I crouched beside her grave and lifted the shroud to touch her face.
She had been beautiful, my Fleur. Her cheeks were the colour of the Centifolia when the petals would open and the soft pink would be revealed. That had been her smile. Now she lay quite still. The corner of her lips that I had so cherished was marred with spite and rebellion. Garish. A waste.
No matter. Soon she would blossom again, and my pruning would awaken in her that same soft sweetness I had come to love before she had turned on me. She belonged here with the others. Tomorrow night I would lift her up, and she would open her eyes again, and she would smile for me.
She would. Then we would be together, her and I, and my sweet girls.
Stepping back, I took a breath of the scent of her perfume in the air. A shudder ran through me. Sublime.
“Brother,” he called me from my reverence. Ashur’s youngest. The eager voice and his haughty, demanding tone gave him away. I turned. Could he not see that I was occupied? I pushed the shovel into the pile of grave dirt and leaned on the handle.
Seth smiled, his lips impish, as if he’d just thought of something clever. He was wearing the foolish scarf. Did he think it was subtle, his devotion to the human girl he coveted? He was never subtle. Anything but.
I wanted to cover Fleur’s face, hers was mine alone, but moving now would reveal weakness. Weakness, in turn, was the birth of useless anger.
I did not have the luxury of anger.
“What brings you here?” I asked.
Seth’s smile broadened. This was not an occasion for smiling. I wanted to query him once more on what he wanted of me, but I resisted yet again.
“I have a secret to share,” he said finally. “For all of us.”
“By all of us, you mean to insinuate that it is a family affair. Not much of a secret if you intend to share it.”
Seth’s eyes narrowed.
The effort strained me. It was not a simple thing to push the words past my lips. They sat like glass on my tongue. He did not seem to have this particular affliction. He would draw this out as long as he was able. Words to him were like shovelfuls of dirt into a bottomless grave.
Fleur was waiting.
“What do you have there?” he asked.
He was a child, little more than a brash boy. He stepped forward before I could stop him. Perhaps it was the effort of stepping toward her myself that I did not want to engage in.
His eyes stole over her, unashamed of the invasion.
“Another one, Brother?” he asked.
I kept my hand tight on the shovel’s haft. Banishing the image of what would remain of him if I let my wrath slip. Another one. As if she was nothing, no more than cattle, no more than the feed with which the roses would grow.
“She has a name,” I said. I heard them calling then. Soft, soft, I mustn’t let my weakness show. I closed my eyes. Not for him would I give in. I felt them settle, resting once more. Their peace brought me peace.
He said: “Don’t they all.”
His barb was a flare of fire on my face, but the moment had passed. His intrusion would gall me no longer. The weakness of the Gentes. A private breed we may have been, but he was still my brother.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want you to come with me.”
“Where?” I should not have had to ask. In compassionate discourse, this would have been revealed to me already. But our little brother had a flair for melodrama.
A sharp tone from the manor caught my attention. My knuckles tightened on the haft of the shovel. I did not need to turn to know it was her.
Delilah was streaming down to us, taking two of the old stone steps at a time, straight for my beautiful garden. Would this abuse of my solitude never end?
And where was my servant? Steps behind her, not even raising an effort to halt her progress.
Seth had stepped back. At least his courtesy was developed enough that he knew the value of the Master’s will in the Master’s own domain.
I settled in to watch their approach. I might have stepped forward to intersect them, but the action weighed heavy, and, again, it would draw me past my task unfinished, and I could not look at her right this moment, lying there. Her face open, so that all could see her in her vulnerability. Tomorrow night, this would be different for her. For me.
“You’re bringing her here?” Delilah demanded, her face flushed, the soft red rising in her thin cheeks. She was a different beauty. She was sharp, and glorious, but that wicked edge in her cheeks was down in her soul too. She was beautiful.
But she would simply not do.
I cast my gaze past her shoulder to the manservant.
“Levi,” I said in a quiet tone. It was the weakness, I heard, trembling behind my words. To be weak was to give in to rage. I could not. Not with the earth so close to my feet, and my girls, sweetly humming beneath it. “She could not be stopped? I believe I made it clear that I was not to be disturbed.”
Levi yawned while his eyes sparkled mischief. He did not know the full extent of my wrath. He would not, at least not yet. He believed that he could slide his lies past me.
“No, I’m afraid,” he said. “She was most insistent. She did not care for your commands.”
“I see.” I turned my gaze back to Delilah. Her eyes caught mine and held them.
“My blossom,” I said. “What has upset you so?”
“Eva!” She said, her shoes pressing lesions into this hallowed soil. It would not do.
I waited, and, sure enough, she continued. “You intend on bringing her here, don’t you?”
With slow deliberation, I forced myself to study them, all three. Seth was behind me, but I felt him lurking, attempting to be discreet in his obvious pleasure at my disquiet. It was vexing to have him here, to have any of them here, so many. It was my Fleur who needed me. Levi’s smile was not a hidden thing. Did he imagine that he fooled me?
Delilah was watching me with such horror, and more horror as her eyes passed down, down, onto Fleur. I hadn’t the need to stop her eyes roving. She knew who I was.
She screamed.
My hands twitched to reach out to her, but she stepped back out of reach, so I did not move. She stumbled into Levi, who seemed more than his fair share of amused at her disgust. He caged her with his arms, lifting her when her legs could not support her.
“You monster!” she screamed. “You promised!”
I tilted my head. I would never have made foolish pacts that I could not adhere to.
Her eyes, her bared teeth, were filled with emotion, disgust, accusation, despair, tears, and spittle.
It hurt my heart to see her like this. She was unseemly in her display. She was better than this, at times.
Too angular.
She would not do.
I had been harbouring her grave beneath the Bougainvillaea in the west corner of the garden. But now was not her time, now was Fleur’s time. She had need of patience. It had never been her strongest trait.
“Take her back,” I said to Levi. He nodded. She railed. She did not understand the impossibility of what she was asking.
“Soft,” I said to him. He was hurting her. The earth rumbled. I must settle the anger back. Not yet, my sweet ones, not yet.
The earth settled.
“You cannot do this to her, not Eva!” Delilah’s voice carried on the soft breeze. “Not to me!”
With a sigh, I turned my gaze back to my brother.
“Forgive me.”
Seth waved off this inappropriate display if it were nothing. Magnanimous of him. I stood between him and my Fleur lying in her grave.
“You were saying?”
He nodded. “Can you tear yourself away for a time?”
“You have spoken with the others then?”
“Not yet, but they will agree.”
My fingers moved through my beard. I waited.
“Morning: the tomb. Will you come?”
I wanted him gone. Fleur was waiting. I nodded.
He smiled, a broad, boyish thing. He bowed his head slightly. “Thank you, Brother.”
I nodded again. Words would only have made my feelings known. No doubt he would go now to that child that he harboured. His family, his little human stock.
“If Iuvent is correct, and I believe he is, what will happen this morning will be a turning point for D’Asur.”
“The Baron-”
“The Baron will need to be distracted. I have made arrangements.”
Of course, he had. I wondered if our little brother ceased his scheming when he slept the daylight hours away.
I merely nodded.
“There will most likely be a call moot, most likely here.”
I nodded again, even though it seemed the intrusions to my solitude would never end. But then, there was nowhere else.
Fleur was waiting.
“I’ll leave you to your own,” Seth said.
I had not the strength of patience to reply.
