47
Flare
I stirred in his strong arms, drowsy from slumber. As my eyelashes fanned open, early morning clung to the waterfall crags, and I caught him staring down at me with a fond expression. We’d been lounging naked at the bank all day, pausing only to eat and drink and touch, with the canopy of trees shielding us from the sun.
My fauna pack lounged atop one of the brackets beside the cascades. The jaguar lapped at her paw, the butterfly perched on a boulder, and the boa tucked herself into a shaded bush sprouting from the rocks. According to Jeryn, the feline had guarded me while I’d been unconscious and Jeryn had rushed to find his vial. She had left after the prince returned but came back at some point while he and I were sleeping. This time, my other two kindreds had accompanied her.
Jeryn’s body temperature eased the aches in my muscles. Though, I wasn’t the only one caught in an afterglow. The prince’s features were relaxed, his complexion refreshed from all we had done, how long and loud we’d pinnacled.
A masculine hum resounded from his body as I curled into his side. He braced one hand behind his head and cradled my scalp with the other, his hands toying with my hair. Tucking my cheek into his chest, I slung one leg over his waist and drizzled my fingers across the cobbled surface of his abdomen.
Jeryn’s timbre roughened, his cock already half-hard. “You tread a fine line.”
To our senses alone, my laugh came out husky. I craned my head toward him, balanced my chin on his torso, and drummed my digits against his muscles. “When has that warning ever worked on me?”
He let out a rare but faint huff of mirth. “True.”
“You know, this is the first time we’ve gotten to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Savor the aftermath.”
He hesitated. “Could you get used to it?”
I pretended to give it some thought, then chuckled when he nudged my side as if offended. “When you delay like that, it torments me.”
“Does it?” I teased, crawling higher up his body. “Tell me more.”
“Bewitched. Smitten. Obsessed,” he listed while nibbling on my neck. “Do not pretend you don’t know this.”
I bit back a giddy smile, then shrugged. “I might get used to it.”
Pleasure spread across his face. I liked seeing Winter this way, casual and carefree. It would shock the world.
Sprawled across the grass, with all that marvelous flesh on display, the sight caused my heart to skip. Long layers fell around Jeryn’s face as he pulled away from my throat and mouthed, How are you?
I glanced at the sparkling cascades. “Thirsty.”
The prince rose, not bothering with clothes, which allowed me to admire the taut motions of his ass. Minutes later, he returned with our canteen, which he’d brought from the ruins—along with other supplies including food and a blanket—while I rested. After everything that had happened, I’d simply wanted to stay here by the waterfalls, soaking in the peaceful atmosphere.
While I sat up with my breasts hanging freely and the blanket puddling around my waist, I guzzled from the vessel. By then, my fauna pack had come nearer, to check on my wellbeing.
As I drank and greeted my friends, Jeryn unpacked a bottle of plumeria salve he’d made for me. Concoction in hand, he strode my way but frowned at the boa, jaguar, and butterfly settled against me.
“Off,” he ordered.
The animals hissed and growled and flapped wings. But at my gentle whisper, they returned to their spot by the waterfall.
Motioning for me to sit up, Jeryn lowered himself to the ground and rubbed the balm across my neck. I sighed, inhaling the floral essence.
The prince had told me the story, what happened after I had bitten through the vines, how they’d poisoned me, and how Jeryn had found me. The whirlpool had taken his necklace months ago, yet he’d jumped back in and found it with the help of my sand net. Afterward, he had fed me the last of the vial’s liquid, not knowing if the antidote would work or if I’d keep swelling and turning to ice.
I moaned as his hands kneaded the floral ointment into my shoulders. “Your fingers.”
“What about them?” he asked.
“The way they sink into me, reaching so deeply. Prince Jeryn, the Cruel Healer. Yet your touch isn’t cruel, it’s lavish.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you or bid you’re welcome,” he remarked in amusement.
I laughed. “Both.”
Jeryn had the walk and talk of a Royal, but he also wasn’t the fur-cloaked monster I’d first met. The Phantom Wild had cut and bruised and hardened every ridge more than it already had been. Also, it had softened other places and brought a new clarity to his eyes.
I could draw his likeness into the earth. But to get those features right, I’d need something with a finer point, like a feather quill.
While he tended to my back, I drew across a patch of soil as if it were sand, forming symbols into the bank. A tidefarer, a rainforest, a hidden palace.
“You’re good,” Jeryn murmured over my shoulder. “Images that speak without words. If they were aware of it, monarchs would summon you across the Seasons to demonstrate such a spectacle.”
