The Toad Prince

Chapter Twenty

Nadaria marched across the bridge. The night was warm, one of the last nights of early autumn that wanted to hang on to the Oak King and his warmth of summer, and resist the pull of the Holly King into his winter.

Her feet thumped across the old wood, but she didn’t see any reason to conceal her presence if she was as obvious as Sorin suggested.

She entered the back garden, expecting Aurelian to try to give her the slip like he had in the library, but he didn’t hide or evade.

He was kneeling in the back corner, a small pillow under his knees to protect them. His shoulders were hunched, his back curved, and worked the dirt around the flowers with gentle hands.

She held her candlestick like a baseball bat, and walked up next to him, so she could see his face and what he was doing.

“I have been sleuthed out again,” he said, muttering and not looking up at her. “You are a thistle in my shoe, you know.”

Nadaria looked at the corner, the flowers, like the night, still holding onto their summer beauty. “I didn’t expect you to be the one that did this.”

“I hate gardening.”

“Then why?”

He sighed and stopped, leveling her with a serious look. “The boy is here, okay? Is that what you need to know? Crina and Sorin’s boy. My boy’s boy.”

He swallowed and went back to work, plucking the relentless shoots of tiny weeds that had worked for decades to take the last of the garden in their clutches.

Nadaria said, “Oh,” and knelt by him. She put her hands on the soft dirt and closed her eyes. They filled with tears, because she could feel the layers of love that Aurelian had rolled into the dirt for almost two centuries.

“Dumitra,” he said, bringing her focus back. “She was the last of us to be turned. Crina and her, they were a pair, Dumitra was her maid, but more her friend. She was with Crina when the stress sent her to labor too soon. Crina told Sorin the boy was born still, but Dumitra says that is not so. He took breaths in this life, but he was too small.”

Nadaria stayed quiet, having learned when someone like Aurelian started spilling, it was best to shut up and listen.

“I think Crina lied to spare Sorin. I don’t know. She had to know what was about to happen, what it would do to him to know he stole her life. Maybe she thought it was better. Dumitra brought the boy out here, and she buried him in the best corner of the garden. She was caught and turned because of it.”

“It’s horrible.”

“Is it?”

He looked up at her with a furrowed brow. “I thought for a long time how horrible it was, but now, after all these years, I understand fate was doing its best to spare the boy. If he hadn’t been born, he would’ve been in his mother’s womb while his own father tore her to pieces. If he had lived by some miracle…” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “I don’t want to know what that woman, that vampire witch, would have done to him. She hated Crina so much. Her green eyes were fitting, for they were filled with envy.”

Aurelian returned his attention to the garden and sighed. “No, he took his only breaths in the presence of love, warm and snug against his mother’s chest. Smelling her soft scent and hearing her sweet voice.”

Nadaria blinked, trying to fight the tears.

“Don’t you think, witch, it would be nice if we could all go back to being a little baby when it is our time? Snuggled against our mother, in the arms of the greatest love on this planet… a mother’s love for her child. The way he left his world, it is horrible, but it is beautiful.”

She sniffled and wiped at the tears on her cheeks. Maybe she didn’t have the best relationship with her mother, but she loved her. Even after Sorin brought her here, Nadaria wanted to seek her guidance. She wanted her help, because she was her mom.

“Does he have a name?”

“Yes, she called him Miklos, after her father. His middle name is Sorin, for his father. I speak it when I talk to him.”

“You weren’t on my balcony,” she said, feeling a little silly.

“Of course not. I would never harm you.”

“Because you love Sorin.”

“He is as much my son as this boy is his, even if we do not share the same blood. I love him.” Aurelian cleared his throat. “I loved his father.”

“Oh.” Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh.” After a moment, she said, “Goddess, how many secrets does this castle hold?”

Aurelian smirked. “It is a big building, yeah?”

She giggled and reached over to pat his hand. He held her fingers with his and squeezed.

“From the papers Sorin brings, it seems things have changed a bit now. Back when I was young, if you were a deviant sodomite, as my father called me while he beat me within an inch of my life, you were… outcast to put it nice. I think he would’ve killed me, but my Mama begged for my life, and he threw me on the streets when I was fifteen. So, I roamed around, learned things, and survived. I was a waiter at a restaurant when we met, Stefan and I.”

He smiled, and she did, too, watching his eyes shine with the memory.

“Father, Stefan said, after they had eaten several meals there over the course of their trip, isn’t he a fine waiter? We should hire him.”

Aurelian pursed his lips and blushed. The tender look shaved decades off of him. He looked so young, and in love. He glanced over his shoulder at the castle, his eyes shining.

“This place holds the best memories of my life. And the worst. Stefan and I carried on in secret for years, until his father was displeased with his son’s refusal to marry and produce an heir. So a marriage was arranged, and Stefan was forced to marry Sorin’s mother. She was a fine woman. A good person. Stefan loved her, you know.”

“But he loved you, too.”

“He loved her, but he was in love with me. We swore we would stop, that we were better people than that. She deserved better than to be betrayed. But… easier said than done.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died bringing Sorin into this world. At first, I felt a lot of guilt when I looked at him. Stefan, I know he did, too, and that’s why he worked so much after. Maybe if he’d been a better husband, fate wouldn’t have punished him by taking her, and Sorin would have his Mama.”

He chuckled and sighed. “But this boy, he was attached to me. All day long, he followed. Aurelian, why do you do that? Aurelian, why is it this way? Aurelian, why is the sky blue, why is the leaf green? He was so curious.”

She laughed with him, imagining Sorin as a little boy walking these paths, playing. A long stretch of silence settled between them, and she looked to see he fought tears.

“To watch what happened to him… what was done that night when Crina died, and how it has destroyed him. It was the greatest pain I’ve ever endured, even worse than losing Stefan.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, crying with him. Nadaria opened her emotions and took some of his torment. But there was fierce love intertwined, and she left it.

“So, Sorin is my boy. And this boy,” he said, rubbing the ground. “Is my grand baby. And I will tend his garden until I die. After that, maybe someone else will do it for me. Sorin does not come. I haven’t seen him cross the bridge in a hundred and seventy years. He does not speak of his boy, and if he does, he can’t find it in him to say his name.”

She remembered the first day, when Sorin walked with her through the gardens. He’d stopped on the bridge.

“Dumitra, she comes too sometimes. She feels a connection. It traumatized her to watch Crina lose him. Maybe she will tend to it when I’m gone.”

“Well, you’re immortal. I think you’ll be able to tend to it yourself.”

“I feel it in my bones, witch, that I am not long for this world. And now, that’s okay… I always worried about leaving Sorin, but he has you.”

“Well, uh. I don’t know, you know? We don’t know.”

She blushed and pointed at the tattoo when she said it, and he chuckled.

“Yeah, okay. I think you do, but I know it’s hard to accept some things.”

She bit her lip, and he squeezed her hand again.

“No one else knows that, about Stefan and I. Not even Sorin. And I would appreciate it if it stayed that way.”

“I would never tell your secret, Aurelian.”

He nodded, going back to his weeding, and she looked around. Moving over, she started working on the next section that was overwhelmed by weeds and time.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She smiled. “Miklos deserves the entire garden.”

Aurelian looked around and arched his brow. “That is a lot of work.”

“Yeah. Together, we can get it done. If we do it now, by next spring all these flowers will come back, happy and new."

He sighed and shrugged, but moved over and started working on the next forgotten section.

Beneath the weeds, the tiny shoots and tendrils of flowers persisted, even after all these years.

Aurelian wondered if it was really possible.

Could this young witch actually peel back the overgrowth of thick death and find the promise of life underneath?