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The gardens are a temporary escape from the stifling regalities of the palace, and that is precisely what makes Lief worry.
He did keep his promise: so many wings and spires of the Del palace had been left in horrific neglect over the years of the Shadow Lord’s tyranny, and now they are reborn from the soil as a dazzling array of flora and fauna. It is a breath of the neighboring woods into the city, a long-overdue nod towards the Forests that stand so silent in their shared territory. If he is to be honest, Lief himself is quite proud of it.
But —
Jasmine should be here, he thinks anxiously as he gently pushes the garden gate open. She would.
Carefully, Lief shuts the gate behind himself before turning to the dew-green garden: itself huge, yet tiny. A vast beginning, plants only starting to push their way up towards the skies; an orderly chaos of buds and shoots. Truly the spirit of the newly revived land.
The one exception is the tiny neat grove of gnarled underground-grown trees. Gifts from the Raladin, these twisted lovely things are Lief’s personal favorites — testaments to the darkness they have all endured, yet striving for the sunlight still, and thriving in spite of it all. A mirror in more ways than one. The grove suggests escape more than any other area in the garden, tucked away at the farthest edge from the palace with breathtaking views of the Del and the Forests alike. And the trees themselves — Lief found it so easy to stroll beneath their writhing, steady branches whenever he needed an escape from the mundanities of rulership, because they understood him, wordlessly and without question, in a way no human could.
Well, save for...
Lief pauses beneath the grove’s edge and looks up, squinting against the brightness of the late afternoon sun.
“Jasmine?” he calls out.
“I am here,” comes her faint answer, from somewhere above. As he had expected. Leaves rustle from that same direction, as though to emphasize her words; it is more than likely that Filli, or Kree, or both, are among the leaves as well.
Lief smiles despite himself.
He cranes his neck, straining to catch a glimpse of a shadow perched among the greenery. The moment he does, Lief walks over to the chosen tree and presses his palm to the roiling bark, smiling again at the memories it brings: the steadiness of his companions beside him, the openness of the roads and skies. A chapter in the past, painted for once in shades of green-dappled gold.
Lief reaches up with that hand and begins scaling the tree slowly.
“So hindered by a common tree, King Lief?” Jasmine laughs, closer now. He finally reaches her perch and grins wryly in reply, settling himself between her spot on the branch and the trunk, relishing the free swing of his legs. “I merely value my life, O most revered master of tree-climbing,” he says, grinning, drawing his cloak closer against a wind previously unfelt from the ground. The sky seems to glow from here, he notices distantly. “Are you to tell me that I should throw my hard-earned breath away? After all those long, perilous journeys — through dangers so much worse than those offered by a mere garden tree?”
Jasmine laughs again and hits his arm, not lightly. “No, what I am telling you, O most revered king of our land, is that even after all my remarkably thorough instruction in the art of tree climbing you are still about as skilled as the Wennbar at it!”
Though he laughs just as heartily as Jasmine does at this, the quip makes him remember: that the Forests are Jasmine’s home first and foremost, have been and always will be.
(And the palace decidedly is not.)
The smile slips from his face, and he also remembers: there was a reason he had come, and sought out Jasmine.
And again I am hoping against hope, Lief thinks wearily. As ever.
“Lief?” Jasmine asks, caution treading her voice. He meets her eyes, and instantly his heart aches to see the unmasked concern there. “Is there something on your mind?”
How well we see through each other, he thinks, half bitterness, half warmth. How well we understand one another.
“There is,” Lief says quietly. He looks back towards the palace towers. “And it is something... that I must speak to you about, and you alone.”
Jasmine is watching him closely, and the weight of her anxious scrutiny is enough to make him want to escape the gardens and retreat into the tower he is so fixated upon. He tries to breathe, to calm his traitor heart.
She waits. Then, “Well?”
“I wanted to ask you about the Forests. And this garden, and the palace,” Lief says in a rush, desperately avoiding her gaze. “Is this— Is this enough? Is life in the palace enough for you, Jasmine? Tell me the truth. Please.”
He almost says, Is life in this prison, somehow enough? If it is with me?
“Enough?” she repeats, bewildered. “‘Enough,’ Lief? What do you mean by that?”
