She also told us about the Red Queen’s teacher—a legendary woman named Harla who could read an entire life’s worth of memories through a single handshake. I hardly believed it, but she told it in such a way that by the end I couldseethe woman in my mind.
Everyone listened liketheyhadn’t been told stories for too long, too.
The table was small, so we were all spread about. Mimi sat at Vesta’s feet. Cook leaned against the wall of the house. Levana had just accepted her third cup of tea. Master Talik, even Silas who sat at the table with Vesta looked perfectly content to be there. Perfectly calm.
I was sitting on the grass near the edge of Vesta’s garden, half listening, half watching a bee flying among the wildflowers. March came and went, sometimes talking to the others, sometimes coming to sit beside me. Meanwhile, I constantly reached for the rose in my pocket, and my heart did strange things any time my fingers brushed against the petals. I smiled and smiled—a different smile, abrand-newsmile my lips were used to, even if I was sure I’d never discovered it before.
I noticed him watching me from the other side of the garden where he talked with Russ and Erith. I always noticed—his eyes felt like a touch when they were on my face, as senseless as that might sound. Even so, I couldn’t contain the smile, not when my hand was around the rose, so I just looked back at him and shrugged. I was only a girl, after all.
March grinned, too, widely, shook his head like he could hardly believe his eyes before he came to me. He didn’t sit,just stood there, close enough that his shadow fell across my lap.
“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious—had I looked like an idiot, sitting there, smiling at him like that?
“You like it here?”he asked.
I nodded. “Yes.” It was lovely, indeed.
An arched brow. “You like gardens?”
I was grinning again. “Why, yes, I do.” I loved the gardens he was in.
His eyes glistened as his smile widened, like he was thinking of something. But before I could ask, he offered me his hands, and the way I automatically put mine over them was so natural. He pulled me to my feet like I weighed nothing, and then we were face to face, and the garden and the yard and the world fell away little by little.
“If I asked you to follow me somewhere, would you?”
Yes.Absolutely, undoubtedly, twelve-hours certainly yes.
But I said, “Somewhere?”
“Yes. Somewhere.” That boyish grin on him was something else. It made the gears and cogs in my gut turn all the wrong ways.
“Alone?” I breathed.
He nodded and dragged me slowly deeper into the garden, farther away from everyone else.
“Alone. Just you and me,” he confirmed.
My heart slammed against my ribcage to say—do it, go, go, go!
“Okay,” I said, unable to look away from his face at all.
“Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.” I’d actually go all the way to the Spill with him, the very edge of our realm, without a word of complaint—but I didn’t say as much.
“Good. Be very silent and follow my lead.”
I glanced at the others. Vesta was deep into a story about a Diamond merchant who’d tried to buy a Heart’s emotions in a jar, and March was pulling me even deeper into the garden, and nobody was looking our way.
Nobody except Silas.
He was sitting on his chair at the side of Vesta and Master Talik, his cane across his lap, a cup of tea untouched on the armrest. His gray eyes moved from March to me, and my breath caught. I thought for sure he’d call out, he’d ask us where we were going, as we were clearly moving away and away, but…
Something passed across his face. Not surprise, not curiosity, and I could have sworn he gave half a nod before he turned away from us and looked at Vesta. As if he hadn’t seen us at all.
My hand was in March’s, his fingers threading through mine like they were meant to exist like that all along. He led me behind the trees and the vines, over the rosebushes that had swallowed the low fence whole—and straight for the thick hedge that surrounded her yard. I looked back and I realized I couldn’t even see the house from here anymore nor the others, and I was so excited I had yet to stop smiling.
March let go of my hand only for a moment, to push the branches aside and create a gap in the hedge big enough to barely fit me.
