54
Jeryn
Three days later, the terrace’s double doors swept open. Only this time, a different pair of visitors stepped onto the platform.
Solstice halted at the threshold, made the proper announcements, and moved aside. The two figures materialized, a drizzle of snow falling around them.
Poet’s raven jacket clutched his athletic frame, with a matching scarf trimmed in wide ruffles flouncing from the high collar. His fitted black leather pants, sterling-embellished boots with heels, and leather gloves stitched in a motley pattern of black and sterling completed the outfit.
A red crown of braids encircled Briar’s head, and a charcoal fur mantle hugged her frame, with gray suede gloves encasing her fingers. From her earlobes, platinum stars dangled.
My hand grasped the railing so hard, the cement might crack. Yet I remained still, fighting to keep my gaze austere despite the palpitations.
The princess folded both hands in front of her, then dipped her head like a genteel Royal, the embodiment of sobriety and refinement. “Your Highness.”
Beside her, the jester perfected the same role. He arched an eyebrow—a painted blade sliced through the left orb—before inclining his head. “Winter.”
Well played. I gave them a curt nod. “Autumn.”
Behind them, Solstice vanished. At my instruction, the First Knight would take up residence at the medical den’s entrance. Far enough from this terrace not to overhear anything, but near enough that this meeting wouldn’t seem circumspect.
The doors sealed shut. The facade dropped.
Briar’s stately expression collapsed as she rushed to my side, with Poet close on her trail. Shifting from ceremonial to informal, the princess seized my hands without warning, the gesture of familiarity taking me off guard.
“Jeryn,” she whispered, puffs of frost falling from her mouth.
“Briar,” I replied, then nodded to her husband. “Poet.”
The jester stood behind his princess, with one hand braced on her hip. Not ten seconds in, patience fled me. Regardless of my exterior, they saw past the veneer, to where hysteria lurked. Another fucking second of waiting, and the terrace ledge would need repairs.
“We have not heard anything,” the princess supplied.
It was all I could to keep the anguish from cleaving through my visage. I had expected this blow, yet Flare’s optimism had rubbed off on me. I’d hoped my little beast had sent them a missive, something they could pass on to me. But indeed, the danger was too great, even in the safe keeping of a fauna messenger.
Poet and Briar had presumed I wouldn’t possess more information about Flare. It was even riskier to send me tidings directly.
The princess gave my digits an encouraging squeeze. “She must be safe then.”
By one account, this was true. If Flare had been recaptured in Summer, we would have heard about it.
Yet. Typhoons. Leviathans. Rapists. Anything else could happen.
No. If she were hurt, I would feel it.
Briar released me and inched backward, tucking herself into Poet’s chest.
The perceptive jester spoke next, his voice low. “And how are you, sweeting?”
Only this once would I condone the endearment. Since returning, no one had asked me that question. Not in that way. More than my kin, these two had witnessed how Flare and I had lived in that rainforest.
The jester waited alongside Briar. Concern. Empathy. They watched me as though consoling a friend.
Is that what we were? Friends?
The notion chipped another fragment of ice from my chest. Briar had once been banished from Autumn; she and Poet had been forced apart. As a Royal, Her Highness had also been bred to keep certain public emotions in check. As a darling to the same Crown that would have sooner clamped his son in irons, Poet had worn a mask in the Spring Court for years.
Indeed. They knew how the fuck I was really doing.
My suite. My bed.
The throne room. The banquet hall.
Escorts. Advisors. Chancellors. Nobles.
I’d never felt less alone. Nor lonelier.
I diced my gaze toward the alpine mountain vista, where the peaks bit into the hemisphere like fangs. “That is irrelevant.”
“You miss her,” Briar interpreted gently, the truth suffocating. But when I kept my gaze averted, she set her palm on my fur-clad arm. “You will find each other again.”
“And if it is not safe?”
A humorless chuckle escaped the princess. “I ask myself that every day, with my husband and our son.”
“My wife isn’t the only one.” Poet leaned one hip against the rim and regarded me with a slanted gaze, his features brought into stark relief against the chilled panorama. “Alas, sweeting. You’ll never stop asking that question, no matter if you’re standing a thousand miles apart or in the same room.”
I cast them a furtive glance. Amid the gray sky, Poet’s green, kohl-lined eyes stood out like a sinful defiance. And how the fuck he’d managed to stride across an ice-laced terrace in those heeled boots without slipping on his ass, I had no clue. The motherfucker made it seem effortless. On that score, no one in Winter could get away with wearing such an ensemble.
