The Art of Courts and Lies (Book 1 in The Gifted Trilogy)

51- Epilogue

The city that was the Nature Court had fallen into a lazy and unbothered sleep. I assumed it shouldn't have looked so bizarre to me. It wasn't them that had competed in the fifth trial of the Garner. None of them had almost killed a king. None of them had almost died.

    Of course their sleep would be peaceful, a blessing that was hard for me to ever imagine feeling again.

    I hadn't slept that night. After Porter and I left Kess's room, we walked through the halls of the palace. The few guards that still remained didn't bother to stop my path anymore. They seemed busier than I'd ever seen them, bustling across the castle. Whenever any of their eyes landed on me, theirs would immediately snap away and their pace would quicken. It appeared that the most fearsome thing in the palace was Wren Heatherfield, the sole champion of the Garner.

    I wasn't sure whether to feel proud or disappointed by that fact.

    I had tried to fall asleep for hours before giving it up as a lost cause. Porter and I had eventually made our way back down to my room and had decided to share the bed, neither of us wanting to be far enough away that we would have reason to worry over one another.

    But I still worried about him. For what felt like years I had watched him as he slept beside me, his arm curled under the pillow as his other had rested lazily on my waist, ensuring himself even in sleep that I was still here. He had a habit of breathing in through his mouth and out through his nose, a feat I had mocked him for countless times before. But earlier that night, when I had listened to his breathing patterns and watched the way the features of his face went soft with sleep, I found myself entranced by his odd habit. It was a reminder that he wasn't just an illusion or a figment of my sleep-deprived imagination.

    When the clock on my wall read that it was four in the morning, I had quietly slipped out of the bed, making sure not to wake up Porter. Closing the door behind me as softly as I could, I began to wander aimlessly through the palace.

    I didn't realize where I was moving until I was standing in front of the familiar door. Taking an unsteady breath, I twisted the handle to find that the door was unlocked.

    Stepping inside, my eyes travelled across the room to find it empty. Shutting the door behind me, I slowly swept across the room, my fingers trailing the walls and the names that had been carved into them.

    I eventually made my way to the mantel as I looked upon the pictures of Kess's fallen friends with a whole different context than I had before. I now knew the way Torren McAllister's laugh sounded. I could close my eyes and remember the subtle twitch of Freddie Gates's restless fingers on his thigh. And if I bothered to imagine, I could hear the way the King of the Ember Court had screamed when he realized what had happened to his friends, his brothers.

I imagined it sounded quite similar to the way he screamed my name at the sight of me being broken by Nox.

"I didn't think I'd find you here" a soft voice lifted through the air. I didn't have to turn around. I knew there was only one other person in the castle who knew that this room existed.

"Were you searching for me?" I asked, my voice croaky and hoarse, still not completely healed from the scorching it had taken earlier due to my screams and cries.

"Not specifically" Kess answered, moving forward and resting a gentle hand on the mantel, right between Freddie and Torren's pictures. "I was busy packing up the things I'd bring back to my court later this morning. I finished about an hour ago but couldn't fall asleep. Ended up finding that my feet were taking me to this room. They always seem to do that when the loneliness sets in."