28
Jeryn
I found her at our cove. On the crescent shore, she had built a fresh pit, threads of smoke lifting into the air and swirling around her. Although I had never taken mysticism seriously, with the blaze sketching her profile, she resembled a divinity. An empress of fire.
Propping myself against a fern tree, I watched her silhouette until nightfall. Hearing the shark’s mercenary screech carry through the ruins, thoughts of this woman had consumed me, and I’d launched into a run. Despite the fear icing my veins, protectiveness had eclipsed terror.
I … hated the thought of anything harming her.
Flare, she’d said. Her name was Flare.
A moniker that burned brightly. It had a temperature, like something hot and bold. One could light a match to the name and watch it ignite the world.
Pushing myself off the wall, I strode toward her—toward that name. My shadow extended over the fire as I joined Flare, seating myself adjacent to her.
While adding kindling to the heap, she said, “Campfires make it easier to tell a story.”
“Mine is not a story,” I said. “It is a fact.”
“I hate what you’ve done to born souls,” she muttered. “I hate you so much for that. You didn’t know anything about the ones you hurt, and you don’t know my tower mates. Pearl and Lorelei and Dante. You don’t know what they’ve suffered, or what they dream of, or what they love. They have hearts and tears, but nobody asks them questions, and nobody cares about them, because the nobodies like you don’t see them, because you don’t understand any of us.”
Moonlight lit the surf. Flames licked the air.
Flare considered me, her gaze nothing short of imposing. “But the rainforest has accepted you, and you faced a siren shark for me. Like it or not, I’ll listen.”
Was that the only reason she would listen? Was I entitled to any other?
Rhetorical questions. She was not sitting here to be nice. Nor was I sitting here expecting that.
True, I didn’t know anything about the ones she’d spoken of. Yet I wanted to know her, more than I cared to admit.
I leaned forward, incapable of meeting her eyes, intimidated by them. Despite her past—rather, because of it—she showed more endurance than I ever had. This woman clamored, but she didn’t make herself into a victim.
I weathered that gaze. “Your story is more important than mine.”
“Then earn it,” she answered. “Earn what I decide to tell you.”
I consulted the scratches across my fingers. “I was thirteen when it happened,” I murmured to the fire.
Thirteen years old. Too soon. Too much had changed that year.
Kingdom of Winter. A landscape where needle woodlands were pockmarked in snow and citizens traveled by stags, sleighs, and sleds. A court where the residents wore layers of fur and blew frost tendrils from their lips. A land where stillness and contemplation prevailed.
The sleet tundra. The monolithic alps. The glacier province.
The chalet castle looming over a frozen lake. Tapestries flossed in silver and cobalt. The scents of cooked venison from the great hall and fresh blood from the medical wing.
I had lived in the stronghold with my parents, my father the sole nephew of the Winter Queens, who had no children of their own. For my birthday, Mother and Father had given me the pendant, the vial weightless and attached to a chain.
“For me?” I had asked, gazing at my parents.
“For you,” Mother whispered, her fragile smile an incision across her face.
“For our boy,” Father said, his voice brittle as if crushed by forceps.
A talisman for me to keep close. A vessel in which to place something special.
Something that would keep me safe, they had said.
My mother and father had clasped hands, their signet rings pressing together. Their fingers trembled, yet I saw no other physical discomforts. It was a fine morning, the illness momentarily tamed.
“Three months earlier, chaos had infested the kingdom,” I said to the flames. “An unforeseen pandemic claimed many victims.”
Oddly, those in their prime were the most susceptible. Yet supplied with gifted healers, Winter had survived that epidemic, its outbreak eventually suppressed.
Though, some had languished in the aftermath. The disease had gnawed on cartilage and nerves, producing daily joint pains and shivers that racked the stoutest of frames.
The memory weighed down my tongue. “My parents had been two such victims.”
I’d abhorred nature for this betrayal, blasphemed the will of the Seasons until my grandaunts intervened.
“It isn’t for us to question the Seasons,” Grandaunt Silvia had said.
“Nature tests us,” Grandaunt Doria had added. “It has a plan.”
As with the born, for example. According to my kingdom, the omnipotent Seasons had chosen people to be fools, birthed into an unnatural state for a purpose. An error to be entrusted to the monarchy. To set the example of a plagued mind—an unbalanced mind—so that everyone may know the distinction.
Fools were meant to be used. Or if uncontrollable, they would be contained like another disease.
That was what everyone had told me. But although I did not cling to superstition, I did believe in the power of illness. Like floods and avalanches, sickness was the same thing. A defect of nature.
At that age, the born had frightened me. The ones I’d seen in the dungeons and labs acted primitive or pitiful.
I had leveled my chin. If nature tested, I would test back. If a bridge between the elements and medicine existed, I would build it. I would learn to rid the world of its maladies.
To be Mother and Father’s hero. To care for them and others. To undo foolishness. Or at least, learn to command it.
