I looked into this garden every day from Mother’s comfortable sitting room, but I’ve only been inside that one time in the dark. There are stunted trees lining the fake stream. I recognize the bulbs of spring flowers. This place is ready to bloom.
But the earth is disturbed in some areas as well. As if by an earthquake.
Elliott takes a tentative step forward, as if expecting the floor beneath us to move. Vines cover some of the trees, strangling them in this sea of green. After a few steps, he seems confident that the garden is stable enough for the two of us. At least, he makes no move to leave.
He places the wine and blanket on the low wall, where he was sitting weeks ago when he asked me to join his cause.
“We might as well be comfortable while we wait for your father.”
But I’m nervous. On edge after the excitement of rescuing those girls and the discovery that Father may be alive.
“Walk with me,” Elliott says, and takes my hand. “This was always one of my favorite places. No matter what villainous things he created, Prospero also engineered luxury.”
He leads me through the garden, past arbors of flowers to a low swing attached to the bough of a weeping willow. “Prospero had to have extra water piped in to keep this old tree alive.” Elliott pats the trunk. “But it still looks healthy.”
“The tree gets clean water, but the people of the city are dying.” I laugh a little, and then choke.
Elliott turns his head. There is something about him here, something calm and thoughtful. As if I am seeing a different Elliott. An Elliott who could have been a poet instead of a revolutionary.
He gestures to the swing, and I sit. The wooden seat is cracked and lined with fungus. All the piped-in water is now trapped in the air, making it heavy and muggy.
Elliott wraps his hands around my waist and pulls me toward him. Then he slides one hand to my back, while still holding me against him with the other, like he knows what he is supposed to do—push me away from him so the swing can ascend—but he doesn’t want me to glide away from him.
Eventually he lets go, and the movement of the swing feels unnaturally slow, as if this moment might last forever. The moisture in the air settles on my skin, but instead of seeming clammy, it feels like fine silk.
When I swing back to him, he catches my shoulders, his hands trailing over the bare skin, delicately tracing my still-healing wound.
“Elliott.” I shift, and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me off the swing. We tumble to the ground, laughing. I reach out and brush the tiny blue flowers in the grass.
“The same color as your hair,” he says. “What was April thinking?”
But I don’t want to think about April, not now. I don’t want to think of anything that’s happening outside these glass walls. No matter what, when we leave this place, people will die. We will find Father, or I will go with Malcontent. Elliott will overthrow Prospero, or not. So I lead Elliott back over to the wall where we left our things.
He spreads the blanket beneath a bower of leaves and opens the bottle of wine.
“I don’t have glasses.” He is not apologetic. “We’ll have to drink from the bottle.” He takes a long drink and then passes the bottle to me. It’s better wine than what we’ve been able to buy from the market.
“This is—” I begin.
“Magical.” Elliott finishes my sentence. I’m not sure it’s what I would have said, but I don’t correct him. “Will you will wear this?” He holds out his hand, and the diamond ring, the one that I traded yesterday, lies in the palm of his hand. It still sparkles, even after all it has been through.
I don’t ask how he retrieved it. We are the children of murderers, abandoned by our fathers. We do things others wouldn’t dream of. But here in this garden, we can forget.
So I take off my mask and kiss him.
And he kisses me back. All of his intensity and all of my own yearning seem to twine between us.
The ring falls from my hand to the earth.
“I love you,” Elliott whispers into my neck, and I don’t know what to say, but then I don’t have to say anything, because he kisses me again. When I open my eyes a moment later, I think there’s a slow anger burning in his. Yet he’s still kissing me.
And then, abruptly, he stops. A shadow falls over us.
“Araby?” Father’s voice is hoarse.
I jolt up immediately, readjusting my dress.
Father presses his lips together. He looks tired but the same as ever. His hair is mussed, and there are ink stains on his hands. A wave of love for him overwhelms me, and I throw my arms around him. He smells of cedar wood and tobacco.
Though he might’ve been shocked at finding me tangled up with Elliott, he pulls me close. Perhaps he didn’t think he’d ever see me, ever embrace me, again, either.
“Dr. Worth.” Elliott is standing now too, and his voice is cold but unsurprised. He is perfectly composed. He knew Father would come here, to the garden. That he would find us.
He set it—me—up.
Like today after April and I rescued those children, Elliott is staking some sort of claim. The diamond ring is still lying in the dirt, and I leave it there.
Father ignores him and brushes my hair from my face. His eyes are filled with tears.
“I was afraid that you were in the explosion, but then I saw your messages.”
The explosion—oh, God. He told me to leave on the steamship with Elliott, but I never boarded because Will gave me to Malcontent.
