Page 85

A kiss landed on the side of my nose, and I opened my eyes to meet Salas’s warm gaze.

“I just realized I hadn’t kissed that freckle yet,” he explained.

He simply wouldn’t let me descend into sadness tonight, lifting me up one kiss, one smile at a time. I liked my freckles. But now I wished I had infinitely more of them for Salas to keep kissing them all.

“And after swimming,” he continued describing the imaginary date we would never have in real life, “I’d make you the best rabbit pie you’ve ever had.”

“I like rabbit pie. Come to think of it, they don’t serve it in the palace often enough.”

He huffed in disappointment. “Well, the life of a princess isn’t as great as I thought then. In such a case, I most definitely would make you the pie. That’s pretty much the only dish I can make, but I can make it exceptionally well.”

“I can cook too,” I bragged, not to be outdone by his rabbit pie. “I know at least a dozen ways how to cook potatoes. And... well, that’s pretty much all I know about cooking.” I shook my head, laughing.

“It’s a really good thing then that we both have other people to make food for us, Princess.”

I had an entire palace kitchen staffed with the world’s most renowned chefs. And he had a slave cook. It wasn’t quite the same, but I smiled anyway because if I didn’t, I’d have to acknowledge the infinite distance between us that could never be crossed.

“STAY,”resonated through my mind.

Only this time, I didn’t say the word out loud as we stood on the patio, his arms wrapped around me in one last hug.

As much as we’d tried to hide from the sunrise in my bed behind the silk screen, the pale light of the rising sun had found us. Morning slithered through the open patio doors, painting the skies with muddy yellow.

Salas had to leave, and I could no longer hold him. I’d run out of time and out of excuses to keep him with me.

He’d put his shirt back on. I’d smoothed it over his chest, running my fingers over the small, polished buttons. With the shirt now in his possession, I realized there was nothing I’d have of him, not a single memento. Just memories.

My throat tightened. I wished I could do something, say something. But words were void of hope, so I kept them all in.

Salas gently ran his fingers along the side of my face. “I wish you all the happiness in the world, Ari.”

I loved the sound of my name from his lips. It pained me to know I’d have to live now without ever hearing it from him again.

Like it had always been, happiness remained unattainable. By now, I believed it simply didn’t exist. There was contentment, safety, and peace. I’d felt those. Happiness, however, remained nothing but an illusion, a beautiful but impossible idea. A ghost. Every time I thought I’d come close enough to feel it, it’d flutter away and disappear like an apparition.

“Can you find a way to be happy, too, Salas?”

“I’m content. That’s more than I could’ve hoped for years ago.”

I wished I could do something for him, help him somehow. But after my last failed attempt, I feared even an offer of help might come off as an insult to the life he’d built.

“Don’t free just one slave...”he’d said.

Mother had told me something similar, though not quite the same. “...you can’t favor any one person without considering the impact it would have on the rest.”

If I made a change to the benefit of all slaves, then Salas would benefit too. I didn’t know exactly how yet, but I was determined to find a way.

“I’ll never forget you,” I said with a sigh, struggling to keep my tears at bay.

“I will always remember you, too, Princess.”

He took my mouth in a kiss that seemed impossibly short when it ended. As he tore himself away from me, I took a step after him, unable to let go. He promptly climbed over the parapet, and by the time I reached it, he’d already made it down the wall, jumping off the lattice onto the ground.

He ripped the lower section of the lattice off the wall, wrested it out of the climbing rose bushes, then tossed it into the nearby hedge with force.

“Don’t let them fix this,” he growled, before walking away.

Air left me, squeezed out of my lungs by a tight band of sorrow around my chest. My knees gave in, and I sank to the ground. Hugging a stone pillar of the parapet, I watched his large figure shrink into the distance until he stepped off the path and took some hidden passage between the hedges toward the slaves’ barracks.