“Compared to the Forests,” he says faintly, and for the first time fear enters his voice in a clamoring haze. “Is this, being in the palace and the garden and surrounded by the trivialities of royal affairs... Is this place, Del— Does this life give you enough freedom? As the Forests clearly do?”
Jasmine stares at him, wide-eyed. Lief stares back, and silence seeps into the space between them as fear’s claws strangle at his throat.
“Lief,” Jasmine sighs at last, closing her eyes briefly, “ Lief. You think too much, I think.”
“That is not an answer, Jasmine,” he whispers.
“It is not,” she agrees. “It is not, but it should tell you what you need to hear.”
Lief tears his eyes away from the towers — those prisons that could, could one day be prisons no longer — and meets Jasmine’s gaze.
“And what is it that you think I need to hear?”
(He does not dare breathe: he fears it might make him miss her answer.)
“That I will stay,” Jasmine replies, a rueful smile flickering across her face. “That I will not leave the Forests and leave you here — here, alone. ...That is what you were thinking, am I right?”
At Jasmine’s amused expression, Lief smiles bashfully and inclines his head in her direction. “You are. But...” He falls silent, eyes straying towards the palace turrets once more.
Jasmine senses his hesitation and sighs, but not impatiently. “But what, Lief?”
“But you never told me why.”
At this she smiles again, broader this time, and looks from Lief to the palace at which he gazes. “Is it wrong— No, is it intrusive of me to ask?” Lief says cautiously, the frost of the question treading through his very heartbeat.
He hears Jasmine breathe in. Then:
“By all rights, yes.”
Lief’s breath shudders to a halt.
“But.”
He remembers to breathe: he does.
“But. I also think... we need to overcome this fear too.”
Lief blinks, risking a glance at Jasmine’s face; its forced blankness holds no answers. “Fear?”
“I think we have circled around this question far too long,” she says. She does not move when Lief turns his head away completely from the palace to face her.
“Question?” he repeats numbly.
“This is exactly what I mean,” Jasmine says, smiling again. “No wonder Doom laughs at me so often.”
“Jasmine,” Lief pleads, mentally setting aside a few questions for the Resistance leader. “Tell me, what question have we circled around?”
At this Jasmine’s expression falls once more, and finally she faces him. “One thing first,” she says.
“What can it possibly be?” Lief asks, exasperated.
“Swear you will not tell anyone what I say next,” Jasmine says. “Not Barda, not Sharn, no one.”
Lief stares at her, lost for words. “Why would I...?”
“Marilen has been driving me mad with this, and she insisted,” Jasmine mutters instead, a complete non-answer. She looks down briefly, taking a breath before meeting Lief’s eyes once more. “And I thought it would be an — interesting endeavor, but quite frankly —”
“Jasmine, please!”
“Very well very well, you seem to be asking for it anyway,” Jasmine snaps good-humoredly, but her voice wavers.
“Lief.” She glances away, back. Away, again; feigning indifference as ever. But —
“...What exactly are we?”
For a moment Lief thinks the words are conjured by the wind that rises suddenly, carried from some other, unrelated conversation to the madness of theirs. For a moment he stills and mulls over the words, his mind a storm. For a moment he wonders what answer Jasmine wants to hear, and what answer he wants to give.
(And for a moment he trembles at the answer he longs to be true.)
“Is this what Marilen torments you with?” he finally says, faintly. Jasmine gives him a pointed look, but color rises to her face. “Either way,” she says stubbornly, “it is the answer to the question you keep asking me. Why I want to stay.”
Lief stares blankly at her, the words completely flying over his head. “You are saying — you want to stay because... because of what ‘we’ are? But — we are...”
And there he cuts himself off, because he does not know.
“Lief,” Jasmine repeats. She reaches out and grasps his wrist firmly. “You of all people should know that I am... not exactly well versed in the mess of — well, feelings, and... and understanding that of others, and between people, and. Well.” She breathes in, the air shuddering through her in a different breed of cold.
(He is overwhelmed, suddenly, by the urge to throw his cloak over the two of them and press close to banish these wintry demons in her heart in a way that would leave no room for doubt, all his own fear be damned; but he resists, he resists, because Lief of Del is a coward.)