When I had unwrapped the vial, I’d promised Mother and Father, “I will use it to fix you.”
That night, I created a make-believe draught for them, hoping to aid their sleep. But I did not enjoy pretending. What Winter citizen would?
Among the kingdom’s healers and scientists, the Court Physician held the greatest office. I’d crept into the man’s chambers and spent hours mixing an authentic tincture. Then I sipped the contents and writhed from an anguished stomach.
Days. Weeks. They passed.
I studied among Winter’s elite. I read books to my parents.
Father and Mother could not succeed my queen grandaunts. My parents were too sick for a future reign, with no convalescence in sight. Thus, Silvia and Doria named me their heir. An unexpected birthright. A chance to have absolute power over treatments.
They set a circlet upon my head, the tapers spearing the air. News of this appointment spread through The Dark Seasons.
It was also a period of travel for my grandaunts. They left for Spring to attend the Peace Talks. Half a year after their return, the queens traveled to Summer, to meet with King Rhys and Queen Giselle. They took me along, insisting it would be a profitable experience.
I didn’t want to leave Mother and Father, but I admired my grandaunts. They ruled a whole kingdom together and planned to show me how.
In Summer, I gaped in shock, overwhelmed by the sweltering heat and bright colors.
So. Much. Sun.
The climate had fried my skin, turning me into a slab of bacon. I had thought my flesh would peel off.
Presently rubbing my palms together failed to alleviate the clamminess. I nailed my gaze to the fire, lest I should meet the woman’s gaze and falter. “It happened during a stroll along the coastline.”
Rhys and Giselle were attending to my grandaunts, their company trailed by knights from both Seasons. As the outing required privacy from the public, a group of noble children playing on the beach were forced to relocate to a different shore. One of them had been a boy with a smug countenance. The leader of the group, I had guessed as the children departed.
At one point, I strayed to the ocean. Warm, salty, restless. Thinking to experiment with the seawater, I waded knee-deep and uncapped the vial hanging around my neck. As I bent to obtain a sample, a dorsal fin broke from the surface. In my periphery, a dark shape flashed in the waves—a large fish with pewter and sterling stripes.
Shouts erupted, the commotion deafening. I straightened, fear trapping my scream in ice.
The creature’s maw split open, releasing a horrible sound. It latched onto my belt and yanked me toward the waves. Its mouth grazed my stomach, the pinprick of razor fangs about to dig in. I’d been in a daze as one of the knights skewered the siren shark, and my frantic grandaunt Silvia wrenched me from the ocean.
To the castle. To the infirmary.
The smug-looking noble boy ended up there as well, with a split lip. Though, he didn’t look smug any longer. The physicians had said he’d been attacked on a neighboring shore.
It hadn’t been another siren shark. Rather, I had deduced what had transpired. I knew the source of his injury, because there was more to this episode. Yet for both of our sakes, I would not impart that detail to this woman.
Later. Not yet.
Back to the story. As my paralysis wore off, I thought of the ones called born fools. I thought of my ailing parents withering before my eyes. I thought of the shark’s jowls.
I wept in bed, bleating that I wanted to go home, that I was going to expire. My grandaunts had assured me that I hadn’t been bitten.
But what if they couldn’t see the bite? What if insanity churned in me? What if I did die?
Nightmares replaced childhood dreams. Over time, relapses ensued, the panic rising out of nowhere. I would randomly check my stomach … and double-check it … and triple-check it.
Months. Years. They passed.
I watched the born with more contempt and my parents with more desperation. I researched, practiced, honed my skills. I discovered a cure that mollified my parents’ convulsions but not their physical torment. I treated disorders but hadn’t remedied foolishness or conceived an antidote for the bite of a siren shark.
Preventions against other ailments, yes. Madness itself, no.
For instance, the clear liquid in my vial. It cured a variety of poisons and venoms, though not the one I feared.
To this day, the terror that I’d been bitten and hadn’t realized it lived inside my head. Illogical. Irrational. However, the human brain was a convincing force. In sudden bouts, it dragged me under, my frantic state eclipsing reason. My mind often cycled, thus magnifying the paranoia and leading to palpitations, reducing me to a hunched figure on the floor. There, I would mutter about the shark attack, either convincing myself its teeth had penetrated me—and the effects were delayed—or reassuring myself over and over that I was fine, safe, alive.
And yes. My family knew. We kept few things from one another.
Despite my condition, they cared for me. Intolerance could be biased that way, particularly among the privileged.
But although my family tried to help, they did not know how, which caused them anguish. So rather than submit them to such distress, I chose to endure these bouts alone, barring a few episodes when they found me cowering on the ground in my suite.
To cope, I would consume the pendant’s fluid. Although technically it did nothing for me, the illusion sedated my blood. In that way, the vial protected me as my parents had intended, since they lacked the strength to do so on their own.
