Chapter 237: Acquired taste 3

BONNIE

It was a summer photograph. The clothes gave it away: the light linens, open collars, and the easy, unguarded way everyone seemed dressed. A crowd had gathered on the front lawn of the very house I was standing in, with the lake glittering behind them and a wide, pale sky stretching overhead. The photograph was taken at a slight angle, leaving the horizon crooked and a few people half-turned toward the camera. It was imperfect, as old photographs often were, preserving a moment rather than trying to make it beautiful.

And yet there was something beautiful about it.

Everyone seemed so thoroughly at ease. Some smiled at the camera; others at one another. The afternoon light had caught their faces, giving the entire photograph a soft, golden warmth. They looked like people who had nowhere else they needed to be, people who had gathered for an ordinary summer afternoon without any reason to suspect that one day someone would stand in this same house and wonder what had become of them.

I studied their faces through the glass.

This house had once been full of life. Whatever it had become since then, whatever had happened to the people in that photograph, the evidence was right there on the wall.

The place had seen better days. Somehow, looking at that photograph made the thought feel less like an observation and more like a loss.

I found Lysander first.

He stood almost at the center of the photograph, arms folded across his chest, chin lifted, wearing a sharp, handsome expression that was unmistakably smug. Even through the faded glass, he had the air of a boy who had just won an argument and intended to make everyone suffer for it. The corner of my mouth lifted.

He hadn’t changed at all.

Beside him stood a slightly taller boy with the same dark hair but a considerably gentler face. His arm rested carelessly across Lysander’s shoulders, and there was an easy familiarity between them that made me smile.

His brother.

I searched my memory for the name. It began with an S, I was almost certain. Sofiane.

The name surfaced a moment later, as though it had been waiting somewhere at the back of my mind.

My gaze traveled further along the photograph, and then stopped.

A woman stood behind the two boys.

She was slender, with a delicate face and dark, thoughtful eyes. Lysander’s green eyes. That was what struck me first. They were unmistakably the same, though hers seemed softer, shadowed by a sadness that his had learned to conceal. One hand rested on Lysander’s shoulder, the other on his brother’s. She held them both with a quiet protectiveness, her fingers settled against their clothes as though the simple act of touching them was something she couldn’t quite bring herself to relinquish.

Everyone else in the photograph was smiling. The boys grinned at the camera, and the older men gathered around them wore the polite, slightly stiff expressions of people who had been asked to do it for a picture.

But the woman wasn’t smiling.

She stood perfectly composed, her lips pressed together, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the camera. The afternoon sun fell across her face, illuminating every delicate feature, but it did nothing to soften the sadness in her expression.

I knew who she was.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me.

"Beautiful photograph, isn’t it?"

I startled, and the towel slipped from one shoulder. I caught it against my chest and turned around.

Nicholas stood a short distance behind me, his hands folded neatly at his waist. His white hair was impeccably arranged, and his lean frame remained as straight-backed as ever. I hadn’t heard him approach. He had the quiet, unhurried movements of a man who had spent most of his life learning how to move through a household without disturbing anyone.

I managed a smile. "I suppose it is."

"It used to be a splendid time here." His gaze returned to the photograph, and the weathered lines around his eyes softened. "The royal family would come whenever they wanted to escape the demands of the court. Here, there were no councils, no formal dinners, no endless stream of visitors. Just the lake, the long grass, and the boys running wild across the grounds. The cook used to put out an entire ham on the lawn."

He gave a small, wistful sigh.

"It was a shame it all came to an end when the Luna Princess died."

My eyes returned to the woman between the two boys.

Lysander’s mother.

The woman who had left him in the worst possible way a mother could. He had told me about it once, in halting fragments, in a dark room where I had held his hand and listened because there were some things a person could not be comforted out of. I had never pressed him for more than he was willing to give.

Looking at her now, I wondered whether I was beginning to understand something he had struggled to put into words. There was something terribly lonely about her expression, something that seemed at odds with the bright afternoon surrounding her. She was standing among people who loved her, with her children beneath her hands, yet she looked as though she were holding herself together by sheer force of will.

I wondered how much of that sadness Lysander had inherited. Whether he had recognized it in her face long before he understood what it meant.

My gaze shifted to the man standing beside her.

He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a heavy, imposing frame and a face that might have been carved from granite. There was no warmth in it, not even the faintest suggestion of a true smile. His expression was so completely unreadable that I found myself studying it for longer than I intended.

It was Lysander’s father.

I recognized him immediately. I had seen that same cold, level stare before, directed at me by another man in another corridor. There was something particularly unpleasant about a face that gave nothing away, as though the person behind it considered every visible emotion a weakness.

He looked as though the photographer had interrupted something considerably more important than a family gathering.

I moved on.

Further along the photograph, I found a couple I recognized far better.

The late King Cornelius stood with one hand resting possessively on his wife’s waist. He looked younger than I had ever seen him, his shoulders broad, his posture commanding, a streak of deep brown still running through his beard. Even in a photograph taken on a summer afternoon, he had the bearing of a man accustomed to being obeyed. He stared into the camera with an expression that suggested he expected it to meet his approval.

Edelina stood beside him, every inch the queen. She wore a pale gown, her jewelry catching the sunlight, and a small, perfectly composed smile. Even then, she seemed to understand the importance of being seen.

In Cornelius’s arms sat a little boy with round cheeks and a mop of dark hair. He was squirming with the unrestrained delight of a child who had been asked to sit still and had no intention of cooperating.

Prince Johann.

He couldn’t have been more than six.

I found myself staring at him. There was something almost disconcerting about seeing him so young, so soft and entirely unguarded. He looked delighted to be there, his little hands resting against the king’s chest, his face bright with the sort of happiness that belonged to children who hadn’t yet learned to be suspicious of the people around them.

It was strange to reconcile that little boy with the man I knew.

I swallowed and looked away.

One more couple stood in the photograph.

They stood at the far edge, slightly apart from the others, as though they hadn’t been entirely certain they were supposed to be included. The man was tall and lean, with a mild, bespectacled face and his sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows. Beside him stood a woman in a long printed skirt and a wide-brimmed hat. She was laughing at something beyond the photographer’s reach, her head turned slightly toward it, entirely unconcerned with the camera.

They looked strangely out of place among the royal family. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but different. As though they had wandered into the photograph from another, considerably less complicated life.

I pointed at them.

"Who are those two?"