Chapter 43

"This way! This way!" Euphemia called, sprinting through the maze of rosebushes an hour later. After breakfast she'd begged to show Leopold the changes she'd done to her playhouse in his absence, asking far too earnestly for him to decline.

We made our way into the gardens, tipping our faces up to the warm light. We'd had a particularly wet spring, with more rain than sunshine, and it now felt like a blessing to soak up so many rays.

It was misleading to call Euphemia's chalet a playhouse. Centered in the rose garden, it was a structure larger than my cottage in the Between had been. The rooms were filled with all the furniture and trappings a real house would have, scaled down to perfectly fit Euphemia's stature.

She redecorated it every season, painting and wallpapering over whatever had struck her fancy only months before. At present her favorite color was teal, and every surface had been bedecked with various shades of robin's-egg blue. Just the day before, I'd helped her hang floral chintz curtains in the sitting room.

Her playhouse had a sitting room.

"You ate the chocolate crepes," Leopold said, falling into step beside me.

"What?" I'd been trailing after the group and hadn't realized he'd stayed behind as well.

"The crepes, at breakfast. You ate them."

"Yes?" I responded, unsure of what he was getting at.

"You don't like chocolate."

Only now did I recall what he'd said upon his arrival. "I don't…I don't dislike chocolate," I began.

"But you don't particularly care for it either. Why would you eat something you don't like? And on your birthday, no less."

"Euphemia made them for me. I didn't want to be rude."

He snorted a laugh. "Euphemia's never set foot in a kitchen a day in her life. She sent word to Cook via her maid, and you knowit."

"But she thought to make an effort, and I didn't want to hurt her feelings, and—I'm sorry, why do you think I don't like chocolate?"

Leopold's eyes flickered from the path before us up to mine. "You never take dessert."

"I take dessert," I protested, a strange fluttering starting in my chest.

"You poke at it. You also never add sugar to your coffee. I don't think I've so much as seen you take a sweetened mint to cleanse your palate between courses."

I stopped in my tracks, floored that the prince had not only noticed this about me but had also filed it away. An entire war had been waged since I'd last seen him, but he remembered that?

"I…" I felt as though I ought to deny it, not because it was anything particularly important, but just for the sake of disagreeing with him. Instead, I found my shoulders relaxing, and I dropped the rigid pretense I'd armored myself with since moving to court. "I actually don't like most sweets," I heard myself say.

Leopold raised his eyebrows as if the honesty surprised him as much as it did me. "Not even on your birthday?"

I laughed. "Especially then."

"What's funny?" Leopold asked, starting down the path again.

"My godfather…" I stopped, wondering why I was about to tell him any of this, wondering why he cared. "He loves to celebrate my birthday. I think he's trying to make up for missing so many ofthem."

Before I could continue, Leopold held up a finger. "He missed your birthday?"

"A few of them," I allowed, feeling as if the admission was a betrayal of Merrick. "He's the Dreaded End. He's quite busy."

I wondered if I would see him today. Since that terrible day in the cavern, he'd remained away, and the silence between us felt charged and ominous.

"Doing what?"

"You know, I'm not actually sure," I admitted, feeling the need to laugh. "He's my godfather and I don't have the slightest idea what he spends his time doing."

Leopold looked amused. "You've never asked him?"

I shrugged. "I honestly was never sure I could."

"He must be terrifying," he offered, giving me a gentle allowance.

"Sometimes, but not usually. He always makes these overly elaborate cakes. There's filling and sweetened cream and colored sugar or candied fruits or…whatever. One year he used five different kinds of chocolate."

"Sounds delicious," Leopold said, swatting at a stalk of oleander growing into the path.

"Merrick always gobbles them down with relish."

He blinked in surprise. "Is that what you call him? Merrick?"

I nodded.

"It makes him sound so…normal."

"He is normal, most of the time. To me, at least," I added hastily.

He paused, reflecting. "I suppose it would be odd calling him the Great Darkness, the Dreaded End. So why don't you tell Merrick you don't like all the fuss?"

I shrugged. "He enjoys making them, and it feels easier to just let him do it." Leopold snorted. "A slice of cake is not a hardship."

"No," he agreed. "But going through life allowing others to impose their will upon you, simply because it gives them pleasure to do so, could be. Not could be," he corrected himself. "It is."

Leopold's observation struck me more deeply than I wanted to admit. No one, not even Kieron, had ever seen me so thoroughly. It galled me that of all the people in the world, it was Leopold who'd bothered to look.

But it also was a bit flattering.

"Who are you and what have you done with the crown prince?" I demanded, causing him to smile. "The one who, only an hour ago, compared me to a prostitute?"

He winced, rubbing at his head. "I'm sorry for that. It's…it's easy to get caught in that pattern of talk when I'm around the other officers."

