Wisteria (Belladonna #3)

by Adalyn Grace

“The trolls are never the ones who save the damsels.”

“I’ve always wanted to travel. It’s why I never planned to marry. I never wanted anyone to tell me where I could or couldn’t go.” Aris looked to the floor as he admitted, “I know. I wove your tapestry, just like all the others. One does not easily forget such a blazing soul.”

I wove your fate as I once knew it, which had you dying by your brother’s hand. But you’ve changed your fate several times over. You are a mystery to me. A sweetbrier, full of thorns in my side.”

“I am interested in all of life’s pleasures, Sweetbrier, those of the body included. I do not limit who I find those with, though nothing has felt the same since my wife’s death. Not that it’s any of your concern, but I have tried to move on. Quite extensively, for a period. Sometimes I still do, though no matter how interested my body may be, my mind has found intimacy meaningless. Without my wife, the pleasure has been lost.” Good. That was good. Because Blythe felt nothing, too. Obviously.

Sometimes with men, and twice with Lady Asherby, the daughter of a marquess who frequented her father’s gentleman’s club whenever he visited the country. She and Blythe had made a fast pair, though it had only ever been in fun. As far as emotions went, Blythe had never found herself serious about anyone.

If it was true that Life had loved him—and Blythe believed that she had—then she was a fool to have given up someone like him. Someone who would wait for her. Search for her. Bend the world for her.

Will you have children? When will you have children? If a woman is out without her husband, then certainly she must be up to no good. Maybe he’s tired of her. Maybe she’s not performing her womanly duties up to snuff, because heaven knows it can’t possibly be him that’s the problem, or that maybe she simply wants a night to herself.”

“Believe me when I say that I could use the help. I was in over my head marrying this one.” He wagged his knife at Blythe, though there was no cruelty. A joke. He was attempting to make a joke on her behalf.

“It’s charades, Aris. It isn’t going to kill you.” His huff was a withering, pathetic thing. “Oh, but I wish it would.”

Though Blythe had already guessed what Aris might be attempting, she told him sweetly, “You’re going to need to give us a bit more than that, darling.” The murder in his eyes was palpable.

She knew who he had pictured dancing with just now as his eyes turned cloudy and unfocused. It was Life. Everything with Aris always circled back to Life. But that song… There was no doubt about it—she must have heard it from Aris.

“A troll, a brute… I really am so many things to you, aren’t I?”

If Wisteria was an extension of Aris’s very soul, then what did that mean for the state of it?

“You are not a part of my soul.” As gentle as the words were, they felt like a slap. “But, if you’ll let me, I can take you wherever you wish to go.”

She’d trusted Fate and had been burned once before.

He smelled of wisteria and tasted like honeyed scotch as she drank him in.

She filled her mind with the garden’s image until it felt real enough to touch. And when she opened her eyes, it was.

She had seen Elaine sick in the mirror only for the woman to be healed after Blythe touched her.

And now, as Blythe stared up at the wisteria tree, she understood why. It was not her cousin who Aris had been searching for all this time.… It was Blythe.

She was the one who Aris was searching for, not Signa. She was Life.

Whatever had happened to change that, it had to have started around the same time that other paranormal elements had invaded her life. Around the same time that she had nearly died.

She had hair unlike any Blythe had ever seen, an unnatural shade that was as red as the devil himself. Her eye color, too, was inhuman, like dancing twin flames that never strayed from Blythe as she dangled her feet.

“I’m Solanine,” said the woman, paying the horse no mind. “But you can call me Sol.”

Just pure stated fact as she told Blythe, “I know Rima because I’m the one who killed her.”

“You have upended the world’s balance, but as you are of Rima’s blood, I will offer you a chance to fix your mess, just as I offered her.”

She had no desire for Aris to suddenly alter his opinions over memories she was only beginning to remember, or because he believed her to be someone she simply wasn’t. Did she have Life’s powers? Yes. And perhaps she was reincarnated, but that didn’t mean that she and Mila would ever be the same person.