“I have my reasons for wanting to remain, and I know this. But I want to know why you even want me to stay, when I am — when I am nothing but a lost wild girl who is closer to the trees and the birds more than other humans, and has no place at all in a palace of royalty and nobility and I... want to know if the reason you want me to stay is the same reason I want to stay, and if I do somehow — if I will even be worth the space I take and the air I breathe staying here, where I do not belong and where I am worth little more than nothing!”
Something cracks and splinters inside Lief: everything shattering, and scattering, and ready to be blown away at a moment’s gale. Something is broken; something is utterly, utterly wrong.
(Something is in desperate need of mending.)
Her words, like the weighty pestilence that they are, seem to hang hazily in the air. But now that they have been delivered from her body, Jasmine is left limp and shivering in the rising evening wind. Her head hangs now, facing the roots of the twisted garden tree, and something about the way her eyes are lowered is all so terribly wrong to Lief.
Belatedly, she loosens her grip on his wrist and starts to withdraw her hand. Lief catches it; she looks up, and her eyes, her eyes — Lief’s heart cries out at the wrongness of it all.
“Jasmine,” he breathes, and at her name she closes her eyes and lets out a choked breath that sounds closer to a muffled sob. He pulls the hand he holds closer to him, wrapping it with both his own. “Jasmine, Jasmine, Jasmine, please — look at me, please, listen to me,” Lief whispers. He watches, anxious and intent, as her eyes open and turn upwards to the darkening skies, rapidly blinking away what Lief knows are tears (and how it pains him to see her drowning so) before shakily meeting his gaze.
(Here, then, begins the mending.)
Lief glances down at their hands and gives in.
Cautiously, he drags himself closer to Jasmine and releases her hand to undo his cloak, adjusting it so that it wraps around both of them. Lief sighs, deeply, a slow and steeling thing: then he takes up her hand again and squeezes it softly, his eyes caught on the press of his own fingers against hers.
(And he hesitates. How to mend something he’d been so sure would never crack?)
Carefully, he looks up to meet Jasmine’s wavering gaze.
“Jasmine,” he says quietly, “Are you sure you are in your right mind?”
That old incredulous expression of outrage Lief is so familiar with flares up again, as scathing and dismissive as always — and he smiles. This is Jasmine.
“Excuse me?” she demands.
“You seem to have forgotten,” Lief adds, “that I... told you, not too long ago, when we were in the Shadowlands, that — that I, too, will marry for love. And that I think my queen is a worthy one for Deltora, as well.”
Jasmine stares at him, wordless. Lief forces his gaze away from the way pink has spread over her cheeks, a mirror to her lips, now slightly parted; he breathes in, willing the chill of the air to fill him with determination to finally overcome this shaking fear that so shackles his heart.
“And so I... well, I asked you. If you were willing. And you seemed to say yes, and so — that is why I want you to stay, Jasmine. At my side. Because you, well...”
(The sun is approaching the horizon, and the palace burns gold.)
Lief realizes he is clutching Jasmine’s hand, tight, and he loosens his grip hastily; but to his immense relief, and even greater surprise, Jasmine mimics his earlier action and squeezes his hand.
Lief looks back at her, his turn to be rendered wordless. At his stunned expression, the corner of Jasmine’s mouth lifts ever so slightly — a tiny small thing, but she is smiling.
(His chest aches. He wonders, half-distantly, how warm, how soft it would feel it against his own —)
He cuts that thought short. No; now is for Jasmine.
“Jasmine. You are... worth so much more than what you said, earlier,” he starts quietly. “There is no one in this entire land that I would rather have traveled with, and defeated the Shadow Lord with, and learned the ways of the Forests with, than you. Because we never would have made it beyond the very beginning without you, or lived to this day without you, and, and— Jasmine, it doesn’t matter whether or not you are of royal blood, or — or unfamiliar with the ways of people, because you can always learn, because you are the reason we still stand today, and stand here. It is you, and...”
Lief breathes in, breathes out. The cold of the air, the touch of the diamond against his skin: these he tries to bring to the forefront of his mind, rather than the burning he feels on his face and the familiar callouses he can feel on Jasmine’s fingers and the overwhelming urge he has to press them to his mouth. He fears, and fears, and hopes.
