18
Flare
His Royal Dickless awoke long after the butterfly had left. Protected from the sun, he reclined against the trunk and stared at the horizon as if expecting his Winter kin to bail him out of his predicament.
As for my greater role in the crusade for born souls, that key still resided somewhere in the forest. I felt this truth down to my soles, like a prophecy.
And once I found that key, I’d have to prevent my nemesis from intervening, provided the calculating monster succeeded in freeing himself. Not that it was likely. I’d seen him fidgeting, trying to unravel my knots. Good luck with that.
The prince abhorred being fed and having his wounded jaw bathed by me. Neither were my favorite hobbies, other than the part where I got to see him humiliated. I broke his fast with the scallops I’d caught, spilled water down his pipes, and wondered what it sounded like to hear a Royal choking.
He sat there, watching me swallow my own helping of water, watching me lick my lips, watching me toil in rags, and piling those details in his mind as if they belonged to him.
As if I belonged to him.
Ungrateful brute. Arming myself with the rope belt, dagger, and canteen, I quested into the forest, intending to search for a reliable water source. The prince could die of thirst or piss himself, for all I cared.
Smacking branches out of the way, I traipsed through the shadows. Claws skittered across the branches, something hissed overhead, and a feline roar pushed through the mist. Everything moved, everything thrived, everything breathed.
This place saw me and heard me. It welcomed me, except into the whirlpool where I’d lost my sense and saved the enemy.
My grin faltered as I remembered those violent eddies, and then I recalled another time, another sort of drowning—the downward pull of sand instead of liquid. That episode had taken place on a different day, with a different person. Reliving what came after and where I’d ended up because of it, I cringed.
After rescuing the worthless prince, he’d crumbled to the ground, and I’d carted his bulky dead weight, using one of the sails as a harness. It had taken a decade to reach the cove, despite the short distance and downward slope from the tree line. I’d been surprised how near the whirlpool was to the coast, reachable through a gap in the foliage.
But that old memory—of a similar day and a similar kind of drowning—had gripped me when we were snapping at each other last night. While explaining why the whirlpool had finally released him, the past had caught me by the throat.
I shook off the memories. As fog brought a sprinkle with it, another thought occurred to me. The legend said this forest was the birthplace of rain. With that in mind, the full song played in my head.
Seek not, find not, this Phantom Wild.
Sea paths, golden rays, to this Phantom Wild.
Light fades, mist grows, in this Phantom Wild.
Mist grows, droplets fall, on this Phantom Wild.
Dark woods, deep ferns, of this Phantom Wild.
Timeless rain, eternal waters, from this Phantom Wild.
Tempests swirl, pools drown, within this Phantom Wild.
Rains fade, fauna roam, through this Phantom Wild.
Apart from the song, the old tales spoke about different forms of rain including lightning, thunder, ember, celestial, and vapor rain. The day before, such fog had been followed by a safe downpour—vapor rain, based on the descriptions that had circulated over Summer’s history.
I huddled beneath an awning of branches and carefully extended one upturned palm. To my relief, a soft downpour splashed from the heavens, wetting and cooling my skin. Reassured, I stepped onto the path. After unbuckling my supplies, peeling off my chemise, and hanging the garment from a low branch, I combed my locks until the matted tangles unfurled and my fingers slid through effortlessly.
As I bathed, I thought of the prince. After the whirlpool episode when he’d passed out, I had removed the dagger sheathed at his hip. He must have also lost the vial at some point, because it was gone. Stripped of his fur cloak and finery, the future king had been reduced to a mere mortal.
Heat swarmed my cheeks. By now the man had glimpsed everything under my chemise. I didn’t like the weight of his stare; it made me want to smash something. Like a sin, my flesh sizzled at the memory of his eyes touching me, sliding across my form.
My disgusting reaction hardened into outrage. I cast my eyes down, gazing at the shape of my body. The tower had made a thread of me, thin and weightless.
It was his fault, King Rhys’s fault, and the fault of every prejudiced soul in The Dark Seasons. Yet food wasn’t the only thing the courts denied born souls.
The first time Rune had fucked me, I’d known how breeding worked. We hadn’t needed to protect ourselves because I had never bled in my life, because Summer had taken care of that. On the eve of my twelfth year, Pyre had pried my mouth open and plopped three darts of liquid onto my tongue, which gave me cramps for weeks and an empty womb for a lifetime. The drug kept prisoners from breeding in cells. Moreover, it had been invented by Winter.
