Page 30

“I’ve seen them just beyond the gates!” I cried, incensed that a fellow soldier would enforce this lie. “They could slip under the walls or into this garden in an instant!”

He stepped even closer to me, his eyes blazing. “We do not welcome troublemakers in this palace. Perhaps you and your mistress would like to cut your stay here short?”

“No!” yelped Ofelia, grabbing my arm. Her eyes shone imploringly at me. “Lope, please.” She glanced up at the soldier. “Please, sir, she means no harm. We were only taking a walk. We’ve traveled so far, and I’m searching everywhere for my mother. She was supposed to arrive here and—I’m looking everywhere for her.” She slowly pushed me behind her. Her voice wobbled as she spoke. “You’re a king’s guard, sir. Would you know if she arrived? Her name is Mira—” She paused. “Her name is Marisol de Forestier.”

The soldier’s posture eased. It was like some magic Ofelia possessed, being able to calm people, to get them to listen to her and want to help her. It worked on me, certainly.

“I do not know every soul who’s come through the gates,”said the soldier. “But a ledger of all guests who enter and exit Le Château is kept in the library, along with all other records.”

Hope made her eyes sparkle. “A ledger! Oh, excellent. Thank you, sir!” She turned to me, squeezing my arm. “Let’s go to the library. They ought to have some proof if Mother arrived here safely.”

She curtsied to the soldier and started to leave, but I lingered for a moment.

“Why did you approach us?” I asked him coldly.

“This bosquet is not open to the public,” he said simply.

My brow furrowed. “Why would that be?”

“The king’s order.” The soldier held out a gloved hand. “Now, your knife, señorita. Unless you wish to leave the palace alongside it.”

As I placed it in his hand, my heart plummeted. They wanted us defenseless here.Why?

He nodded his head. “Be on your way.”

Ofelia grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the bosquet, back into the brightly lit allée. Her hand slid down my arm, her fingers entwining with mine. It made the heat of my anger and confusion melt into something sweet and warm.

“Let’s go back to the palace and find this library, like he said,” Ofelia told me as we walked side by side.

I glanced back over my shoulder. The soldier lingered in the shadows of the bosquet entrance, his halberd held in hisfist. “Why would he concern himself with us?” I murmured. “The place was gated off, anyhow....”

“He probably just has a temper.”

Her thumb brushed against mine, the only thing that could make me tear my eyes from the soldier and that little alcove.

“Something’s hidden there,” I murmured. “Something we got too close to.”

She let out a soft sigh through her nose, her gaze firmly upon the palace in the distance. “Lope, I don’t want a mystery,” she said, small and defeated. “I want my mother back.”

Her eyes looked like sunlit water. My heart twinged. I was letting my ambition take charge. My knightly need for duty and honor and defeating evil.

Now Ofelia didn’t need me to fight her monsters. She needed me to guide her someplace safe.

I clenched her hand to ground me. To turn my thoughts from myself to her—her and her mother.

Yet when I looked at the palace before us, golden in the morning light, something unsettled me. That ethereal, splendid beauty. It reminded me of the divine stories the pious caretakers would tell in the orphanage. That if the gods were to visit us, they would be too resplendent. That blood would seep from our eyes.

Beauty so brilliant it was deadly.

9

Lope

Within the pages of a book,

I wrap myself in solitude and solace.

Words from long-gone poets, friends I’ll never know,