29
Flare
Jeryn.
I repeated the moniker, and he watched me sound it out, my lips taking a while to string the letters together. He’d been given a patient name. It took its time on the tongue, whereas mine shot out like a dart and landed somewhere unexpected. Maybe that was the difference between a seafarer and a ruler, or a woman born in flames and a man born in frost. Fire moved while ice stayed still.
Although the lives of Royals were widely talked about, his name had never been mentioned in my presence. Not once in my life. The few people who’d referred to him when I was around had only used his formal title, including Poet and Briar.
I had planned to sketch the letters beside my own. But on second thought, I leaned back and gestured at the empty space.
The prince straightened as though given a pivotal task. Yet he didn’t hesitate. Hunching forward, a cord of his blue mane poured over his shoulder, and the blaze sketched his profile.
Like signatures to a treaty, he scripted his name into the sand. My pulse skipped when the edge of one letter touched one of my own. I would say it hadn’t been on purpose, but with this deliberate man, I doubted it.
My heart clenched for his family. I hadn’t wanted to believe him, or understand him, or forgive him. But if I couldn’t, what sort of person did that make me? What kind of change could I hope for in this world? Compassion was a strength, as much as any other power.
The mad prince. It made sense now.
He’d taken his fear out on born souls. The confession didn’t absolve him, and I couldn’t fathom anything ever would. But acknowledging it could change him.
In the face of this prince, I beheld a child afraid of sharks, of death taking his kin, of sickness taking him. People had told that boy about born souls the same way everybody told everybody about us, and that was how the boy had grown up.
I despised the man that little boy became. But now I knew why he’d transformed into a monster, and tonight he was here, and he saw me. That was something I couldn’t despise.
His eyes no longer saw through me but watched my lips in anticipation, holding their reflections in pools of black as I balanced his name on my tongue.
“Jeryn,” I said.
The fire sizzled. At that moment, his pupils exploded with light.
***
While darkness glossed the sky, we remained at the cove. Dying embers from the pit separated us as we reclined on opposite sides.
Despite what Jeryn had lain bare, a new calm settled around us. This moment should have been awkward, but something cathartic unspooled instead. Like with Poet and Briar, it happened more naturally than I would have imagined.
We had exposed ourselves to the point of ease. Except this felt different and deeper and maybe … maybe more desirable.
I curled like a shell into the sand. “What do you miss about your home?”
Jeryn’s features relaxed, the inclines smoother than before, as though bricks had fallen from his countenance. “I would rather ask you that question.”
I shook my head. “We’re not there yet.”
Although he’d experienced enlightenment, I wasn’t about to hand over my life’s history at this point. He still had some unraveling to do.
The prince rolled his defined jaw, the sight more exquisite than I’d like to admit. “What would you care to know?”
“The stuff you’re less likely to include first,” I replied to see how much he’d learned about me.
After a moment’s deliberation, the prince began. He talked about yule owls and dire wolf sleds and stag sleighs. Then he described star murals in the astronomy wing, a castle overlooking alpine mountains, and elks promenading through a place called The Iron Wood.
Points for him. These were fine choices.
On a wistful tangent, Jeryn reminisced about the richness of gravy. “Seasons, I fucking miss gravy.”
Chuckling, I scooted closer to the blaze. “What does your suite look like?”
“I’ll tell you, if you describe at least one particular to me,” he compromised. “Consider it a trade. Your tidefarer boat, for instance. I didn’t see the inside of it.”
“That’s because we were too busy trying to kill each other.”
His eyes glittered. “Who says we’ve stopped?”
The husk in his voice coiled low in my stomach. Stretching that hard body across the sand, with all that hair falling like a river around his face, he resembled a lord of the sea. Though, he would probably curl his nose at the description.
The flames crackled as we stared at one another. I shook myself out of the vision, the movement knocking Jeryn from his own trance.
Registering the provocative dip in his tone, he cleared his throat. “Where did you sleep?”
“In a room below deck. My pillow was as big as me. I loved my pillow.” I nestled deeper into the shore. “Your turn.”
“My suite is furnished with mahogany wood. Everything is accented in cold shades.”
I kept a straight face. “To match—”
“Do not finish that question.”
“—your hair?” I baited anyway.
He gave me a stern look. “If you insist on amusing yourself, may I be excused?”
“You’re actually asking my permission?”
That frown deepened in a rather endearing way. This man looked fetching whenever I got on his nerves. Pleased with myself, I asked, “What is snow like?”
Jeryn bypassed the technical things, knowing what type of details I fancied. “Sometimes the starkness can make you squint,” he shared. “Other times, it’s tinted blue or blackened with footprints, like it’s been bruised. It can be as soft as powder or as coarse as rubble. You can make art from hard-packed snow, or it might be so light and soft that it cannot bear your weight.” He held my gaze. “Always, you can draw in it.”
I swirled my finger across the ground and whispered, “I was born in the sand.”
“My first sight was of ice,” he confided. “To this day, my family often recounts the birth.”
He told me the story. Apparently, the prince had craned his small head toward the window. Instantly, his eyebrows had pressed together, his gaze assessing the frozen land beyond as if demanding an explanation for everything that existed out there.
Jeryn’s features became remote. “I miss them.”
I nodded. “I miss my family too.”
As the sea whisked back and forth in a gentle rhythm, and the pit glowed with warmth, the prince raised himself on his elbow. “Tell me why you enjoy drawing in the sand. Tell me why you prefer it to canvas or parchment.”
My finger stopped moving. “Because it’s stronger than people give it credit for. Everyone adores the ocean so much that they forget what holds it up.”
I told him more about my passion, the details unfurling like a wave. All the while, he did more than absorb my answer. He listened.
***
By the time we returned to the ruins, it had to be midnight. Plants glowed, and damp spiderwebs glistened like ropes of diamonds. Although some areas got so dark we struggled to see our fingers in front of our faces, the moon snuck through the canopy, enameling the world in pearly light.
While I padded to my chamber, I spied on Jeryn in his adjoining room. Through the arched doorway, he rested on his back, as heavy as an anchor. From the way he’d described snow, the prince slumbered as though buried under a layer of it, his large frame going still.
I paid attention to the straight lines of his face, from the aristocratic slant of his nose to the cleft in his chin. He’d been graced with a chilling sort of beauty. Yet rainforest scars branded the prince’s skin. More than anything else, I liked seeing those marks on him, proof that he was vulnerable.
I dragged my gaze from his sculpted body. It had become harder to ignore the sight. My eyes might not linger, but my mind was another story.
As I tucked myself into bed, I wondered. Did he suffer from shark nightmares anymore? My eyelids fluttered closed, the question pinching my dreams.
Hours or minutes later, I learned the answer. During the night, I lurched off the mattress, ripped from my sleep to the sound of Jeryn screaming.