Jasmine watches, fixed, silent.
Waiting.
“You are... irreplaceable, Jasmine. To Deltora, and — and to my heart. And so that was why I asked you to stay, and, ah, as for what we are, well...” Lief smiles slightly, bright and careful, the heat in his cheeks heightening impossibly further. “I hope that we are — more than mere companions who went on a quest and survived, and more than friends who seek each other’s company day after day. And so... I think —”
Jasmine starts laughing.
Lief can only stare as she almost tips into him, watches in embarrassed horror as she doubles over, the hand still held in his loosening for the moment. It is only thanks to years of experience that she remains on the branch, and not below it.
“Lief,” she finally wheezes, “look at you! No, no no no, look at us . No wonder we are the joke of all the palace servants, and Marilen never stops her pestering, and Ranesh gives me those looks, and — and Doom my own father for Adin’s sake keeps asking if we are still sane, ahhh —” She finally controls her laughter enough to sit up and inhale deeply, an attempt to return to normal breathing.
Half bemused, half relieved, Lief readjusts the cloak for the sake of having something to do. He does not know if he can trust himself to speak words that make sense.
Eventually, Jasmine calms herself and sighs, long and deep. She looks Lief in the eyes, and the mirth lingering there paints the green a gentler cousin of their usual fiery sharpness. “Lief, you words are— I mean, what you said then...”
And here she bites her lip, struggling, worrying over her words: fearing, as ever, that she would say the wrong thing, or sound as such. Lief sees, and the wrongness pummels him again. He tightens his hold on her hand, wills her to summon that strength he knows she holds — to mend herself, to accept his lended strength.
Jasmine breathes in; accepts. And she smiles.
It softens Lief’s eyes.
“Your words — they mean a great deal to me,” she murmurs at last. “But Lief, it is me you are speaking to. Me. I have —” She shakes her head, her voice gaining strength. “I have seen you in every form you may take, for better or for worse. Do you think I will mock you or, or insult you or hurt you for something you want to say from your heart?”
Her smile widens before she schools it into solemn fondness and says:
“Tell me what you keep dancing around, Lief!”
Lief stares at her in astonishment, and amazement and wonder, marveling at the miracle of this incredible soul he so admires, and treasures, and —
She deserves to know.
“I ask you to stay,” Lief says delicately, firmly, his heart trembling at the possibility of it all, hoping, hoping, “I ask you to stay, because I am terrified of losing you. And that is because — because —” he breathes in: cold, steeling — “because I love you.”
He glances away — hoping, fearing, hoping — and glances back.
(He remembers to breathe.)
Jasmine is watching him carefully, through eyes wide and shining with something as namelessly bright as the surging wild joy that flares to Lief’s chest. Slowly a smile creeps across her face and helplessly he mirrors it, laughing, soft and embarrassed. Dimly he realizes he is clutching her fingers more tightly than ever; abashedly he loosens it, and it startles a choked laugh out of him when Jasmine’s immediate response is to pull it back to her and tug, using the leverage to press close. She laughs too, briefly dipping her face into his shoulder to hide her face before lifting it again to watch him.
(He hopes, he hopes —)
“I am afraid,” Jasmine murmurs, still smiling, “that I am not as... good, or — articulate, with words than — than with, well...” Her voice trails off and she lifts a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug, a trace of that old mock carelessness that, to Lief, speaks volumes more to her own nervousness than anything else.
But the smile stays on her face. “I take it you trust me?”
“With my life,” Lief replies instantly, and grins like a fool when she rolls her eyes despite the flush that rises in her cheeks.
Carefully she lifts their joined hands to rest by her sternum, over her heart; that smile still lingers on her features, now hesitant, and her eyes cast downwards to their hands. At the sight an ache begins in Lief’s chest, deep and whirling, seeping through his limbs like rain. He watches, and feels, and aches, and is silent. He feels content to watch the world turn. He feels as though this is as close to bliss as he will ever get.
He feels the tripping pulse of Jasmine’s heart through his palm, the rise and fall of her uneven breaths, the hesitant softness in her eyes as soon as they lift to meet his.