I imagined my sand art reaching the hearts and minds of this continent. The possibility fluttered in my stomach. The thought of being heard … the chance to have a voice … to bond with so many others …
Your strengths don’t begin and end in this realm.
As they often did, Jeryn’s words from our dinner on the beach returned, including his declarations about my mission. If the rainforest weren’t able to tell me which of my skills could help born souls, would I be able to figure it out myself?
What did I have to share with this world?
Twisting my head Jeryn’s way, I wondered, “What about the people? How would they react?”
“That would be for you to discover,” Jeryn answered. “But whatever you made them feel, they would not forget it.”
“Would you?”
Those eyes darkened. “I will never forget anything you’ve made me feel.”
Setting aside the ointment, Jeryn wiped his hands and wheeled me toward him. We reclined in the grass and lay on our sides, facing one another. I drew the blanket over our waists, barely enough to cover his beautiful ass and my hips.
Like this, we stared at one another. The waterfalls threw mist into the air and filled this haven with secretive noises.
“When the poison seeped into me, I thought of Winter frost,” I said. “Does the cold sting like that? Is it so intense that it burns? Is there no sun?”
“There is—”
“It didn’t sound so when you described it. How can such an icy place have star murals, sleighs drawn by stags, dire wolf sleds, and yule owls?”
“Flare—”
“And you talked about elks in a forest called The Iron Wood. And you mentioned gravy. Is it warm? How do the animals not freeze?”
A wry look crossed his face. “May I talk?”
“What?” I asked innocently. “I’m not stopping you.”
He threw back his head and burst out laughing. The baritone sound heated my flesh, so that I longed to drag my tongue across his mouth and learn what his mirth tasted like.
Recovering, Jeryn twined a wavy lock of my hair around his finger and admired how it sprang back into place, reshaping itself. “Winter has as many havens as it does perils, just as each court possesses its own courtesies and malevolence.”
That didn’t excuse the dungeons, towers, or oubliettes, the places where they dumped people like Pearl and Lorelei and Dante and Rune.
I scooted closer, the movement prompting him to wind an arm around me. “You once held me in contempt for being mad, yet your feelings changed.” I seared my gaze into his. “So has your definition of madness changed too?”
Jeryn glimpsed my neck and then dragged his eyes to mine. “Flare, I—”
“Because who says the free citizens of The Dark Seasons aren’t just as mad? Is it normal to scorn and enslave the way they have? The way you have? Was it normal for Pyre or the rest of the tower guards to enjoy tormenting prisoners? Is King Rhys sane after everything he’s done to born souls? To Poet, Briar, and their son?”
“Flare. You know I don’t feel that way anymore.”
Air gusted from my lungs. Jeryn had joined the clan. Of course, he didn’t feel the way he used to.
“It’s just …” I touched my neck. “Being trapped by the vines, so soon after ridding myself of that collar. I hate to think of others suffering like me when they don’t deserve it.”
“Do you trust me?” When I nodded, he gathered me to him. “Then tell me. What did you do?”
What did I do to get caught? What did I do to condemn myself and my parents? What brought me to the tower? Why had Summer painted a collar around my neck?
He’d told me about his past, but I hadn’t shared mine. I hadn’t been ready. Now I wanted nothing more than for him to know me entirely.
Safe in his arms, I told him about growing up as a drifter. How I would climb the mast of our tidefarer to stroke the clouds. How I’d once slammed an iron pail across a shark’s face because it wanted to steal my favorite sand net. How I had danced on hot coals and through sandstorms.
I described Papa, who threaded his hair into tight braids across his head, wore a looped ring in his eyebrow, and was short and plump. He was all hugs and booming laughter, with a voice as deep as a boar’s.
I described Mama, the tall and tranquil one of our family, who narrated folktales every night when I didn’t want to sleep.
They called me their flaming girl, the greatest treasure they’d discovered together. Though sometimes I burned too hotly. That’s what they used to say whenever I raged or did something without thinking.
When this happened, Mama would caress my hands and whisper for me to be calm and careful. I tried, yet I often got upset about unkind words or hurtful actions from strangers.
While passing through a canal thoroughfare, another sand drifter had once called Mama a harsh name, so I smashed the handle of the man’s oar against his boat. And in a swamp, I splashed a bucket of sludge at a swindler for cheating my parents out of coins. These things, I did before Mama and Papa could stop me.
And I did one other thing too.
Because of my turbulent whims, Mama and Papa didn’t bring me to the markets with them. Instead, one of them would always stay behind with me. But one day, we docked ashore by the castle, with a heavy trunk of wares to sell, too weighty for a person to cart alone. Even though it had built-in wheels, the chest would need both Mama and Papa to transport it. They’d had to leave me there, making me promise to stay put in the tidefarer while they set off for the lower town.