“I want you to pretend you never met me. Become someone else,” Father continues. His eyes are more haunted than I’ve ever seen. He knows that I know, about the disease, everything. He’s ashamed.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I respond slowly. There is no doubt, now, that he’s guilty. “I couldn’t, but you have to explain. I need to hear it from you.”
He doesn’t answer. Some childish part of me still hoped that he would proclaim his innocence, and somehow I would find it in me to believe him.
The silence stretches out. I’ve come all this way, and he answers me with silence.
But I didn’t come back to the city just to ask him this. I came to save April.
“April is dying from the Weeping Sickness. Will you help her? Can you?”
Father’s brow furrows. “You know there is nothing that can be done.” His tone is completely without hope.
And this is somehow worse than everything that came before. Because if he can help April, he can undo a little of the evil he has done. In his journal, I saw a man twisted by remorse, but also a man willing to make excuses for his own deeds. A weak man. I want my father to be strong. To save the day.
I grip Father’s sleeve. “But the rumors. You had something that you threw away when Finn died. April is dying because of me. We have to help her!”
“If there had been a way, would Finn have died?” The way he says my brother’s name is just one more stab in my heart.
“So that’s it?” I say in a low voice. “After Finn died, you stopped working on cures and just created ways to kill more people?”
Father stumbles back, away from me, his face completely white.
“It’s all the prince let me do,” he says, with the same lost look I’ve seen him wear for years. I turn away so he can’t see how it infuriates me. Elliott doesn’t need to see how weak my father is. Elliott is an expert at exploiting weakness.
As if to make some sort of amends, Father puts his hand on my shoulder. He takes a tiny vial from an inside pocket. “You did drink yours?”
I nod. “It protects against the Red Death?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Give some to Elliott,” I say. And then, because he’s still my father, I add, “Please.”
Father squares his shoulders. He told me to go with Elliott, but he’s never approved of our friendship. Elliott crosses his arms over his chest and smirks.
“You don’t love her,” Father says.
But Elliott said he did. Just moments ago. And I never responded. That’s not the sort of thing he’s likely to ignore.
Father rolls the vial back and forth between his thumb and forefinger, as if considering.
“Give him the vial,” I say. “Whether you like him or not, Elliott is doing some good for the city.”
Father hands Elliott the vial. “Drink half.”
He does so without a word. I take it out of his hand and cork the vial before tucking it into my pocket. “I’ll need another, too,” I tell Father. That will be enough for Henry, Elise, and Will.
Father takes a second vial from his vest pocket, and I snatch it. Elliott keeps that slight mocking smile on his face, but I see the anger in his eyes. He knows that this vial is for Will. The gesture may be innocent, an attempt to protect a friend, the children. But it’s too soon after ignoring his declaration of love. I care for him. But I don’t love him.
His eyes narrow, and something between us changes.
We can’t stay here. If Father can’t help April, then my course has been chosen for me. I press my mask to my face and hold out Elliott’s, for him to put on. In return, he holds out the diamond ring.
I take it, but I won’t wear it. I drop it into my pocket.
Elliott gives a sharp, ugly laugh, as if my gesture confirms everything he’s been thinking. I look into his eyes, trying to understand, but he’s closed off to me now.
“I’ll come with you to your friend,” Father says. “If nothing else, I have an ointment that will soothe her—”
“That’s what we wanted,” Elliott cuts in. “To soothe my sister. As she dies.” Elliott lights a cigarette as Father retrieves his small doctor bag.
“I’m sorry that she caught the disease,” Father says. “There are ways to prevent the spread. A white powder.” We’re making our way back through the garden as he speaks. “Prospero wouldn’t let us manufacture enough of the vaccine, but it exists. But after you catch either of them . . . there isn’t much you can do.”
“I need to know everything about the powder,” Elliott says. “How to make it, how to distribute it. You’ll help me?”
Father sighs. “It’s better than watching the world fall to ruin, I suppose. Something to occupy our time while people destroy what’s left of the city.”
I hate his disillusionment. Father’s face has become so lined in the last few weeks. Despite my anger and disappointment, I want to smooth the concern from his face.
He is about to say something else when the metal hatch nearby shudders. Someone is trying to enter the garden through the maintenance closet below.
Father hurries to it and twists a lever, locking them out and sealing us in. He doesn’t know about the door leading in from Penthouse A. “Come quickly,” he says. “It must be Malcontent. His men have been searching for me. We can break a window and escape through one of the apartments.”
“There is still only one stairway leading down.” Elliott paces back and forth. “All they have to do is block it. We’re going to fight our way out. Araby, do you have your gun? Your knife?”