Poet would turn every head tonight at the welcome feast. I’d seen him eviscerate Autumn’s chaste sense of propriety merely by stalking into a room. With that face and voice, he was a walking aphrodisiac, smirking and flaunting his tongue as if he’d invented sex. Case in point, that mussed, fuck-me hair routinely looked as if his wife spent the majority of her nights yanking on the roots.
On that score, the jester would disappoint each noble and dignitary in attendance. As much as people lusted for him, the man had eyes only for one woman.
The freckles dotting Briar’s countenance were more pronounced in this climate. Her plaited tresses burned through the frigid setting, and her poise balanced out Poet’s fiendish appearance.
They made a striking pair. Never once did this power couple take for granted the luxury of being together. Nor did they remain ignorant of the constant threats they continued to face.
With renewed ambition, I revisited the other reason we’d convened here. The plans we had made in the rainforest. Our intentions for Autumn and Winter, the merging of our courts for the same crusade.
In The Phantom Wild, we had plotted. Now we would act. To get my little beast back someday, this must be the path.
Poet wrapped his arms around Briar from behind. We stood at the terrace edge, assessing the vista. A blustering wind slapped the fur coat against my limbs and shook the chains of my boots.
Nestled into the alpines, candlelight flickered from countless windows throughout Winter’s universities and museums. It wasn’t a lower town so much as a small city.
I regarded the view while addressing my allies. “For all Winter’s knowledge, we have been educated singularly. Flare’s false imprisonment and the incarceration of any born soul, among countless other errors in judgment, prove as much. It will take time and science but also testimony. To start, tell me what’s happened since the Reaper’s Fest riot. Tell me how you convinced your people in the long-term. Tell me what I don’t know, then share these facts with my queens and our court. Help me to convince them.”
Medical remedies only did so much, providing advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately, they couldn’t be solely relied upon.
Unlike Winter, the Kingdom of Autumn had been learning differently. Avalea, Briar, and Poet’s court taught born souls practical skills, valued and enhanced their inherent abilities, and treated them by mindful means as well as medical.
Poet and Briar’s son, for instance. Nicu’s affliction had to do with an impaired sense of direction, lacking comprehension of space, distance, and location. He could not tell the difference between north and south, the distinction between a kitchen and a bedchamber.
I recalled additional symptoms, though his parents had never volunteered further information. Back when I’d cured Briar from the Willow Dime poisoning, I hadn’t bothered to ask questions, much less cared. Not that the princess or jester would have provided details about their son to the enemy. Regardless of our alliance against Rhys, we hadn’t been on trusted terms.
“A family’s knowledge would assist,” I said. “Give Winter the information we haven’t considered. I’ll do what I must to prove alternative ways of treating mental conditions. This is to say, the ones that actually require assistance. This, we must also learn to decipher correctly, in addition to identifying conditions with accuracy.”
Poet rubbed his absurdly sculpted jawline. “Winter needs Autumn’s advice. You do realize I won’t let you live this down.”
Over-confident motherfucker. I gritted out, “You do realize we’re standing within twenty feet of a lab equipped with sharp tools. I have a set of pinchers with your name on them.”
“Evidently, you’ve never seen my pleasure toy collection.”
“We accept your invitation,” Briar said, amused by our mutual antagonism. “Every step forward is a step closer to Flare’s return.”
The jester’s lips crooked. “Wine, first. Felony, second.”
“And soon enough when it’s safe, Flare will tell you where she is,” Briar avowed. “In her own way, she will find you.”
Her name burrowed into my skin. My baritone came out like a devoted hiss. “Not if I find her first.”
***
Our initial roundtable with Silvia, Doria, and the council didn’t go well. The meeting incited political upheaval, as well as a few tedious hissy fits from the advisors, chancellors, treasurers, chief physicians, and military leaders. Voices drifted from the throne room and into the halls, which filtered through the court, which led to gossip.
Had the prince gone mad in that rainforest?
Everyone speculated. They stared and whispered. They beseeched the queens behind my back and questioned my ability to rule.
I did my fucking job and proved them wrong. On a routine basis, I debated with my grandaunts and the council. I cut down the advisors’ theories with utilitarian facts and a surplus of icy stares that dared them to contradict me.