Mama had whispered, “Be soft and be good. No wandering or engaging with strangers. Remember.”
“I will,” I had vowed. “I’ll remember.”
Our tidefarer was moored out of sight, surrounded by trees. I’d been ensconced in the boat and gazing at the beach when a group of children appeared. Despite their fancy clothes, they seemed to love the shore as much as I did, because they played in the sand, throwing damp balls at each other and giggling.
Children like me, I had thought! They weren’t sand drifters, because they looked too regal for that. I guessed they were nobles, but I didn’t care, because that didn’t make us different. Not if we all loved the shore.
What could happen?
I sprinted out of the tidefarer. When I approached them beside a grove, they stopped chortling and gaped with wide eyes. I didn’t know what to do or say, and I hadn’t thought to bring my sand net to impress them.
One of the girls ran her gaze over my clothes and exclaimed that I was a sand drifter. Then a boy prompted me, asking if I had treasure on my boat. Nodding, I dashed aboard and returned with a clear seashell, as translucent as a piece of glass, a rare find that my parents had forgotten to take with them.
The boy snatched it from me, and the children gathered around to peer at the charm, but they grew uneasy when the male packed my shell into his pocket. I reached for it, but he wouldn’t give it back, and the fire in me simmered. That shell belonged to my family.
“Want it back?” the noble boy asked.
I didn’t trust the question, so I stood there, anger creeping up on me as the sun hit my back. Its bright glare made the children squint, like they couldn’t see me well. And maybe they truly couldn’t, because none of them defended or helped me.
If I wanted the shell back, I had to take it back. That’s what the noble said, right before he wadded up a clump of wet sand and lobbed it my way like a grenade.
The ball smacked my shoulder and broke apart, spraying into a million flecks. I froze in surprise, long enough that another ball launched and shattered against my neck, the impact pulling tears from my eyes. That he turned this beautiful setting into a backdrop for cruelty set the fire roaring. I cannoned after the spoiled brat, dodging the sandy balls he pitched at me. He had no right to the seashell and no right to violate the beach.
A moment later, I landed on top of him, and I was punching his noble face into the coast, blood spraying from a gash on his lip. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, we’d rolled across the ground—and the ground was sinking. It grabbed and sucked us down. At first, it was enchanting, so I let the bloody boy go and gawked at the spectacle.
It was a new discovery, the quicksand. I’d only ever heard of its existence.
One of the children screeched. A girl seized her skirt and bolted into the trees, with the rest of them following her.
Because I wasn’t moving, the quicksand didn’t consume me as fast as it did the boy, who screamed and thrashed. Reflexively, I snatched onto a tree root and managed to haul myself out of the mess, then I crawled to the edge and watched the boy flounder and spit curses at me. It would serve this boy right if the sand took him, so I stared until he was up to his neck and had begun to whimper.
The fear in his eyes stabbed my conscience, made me feel wrong about scaring him, even though there wasn’t any real danger. It was only sand, and I was going to pull him out anyway, because he was just a boy. A fiendish boy but also a child like me.
All the same, he deserved for the beach to give him a scolding first. He pleaded that he was sorry and to please help him. Desperate, he swore to give my shell back.
Since I had already been fixing to save him, I stretched out my hand. The noble had lunged for it, and our fingers grazed when a pair of gloved fingers hauled me upright. Knights swarmed us in a commotion of steel and shouts, with the other children on their heels. Then the boy was being rescued, his mouth bleeding from where I’d attacked him. Crimson oozed from his hip as well, because the seashell had shattered in his pocket, crushed to pieces when I’d tackled him.
I mourned those shards. I hadn’t kept my promise to Mama and Papa like I was supposed to, and now a treasure was destroyed, and the boy’s lips gushed from a split. I hadn’t meant to do wrong, but it was an accident, and everything was all right now.
Yet the children shrieked that I’d come out of nowhere and pounced on their friend. All the while, the boy said nothing about it. Not about taking my shell or baiting me, because he was too busy coughing up grains. His clique accused me of booting him into the quicksand, that I’d been pushing him into it and going down with him like a mad girl.
“Like a mad girl,” they cried. “A mad girl, a mad girl!”
I rushed at them, screaming that it was a lie. Appalled, the Summer knights yanked me back, and I heard the boy tell them in a small, shaken voice that I’d been about to let him drown. Over and over, he repeated that I meant to let him drown, sounding like he really believed it.
I wouldn’t have. I’d have given him a beating, and I might have chipped a tooth, but I wouldn’t have done worse. I had just wanted my shell back.
