51
Flare
When I was little, I used to imagine ships were wooden whales, gentle giants who ruled the sea. These vessels appeared small from afar, but their sails told me better. From here, I made out the swollen bellies of their hulls and the spearing bowsprits. These were no gentle giants on a peaceful expedition. These were monsters beating aside the waves, their silver figureheads aiming for the shore.
Then a second armada followed, this one hailing from Summer, their golden masts lancing into the sky. I stumbled backward, the scent of brine stinging my nostrils. It couldn’t be real. I had to wake myself up from this nightmare. Now.
Except Jeryn and Aire saw the ships too. But how? How was this happening? The rainforest couldn’t have summoned this legion as it had me.
A shrill noise gutted the sky, the ships’ horns tolling. The cacophony scattered a flock of macaws from the ferns, because they saw the enemy as well.
Soldiers clamored, hollering and pounding across the decks. They were too far away to see our shapes, but if the naval vessels were real, they would anchor soon.
I thought of their mainstays smacking the ocean floor, the iron weights breaking off a hunk of coral and crushing kelp. Skiffs would paddle the rest of the way, drive across the sand, and make track marks in the cove.
The butterfly launched off my shoulder and flapped into the trees. I charged toward the sea, to defend this land. An arm clamped around my waist and heaved me back.
Furious, I swung my fist at Jeryn, but he caught my knuckles. “Flare,” he cautioned.
His complexion hadn’t regained its color. From the sight, a new thought seized me. If we weren’t dreaming, Winter was coming to get him.
His pupils darkened. I stared at those black pits, his gaze confirming there were too many of them to fight. And if they were searching for him, that meant they were also looking for me.
Protectiveness sharpened those eyes, which clicked over my shoulder to the forest. He calculated, then his gaze snapped to me. He nodded, and I nodded back. Then his hand seized mine, and I strapped my fingers with his.
And we ran.
Veering around, we bolted into the rainforest with Aire bringing up the rear. Ferns rattled as we catapulted through the thicket, the trees patrolled by birds of prey, hundreds of caws scratching my ears. Jeryn and I had hewn a wider path through here ages ago, but the rainforest was immortal and unpredictable. No matter how much we knew of it, The Phantom Wild knew more. It grew itself back, clogging the spaces quickly, with new surprises burgeoning out of nowhere.
We ducked under creepers and sprinted around trunks. But shit. We’d left our wood slings behind for the convoy to see. With that evidence in sight, there was no telling whether they’d comb the beach first or brave the wild straightaway.
How had they known where to look? How could the rainforest have let them in?
The Phantom Wild was sacred. They didn’t deserve this privilege.
Although I no longer wore a collar tattoo, my flesh sizzled where the sunbursts used to be. A growl rolled up my throat. Like hell would I let Summer or Winter take me again.
Bromeliads flashed in the darkness. An insect flew into my clothes and pricked my side with its stinger. Our race kicked up an ugly, rotten stench from the undergrowth, its rancidness clashing with overripe floral whiffs.
I inhaled dampness and sweat. More than that, I felt the dip in heat and shift in the fog, pushed by an incoming force. Jeryn and I stopped. As did Aire, who’d sensed the change in his own unearthly way.
We couldn’t see or hear beyond the canopy, but the hairs on my arms rose.
Jeryn halted next to a compact batch of shrubs and flung aside the branches. “Inside.”
I released his fingers and snatched the knight’s arm, tugging him toward the enclosure. At first, Aire protested, his call-of-duty instincts resisting. But after checking the terrain again, he hunkered behind me. After scanning the environment, the prince crashed through, his body alongside Aire’s walling me in like a barricade.
Thunder rain fell, the droplets slamming into the ground. We huddled there, with Jeryn’s arm reaching behind to shield me, while I swiveled my face into the ravine of his shoulder blades and breathed him in.
He said something over the deluge, and Aire said something back, their voices getting louder and faster. Yet I heard them in only snippets, the story patching together.
In low tones, the details flew out of Aire’s mouth. “We arrived from Autumn for a meeting with Giselle. This morning, a tower guard noticed your drawing on the cell’s ceiling. They questioned everyone, asking what it was.”