Standing in the rain, I hugged myself tightly. My arms and legs and hands might look meek to a prince, but they didn’t act meekly. He’d do well to remember that.
The rain cleared, replaced by the echoes of scratchy caws and trembling bird whistles, and the forest glistened within its own darkness.
After throwing the chemise over my head and affixing the rope belt, I traveled down the path and gasped with delight. Plump najava berries hung in bunches from a shrub, the bright orbs shaped like bells. Inside, they would be filled with the promise of sweet juice. I’d partaken of these treasures whenever my family had made camp in outlying marshes.
Elated, I rushed toward the bush, then paused. I’d never seen najavas flourish near the coast. And as the whirlpool had taught the prince, things were not always what they seemed here.
Yet my stomach grumbled, and my mouth watered. Despite the rations I’d found, they weren’t enough.
I knelt with caution, plucked one of the morsels, and pried open its womb. Nothing but familiar pulp and flesh stared back, both emitting a recognizable sugary fragrance. With a sigh, I popped the berry into my mouth. The fruit tickled my lips, the nectar riper than I remembered as I savored every bead of juice.
Eager to collect more, I picked a handful and blissfully imagined baiting the prince. Pretending he was there, I held a berry between my fingers, wiggled the fruit, and spoke to thin air. “If you want some, you’ll have to ask nicely—”
The words died on my tongue, which fattened and swelled. Fear licked a path across my chest. Within seconds, my throat shrank, air fighting to squeeze through.
The berries toppled to the ground. I wheezed through my nostrils, oxygen fighting to reach my lungs. Grabbing another berry, I ripped the thing open and checked its innards. There it was, a seed nesting inside the flesh, blending in with the pulp.
Camouflaged. Because najavas didn’t have seeds.
As the seconds ticked by, a dozen of them sprouted, materializing out of nowhere. Instantly, the prince’s warning from the day before chewed through my head. In Summer, the brighter the fruit, the deadlier the poison.
With a cry, I hurled the bedeviled berry against the nearest tree, where it exploded into a soggy mess. Thinking better of it, I snatched a second one, then staggered to my feet and ran. My body shredded through the rainforest, the canteen and dagger rapping against my hip. Racing toward the cove, I blew through the hedges.
The villain prince observed the spectacle with a mask of boredom. The rainfall must have spat at him through the canopy, studding his clothes with droplets. Like a careless shark, he lounged as I thrashed toward the camp, dropped onto the sail blanket, and struggled to write in the sand. Except my hands shook so badly, I failed to compose a single legible word.
To which, he merely tutted. “Convulsions. Swelling.”
Abandoning the sand, I attempted to respond. “I … I can’t …”
The Royal peered closer. “Asphyxiation. Must have been venom.”
“It was … fruit,” I croaked, opening my hand to show him the morsel I’d brought. “Berries.”
Understanding gripped his visage as he regarded the najava. “Ah, poison. Nature defends itself with deceptions, which is one of many ways fools and normal people differ. A vigilant person is equipped with logical defenses and instincts against hazards. Though, as a presumed sand drifter, you should have known what to avoid.” Sudden clarity honed his voice. “Or you were acting on impulse. You recognized the berry, therefore mistook it for edible and neglected to check the details. An exceptionally stupid fool, then.”
“Hypocrite!” My fangs came out. “You should … talk when … you nearly … drowned.”
With an elegantly dismissive shrug, the prince said, “You will die.”
I tore my dagger from the rope belt.
“You will die in pain.”
Launching at him, I angled the weapon against his throat. “I’ll take you … with me.”
“Is this your way of asking for assistance?”
Curse his bullshit. If I keeled over, this man would stay tethered until he turned into a skeleton. He knew as much, his nonchalance a facade meant to rankle me, because he also knew how this scenario was about to play out.
The dagger quaked in my fingers. While gasping for air, I fetishized about tracing a vein in his neck, teaching him an overdue lesson, marring him the way his cretins had marred me.
My fingers clenched the hilt. “Help.”
“I don’t specialize in Summer antidotes,” the prince replied.
Frantically, I thought back to Autumn, when he’d treated Briar’s poisoning. Although the princess hadn’t told me about that event, any news about Royals traveled fast, including to jail cells. “But you know things.”
The prince’s irises glinted. Based on that, he might be remembering the same incident. At length, he drew out, “I might know things.”
“Then … help … me!”
He raised a triumphant brow. “I cannot talk you through it.”
Shit. I dropped the berry, scrambled behind the bastard, and cut his bindings.