34. Rosalina
34
Rosalina
I ’ve never seen a sunset like this. The sky’s blistering red and orange, rays of light gleaming off the rooftops of Coppershire. Standing on the balcony outside of my private room, the capital city of the Autumn Realm stretches before me, bathed in crimson light.
Growing up in Orca Cove, it seemed like everyone around me was constantly exploring, wandering. Papa had hit one hundred countries before I was fifteen. Lucas’s family took fancy vacations every summer to Mexico or Europe. Even my school friends went to university abroad. The only traveling I ever did was in my stories, but that felt like enough.
Now, staring down at the bustling city, the buildings a mix of brick, lumber, and shimmering gems, I wish I could sprint from the castle and lose myself in the markets and alleyways. For once, the whole world feels ahead of me.
But as much as I want to revel in that thought, my gaze drifts higher, beyond the city and the fields and forests that border Coppershire. Over the orange-baked hills, a glimmer of white-blue shines on the edge of the horizon. The frost.
I rub my arms. I’d tried to put on a brave face for Farron, but I’m scared, too. I just got this world back. I can’t lose it.
The men are preparing Farron’s room as best they can, in case Caspian’s bargain is bullshit. But somehow, I know it will work. There was something about Caspian that seemed… sincere.
You’re a fool like them, Rosalina, I chide myself.
I should go back inside and check on everyone. But I can’t tear myself away from this sunset, the apple-scented breeze that makes my white sleeves billow like wings.
Metal clinks behind me. I turn to see Ezryn leaning against the doorway. Somehow, I get the feeling he’s been there for a while and only shifted so that his armor would alert me to his presence.
“Hi,” I say softly.
He doesn’t reply but moves to rest against the balcony railing beside me, staring out at the horizon. The sun gleams off his armor in a way that makes me think of legends of Sir Lancelot riding into battle.
“How are you doing?” he asks slowly, almost as if he had to think about those words for a long time.
My stomach twists nervously. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to him since our kiss in the pantry where he’d walked out, leaving me stunned. My fingers trail over the railing, and I try to forget how good they felt tangled in his thick hair.
“I’m okay,” I answer. “I’m pretty used to being imprisoned by faeries, you know.”
He snorts. “At least you didn’t have to spend a night in the dungeon this time.”
“True.” The wind catches my long hair and sends it tumbling across my face. I stare at him through the waves. His shoulders are slumped, body heavy. “Are you okay?”
Why do I get the impression no one ever asks him that?
“Princess Niamh mentioned she sent word to Spring but never heard back. My father is the steward there. It borders Winter on the other side.” His dark cape flutters in the wind. “My father’s been sick for a long time.”
I place a hand on his arm. “Do you want to go to him?”
He shakes his head, little tings ringing in the air. “Farron and Kel need me right now. Besides, my brother would send word if something were wrong, I’m sure.” He reaches into his chest plate and pulls out a piece of parchment. It’s filled with the same beautiful handwriting I saw on the jars in the healing pantry. “But I’m writing to Father to be certain.”
I notice now he’s not wearing his leather gloves, his large, tanned hands delicately running over the paper. My breath quickens as I remember their firmness on my waist, the strength as he pushed me back into the shelves.
With quick and elegant movements, Ezryn folds the parchment over and over again, then holds it up in his palm.
“A bird!” I gasp. “That’s magnificent. I was never good at origami. Mine always came out looking like someone sat on it.”
He quirks his head in the way I’ve now learned means he’s smiling. If he ever takes off his helmet in the dark again, I’ll ask him to smile. I’ll feel it with my fingers, memorize how far up his face it goes.
He cups the little paper bird in his hands, palms sparkling with green light. He brings it up to his helm and murmurs in a language I don’t understand. The bird springs up, flapping its parchment wings, and leaps off into the breeze.
I gasp, then clap my hands. “Ez! That’s incredible.”
“It’s not very hard. A little trick my mother taught Kai and me.”
“Kai’s your brother, isn’t he?” Caspian spoke about him at our dinner.
“Yes. Kairyn,” he murmurs. “But I don’t want to think about him right now. I came because I wanted to ask you something.”
Heat springs to my cheeks. “What is it?”
Ezryn turns to face me. When we’re chest to chest like this, I remember how huge he is, how tall and broad in his armor.
He delicately takes my left hand. His calloused thumb trails over my skin to the wrist bone. I become conscious he’s drifting his fingers toward my forearm, and try to jerk back, but he holds me firmly.
With his other hand, he touches the cuff of my sleeve, then stares at me. My breath catches, eyes lost in the dark visor within his helm. He’s asking my permission to look at what I’ve kept covered for years, at what I can barely look at myself.
I nod.
He pushes my sleeve up, revealing the ugly scar, the raised, jagged lines spelling my abuser’s name.
A thought rushes at me unbidden: I’m glad Kel killed him.
Ezryn places a featherlight touch over the scar. “I can heal this for you. If you want me to.”
“It’s so old. Can you really do that?”
He nods. “Spring’s Blessing is strongest in renewal. If you want a fresh start, I… I can help.”
I run my hands over each letter. Tears well in my eyes because that’s exactly what I want. A fresh start.
“Yes, Ezryn,” I say, voice catching. “I would like that very much.”
He nods again, more boyishly this time. I straighten my arm for him, cringing a little at how on display the mark is. I’d never allowed anyone to see it. “Do you need to get anything? Herbs or something?” I ask, remembering how last time he healed me, he’d used a combination of leaves and his own spit.
“No,” he murmurs and holds my arm with one hand and places the index and middle finger of the other on the S . “This time, the magic comes from within.”
