𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 // 𝐧𝐢𝐤𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐢 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬𝐨𝐯

𝐟𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧. 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Saints

     Her heart boomed in her chest, sounding right next to her ear. Her room was dark, except for the moonlight streaming through the singular window.

The door opened. A head of golden curls peeked in, hazel eyes quickly finding Estelle's rapidly breathing figure in her bed. She pulled her covers closer to her body.

Nikolai stepped in quietly and closed the door behind him. He was in a robe, one of the silky orange ones. It wasn't a bright orange, more of a yellow-orange so light it would look like it was white from a distance.

"Did I wake anyone?"

He cringed, walking closer to her. "Nearly the whole wing. Same nightmares?"

The rose with broken petals. The boy with blood. She nodded, not trusting her own voice.

"Would you...would you like to take a walk with me?"

Estelle glanced up at him again. "Where?"

He merely shrugged. "Anywhere we want. Preferably away from prying eyes, just in case rumors begin to spread."

"That's what they do," she joked.

"Yes, but as prince and Star Summoner, I doubt they would be good ones." Nikolai held out his hand to her. "Just for tonight, indulge me."

She glanced at his hand, his fingers outstretched. They were calloused from his years on the sea as a privateer, but still somehow perfect. Estelle decided to place hers in his hand. What could be the harm?

—

They walked through the gardens, as her room was the only occupied one overlooking them, it so turned out. The flowers smelled sweet, much sweeter than her earlier visit, the ones that had been interrupted by Nikolai's older brother.

While Estelle walked slowly, savoring the very well-tended garden, Nikolai found it hard to stand quite so still. He was often many paces in front of her, explaining how he'd used to come out and smell the roses as a child to help him relax, or how he once uprooted an entire family of tulips to get his father to pay attention to him.

Meanwhile, Estelle listened half-heartedly, her mind replaying her nightmare over and over again. The dying boy. The blood as red as the roses in the garden.

"Estelle, did you hear me?"

She jolted back to the present, the darkened bushes and the sweet flowers. Nikolai stared at her from not too far away, he must have moved closer once he realized she wasn't listening to his latest story from his journey with Alina.