"That talk didn't surprise me," I pointed out. "But this…talking about cake and sweetened mints. I never would have thought you would notice—"

"Of course I notice," he cut in, quicker, perhaps, than he'd meant to. "Didn't you…did you get my letter?"

His tone had grown softer, hushed, as if he was holding back some feeling he wasn't yet ready to give away.

Just because you made him change does not mean he changed foryou.

"I did."

"You never wrote me."

Did he sound…hurt?

"I didn't know I could," I admitted. "I didn't know you'd want to hear from me."

Leopold dared to look my way, meeting my eyes with a stare so blue my heart began to rekindle some of those ridiculous daydreams.

"For a girl who's so terribly smart and skilled, there's a surprising amount you don't know."

I didn't know how to respond.

"I thought about you quite often, there, at the front," Leopold mentioned.

"Why?" I asked, my eyes narrowed with distrust.

He paused, choosing his words with care. "I'd never been close to death before. The nearest I'd ever come was when Mother…but even then, I hadn't seen the process of it, the moment it happened.She just went out for a ride and never came back. And then…servants took care of the body. The embalmers took care of it after that. I'd never had to deal with the aftermath…the after."

I nodded, understanding. Since the Shivers had passed, I'd noticed how unpleasant an intruder death was here, a distant relation you couldn't bear to spend time with. People didn't know what to do with it. They did not sit with their dead. They did not prepare the bodies of their departed themselves, the way people would in smaller towns and villages. They sent their loved ones to a place where someone else would clean them and dress them and make them appear as though they were every bit alive as the living, who would mourn them too quickly, eager to return to their own lives.

"But on the front," Leopold went on, "there was only us to deal with it. There were no servants, no gravediggers." He let out a small laugh that held no trace of humor. "There weren't even enough men to take away the bodies. They were just left there, with us. So there was no choice but to deal with the after. There they were, taking up space and reminding us of everything that would come for us, no matter how hard we fought, no matter how brave we pretended to be. And I found myself thinking of all the afters you must have seen. I know…I know you're good at your job, that you're very, very good at it…but even very good healers must eventually deal with afters."

"Yes." It came out softly, less than a whisper, as my mind dredged up every after, every terrible moment before the after.

"It helped me, in a way, thinking of you." He smiled and the corners of his eyes crinkled, giving him a gravitas I had not seen in him before. "Sometimes I'd even talk to you, in my head."

"You'd talk to me?"

Leopold blew out a breath, as if hardly believing he was admitting such thoughts. "You became this kind of daydream to help me through everything. I'd imagine what you'd do, how you'd treat the boys dying all around me. Elevate the wounds, apply pressure to staunch the blood flow and all that, but also…more, you know?" His smile deepened. "So now you know my little secret and I can die of shame in these box hedges here."

I studied him, trying to see if it was a trick, trying to see where the punch line might lie. He returned my stare with an open guilelessness that undid me. "You don't need to be embarrassed."

"I just told the pretty girl who I've been thinking of for months that I've been thinking of her for months. I truly think I should, Hazel."

Pretty? My heart glowed, but I pushed the word away, certain he didn't truly mean it. No matter how introspective he might become, Leopold would forever be a flirt. "You never need to feel ashamed of striving to become a better you." I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. "I think the changes suit you."

"Not everyone does. I can feel people expecting me to go back to my old ways now that the war is over. And being home…it feels far easier to watch the world through gilded glasses, but…it's also tiring to not care about things, you know?"

I raised an eyebrow. "So now you care about…cake?"

I was happy to hear him laugh.

"I am trying to care," he began, deliberately emphasizing each syllable, "about those around me. Which includes you now too, healer—in case you don't know. I'm sorry for what I said earlier. I feel as though I'm trying to please so many people, to be everything to everyone. But I find that costume no longer fits so well." He pressed his lips together. "You'd be surprised at how it now chafes."

I wanted to respond with some airy remark—a talent I'd found came so easily in conversation with Bellatrice—but those words would not come.

"My mother used to make my brothers and sisters a spiced nut cake for their birthdays," I finally said, feeling as though I'd handed him something precious.

"But not you?" he asked, hearing the words I hadn't said.

"I…I wasn't ever really hers to care about. Not after Merrick claimed me."

"Was it very good, this spiced cake?"

I smiled. "I didn't think so at the time, but now I'd love to have it again."

Slowly, as though worried any sudden movement might jar this delicate moment growing between us, he reached out and brushed his fingers over mine. It wasn't an attempt to hold my hand. It felt as if he wanted to touch me, just to know he could.

"Perhaps—"

"Leopold! Look! Look! See all the changes?" Euphemia said, running back toward us. She grabbed her brother's hand and whisked him off, chattering in an excited rush.

Leopold glanced over his shoulder, just once, but I felt his expression linger with me for the rest of the morning.