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“Yes. Right. Okay…” I gasped, wishing the floor would open and swallow me entirely. “Yes… but…”
I faltered, and he gave me a begrudgingly peripheral glance. “What is it?”
He was trying hard to keep the exasperation from his tone, I could tell, and I hated to bother him with something so trivial, but it was a formal party.
I stared down at the table, my cheeks flaming.
“I really don’t have anything appropriate to wear to a gala, Alpha.”
He was unbothered by my concerns. “We have a tailor and seamstress in the castle, plus an entire room filled with gowns somewhere. There is not a single being who isn’t fully adept at magic—including you. There is something for you in here; I personally guarantee it.”
I balked, shaking my head. “I don’t know if I’m capable of magic,” I mumbled, and he grunted.
“I’m sure you are,” he insisted. “If you have a capacity for botany, you can do magic. But that will come, too. In the interim, the staff is here for anything you need. You only need to ask, Mirielle.”
I sat back, again overwhelmed by his generosity and by the confusion and perplexity of my situation. “Thank you, Alpha.”
“Keep up the good work.”
He wiped his mouth and stood, placing his napkin on his half-finished breakfast as he flashed me a quick smile. “Stay and finish your meal. I have meetings today. I’ll have someone send you the details regarding the event. They will be in touch regarding your dress.”
With a final sip of coffee, he was gone, leaving me there with my head swimming all over again, but I still couldn’t help but watch him walk away.
Chapter5
Zen
The invitation to breakfast had been a long time coming—something I’d purposely put off at Endora’s suggestion.
“Let her get settled in first,” the enchantress had said when I told her to send for Mirielle to me on the second day after her arrival. “Let’s see if we can’t shake some of those memories loose.”
“What harm can breakfast do?” I asked, bewildered by her refusal to allow it. “They’re not mutually exclusive concepts, are they?”
“They are if you intimidate her,” Endora replied flatly. “You admitted yourself that she’s probably in a stress fugue. If I can’t probe her mind in a usual fashion, only time will take her out of this. Give her some time to find a routine, and we’ll revisit the issue in a little while.”
I didn’t push the implication that maybe I was the cause of Mirielle’s inability to remember, but after a week of waiting around, I’d decided to take matters into my own hands—without informing my adviser. Without any advancement in Mirielle’s predicament, I didn’t think she would agree anyway. As much as I respected my enchantress’ advice, she wasn’t the end all and be all of my decisions.
What I hadn’t expected was to be so overcome by Mirielle when she sat down at the long, antique wood table, clearly ill-at-ease in her gardening uniform, unsure of what cutlery to use. There was still a lost babe-in-the-woods aura about her, despite the fact that she had cleaned up so much better than I could have predicted when I last saw her.
I understood now what Landon meant about that face to remember. I would have known her too if I’d met her before. She was clearly a beauty, with her shining, dark red hair and vivid blue eyes.
But it was her innocence that entranced me the most, her eagerness to please and make no waves. I got daily reports from her supervisor in the greenhouse, Lacroix, of course, interlaced with his incessant whining, but the data was favorable. Mirielle was well liked by everyone she had encountered so far. She was breaking down my carefully erected walls of suspicion bit by bit.
If she was putting on some kind of intricate act, she was doing a job worthy of awards. I couldn’t buy into that theory anymore, not after all this time. And the breakfast had proven what I’d already suspected—Mirielle truly had lost her memories, and I wanted more than ever to help her reclaim them.
“Who was that at breakfast?” My sister’s soft voice stopped me mid-stride down the center hallway of the main floor, my briefcase in hand, the guards a few feet ahead and behind as we headed out to meet the Council of Ministers this morning.
I slowed, my pulse quickening to realize Cyndella had witnessed Mirielle’s presence in the grand dining room. She so rarely came down for meals, I hadn’t considered she might appear.
I waved my guards away for privacy and stopped to speak with my sister in the front sitting room, next to the front doors. On the olive-green chaise, a book lay pages down, the crease of the sofa still imprinted where Cyndella had been lying. I wondered if she’d been there all night.
“You’re getting better at this stealth thing, Cyn,” I teased. “At least you’re not barreling into me anymore.”
“Who is she?” Cyndella asked again, not cracking a smile. “I don’t recognize her, but she’s wearing a greenhouse uniform. Where did she come from?”
Her eyes were as dark as the sofa, closer to my shade of slate gray than their usual hunter green. I considered lying to her, but instead, I decided to answer in the simplest terms possible. Gaslighting her wasn’t going to heal her.
“Her name is Mirielle. She’s Lacroix’s apprentice.”
