“How? How is he possibly right to go to his death!”
Emily braved a sideways glance at me, her shoulders wrapping her ears. “Who else can?”
“It doesn't have to be this way. We don't have to kill Drake. We can reason with him, or…I don't know, anything. But not death. That’s eternal, Emily. Don't you care?”
“Of course I care.” She spun around on the spot to look at me. “You know I love David. But I love you, too, Ara, and I care about the future of our people, and that means we need you alive because we need an heir to the throne—David’s blood or not.”
I hid my face slowly in my hands. “Why can't anyone, ever, just take my side?”
She appeared beside me, sweeping my head against her shoulder. “I'm on your side. But, I…I just don't know how to talk sense to him, Ara. All I can do is accept what he thinks is best and just go along with it.”
I uncovered my face. “You’re afraid of him.”
“I'm not afraid of him.”
“Really?” I smirked. “’Cause you . . . you’re kinda pale.”
She adjusted her seat. “No. I'm just…cautious not to aggravate him.”
I laughed. “Precisely.”
“I'm not, Ara. Not really.”
“Okay.”
We both sat smiling for a few seconds, but inside, a part of me was battling with the other half that thought telling Emily my plan to have a child with Arthur was a bad idea.
“What if there was a way I could save him?” I said, still talking myself into involving her.
“What do you mean?”
“What if—” I sat up more. “What if there was a way I could crown someone else king?”
“So David wouldn’t be the one who had to kill Drake?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’d say do it. Yeah. Whatever it takes, Ara.” She nodded, becoming more convinced by the second. “I'm on your side. If there’s a way we can save him, let’s do it.”
“It would mean…” I hesitated. “It could hurt him, though.”
Her eyes went dark, her chin slowly rolling upward, making her shoulders straight and her spine tall. “You mean jure uxoris.”
“Yes.”
“No.” She brushed her skirt down her legs as she shot to her feet and took a few steps backward. “No way.”
“Why?”
“If you have even half a brain in that head, Ara, you won't do anything of the sort.”
“Why?”
“I'm not getting in the middle of that. If that’s your only plan—” She walked over and opened my door. “You're on your own.”
“Fine,” I said to myself as she slammed it behind her.
Every summer, as a little girl, I’d leave the wintry cool of my home in Australia and fly a couple of thousand miles across the sea to my dad’s house. I only ever stayed a few weeks at a time, but it meant everything to him. I knew that as deep as I knew my own soul. Every night, when he’d tuck me in and kiss my head, he’d take a minute or two to sit by my bed and tell me a story—always some tale about love conquering all—before winding the mechanism on the base of my music box, setting it down on my grandmother’s dresser, and closing my bedroom door. I’d fall asleep to the gentle hum of his voice lingering in my ears and the soothing chimes of a lullaby. Now, whenever I hear rusty clicks moving a string of notes toward the end of a song, it always takes me back to the sweetness and innocence of childhood. But, this tune was different.
I lay staring at the dome of stained glass above my bed, imagining that little girl in the picture had grown up and lived some amazing life. But the score to my imagined story, chiming through the night from the silver box David gave me the night before our wedding, conflicted the joyous past I tried to create with a quite sombre, rather daunting one—bringing more sorrow and mystery than I think the composer intended. The notes rolled off each other in ghostly succession, the melody so intrinsic it took on what felt like solid form, floating in the summer air above me—a foggy white light, littered with tiny sparkles.
No one ever taught me the words—given that they were in the Ancient Language, but somehow, I’d sung the translated version the day David died at Elysium. Lying here now, though, I couldn’t recall even one lyric—didn’t even know the title.
“Mort de l’Amore,” a small voice whispered. “Death of Love.”
My eyes moved from the glass dome above to the child beside me. Her golden hair fell in long, crinkled waves over her shoulders, framing the eternally youthful face of pale skin, unblemished by life. She sat toying with the golden apple, spinning it carelessly between her fingertips.
“Mort de l’Amore,” I said it quietly to myself, sitting up a little. “Do you know the words?”
She nodded, her small mouth opening, waiting for the gears to spin back around to the song’s beginning. And her voice was high like a child from the choir of angels—the words of the song touching my ears for the first time, despite once having moved my lips. I closed my eyes and listened for the meaning—catching a moment of sorrow within it that was quickly retrieved by the deep undertone of love. Eternal love.
The words faded away then to nothing but a soft breath, a few seconds after the endnote. Eve looked down as if the golden apple had been mentioned in the lyric, and held it up, giving it a gentle turn to show a small hole in the side.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a keyhole.”
“A keyhole?” I reached for the apple; she drew it away. “What’s inside?”
“The secrets.”
“Can you share them with me?”
Her gaze went to my collarbones. “Only you hold the key.”
I touched my necklace. “This key?”
“Perhaps,” she said, slowly reaching across to cup my hand with her tiny, cool fingers, then turned my palm upward, laying the apple there.
“But the hole is too big for this key.”
“Then you’re not looking at it properly,” she said, and a coy smile moved her lip, her hand coming up a second later to swipe the apple. It rolled, bouncing off my fingers in a series of failed attempts to catch it, hitting the ground with a thud, then disappearing under the bed.
“Eve?” I looked back at her, but the only thing beside me now was the peacefully sleeping man sprawled out like a starfish, taking up way more than his fair share of the bed. I waited a moment to see if the thud woke him, holding my breath as I watched his chest move rhythmically up and down, the cool air coming from his nose, moving across the sheets and brushing my pinkie where my hand rested, propping my arm up against the sheets.