The knights dragged me across the shore. The more I hollered—“I’m not mad! I’m not mad! Mama! Papa! I’m not maaaaaad!”—the tighter their hold on me became.
As the knights stole me away, the last sight I took with me was of the beach—of my footprints in the sand.
Later, Pyre gloated and told me they’d caught my parents too. Mama and Papa had been tossed into a dungeon for concealing me from the Crown, while I was sent to a different cell.
And maybe Summer was right. Maybe I was mad, because why had I gotten so angry and attacked that boy over a seashell? Why else would Mama and Papa have kept me away from the markets so often?
Over time, I started to believe what everyone said about me. I was dangerous. Not to kind people but surely to evil or harmful beings, especially if they threatened what I cared about.
Only the rainforest had seen something good in me, something worth summoning. And that became my only light in the darkness.
Fury contorted Jeryn’s features as I finished the tale. “Anyone who ever hurt you. I will massacre them when I return to Winter. Let that be my first task.” He seized my cheeks, thumbs stroking my skin. “You’re safe now. You’re free.”
A lump clotted my throat. “Don’t hurt anyone for me. Violence is the reason I got myself locked up in the first place. I want no more of it.”
In place of rage, a haunted look strained his face. I wondered if the quicksand story reminded him of the whirlpool, until he uttered as if to confirm, “The boy had a split lip.”
I flinched. “I didn’t mean it.”
“And bloody pants.”
“From the seashell.”
Jeryn grimaced as if he’d anticipated this answer. He scraped his fingers through his hair, his next words sounding like a confession. “I was there.”
I couldn’t have heard him right. But when I said nothing, his eyes lifted to mine, and he repeated in a strained tone, “I was there.”
“No,” I balked. “I would have remembered a young man with blue hair.”
“I was close by. On the same beach. It was the day of the siren shark.”
Oh. Oh.
Yes, that day. He and his grandaunts had been touring the coastline with the Summer Crowns, and there had been knights escorting the Royals, and because those Royals wanted to be private, a group of children had been forced to migrate elsewhere.
Jeryn reminded me, “The boy with the split lip. I saw him earlier that day, on the beach with the other children.” The distant memory played before his eyes, his voice narrowing to a knife’s edge. “At one point during the stroll, I succumbed to curiosity. While my grandaunts were indisposed, I slipped from my security detail and followed the children to a neighboring shore. I arrived as the soldiers were dragging you away.”
The muscles of his throat bobbed. “I saw the guards hurting you. I saw the look on your face.” His eyelids clenched shut. “I have seen that moment ever since. You were a vision so unfamiliar to me. Wild. Golden. Ethereal. You were the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. The urgency to save you had gripped me, yet I was a mere boy, unsure of what to do. Before I could race to your aid, the guards had clamped you in irons, and the noble youths were screaming about madness.
“The term stalled my tracks and scared me. I started to question if you were safe or deadly, because I hadn’t known better. Instead, I returned in a daze to my side of the beach, my mind overpowered by you. I fought to distract myself by stumbling into the water, thinking to collect a sample for my vial, and hadn’t noticed the shark’s approach.”
In a timbre scraped raw, Jeryn admitted the rest. When his grandaunts took him to the infirmary after the shark attack, the noble boy was admitted soon after. The physicians had whispered that he’d been assailed by a mad girl near the ocean.
The same day. The same hour.
The soldiers had been dragging me to danger. Meanwhile, the prince’s grandaunts had been dragging him to safety.
“Your screams were the first sounds I ever heard from you,” Jeryn rasped. “In Autumn’s dungeon, I did not merely notice you. I recognized you.”
Tears clung to my lashes. When we met on that fateful night, he’d already seen me before.
And he’d heard me. In Summer’s castle when Jeryn had me chained in the quad, he commented on my voice, declaring how I had possessed one in the past. To that, I’d been stumped, questioning how he could have drawn that conclusion without knowing a thing about my life, much less without examining me. And I hadn’t believed his excuse of simply being a doctor.
So this was it. He’d known me for years, long before I knew him.
Jeryn’s repentant gaze searched mine. I witnessed the self-loathing across his face. If he hadn’t been there, those children wouldn’t have traveled to another part of the shore, and they wouldn’t have seen me, and I wouldn’t have gotten into trouble. If he had rushed to my side and defended me, the guards and children would have thought twice about discounting a testimonial from the Prince of Winter.
If and if and if .
But instead of dwelling on that misfortune, I cupped his jaw. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I saw you being hauled away,” he snarled. “I saw you and did nothing.”
“Just because you were on that beach doesn’t mean you sent me to the tower.”