Poet, Briar, and Aire had traveled to Summer for a conference with the queen. While there, they’d sought an update about Rhys, but although they hadn’t gained new information, word about the map had reached Giselle while the clan had been present. Such a simple thing. The guards had never looked at the ceiling, not once when I was there, because they’d had lots of practice looking without seeing. Our cage wasn’t worth inspecting.
Yet this time had been different. But because the jester and princess had already given my tower mates sanctuary in Autumn, Lorelei, Dante, and Pearl weren’t the ones to expose me during the interrogation. Instead, one of the other prisoners had. Because of my penchant for sleep talking, they’d noticed my mouth moving one night and made the connection.
Few people could read my lips. Still every soul in that cell block had learned to see in the dark, to understand how my lips moved. In fact, I had spent time helping them, teaching them to understand me. Although I’d been closest to my tower mates, I’d lived on-and-off with the others for almost ten years. With nothing but time on our hands, they had learned to communicate with me. But none of them had ever told me I talked in my sleep about the song.
“The wardens threatened them for details, then had the map copied,” Aire whispered while glaring through the foliage. “Autumn’s ship was a risk, so we took a skiff before the fleet set out.”
Jeryn grunted. “A remarkable coincidence that Winter happened to be in attendance.”
“No, Sire. Your Queens had grown desperate. With Giselle and Rhys’s approval, Winter recently ordered a fleet to be permanently stationed in Summer, lest your whereabouts should be discovered. In any case, our clan disbanded to find you upon docking.”
“Where are they?” I whispered. “Poet and Briar?”
Jeryn translated my question. To which, Aire consulted the forest, his attention riveted, scanning the atmosphere for a sign. His jaw tensed in frustration, his grip tightening on the broadswords. “I do not know.”
I deflated. The absence of Autumn’s ship would have been noticed on the mainland. Its presence here would have identified the clan. Taking a skiff from the wharf stood to reason. Likely, they had docked somewhere hidden, which meant searching for me and Jeryn had taken a while.
Splitting up made sense, and it was no wonder the instinctual knight had located us first, alongside my butterfly companion. But now our friends were alone in the wild, where predators roamed and thunder rain punched craters into the earth.
If Summer or Winter caught them, what excuse would the jester and princess give? They were clever. Yet fear for their safety thrashed inside my chest.
The troops couldn’t find our friends. The troops couldn’t find the ruins either.
Our fortress. Our home.
The ancients, whose existence needed to be preserved for this campaign. If Summer stumbled upon and reported the rainforest’s castle, Rhys would demolish it.
How had my homeland deciphered the hidden map? The prisoners had explained what the sketch represented, but it would have taken a chosen one to see through the lyrics. Or at least, to enable others to see them.
Jeryn squeezed my fingers, aware of my thoughts. He would say a talented Summer captain or cartographer could have decoded the map, along with the help of a Winter genius. But what about my calling? Unless the forest had a purpose for bringing these ships here.
Aire cocked his head, then stretched his gaze over his shoulder. He must have felt my questions, attuning himself to my dismay. “Sand drifters read the map.”
My features crumpled. Of course, the Crown would have employed my kind to interpret the lyrics. If our culture could navigate the crevices of this kingdom and find priceless treasures, drifters had the best chance of understanding my sketch.
Still. I was the chosen one, not them. The rainforest had bestowed me with the ability to see the map.
Aire’s irises glinted. “You did not fail this wild.”
Mist filled my eyes. This man read emotions the same way he read nature. What a beautiful gift—and what a haunting burden.
Then again, this land had called me to find the key within myself. Yet maybe it didn’t have a connection only to me, but to everyone. Because we were all part of this world, all part of nature, all linked to one another, our paths converging and diverging. Every sacred realm in The Dark Seasons had its pull, and the difference resided in how it welcomed each of us, and what happened when we arrived. Maybe we were all chosen ones, and maybe the outcome was a mixture of destiny and choice. Not one or the other.
And that was okay.