With the jester and princess as allies, wit and wisdom became its own power, sentiment and science aligning like weapons. This consisted of rebuttals and examples from Autumn, my experience in Summer, innovative ways to improve the kingdom and its treatment of born souls, and the reasons for its importance. To my intrigue, Poet and Briar had perfected a secret method of communication involving hand gestures, proving industrious during these sessions.
After they returned to Autumn, we continued our correspondence, which included Queen Avalea. I copied Winter documents procured from universities and medical halls, then had the scrolls delivered to Autumn: decrees, regulations, historical cases, technical assessments, and alternatives for integration. Many of them were solid, to which Briar replied by underlining passages, utilizing her talent for finding loopholes. Poet added his own brand of cunning to the missives, citing ironies and contradictions to the Seasons’ beliefs.
We proposed incentives to expand Autumn’s cause and sway Winter. A critical hindrance was medicine. Among numerous other cures, the former contents of my vial had been developed through experiments on born souls. Heinous as they were, Winter’s methods had resuscitated Flare.
It had saved her life. I would not have changed that.
As to future creations—that, I would change. The restoratives I’d created in the rainforest, along with new remedies including botanical specimens from the wild, would hopefully assist. After presenting these options to the queens, I listed solutions for replacing experimentation, including a novel form of treatment: physicians of the mind.
Moreover, we could study volunteers afflicted with various conditions, both mental and physical. The trials would be conducted with the subjects’ permission, and only providing they were fully capable of giving such consent. This allotted willing participants a chance to have their health assessed and treated at no cost to themselves. Rather, they were compensated with currency or other advantages.
Physicians listened with a vested interest. They could not deny the benefits, especially the bonus of unique ingredients.
A bargaining chip. A case that validated my sanity.
Relieved, my grandaunts granted me leave to shift Winter’s practices. To extract some born souls from confinement, on an individual basis.
Moderately. Slowly.
***
Weeks turned into months. Months turned into a year.
Rumors traveled from beyond Winter’s borders—talks of mysterious drawings appearing on Summer’s beaches. Intricate sketches on different shores materialized at random, the renderings created inconspicuously overnight.
Lovers on the shore, in the sea, in a wellspring, beside a waterfall, in a bed.
Guards in a tower. The faces of a hundred citizens. Depictions of a rainforest. Flora and fauna. Ruins with ancient chambers.
Renderings of moments Flare and I had shared, anonymously depicted. Reenactments of the memories Aire had sensed during the clan’s visit.
A society where born souls lived freely. A community that had thrived.
This offered a connection between the ruins and its history, without revealing its existence. This was her key. One of her own making.
No one knew where the next drawing would turn up. Each sketch was created in an honest but complicated form, illustrating the lightness and darkness of this continent. It appealed to the Seasons’ attachment to stories, verses, and legends passed across generations, with the creator using images to convey unspoken words.
Fool. Human.
Trapped. Free.
Hate. Love.
Reports said the artwork left onlookers breathless, baffled, troubled, furious, shamed, awed. Sometimes people cried. Sometimes they kicked the sand, destroying the sketches.
It could be a sand artisan. Or perhaps a sand drifter. Someone whose work campaigned for change, questioning the definition of humanity.
A signature. A message. A dare.
Winter and Autumn couldn’t strike Summer where it most mattered. It had to be a person from the Season itself. A woman who knew its landscape, spoke its language, was fluent in its heat.
While reading the report in my suite, my mouth lifted. “Much better, Little Beast.”
***
Two more years passed. In that time, I expanded Winter’s scholarship. I eradicated the kingdom’s experimentation practices on born souls. Using Autumn’s model of integration, some of them lived and worked among their neighbors. Others did not.
Some Winter citizens accepted this. Others did not.
A noble tried to poison my grandaunts and learned the extent of my patience when I got him into my medical den. A hunter set a knife to my throat while I slept, but Solstice intercepted the man.
More such assassination attempts followed. Still. Winter began to change, as did Summer. My efforts paired with Flare’s inspired a shift in the people.
Both courts eased their laws. Gradually, my nation set some prisoners free. Despite Rhys’s tantrums, Giselle gave the same orders in Summer.
According to the queen, her husband had gone from stewing to simmering the pot. However, she had no idea with whom he’d aligned himself. Nor did our clan. That unnerving mystery had yet to be revealed.