Jasmine’s eyes flit down to their hands and back up to him. Wordlessly she leans their foreheads together, and Lief watches in his own trembling silence as her eyes flutter shut and her breaths mingle with his. He follows her and closes his eyes too, just breathing, feeling and feeling and feeling, her heartbeat still galloping beneath his hand, a rhythm to match his own.
(Lief hopes: this is on the path to mending the broken.)
“I will — stay,” Jasmine whispers haltingly, and Lief can feel her shaking everywhere. “And your words. What you said earlier. I just... I never thought I would be. Enough. For anything, for the kingdom, for — well.” She huffs, disbelieving still, after all this time. “For you.”
“I will say it,” Lief replies quietly, “as many times as you need to hear it, to believe it.” Lief opens his eyes and lifts his other hand up to tuck that wild hair back behind her ear against the wind, searches her face. She is too close; he can make nothing out, so he says, “Tell me again? ...Will you stay?”
Jasmine lets out a tiny understated laugh, leans closer. He can feel the petal touch of her exhales against his mouth; there is nothing in the world but the two of them. “I will stay, Lief. As long as you... For as long as you want.”
Her voice falls so, so warm on Lief’s lips.
“Jasmine,” he says, and it comes out far more strained than he intends, but he doesn’t care to be embarrassed, not now, not with her, not when this is more important than anything. He pulls back a breath to tilt his head ever so slightly, a silent question, hovering. “Jasmine, can I— Is this —” Is this also what you want?
“Wait, Lief,” she says suddenly, and he stops breathing. “Wait. Before we... Let me say something.”
Lief breathes again. He pulls back a bit, and he waits, as she asked; because he would tear down the stars if she so desired, and because there is a breathlessness in her voice that wrenches his attention away from everything else. Her face is so red; he knows he is no better.
Jasmine swallows before she meets his eyes again, and it is all Lief can do to stare back, captivated by the way her fluster worries her mouth. She lets out a breath, a small muted thing, before adding just as quietly: “You said you trust me, so just, this... This is without the words.”
She lifts her chin ever so slightly, carefully presses her lips to his. The gasp slips from his mouth before he can stop it, and immediately Jasmine leans away. Lief opens his eyes (when did they close? — did they? — he is so lost and yet so found) to her nervous startled stare.
She’s shocked, Lief realizes, startled and astonished. She can barely believe I would...
(Another point of mending, but perhaps —)
“Is this— Did I— Do you still want this?” Jasmine asks, eyes still so wide, her breaths as shallow as his.
And Lief hears: Do you still want me?
(— perhaps this is easier done than said.)
“Yes,” he whispers, pressing back in, closer this time, shivering when she sighs his name at the proximity. He lets his eyes fall shut. Blindly, he lifts his hand to thread it into her wild hair, and Jasmine makes a sound of surprise against his lips in response, her hands fumbling to loop around his neck. Lief’s mind stills, settles; everything becomes this, the gentle insistent push and pull, their sharp stuttering inhales, the clumsy careful honesty of their motions.
He pulls away eventually and leans their heads together, desperately trying to catch his breath. When his eyes open, Jasmine is watching him, and her smile blinds.
“Again?” she asks quietly, and Lief’s mouth dries. All he sees is her smile, her bright-eyed joy. “Yes,” he breathes, a repeat of his own words, before he feels Jasmine’s hands skim up from the back of his neck to cradle his jaw as she pulls him impossibly closer, ever a quick learner in this language without words, teaching him too how to speak it more fluently.
When he finally pulls back, Lief distantly registers that the sun has almost completely set. But the realization comes only after he registers Jasmine’s expression; her eyes still closed, her lips parted, the way everything about her is soft-edged and open. Vulnerable. A Jasmine only he has been blessed enough to see.
It robs him of words, so he simply tips his forehead into hers and murmurs, “Jasmine.”
He feels more than hears her questioning hum in response.
“Thank you,” Lief says quietly. “Not for — this, specifically, but for telling me. And for staying. I know you love the Forests, and I will not chain you here, but... Thank you for choosing me.”
She scoffs, but it is kind and endeared. “I thought you would hear this without my saying, but I suppose I should use words for the sake of clarity.” Jasmine turns to tuck her face into the side of his neck, and Lief closes his eyes.
