I understood why I could never leave Aloriya. My father could make the late king’s beloved endover lilies bloom year-round, but I could grow a forest in the name of Anwen. When Papa passed, he would hand the mantle to me, and I would prune the lilies and plant the new seeds in spring and trim the wisteria trees in the fall.
And it was safe. I was safe.
The wood couldn’t get to me here.
And while it would be nice to dance with someone, to make a home with someone, my home was this garden, my house its walls. I’d known it all my life—what else could I want? And besides, how many people out there could love a girl with dirt underneath her fingernails?
There were no stories of gardeners’ daughters. Or bakers’ daughters. Or blacksmiths’. We did not bloom where our roots did not grow. So I accepted that I would disappear into history just like every other gardener’s, baker’s, blacksmith’s, or merchant’s daughter.
And I would never be asked to dance.
I spun across the soft grass, humming the melody, which I knew by heart. One turn, then another, and another—and suddenly I felt my fingers folded into the hand of another, my hand on his shoulder, his on my waist. Golden hair and a sunset smile and eyes like ocher. My breath caught. Because for half a second—for a blink, a moment—it felt like—
But then I snapped my eyes open and accidentally dropped the fox. He gave a yip as he hit the ground.
I blinked quickly and glanced around, but there was no one on this side of the garden wall. I was alone—
The garden was quiet. The waltz had stopped.
It was time for Anwen to take her crown.
6
The Splendors You Stole
Cerys
“SPROUT! THERE YOU are,” Papa called excitedly, poking his head through the vines of the archway. “Hurry! We can’t miss the coronation!”
“Miss it? But I can’t . . .”
He took me by the hand and said, “We’re not missing this.”
“But the seneschal . . .”
“What can she do? Fire me?” He scoffed and pulled me through the garden. I glanced around for the fox, but he was gone, and the ivy vines closed behind me as Papa pulled me into the royal garden of Aloriya.
To most other countries and kingdoms in the greater continent of Vaiyl, this probably looked like a rather quaint affair—charming, I think I heard the princess from the cold climes of Malvok say. But the royal garden was so much more than charming. It was beautiful in the only way Aloriya could be, beauty that could only exist under the auspices of the Sunder crown. Paper lanterns hung from strings, tied from one tree to another, lacing across the sky above us, their warm, golden glow soft on the myriad of flowers and shaped hedges and bushes with flowering blooms. There was a fountain in the middle of the garden that ran crystalline spring water from a stag’s mouth as it stood on the precipice of a mountain, and lily pads grew in the pool beneath it, orange and yellow fish munching on flies that landed on the water. And surrounding us, like ancient sentries, were those old and bent wisteria trees, a spring breeze riffling through their vines, blowing flower petals across the garden.
Papa and I stood at the edge of the crowd so as to not arouse suspicion, but it was still painstakingly obvious how out of place he and I were here. My honey-colored hair was unruly and curly, even after I’d taken a brush to it, and my skin was still fair and freckled even though I spent most days outside tending to the gardens. My hands were callused, scarred from years of pruning bushes and being pricked by thorns. I was not beautiful by any noble standard, but no one expected me to be.
I was the royal gardener’s daughter, and my best friend was about to be queen of Aloriya.
I wondered, briefly, as I looked across the crowd, who Anwen’s late brother would have chosen as his partner if he hadn’t been lost. Who would Anwen choose? A prince, a princess—no one at all?
The seneschal led Aloriya’s finest onto the terrace, their silver armor shining in the lantern light, chests emblazoned with the head of a lion. The first king of Aloriya, King Sunder, had broken ground on the Sundermount with a sword that had a hilt carved like a lion’s head. King Sunder’s portrait looks out over the great hall like an eerie sort of specter, watching over the kingdom and its goings-on. If the seneschal had her way, she would’ve taken the portrait out and propped it up on the terrace, too, but thank the old gods it was bolted to the wall.
The orchestra trilled a soft note, and our princess stepped onto the terrace, as graceful and beautiful as a swan. A soft white mist began to settle into the edges of the garden and made the lights glow.
“Sprout,” Papa said softly, and I glanced over to him. He took my hand gently in both of his. They were tanned and gnarled from forty years of tilling the earth and pruning bushes, never once thanked for his artistry, for a single moment of his labor and love, blown away like petals on the wind. “Is this what you want?”
I gave him a strange look. “What do you mean?”
To that, he chuckled. “This. This garden, this job, this legacy.”
“I . . . I don’t know what else I would want,” I replied, a little at a loss of words. “I don’t know what else I could do. This is my home—of course I want this.”
He pressed a kiss to the side of my head, but I got the feeling that I had said the wrong thing, somehow.
On the terrace, the seneschal took the crown out of a gilded golden box and held it up toward the sky. It was made of gold shaped like leaves, twined together like the daisy crowns my mother used to make me. It was the crown that had sat on the late King Merrick’s brow for thirty-seven years, and the king before that, and before that, all the way back to the beginning of Aloriya. The crown had been a gift from the Lady of the Wilds herself.
In good faith, to protect our kingdom.
In return, we were never to visit Voryn, never to speak of it, never to bother her fair, magical city.
It had been so for hundreds of years.
This would be no different.
The apprehension in the garden was palpable, and the mist rolled low through the green grass, covering our feet like a tide. A chill passed through me; I shivered and rubbed my arms.
“As her father before her and their forefathers before them,” the seneschal announced, holding the golden crown up for the crowd to see, and then went to place it upon Princess Anwen’s brow. “I bless you with the gifts of Aloriya and the splendors of the Wilds—”
“The splendors you stole,” someone said from the crowd. A hissing, rumbling voice that seemed to quake the air itself.
I whirled around to try to find the owner of the voice, as did everyone else.
But we found no one.
Papa squeezed my hand tighter. Wen’s wide eyes flicked around the garden, trying to find the source of the voice, the guards reaching for their swords, but all we heard was the rumble of thunder in the distance.
On the wind, spirals of black seeds spirited into the garden. One landed in my hand—and shriveled instantly.
The seneschal spoke. “Who said that?”
On the other side of the garden, a pale woman let out a shriek, and a few feet away a bearded man dropped his champagne glass, a third clawing at the flushed sandy skin on his face. The woman in front of me let out a gasp, and I watched as black spots—like the rot on the orchid this morning—bloomed across the brown skin of her hands from where a seed had landed, and burrowed roots down into her skin.