Jeryn stayed quiet. I peered at the honed shadows of his profile, which I doubted even Aire could penetrate. But if a person close to this prince knew where to look, they’d find a crawlspace, the fissure where he concealed his thoughts. He was considering the knights who’d disembarked from the ships, the torrent presently ambushing them. Fated or not, if they expected to march through here without a problem, they had a vicious surprise coming.
The rain became a drizzle and then dissipated. In its place, bushes shivered, remote voices filtered through the understory, and steel rang. They’d made it inside.
“Your Highness, this is ludicrous,” Aire growled at Jeryn.
“Quiet,” the prince clipped. “I’m thinking.”
“Concealment should not have been the plan. At least, not for you.”
“I know.”
“You could have provided a distraction.”
“I know.”
“If you wanted Flare to get away without them giving chase, you should have stayed behind to deter them.”
“I know,” Jeryn stated while peering into the trees.
On the shore, when Aire had stressed that we needed to leave, he’d meant him and me. True, Jeryn’s presence would have distracted the fleet. Yet I recognized the harsh set of his features, that concentrated dip in his brows. To stop them from finding me, Jeryn would have cut through this army with his bare hands. Although he knew I could blend into this forest without his help, his first impulse had been to remain by my side.
More than that, my prince had another reason—a motive he kept to himself. And there was no way I’d have left him behind in that cove anyway.
Footfalls trampled into the rainforest, the sounds carrying through the storm. More than a dozen soldiers groaned and grunted, the rain having pummeled them like hammers.
“Stay close,” one hollered.
“A torch!” another called. “We need light!”
“Fuck the light,” someone else grumbled. “Do you want to get us mauled?”
“Mind this path. Something’s getting close.”
Something. Not somebody.
They spoke loudly, shouting the words “Prince” and “Prisoner.” That kind of racket would draw the faunas’ attention. And if they disturbed that nest in the creepers, they’d be pincushions in no time.
The troop made it another three paces. Then a woman barked, “Don’t, you idiot. We don’t know–”
A man bellowed, his pained shrieks ripping through the forest. I knew that torture. One of them had gotten thirsty and taken a gulp from a stream that burned its victim’s tongue off. Jeryn and I had discovered this waterway over the past year and avoided it. The soldier groaned and hacked as if half of his mouth had been melted off, the grisly scene preoccupying the troops.
Aire launched forward. “Now.”
“Wait,” I cautioned, snatching his arm and pointing to an overhead bough.
“Patience,” Jeryn murmured, having recognized the same thing. His gaze was also fixated on the spot I’d indicated, where a barbed tail slithered along the branch, its source getting nearer to the voices.
The boa from my fauna pack. After bonding with the creature, I’d learned about her powers. With a strike to the nape, the serpent’s quarry would die in agony, with blood spurting from every nook and cranny of their skin. Despite my kinship with the animal, she had the ability to condemn her targets to a hellish death. Or if not, this legion would harm her.
Terror clenched my throat. Frantic, I scrambled for a way to distract her, to keep the female out of harm’s way without alerting the troops to our presence. But the snake hissed, already noticing me hiding like prey and sensing why.
No sooner did the burned soldier go silent than another knight screamed. And then many knights screamed.
“Get it!” a voice raked. “Slaughter the fucker!”
No! Not her!
I vaulted past Aire and Jeryn, only for the prince to snatch me back. His palm clamped over my mouth while I thrashed, but his cool voice stroked my ear. “Look.”
And I looked. And I saw the boa shooting past the soldiers, her movements too rapid to follow, fluidly dodging the army’s attack. As she sank her fangs into a warrior, a feline roared through the wild. From the undergrowth, a jaguar leaped on the springs of her paws, her saberteeth and claws bared while other predators stampeded into the scene, including anacondas and leopards and reptiles with tusks. Among them, my fauna pack laid siege, defended their home, and protected me as one of their own.
Voices howled. Flesh and ligaments tore. Blood ran like a river.