“Ignorance sent you there. Royals like me kept you there.”
“Then in Autumn, why did you …”
“Why did I treat you that way? Because I spent years trying to forget your existence, desperate to evict the memory of you from my mind, out of fear and guilt. Although you captivated me at first sight, I quickly second guessed that feeling, long enough to stay my actions.
“For a while after, I regretted that. But over time, the more I grew to fear what this continent deems as foolishness, the more loathed it. Out of misguided self-preservation, I convinced myself you were mad after all, and I should move on.” His fingers tightened on my hip. “Then Autumn happened. When I saw you behind those bars, you consumed me once more.”
He admitted the rest. Ordering my dirt sketch swept away hadn’t been intended as punishment. Rather, Jeryn had wanted my cage cleaned, unaware of what the pile meant to me.
But when I broke the vial and marred something precious to him—a gift from his parents—I shattered his first image of me as a tyrannized girl.
“If fear hadn’t fueled my disdain, perhaps I wouldn’t have overreacted about the vial,” Jeryn admitted. “I was embittered and sought to punish you for the disillusionment, to further convince myself you were mad and did not matter. You were right to cast me as a villain. Cruel. Cold. I relied on those traits to deal with you, even while I obsessed about you every waking moment.”
Having me isolated in a separate cell, not to torment me but to give me peace and quiet. Seeking me out during the Reaper’s Fest riot, not to trap me but to make sure I was unharmed. Jeryn had found himself acting out of protectiveness instead of viciousness.
I brushed my mouth against his. “Now we know.”
“Now we do,” he murmured.
The waterfall spilled down mantels of rock. At some point, my fauna pack had departed into the rainforest. They must have known Jeryn and I needed this time alone.
“Flare,” the prince hissed, clasping my cheeks. “You said it wasn’t my fault when I didn’t help you. Now I’m telling you, what happened to you and your parents also wasn’t your fault.”
Pain lanced through me, grief and guilt wringing tears to my eyes. My voice crumbled to pieces as I palmed my face and hunched over, letting Jeryn fasten me to him while my body jolted from weeping, the cries heavy and endless.
“I have nightmares about being caged,” I sobbed. “Though, it’s only happened once here, back on our first night. But the worst nightmares are of Mama and Papa suffering. I got them into trouble. They died because of me.”
“No,” Jeryn intoned. “They died because of prison.” When my tears ebbed, he lifted my face to his. “It was not your doing.”
“Pyre said I had a feral madness. Everyone said it too.”
“Anyone can be susceptible to anger. You were an excitable, imaginative child with a temper and an impulsive streak. That’s why your parents kept you from markets; rightly so, they didn’t want anyone to misconstrue your behavior. As for that noble boy, he was in shock. The other children shouted in his defense, purely out of hysterics, and those fucking knights overreacted. But you are not feral. This would have been evident if The Dark Seasons had educated itself correctly about the distinctions. Instead, we’ve all been learning in the fucking wrong way.”
Jeryn traced my skin with his thumbs. “Flare, you have lived through something horrific, and it has scarred you. Captivity and bigotry taught you to believe something that wasn’t true, and confinement among baiting guards reinforced that.” His eyes bore into mine. “You are not mad. And you must forgive yourself. Your parents would want that for you. They’d want you to live without regret.”
Hope eased the knots in my chest. His words washed through me like an ocean wave, rinsing away the ashes. Finally talking about it with someone—with him—poured warmth inside me, where there had always been bleakness.
Leaning over, I drew in the soil, the motions luring me, soothing my thoughts. Onto the earth, I sketched a seashell, whole and unbroken.
Then I turned in Jeryn’s arms. “One more thing.”
Jeryn hauled me against him. “Anything.”
“No more secrets.”
He ran his fingers down my arm. “No more confessions.”
“And be with me. Not just until we say goodbye but after. If we part ways, we do it with a plan to meet again, to stay together no matter the distance or time.”
“You don’t need to propose this.” His gaze burned into mine. “After almost losing you, I won’t let you go again.”
Flipping me onto my back, Jeryn dipped his head to my throat. “To the ends of the earth, I will meet you. Until the end of time, I’ll wait.”
Tingles spread along my flesh. I wound my legs around his waist, chuckling tearily as he growled into my neck like a hungry creature.
“Forgive me,” he intoned ruefully against my skin. “I could not wait to taste you again.”
The admission stalled my humor. A stampede of wild animals sprang loose in my chest while he tucked into my throat.
“Couldn’t wait?” I repeated.
“Could not wait,” he said.
Another pause. I might have teased Jeryn about his lack of patience. Instead, a grin stretched across my face. “That means you love me.”