Chapter 5
In the hundredth year of summer, when Naia was twenty-three, her well ran dry.
Her family didn’t go thirsty, though. Suitors trekked up the hill daily, vying for Naia’s hand. They came with offerings of dried fruit and fresh butter, with bolts of silk and skins of wine.
Elias gave most generously of all. Each week, he staggered up the hill, laden with buckets of water. He gazed at her with enough violet heat to scorch a kingdom, and whenever his arm locked around her waist, he stared directly into her face.
“Marry me,” he always said, his voice smoky, as if he’d caught fire inside from wanting her. “Please say yes this time, my love.”
Naia’s heart nearly burst at each proposal.
But she couldn’t accept, not while summer squeezed the land in a merciless fist. Not while her mother, who’d sacrificed so much, waddled around, her rounded belly heavy with new life.
Not when the deer had vanished into the wilting forest as if they’d never existed.
Not when her family needed the fruit. The butter. The water.
So Naia whispered in Elias’s ear—someday, someday.
She chased the promises with her secrets, with all her hopes and dreams. She shared every last piece of herself as Elias played chess with her, then clung to his arm as he walked with her in the forest. Beneath the dying trees, her heart burst into flower, and all the while, she ignored the part of her that had once longed to push her prince down a hill.
Though, if she was honest, she still felt the urge sometimes, when she woke in the sweltering darkness and wondered if her butterflies had returned. But whenever she ran to the mirror, she glimpsed only smooth, sun-browned skin, and she forgot again.
The weeks and months flew by, and she forgot.