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Chapter Twenty-Three
Aika
Jasmine.
It’s in my hair, on my clothes, clinging to every inch of me and threatening to drown me in memories of my dead sister.
Worse still, it’s all I have to show for my ill-fated journey into the king’s rooms.
That, and a heartbeat that still hasn’t slowed from the near-death moment with the giant cat. I keep up a rapid pace all the way back to the estate, turning the encounter over in my head and trying to make sense of it.
Obviously, I was wrong about the king not leaving the beast in his rooms unattended. What was strange was the thing’s odd cry at the end, like it was... sad.
Does it miss my sister? Did it somehow know I was connected to her?
I head straight for the bathroom, determined to wash off the visceral reminder of memories that threaten to drag me under.
Zaina, coming to my room the morning after my virginity was sold, bringing a tonic and a warm compress.
She doesn’t speak, doesn’t iterate the helpless fury that burns in her gaze. She only sets the things on my bedside, then presses her forehead against mine in a rare gesture of affection.
Her hair pools around me, shielding me from the room outside, and a waft of jasmine fills me with... something, too much, when I need to be numb and forget last night ever happened.
I pull back, scoffing.
“You’re so dramatic, Zai. It was hardly the worst night of my life.”
She shakes her head, uncharacteristic melancholy passing into her gaze. “That isn’t better, A.”
She gives me one last look before leaving me with the solitude I desperately need.
But the scent of jasmine remains, and I finally put a name to the feeling it gives me.
Comfort.
It isn’t comforting now. It’s like torture, slower and more excruciating than anything my knife could exact.
It’s like she’s died all over again.
What was I even expecting to find in that trunk? Some locked-away memory of how she spent those final months? My sister herself popping out, alive and well and proclaiming the entire thing a huge joke?
I scoff at myself. Zai was many things, many complicated things, but cruel was never one of them. If she were alive, she would have found a way to let Mel and me know.
If she were alive, Damian wouldn’t have returned to Mother without her.
Logically, I never really thought there was a chance otherwise. So why does it feel like I’m being crushed under the weight of a thousand corpses?
I don’t wait for the servants to heat up water. Instead, I let it run cold from the tap and grab my roughest sponge, already scrubbing harshly at my skin.
To hell with jasmine.
* * *
In the tenyears since Mother plucked me off the streets to offer me a life and a family and a purpose, she has never once asked me to dinner.
Normally, she eats alone in the vast room that feels more like a tomb, pristine to the point of being lifeless.
But nothing has been normal since Zaina died.