More than anything, it gave them solace. Their peace of mind mattered most of all. I knew that if something ever happened to the vial, it would dismay them, the turmoil endangering their feeble constitutions.
Across the fire, I mustered the fortitude to meet Flare’s gaze. “I do not say this to excuse myself. But you deserve to know why I lost my shit when you broke the vial.”
Well. That was part of it.
But again. Later.
I would treat this moment with the care and pacing it warranted. With patience.
As she wished, I exposed my demons. “My family is my lifeline. I shall destroy anyone who endangers them.” The next words sharpened like a blade. “Including your king.”
What does Summer have on you?
Then I told her about Poet’s parting question before I left Autumn. The spies Rhys had recruited throughout the Seasons. How I’d dealt with Winter’s offenders before they had a chance to uncover sensitive information about my condition.
“If they had succeeded, I would have been branded as unstable.” Before this woman, I let the confession slip from my mouth, drop by drop. “One precarious word or rumor would have marked me as a born fool.”
A born fool. A mad prince.
My treasonous secret. My bigoted hypocrisy.
Over the years, the more afraid I became of myself, the more I loathed the born for reminding me of my true nature. What I had feared, I’d hated in kind.
Yet that was not all. The shrewd jester had been right about my concerns. However, Poet had been wrong about my motivation—or whatever malignant conclusion he had drawn. Fair enough.
Disemboweling my knight on the parapet in Autumn. Allying with Poet and Briar to thwart Rhys. I’d had incentives, trade negotiating power among them. Not least of all, the golden woman who’d glamoured me.
But those hadn’t been my only reasons for snuffing out Summer and its spies. I had never worried for myself.
My voice hardened like steel. “As I said, no one harms my parents or my queens. If anyone touches what I treasure, they will suffer. If the court had leaked my affliction to the masses, the people would have rioted. They would have targeted my family for keeping this secret.”
For my welfare and the good of our court, my grandaunts and parents had guarded this information at their own risk. Should this intelligence have fallen into the wrong hands, it would have placed my kin in danger. That had been my greatest worry.
Moreover, it would have led to the breakdown of Winter. As it nearly had in Autumn.
Even now, the threat existed. Rhys hadn’t gotten wind of my secret, but he still could by alternative means. Or if not him, someone else.
Putting it mildly, my forbidden addiction to a certain female did not help matters. Though on that account, I did not give a fuck. She had always been my exception.
I finished my story, omitting that I’d lost the vial in the whirlpool. I could not go there tonight. Nor to other places having to do with our histories.
For as long as I could remember, I had made an enemy of sickness. I had been at war with it. But in doing so, I’d acted criminally. Trying to defeat illness—to cure my parents and myself—was not the same thing as trying to save lives.
All lives.
Including born souls. Like my peers, I had not taken Autumn’s crusade for humanity seriously. Yet it felt wrong to me now. So crucially wrong.
This woman knew emotional and physical misery in ways I could not begin to imagine. In ways I had caused.
She had also endured nightmares. She’d had a family too. She had her affections and proclivities. She had wild and peaceful moments.
Seasons forgive me. This woman was not a damn fool.
Speaking aloud didn’t atone for what I’d done to her or others. Forcing those people into labor, experimenting on them, condemning them. Expending selected individuals to treat the rest of the world.
Now it disturbed me to remember. More than that, it haunted me.
The past drained from my pores like contaminated blood. In my mind’s eye, I saw every face I had tortured.
A man throwing back his head and shrieking through his broken teeth. A woman begging for mercy while I calmly strapped her limbs to the table. People screaming while I cut into their skulls. Others sedated and lost in a stupor.
I saw the tools I’d used. I saw blood splattering the floor. I saw samples of their anatomy on my shelves.
I heard them wailing. I heard them crying.
Shame. Disgust. Both emotions grabbed me by the throat.
This whole time, Flare had trained those smoldering eyes on me. I had felt the burn of her stare even when I’d averted my own. Across the flames, I weathered her judgment, submitted myself to it, and awaited the verdict.
Where she had regarded me with disdain earlier, now her pupils reflected something profound. Compassion. I had never been the recipient of such a reaction, yet I recognized it within the gilded sheen of her irises. No one communicated their emotions as potently as she did.
Unlike me, Flare’s mercy proved stronger than her hate. The impact lanced through my sternum.
After a moment’s thought, she leaned over and drew in the sand. Letters formed the shape of a lost vial.
Flare
A vacant space rested beside her name. An invitation not merely for a truce but something that involved multiple possibilities over time. Sincerity. Honesty. Trust. Provided that I share one final thing about myself.
The surf washed in and out. The moon poured its rays into the lacquered sea.
Her finger paused on the empty space, ready to write more letters, to inscribe me beside her. She held my gaze and waited, commanding me to make a choice.
The firelight painted her face in amber. The name Flare suited her.
Finally, I met her golden eyes. “My name is Jeryn.”