The East Wing Garden.

Jade.

     Something invisible, forbidden and frosty was slowly creeping its way up my spine.

I couldn't explain it to anyone else. I didn't even know what it was, but I could feel it. In my veins, in my fingers, in my body, in the air.

It was everywhere. An ominous presence that seemed to drag its feet across the floors, leaving a trail of icy coldness in its wake, pronouncing and promising a kind of doom that could not possibly be real.

It almost felt like a thick veil of fog, choking me up from the inside, and still, I could not explain it to anyone.

I feared I was losing my mind.

It was a wonder I hadn't lost it all those years I'd spent locked up in the house anyways. Maybe it was finally happening. Insanity was finally creeping up on me.

The week slowly ran out, and the feeling kept getting worse. No matter how much I turned up the heater in my room, the chill in my bones never left. I even started to have multiple fainting spells, accompanied by sleep paralysis every other night.

The fainting spells and petechiae rashes were getting so bad, my leafy green juices seemed to be losing their effectiveness. Even the meds seemed to be losing their potency, and Mom and Dad still weren't back from their business trip.

I was looking forward to the weekend though, bad as the week might have been, I knew they'd eventually come back home. They wouldn't miss our swim hangout. Dad had promised. So, that was at least something nice to look forward to amidst all the torture.

School was even worse. The pile of home-work grew so humongous every day, Brittany and I never left the library. And, Vasilis still wasn't showing up.

Even though I'd wished for a moment, that he wouldn't show up because I was still so embarrassed about our almost kiss, his absence tugged painfully on something inside my chest that made me miss him more and more everyday.

But I knew he was in the dorms. I'd made eye contact with him that day in the parking lot.

For some reason, my gaze had randomly wandered upwards while Brittany gushed over how nice my uniform looked on me, and my gaze had found his.

My heart had leaped into my throat in...excitement? Shock? Before I could be certain, he'd turned on his heel and vanished, and the pain in my heart had intensified.

He was clearly avoiding me.

But midterms were drawing nearer. Surely, he wouldn't keep skipping classes just to avoid me? Come to think of it, even the arrogant block of ice, Roman and the rest of 'The Eight' had not been showing up to classes either. In fact, apart from Roman and Vasilis, I've never seen anyone of them in class ever before.

What a weird bunch. Thinking about them always gave me a headache. I wondered if the teachers truly knew of their absences, and why everyone kept acting like it was completely normal, but I had enough on my own plate to worry about. Until, one foggy late-September afternoon.

It was a free period, and Brittany and I decided to take a break from studying to go take a walk in the school gardens instead.

It was a part of the school we rarely ever visited because we simply never had time to frolic about, and we'd skipped past the gigantic willow tree in the yard—our usual hangout spot for when we wanted to spend time outside—and around a corner of the balcony of an empty classroom.

The garden was located right behind the East Wing dormitory, past the parking lot, and we knew we shouldn't be there because regular students aren't allowed in the dorms. But the porters weren't around anyways, and after such a long week of studious work, it felt great to be doing something so exciting like breaking a rule. Even though we just wanted to see the gardens, and that couldn't really be considered rebellious or anything.

Brittany and I tiptoed our way around the manicured hedges, spaced out by tall palm trees that were slowly losing their color to autumn's charm.

A few gargoyles and stone angels marked the path, and the gargoyles seemed to watch us with a warning sneer, as if they knew we weren't supposed to be there.

I ignored the gargoyles as we made our way past the ornate gates, and finally into the East Wing of the castle, and I suddenly remembered that when Roman had invited me to that party I never attended, he'd mentioned that it was happening in the East Wing dormitories.

Did that mean this was his dorm? I wondered if we'd run into him. And even though I absolutely detested talking to the guy, and never wanted to have anything to do with him, I hoped we'd actually run into him just so I could ask after Vasilis.

We entered the garden, and almost immediately, came Brittany's excited shriek. "The Lilyturfs are in full bloom!" 

My gaze went over to a patch of tall, grass-like architectural foliage lining a path that veered to the left along the garden walkway sections.

I'd been busy observing a pot of Cyclamen at my feet and hadn't noticed, but the Lilyturfs—also called Liriope—were so beautiful, especially with the way they lined the path, giving it the appearance of a magical walkway.

The bulbs of their flowers blossomed from the inside of long blades of grass, their light lavender shade contrasting beautifully against the green of their surrounding grass-like architectural foliage.

My fingers itched to paint them. It had been a while since I'd had the urge to paint, and maybe it was because the flowers were lavender—my favorite shade of paint to work with—but for some reason, I found myself burning the images of the plants into memory, so I could paint them as soon as I got home.

I moved closer to the Lilyturfs while Brittany moved on to a patch of flowering Asters that were located underneath a partial shade. Then, I brought out my phone and decided to take photos instead, so I could show them to Dad when he and Mom got back from their trip.

Dad was such a plant nerd, and he used to tend to the gardens in the houses we lived in, which meant that naturally, I'd grown to share his love for plants and flowers.

I took a few shots of the Lilyturfs, and was about to move on to a pot of exotic, wild orange Crocosmias, when Brittany exclaimed behind me.

"Oh! Hi, Vas!"

I whirled around immediately.

And there he was, as beautiful as ever with his dark cloud of curls framing his perfect face that I was realizing I really, really would love to paint.

He was the perfect muse, in fact. Every single one of his proportions were the perfect ratio to-

"What are you guys doing here?" Vasilis cut through my thoughts, voice cold and curt, and all thoughts about painting him flew out of my head as memories of the last time we'd been in each other's presence flooded my mind. 

He'd slammed me into a table on Saturday. 

"You shouldn't be here," he added, eyes narrowed on Brittany who had a confused frown on her face. 

He refused to look at me, and presiding shame about our almost kiss, along with anger at how he'd slammed me into the fucking table welled in my stomach.

"Um...we just wanted to see the freshly bloomed autumn plants before it gets colder and they all wither away," Brittany mumbled an explanation, as miffed as I was about Vasilis's reaction.

"Well, I hope you've seen enough of the autumn plants now." Unnecessary sarcasm coated his response like venom, his eyes still glued to Brittany as though I wasn't even there at all.

My fingers balled into fists, anger and indignation at his needless rudeness blazing and burning the last shreds of embarrassment I still felt over our almost-kiss to smithereens.

"Yes. We were just leaving." I gritted through clenched teeth, unable to mask my anger as I went over to the patch of Asters Brittany was standing by to grab her hand, before I then moved to stalk past Vasilis—I made sure to bump him out of my way in the process.

A cold hand shot out to wrap around my wrist, holding me back.