Quiet Gardens

Chapter 2

My pen hovered over the surface of the crisp paper, but my thoughts were tangled in my head. I couldn't find the words to write, even though I'd been trying to pen a letter to Lucien for the past few months, ever since I'd arrived back at the Spring Court.

It was less of a problem of how to say it and more about what to say. If I was being honest, there wasn't much at all worth writing. I had only seen Tamlin a handful of times in the weeks since I'd walked back into the manor house. He was reclusive, but more than that, he was avoiding me. I could sense his discomfort with my presence at every turn, which vacillated between irritation at my intrusion and a gut-wrenching shame at the disarray he could no longer hide. I tried my best not to show how appalled I was at the state of affairs I'd found him in, but at times it was almost impossible not to marvel at how colossally broken he was. I didn't allow myself to linger too long on that thought, however, because close on its heels was a dizzying progression of wondering about who had broken him so thoroughly in the first place.

As few times as I'd actually seen Tamlin, we'd exchanged even fewer words. After his guilt-ridden request of me 'not to help me too quickly', we'd spoken only on the absolute necessities. No, Tamlin didn't know where I could find clean sheets. Yes, it would be fine if I stabled my horse in his barn. Yes, he could get me a pen and paper.

He'd not asked me one thing about me, not one damn thing. No 'where-have-you-been' or 'how-are-you', not even a 'why-are-you-here'. I would have settled for almost anything from him, even just the sound of my name in his gravelly voice.

Mixed in with my intense disappointment at the anticlimax of my return was a budding anger. Rage was a better word, in all honesty. I was enraged. I had spent the last three hundred years zigzagging across a continent not my own barely staying a half-step ahead of my own heartbreak, yet it seemed the Lord I'd once known was nothing more than a figment of my memory. I knew the rage came from a deeply misguided and intensely vain hope I'd harbored that my return would spark something in him. Even though I'd spoonfed myself the bitter truth about Tamlin ever since I'd left Prythian, it seemed I hadn't been that successful in accepting the ugly fact that he wasn't in love with me, and my undying affection wasn't going to be the salve that patched his fractured heart together.

Instead, every act of affection or decency I showed him sent him retreating further into himself. I'd stopped inviting him to share the dinner table with me within the first week, and shortly thereafter I'd stopped trying to prepare food for him altogether as it all went to rot outside the door to his study, where he'd taken to barricading himself during the day. I didn't bother to offer to go for walks with him on particularly beautiful days or ask him if he needed anything from the town market anymore. And I had only made the mistake of picking wildflowers to decorate my room with once. After coming back from a morning ride in the woods, I'd found the vases smashed and the wildflowers shredded on the floor, and a new set of claw marks dragged along the walls of my room.

So, rather than waste my energy on healing him, I'd decided to invest my days in repairing the manor house and the grounds around it. The work was backbreaking at times, and even more so because I did it entirely alone. Not once had Tamlin ever offered to help, even when I'd almost found myself crushed under a toppled bookshelf in the library or when I'd burned the back of my hand in scalding water while scrubbing grime from the floors of the hall. And I knew perfectly well that he heard my pained groans and shrieks of surprise in both instances.

I knew I shouldn't resent him for the work I was doing. He hadn't asked for it, hadn't asked for any of it. In fact, he'd made his general lack of interest in my agenda perfectly clear with his pointed absence. But, as irrational as it was, I felt the rage blossoming in my chest and the resentment building.