Blythe didn’t want him to want Mila. She wanted him to want her, which was horrible and embarrassing and a truth that was consuming her thoughts. But Aris had been clear about his feelings, which meant that there was no world in which Blythe could tell him the truth. At least not yet.

Solanine had promised chaos. And chaos, it seemed, started now.

She knew he, too, could likely help her. But it was Signa who had saved Blythe’s life once, and Signa who had been willing to give up everything and everyone she loved to save Blythe a second time.

“Shut your eyes and picture in your mind that you are wholly yourself,” her cousin whispered, a portrait of calm. “No ivy. No flora. Just Blythe, bare skinned and at ease.”

I had no idea of the truth until the day you poured your blood onto that tapestry and struck a deal with Fate.”

“Speak one more word to my wife,” Aris growled, “and I will tear your tongue from your throat.”

“You know I despise you.” “And you know that I despise you,” he echoed, a smile slanting his lips. “It’s a conundrum, and one that I fear we will have to tend to.”

Burn was too casual a word, for Blythe did not burn for this man; she incinerated. And in that moment, she knew there would be no getting it out of her system. No satiating the hunger.

Three stockings hung above the fireplace—one blue and adorned with a silver B, one gold and adorned with an A, and a final red stocking that Blythe had to squint at to see that it also had a B, though beside it was a small paw print with golden stitching.

“Beasty is a part of this family.” “Beasty? That is what you chose to name her?” “I thought you’d appreciate having her named after you.”

“I’m done trying to run you out of Wisteria. When you left this place, I was relieved. I thought I was glad to no longer have to care for you or wonder whether you’d be outside my door ready to terrorize me as soon as it opened. But to my surprise, a larger part of me felt your absence in ways I do not yet understand.

I have watched humans fight against their fates for a millennium, and I have no intention of doing the same to my own. We are bonded, you and I.”

Amusement brimming in his words, he whispered, “Take the dress off and I’ll fix it for you.”

“You are the most infuriating creature.” As abrasive as he was, there was a tenderness in those words. A gentle laughter that was as soft as the bend of an owl’s wing. “You have been a thorn in my side since day one. There have been times when I’ve wanted nothing more than to have you out of my life, and I have imagined countless ways that I might be rid of you. Countless ways that I might quiet that filthy mouth of yours. Yet since the moment I saw you stalking the halls of my home, I’ve also felt something stirring that I do not understand, but that I’ve not felt in a very long time.

What she wasn’t used to was fingers that curled against her skin and tore off her stockings. A mouth that drank her in as if she was the ambrosia of the gods.

That is the way of things—Life, Fate, and then Death. Every role has its part, and each of those parts is as beautiful as the next.”

“It’s not your fault,” she soothed. “You didn’t know, but now you must fix it. You’ve upset the balance.”

“Your memories will come in time, if you choose to let them, but I cannot tell you what you do not already know in your soul. You have to realize it yourself—there is but one rule to the power you wield. There is but one thing you can do that would forever upset the balance of this world. Think, Blythe. You know what it is.”

“No matter how much you may want to. She is a distracted sort, but should such a thing ever happen, breaking that rule would only invite Chaos.” Chaos. She should have guessed that’s who Solanine was.

“I cannot say more than what you already know. Chaos reigns when the balance of nature is upset, and you, more than anyone, must respect the natural balance of this world. All who live must one day die.”

But Blythe had existed for twenty-one years without knowing what she was capable of. She had never crafted a life in her hands, nor had she so much as glimpsed a soul until moments ago. There were a million things she didn’t understand, but at least she could feel relief about this.

If it was true that silver was meant to represent Life, then perhaps this monstrosity belonged to her.

She was meant to be the bane of his existence. A hindrance to his every waking moment. So why was it that seeing that spark in her eyes felt like it had awoken something within him? Why was it that he felt the need to earn that look over and over again and draw delight from those pretty lips?

For the second time in his life, Aris Dryden was falling in love. Only this time, he prayed that fate would be on his side.