“The Forests will always be there,” she murmurs against his skin. “But you... Well, if I were to leave, then who would be here to keep you from falling off a tree? Or from going mad in your kingly duties? Or even just to reminisce with about the old days of the quest? Barda might be able to achieve two of those, but absolutely not all three, I think.”
Lief opens his eyes to gaze at the darkening sky, something wordless and roaring rising in him. He leans away, looks down to meet Jasmine’s steady gaze; he feels full to overflowing, and it is all he can do to curl his fingers under her chin and bring her mouth to his again. “Jasmine,” he mumbles, his mind a haze. “Jasmine, I —”
“It was never about choosing one or the other,” she whispers, pulling just far away enough for Lief to feel every other word against his lips. “I can have the Forests, and my freedom. And I can have you too. Are we clear?”
Lief’s resounding grin is so wide he almost fears he will somehow hurt Jasmine with his teeth, but then he feels her own smile against him. “Giving me a taste of my own medicine, are we?” he asks, and she laughs when he leans back to watch her eyes flutter open, tugs on her hair gently as he carefully frees his hand to lace their fingers together. “But yes. We are clear.”
It is like this that they stay, quite alone, watching as the sky begins to glow with the promise of another kind of light. And although the sun has taken the warmth of day with it, Lief finds himself content to bask in the summer that is his place next to Jasmine, his cloak around their shoulders.
(It is like this that they stay: the quiet of his rioting heart, the slow slip of dusk to evening; and this: the weight of Jasmine’s body against his, steady and warm and here, with him.)
(Quite alone indeed.)
When the first three stars appear, Lief says quietly, “Shall we leave before the cold becomes too much for my one cloak?”
“So sensible,” Jasmine replies, her smile audible. “Let us do so, then.” And then, to Lief’s silent astonishment, she presses closer briefly before pulling away, without hesitation and so utterly at ease that it stings his eyes. He watches, still astounded, as she peels his cloak from her shoulders and swiftly begins to climb down from their perch.
The wind rises to batter them once more, but Lief hardly feels it — because now, now the world can turn as it pleases: he has finally heard what he had longed to hear, for longer than he knew.
“Lief? Lief!”
He blinks, looks down towards the sound. Jasmine stands below him, arms crossed but a grin on her face, tilted up towards him. “Are you coming down from that tree or not?”
And for the second time that day, Lief finds himself in awe of this incredible wild girl — so doubted and wounded and scorned by the world so determined to break her, but still, still, bearing and baring it all with the courage of her vulnerable pride.
He laughs, loud and bright, clumsily climbing down to her side.
Jasmine grins up at him when he lands at last, and there is a light in her eyes that rivals the stars overhead. “Ah my king, you have made it alive!”
A rush of fondness washes over him, stronger than any wind, and Lief abruptly pulls her close, bundling the edges of his cloak in his fists and wrapping her up in it. It makes her laugh in startled delight as she falls into him, and he revels in the joyful sound of it.
“In all honesty, I am only alive thanks to my wonderful teacher,” Lief murmurs into her hair. She wraps her arms around his waist, makes a soft inquisitive noise that reminds him of the Forest birds. He can feel her fluttering heartbeat against his chest, knows his own is also a bird of the same rhythm, and something in him warms. “She taught me well.”
“And who exactly is this esteemed teacher you regard so highly? A princess, perhaps, or a noble lady?” Jasmine asks, playful despite the careful hesitance in her voice.
Lief pulls back slightly, dropping the edges of his cloak from his hands to hold her by her forearms, looks into her eyes. They roam, searching his face.
He laughs, quiet and small, but for some inexplicable reason he also wants to cry.
“Oh, but have you not heard?” Lief says. “She is far from any princess or lady; she is Deltora’s queen, more than worthy of her crown. And she is, more importantly —” he breathes in, no longer needing hope — “my love.”
A slow smile, bright and open and real , spreads across Jasmine’s face before she buries it in his shoulder. “Lief,” she mumbles, “when I said I want to stay... I also meant to say. That — that I. I love you too.”
He closes his eyes, presses his own smile to her temple. “I know,” he says. She hums quietly, a question. How? Lief laughs quietly and wraps his arms around her.
“You already told me. Without words.”
(And now there are two on the path to mending, instead of one.)