I stopped walking, too.
At the end of the cobbled path was the most unusual gateway I’d ever seen.
Thick white pillars on the sides, so tall, taller than most buildings, at their tips a single gigantic rose. Hedges just as tall somehow stood perfectly upright and continued on the sides so far I couldn’t see where they ended. There wereroses, red and white on the leaves everywhere, as if the hedges thought they were rosebushes instead.
“This is it,” March whispered, pulling at my hand to get me to walk again. “Welcome to the Garden of Memories, Ora.”
My mouth opened, but no word came out. There was no thought in my head, either, no feeling inside me other than awe.
A garden unlike any garden I’d ever seen.
The trees came first, right off the pillars—enormous,old, with trunks wide enough to live in and branches that reached for each other overhead, forming a canopy so dense the light that filtered through was stained rose and gold. White cobblestones made a winding path beneath them, and red benches were tucked between the roots, each one facing a different direction.
On every branch, hanging from thin silver chains, were hearts.
Glass hearts. Thousands of them, maybe more. They caught the light and scattered it in fragments of red and pink and amber, and they swayed in the breeze, sometimes clinking against each other with a sound so delicate it was barely there. Some were bigger, the size of two fists pressed together, but some were small enough to fit in my palm. Some were clear as water. Some were clouded with age, their surfaces frosted by time.
“Wow,” I breathed becausewow.What other word could there be for this? “March, this is…this is…”
No word. I shook my head and held his hand and drank in every detail my eyes could see.
“Do you like it?” he whispered, and I nodded so fast I got vertigo.
“Iloveit,” I whispered. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything more beautiful in my life.”
A chuckle. “Me, neither,” he said—only he was looking atme.
Heat on my cheeks.
“What is this place?” I breathed, a little overwhelmed by the scent of roses hanging in the air, by the silence, by the intensity of his eyes on me.
Oh, this Heart boy really was more trouble than I could even imagine.
“It’s where we store our memories,” he said. “Before a Heart dies, they choose their most precious memory and seal it in a glass heart to hang it in one of these trees forever. Each quadrant has one.” He stepped onto the white cobblestones, his hand still in mine. “But the best part is that, whoever comes here to visit, whoever touches them, they feel what the people felt. They live the people’s best moments for a few seconds. It’s like their memories are yours.”
Those words put together like that.
The very idea of something so beautiful, so heartbreaking existing in the realm…
It was a well-known fact that Hearts wereemotional,but I’d never considered that to be a good thing until I saw this. In our court, Spades were ice cold, and whatwedid when our people died was write their names on a wall.
Those who died before their time?A separatewall. So, they could be separated from their own people forever.
Cruel,I’d thought, though everyone insisted it was balance. But it wasn’t—andthiswasn’temotional.It was everything. It wasimmortalityin the flesh.
And Jinx would have absolutely adored it here.
I walked forward as if pulled by strings. My hand slipped from March’s, and I moved between the trees, looking up, turning slowly, my mouth open and my eyes everywhere at once. Every branch held more hearts. Every heart held a memory. The whole place hummed against my skin—warmth and love and a particular ache that was as devastating as it was beautiful.
We walked and walked for a minute or two, but the view didn’t change. So many trees. So many hearts. So many memories…
“May I?” I whispered eventually, when my eyes caught on one of the smaller hearts on a low branch just there, like it was asking me to reach for it.
“Of course,” March said, and I didn’t hesitate.
I wrapped both hands around the heart, and it fit my palms perfectly. It was warm—not from the sun, but from within. The glass was smooth and heavy, but at the same time it felt like holding onto a living thing, and the moment my palms closed around it, a flash took my vision away.
It was bright, vivid, so real it knocked the air from my lungs.
