chapter forty-two

"What?" Thea gasped. "What do you mean, it's a person?"

"I've felt the energy of hundreds of flowers and plants over my life," Priscilla explained. "This has the energy of a plant, but also something so much more powerful. I can't explain it; other than the rose is housing something stronger, something with thoughts."

"A soul," Hayden clarified, his grip tightening around the rose. "I'm certain of it. I've transported enough bodies to know what it feels like when something alive passes through one of my portals, hence why I was able to notice your entrance." Hayden nodded toward Thea. "This isn't just some enchanted flower, it's a trapped soul."

A trapped soul?

Thea pressed a hand to her lips, her heart pounding as she remembered all the times the rose had responded to her, or pulsed like it had a heartbeat. It had been alive all along.. .

"But how...? How does a soul become trapped in a flower?" Thea asked.

"I'd gamble it's trapped in more than just the rose," Priscilla explained as her fingers twisted into her skirt. "The labyrinth is said to be alive, right? It's always changing and learning, hence why it's impossible to navigate."

Thea's breath caught. Of course...

"The labyrinth and the rose have always been connected," Thea thought aloud. "They would always work together to guide me, and both had the same strange sentience. Does that mean the soul is split in two places?"

"Or it has two forms," King Hayden explained as he passed the rose back to his wife. Priscilla took it gingerly, cradling it like a child instead of a plant. "A lock and a key. If the rose is meant to be the key to the labyrinth's undoing, then the solution might be to combine the two to make the soul whole again. Or at least, that's my first theory. There's still the beast's curse to consider... How does the rose play into this?"

"I'm not sure." Thea shrugged, still wrapping her mind around how a person could be transformed into both a maze and a rose. "Zared was told by his mother that the rose would be the key to curing his curse, and the rose was guarded by Lord Malik, Zared's father. Perhaps Zared's curse is tied to whatever magic is in the rose? "

"Another curse..." King Hayden's eyes flared red, his jaw clenching as something clicked in the back of his festering mind. "Fairmyth... it can't be."

King Hayden rose from his seat, storming out of the room with heavy steps.

"Hayden?" Priscilla got up to follow him, and Thea did the same, earning a grouchy meow from Cerpurrus as she knocked him off her lap.

They both tailed the king, following him all the way into a library that was filled with even more books than the parlor they'd been in. The king started raiding the shelves, pulling off old books and scanning the covers before tossing them aside to grab the next.

"Hayden, what are you looking for?" Priscilla asked.

"Something never sat right with me about that Malik fellow," Hayden said as he pulled out another book, this time keeping it and moving toward a table. "His records never added up."

"Records?" Thea asked.

"We keep records of every body buried in Underworth, except for those in Tarteron," Hayden explained as he thumbed through the pages, scanning what looked to be thousands of names. "For divine ones, we also record every birth—that way they can have both dates recorded on their grave when buried. Even mortal children of divine ones are included, such as the prince of Oceanic. So long as they had a divine parent, their birth and death will be recorded."

Priscilla moved beside Hayden, staring over his shoulder at the list of names. "I don't understand," she said. "What does having a birthdate have to do with any of this?"

"It's not the birthdate," Hayden said as he stopped on a page, gliding his finger down the list of names. "It's the death date. Lord Malik reported his eldest son as dead not long before his second birthday, but we never received any body."

His finger stopped on the page, and Thea raced over to see what he had pointed at.

Zared Ashoran (Mortal)

Thea's heart pounded when she saw his name. It was almost relieving to know that he had been remembered at one point, but so much sadder when she saw the rest of the report. Underneath his name was a date of birth and a date of death that never truly occurred. Anger swirled up inside Thea as she imagined Lord Malik casually reporting his little son as dead, despite knowing perfectly well he still lived. Just below the death date was a spot for the grave marker to be listed for Zared, but it was left blank.

"So, he was never buried?" Thea asked as she looked back up at the king. "That's not surprising, considering I know he's still alive."

"I agree," King Hayden said, his voice shockingly grim as he continued to stare at the faded ink. "It's not uncommon for divine ones to have private burial grounds, especially for their children, so I didn't think much of it at the time..."

He flipped back a page, revealing a whole other list of names, placing his finger at the bottom of the page. Thea read through the names, trying to figure out what he was trying to show her until one last name caught her eye.

Ashoran

"The strange part, was that wasn't the first body Malik had kept to himself," King Hayden brushed his finger across the death date of a lifespan that only appeared to be seven years.

Thea clasped a hand to her mouth, her voice clogged in her throat as she pieced together what the king was implying. The last name on that page had a birth date, death date, and no assigned grave.

Daida Ashoran (Rose Nymph)

"Fairmyth..." Queen Priscilla gasped, her hands shaking around the glowing rose.

"It would seem Zared wasn't the only child Malik had cursed," Hayden growled. "He had a daughter, too."