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I know where this is going. She’s going to make us stroll through the gardens and talk. I feel a little queasy and nervous. She’s the only person I want to talk to about this. I don’t know why I didn’t go to her in the first place. Her advice and opinions are worth more than anyone else’s.

We travel out of the door and into the garden.

“A girl?” she asks, forging ahead.

“A girl,” I confirm.

“She must be quite the woman to snag your attention.” Her curiosity is unnerving. She isn’t betraying what she is truly thinking in her elegant mind.

“She demands attention everywhere she goes. Mine is only a needle in a haystack.”

“But she doesn’t prefer the haystack if she’s your girlfriend,” she gently points out.

“She isn’t my girlfriend. They were only taunting me.”

“So you’re friends?”

“Not exactly,” I exhale.

I don’t know what we are, and I’ve never been on the receiving end of this confusing dynamic. I’ve always made it clear where I stand with people, male and female, no matter their status or my dealings with them. When it comes to Josie, I’ve been careful not to push her in any direction in fear that she might find it too much and not return to me.

“Your father mentioned her to me,” Persephone sighs, finally looking at me with a strange mixture of emotions.

I groan. “Of course he did.”

“You’re misreading me.”

“Then state it plainly.”

“You ask that of me, but not the girl?” The corner of her mouth twitches, the ghost of a smile.

“She’s unpredictable.”

“So she’s been hurt before?”

“I wouldn’t know. She makes it impossible to get to know her.”

“Yet you still want to. Are you trying to solve her mystery, or do you have genuine interest in her?”

My mother always asks thought provoking questions. I think about it. Josie is a mystery; I can’t argue that. But every time she gives me a crumb of herself, I inhale it like a starved man. Sure, I contemplate the words and the small admissions. I wish she would give me more, but not because I want to figure her out. The only things I want to know are how to make her stay, and how to make whatever haunts her go away.

I look away with shame. “Genuine interest.” These feelings are new to me, and they’re uncomfortable.

She nods her head in understanding. “I always wanted to be a bit of a mystery myself, but I was never good at it.”

“It’s an infuriating trait.”

She laughs. “It takes patience. That’s something you have never been very good at.”

“No, I’m not.” I feel a little lighter. It’s easy to talk to her. There’s no blame in her tone, no lecture on responsibility, and no reminder that someday soon I will have to sit on the throne and make decisions for an entire civilization. Just true, genuine concern.

“It’s lonely to live like that,” she ponders. “I have personal experience. It’s like you’re clawing your way through a current just to get a breath of fresh air. You don’t know who you can trust, so you trust no one at all.”

“She has a sister.”

“That doesn’t make her any less alone, Aedonaeus. Sisters are always trying not to be a burden on one another.”

She stops and sits on a bench in her favorite spot. Across from it is a wall of flowers, pink like the ones in her hair. They stretch and bloom bright in her presence.