Man-made weapons struggled against the onslaught. To say nothing of the flora, brambles spearing legs, creepers snaring waists so tightly they threatened to sever each armored body, stinging tree sap tacking men and women to the trunks, and bottomless streams that only appeared shallow before they sucked victims into an abyss. Against the predators’ speed and strength, the knights toiled in a battle with nature.
“Seasons almighty,” Aire breathed.
“I can’t!” I wailed, flailing as Jeryn dragged me out of the shrubs, away from my pack. “I can’t! I won’t leave them!”
“Trust what you see, Flare,” he growled. “Give this wild credit.”
Aire nodded his agreement before launching ahead. I stalled, because the rainforest was eternal, and it had lasted for centuries without me, through eons of elemental disasters. A few soldiers wouldn’t overpower this realm.
Jeryn was right, and Aire sensed this truth, so I had to keep faith. My pack would be safe. If I didn’t believe that, my heart would crumble to dust.
We quit the gruesome spectacle, our feet flying, gaining distance. Or so we thought until Aire swerved to avoid a leopard with glowing spots, the creature bounding inches from him, forcing the knight through a beam of canopy light.
“The shadow,” a man yelled. “There!”
“It’s another creature!” another bellowed.
It wasn’t. But if they mistook us for the fauna, so much the better. Still, one of them hollered, “Seize the monster!”
Damnation. I veered toward Aire while ripping the machete from my rope belt, then skidded in place when a small object whizzed past us and blasted the first assailant off his feet. I squinted, making out the shape of a dart as another one fired through the foliage.
Or not a dart. The object was quill shaped like a thorn.
My eyes widened. Briar.
Relief flooded my being as a flash of red hair dashed into the scene. Clad in a dark jumpsuit and with a braid crowning her hair, the princess catapulted into view. With pinched features, she narrowed her gaze, fighting to see through the murk. Then she flung another thorn quill across the divide, using the forest’s glow to guide her aim, as I’d once instructed during her visit. The weapon hit its mark, knocking down a female warrior.
The thorn quills disintegrated seconds after impact, some newfound form of design that I hadn’t seen from her before. This would prevent the troops from identifying Briar’s signature weapon.
Awe stretched across my face. Stumbling to a halt, Briar exchanged nods with Aire, then sought my gaze.
“Flare,” she gasped.
“Briar,” I called.
In the dark, we lunged for each other, clasping in a quick hug. The cacophony of bloodshed consumed the wild. Human shadows collided with fauna outlines, and knights jabbed their swords, combatting the predators and each other. Confusion ensued, with the soldiers unable to tell comrades from animals, trees from giants, plants from weapons.
This lush, dark rainforest disoriented them. The fray spread like a rushing tide.
Jeryn’s silhouette rammed into someone. He lashed his knife, and the attacker hunched, fluid spraying from their throat.
Another knight surged toward him. I growled and flew in their direction, swiping my machete across the soldier’s legs before he planted a weapon in the prince’s back. Then another blade hurled toward me, and Jeryn belted out a murderous growl, flinging me behind him and slicing through the person’s stomach.
A flash of steel arched our way—and split under the force of a staff. A whipcord form blew from the shrubs, a pair of arms windmilling the rod and cracking the enemy’s skull.
Poet.
The jester hissed, his green eyes flaring, visible for an instant. He slipped into the shadows again, twisting and spinning while bodies toppled around him.
Aire moved like a tornado. Briar’s thorn quills intercepted flying stars from the Winter soldiers. Jeryn’s deadly precision took his opponents down too fast for them to register the attack, his aim focused on arteries and vital organs. And I moved like a member of the fauna, quick and sure.
A woman shouted. Glancing back, I spotted a flash of white hair and split complexion of pale and gray, like that of a half-moon. Upon hearing the female, Jeryn faltered. In the castle, that knight had worked under his command, and she’d been the one monitoring me shortly before I’d escaped.
The female gained on my jaguar, who tore into one of her brethren. Darting the animal’s way, I snatched a vine from a branch and threw myself to the ground. Sliding on my hip between the feline and the woman, I flung out my leg to trip her. The Winter bitch landed face-first, a crossbow slipping from her fingers and her armored shoulder popping like a bubble.