Not wanting to be left behind, Spring followed suit in releasing select captives and slaves. Briar’s ladies and her friend Eliot served as ambassadors there, which made communication go smoother.
Some liberated individuals required guidance from Autumn and Winter, which we provided. It was not an immediate revolution, but the change was considerable. It needed to be slow, to prevent as many riots, rampages, protests, and skirmishes as possible.
Indeed, those happened. We’d have been unwise not to expect it. But after the Reaper’s Fest riot, our clan was more prepared.
Although the trade amendment still existed in the Fools Decree, we would eventually get to that document. Perhaps not this year or the next, but in due time.
Inspired by my actions, my grandaunts’ perspectives about humanity changed, yet they faced scrutiny. Often, it tempted them to forsake the cause. Each time, I convinced them not to.
Then one day, the decisions fell solely to me.
Silvia went first, in her sleep. Doria, one month later.
Honoring their wishes, Winter buried its queens in the ice sculpture park where they had met. I hadn’t gotten to tell them. On many occasions, I’d wanted to, but there had never been the right moment, never a safe one until recently when it was too late.
Instead, I spoke to their graves. In a low tone, I spoke her name, the word an ember on my tongue—hot and painful. But somehow, I knew they’d heard it.
The kingdom mourned. Then it crowned me.
The court celebrated. Then it made its expectations known.
Yet at twenty-seven years old, I showed no interest in women or men. I refused to marry, which led to inevitable whining among the council.
Regardless, only one woman existed for me.
Three years since I last saw her, touched her, tasted her. The day after my coronation, I knelt in the snow, to write something there. Something that Flare might sense, wherever she was. Something that called out to her. However, I knew.
I fucking knew. I could do much better than this.
***
When Mother and Father sent for me, I entered the room and sank to my knees before them. They looked older than they should have. Settled in their chairs beside a fire and with furs draped across their laps, their bodies appeared as frail as twigs.
As the nearby flames crackled, my parents clasped their hands with mine. Our three signet rings glinted in the morning light.
“Son,” my father said, his blue hair threaded with strands of silver.
“Father,” I replied. “Mother.”
My mother grinned, her eyes the mirror image of my own. “My Jeryn.”
The words ended on a hacking cough. Gingerly, my father patted her fingers while I rushed to hand Mother a steaming cup of herbal tea, the drink soothing her throat.
Always ill. Never cured.
Nevertheless, they were lucid and mostly happy. And they knew me. They knew what I’d been yearning to say, the truth I loathed to conceal. As they glanced at my vial of sand, then at me, they understood.
“You’re in love,” Mother whispered. “And you’re waiting for her.”
Not a day had passed that I hadn’t yearned for my little beast. Not a night that I hadn’t reached for her in my empty bed. Not a second when her parting words hadn’t replayed in my head and lacerated my chest.
I love you.
In dreams, I saw her. Those burnished eyes. Her face flushed, the blood rushing to her cheeks as I stroked my cock deeply into her. Her vivid gaze worshiping a place that we’d once called home.
And fuck. Her hands.
Mother caressed my jaw. Before I could make a reply, Father prompted, “Then stop waiting.”
Hope infused my blood. Winter was reinventing itself. As such, my kingdom knew I’d evolved as well.
Summer was shifting too. Because of her.
Flare had become a legend. Although her drawings didn’t move everyone, because no person could accomplish that feat alone, she elicited reactions from this continent.
A conversation. A shift.
A sand artist whom none had ever seen. People tried to decode her travel patterns, to gauge which coast she would visit next, but failed because they lacked patience. Because they did not observe.
Because they had not lived and survived with her.
I consulted the locations where Flare’s renderings had been discovered, as well as the dates when they appeared. The days and times were unpredictable and seemed random to most, but not to someone familiar with her wandering nature. I consulted atlases, researched Summer’s shores, recalled what she’d told me about the culture of sand drifters.
I dove into my own memories of her. I might be wrong, but I had chased this woman once before. I could do so again.
On the pretense of business, I sent a dispatch to a coastline several days north of Summer’s castle. Timing was crucial. The missive must be left shortly before she got there. The messenger’s task was to find the appropriate shore and write a note by torchlight, scripting into the midnight sand.
I handed over a sealed note containing a cipher—my own pathetic excuse for a drawing, which indicated a place, day, and time. That, and two words camouflaged in the design.
A call. A plea.
If she wanted to. If she wanted me.