I snared the vine around her limbs and yanked it in place. With the knot wound so tightly, she wasn’t going anywhere. For all this knight knew, a log had felled her, and an errant creeper had done the rest.
Pitching to my feet, I whirled and caught up to our clan, who’d stopped to search for me. “Sorry!” I said while jetting past everyone.
We cut a retreat, the troops having misidentified us as creatures. The echoes of pandemonium faded once we reached one of the underground caves, which deposited us at the ruins. We had sworn not to lead anyone here, but for some reason Jeryn had forced us in this direction.
Barreling up the front steps and staggering to a halt inside the vestibule, Aire bent forward to catch his breath. “They do not suspect us. The legend and its fauna will dissuade them.”
Regardless, Poet hauled Briar against him and spat, “Jeryn, what the fuck?”
“We can’t stay here,” the princess agreed. “The ruins—”
I shook my head at them, indicating that we weren’t actually staying here. Then I looked up at Jeryn, who clasped my face and raked his eyes over me, checking for wounds. His expression confirmed this hadn’t been impulsive, because he rarely did anything that way.
With reluctance, he released me and snapped to everyone, “Wait here.”
Then he strode down one of the halls. Unable to stay still, I raced after him, hastening up a stairway and into our adjoining chambers. In the doorway, I watched Jeryn shove every stitch of my clothing into our satchels, then add my sheathed dagger and my collection of nets to the pile.
Hitching the straps over his shoulder, the prince stalked back to me and took my hand. Without a word, he led us down the steps. In the medical chamber, he collected bundles of herbs and florals, shoving them into the bags as well, along with our old canteen filled with water and fruits from the dining hall. After that, we reunited with the clan.
Poet, Briar, and Aire took one look at the satchels. A conclusion pulled their features taut, but only the princess let her emotions betray her. She peeked my way, compassion glossing her gray eyes.
Trepidation sank to the pit of my stomach. We vacated the ruins, fled down another tunnel, and emerged at the southeast cove where Jeryn and I had moored our newly constructed tidefarer. Next to that, bobbed the skiff our clan had used to sail here.
All seemed peaceful except for the swaying waves. I couldn’t say the same for my insides, which twisted into knots.
After exchanging words with the jester and princess, Aire inclined his head. “Make haste,” he advised before striding to the skiff.
My brow furrowed as the knight sailed on his own, shrinking to a dot on the horizon. “Where is he going?”
“To the wharf,” Poet answered, guessing my question more than reading it. “He’ll make certain it’s vacated by the time we get there.”
But why hadn’t Poet and Briar gone with Aire? Jeryn and I would be fine on the tidefarer. If we caught a current, we could journey farther east with our pursuers none the wiser.
And then …
Then what? We had no plan for this. Leaving wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
Grief clogged my throat. This couldn’t be the end. We hadn’t had a chance to say farewell to the rainforest or my pack.
“Take this,” Jeryn instructed, handing the satchels to Poet and Briar.
The pair tossed us grave looks before carrying the items to the tidewater. Far too late, the harrowing thought occurred to me. Jeryn had packed my clothing and weapon—but not his. I’d missed a detail, something he wasn’t spitting out.
Jeryn stared past me, to where Poet and Briar had boarded the tidefarer. His eyes sent a message across the divide, and I sensed them receiving it. The jester and princess busied themselves, loading the deck and pretending not to witness this moment between us.
“Jeryn—,” I began.
“Come,” he said.
I accepted his hand, letting him guide me to the sea’s edge, where the tide brushed the shore. All I could think was, he’d cut me off. He rarely did that.
Something was wrong.
My feet stalled, the sand scratching my feet. Jeryn had erased me from our home, packing items only I would need. All along, the prince had intended to get here before they did, to make sure I had what I needed for travel.
But what about him? Where were his possessions?
Jeryn stood beside me, watching the ocean sparkle, and I cursed his silence. I stared at him, ready to shout. But then he turned my way, expecting this reaction, because he knew that I knew.
He wasn’t coming with me.