My heart hammers in my chest as he bends over, helmet’s gaze intense upon my forearm. An emerald glow ignites on the tips of his fingers and streams down into the raised skin. A tingling sensation, like the taste of peppermint gum, follows each stroke.
My eyes widen in disbelief. The letters are disappearing. But Lucas’s voice rings in my head: She’ll always come back to me.
“Do you believe people can change?” I ask softly.
Ezryn glances up. “What do you mean?”
“The person we were a decade ago or a year ago or even yesterday… Are we stuck being that person forever?”
Ezryn is silent for a long moment, and I start to think he’s regretting offering to help me. But then as he moves his fingers over the A, he says, “As children, my brother and I would often play in the woods near our castle. He’d be off running and catching frogs, but I’d find myself sitting on stumps. Taking in the life encircling me.”
I blink softly as I watch him work, lost in the mesmerizing softness of his touch and his voice.
“In Spring, we’re taught rebirth is all around us,” he continues. “The seed becomes a sprout, becomes a flower. The egg becomes the bird, which dies and becomes the dirt that houses the worm that feeds the bird. The deer feeds the cougar, which then lays to rest upon the grass, which in turn, feeds the deer. And the stumps that I would sit on… There were rings and rings and rings, more than I could count. Ages upon ages of growing. It may all begin somewhere, but it changes, dies, renews.”
I hear the rasp in his voice and wonder what memories belong to him alone in those woods.
His fingers tingle over the C . “We are all a part of the cycle. And though the seed may always be a part of us, nothing stays the same.” He pauses, helmet downcast. “Nothing stays.”
“So, that person may always be a part of us,” I whisper, “but we don’t have to hold on to them.”
“Does the river hold itself back from running?”
“It’s sometimes hard to let go of that person,” I utter softly. “The one we used to be.”
“I’m still trying,” he says, then pauses for a long moment. “And I hope you know, Rosalina, he was the monster. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. Deep within me, I know.” I look down at my forearm. Half the name is gone, replaced by red flesh, raw and new.
I forgive you, I think. Not to Lucas. But to myself, the younger me. The one who didn’t know how to leave. Who didn’t know how beautiful the world truly was and didn’t think she deserved what beauty she could find. I forgive you, and I can let you go.
The moment passes in comfortable silence, the setting sun bathing us in its last warmth. And as Ezryn’s light illuminates the L , coaxing new skin to heal the old, I think, I hope you can forgive yourself, too.
Ezryn holds up my arm, examining it in the crimson sunset. “All done.”
There are so many things I want to say to him, so much emotion right on the tip of my tongue. But all I manage is, “I can finally wear those short-sleeved dresses Marigold loves.”
He tilts his head, then turns toward the door.
As he’s about to step inside, I call out, “Ez?”
He stops but doesn’t turn around.
“Why did you leave? After you kissed me?”
“Rosalina…”
Heat trills through me. I run my hand over the raw skin of my forearm, a choking sensation in my chest. He gave me something I can never thank him for, and he’s going to walk away.
“I’ve seen you do this with Kel,” I say, voice breaking. “One minute you’re present, every piece of you bright and available. And the next… You’re gone. Sometimes literally, out running around the Briar or whatever you do. But sometimes you can be right in front of me and it feels like if I reached out and touched you, you’d disappear.”
“Rosalina,” he says lowly, “you don’t know who I am. What I’ve done.”
“Then let me in,” I whisper. “Plant your roots in me, Ez. I’ll keep you safe.”
He turns, body rigid. “We can’t do this.” But he’s stepping toward me.
“Why not?” My words are a breath, carried away in the bracing wind. I back up as he stalks closer, bumping against the railing. My heart hammers like a cornered rabbit.
He shoots an arm out on one side of me, seizing the rail. “Because I’m dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
He’s so close, I have to arch my back over the railing to avoid being pressed against him. There’s something inhuman about the way the helmet glowers down at me, his body made of steel. Electricity nips through my core, a desire to push that steel until it snaps.
He captures a loose strand of my hair and curls it around his finger. “You’re tempting the fates.” His head lowers to the crook of my neck, and I catch a glimpse of his skin between the armored collar and the helm. I inhale, taking in his familiar scent of leather, iris, and cedarwood. “And yet,” he murmurs. “I find myself doing the same.”
His other hand slams down on my opposite side, fully caging me in. I brace myself on the railing and breathe out, my bust pushing against his huge chest. The cold armor of his breastplate sends a shiver through the thin fabric of my blouse.
“You know,” I murmur, “I’m Kel’s mate.”
“Obviously.” His body pushes harder against mine.
“And Dayton and I like to fool around.”
His voice is a dusky growl. “I know that, too.”
“And Farron and I… Well, Farron is special to me. Very special.” Little gasps escape between my words.
“Why are you telling me this, Rosalina?”
My mouth falls to that gap between his armor and his helmet. “In case you kiss me again, I want you to know those facts. I’ve told them you kissed me. And they don’t care. Dayton and Fare said they liked it, actually—”
His knee jams in between my legs, wedging them apart. “But did you like that I kissed you?”
I gasp, the feeling of his huge, hard leg in between mine filling me with pressure. My lips linger on that precious gap of skin. “Very much so.”
He sighs, as if in resignation. Then he grinds his leg into me. I let out a small whimper, hands lacing around his neck.
As if aware of how weak he’s made me, Ezryn embraces me. I grasp the edges of his armor, wanting nothing between us.
His hands grip my hips and I melt against him, wondering if his touch will consume me whole. He dips his head to the space between my breasts and lets out a growl. “Sometimes I hate this fucking thing.”
“W-what?” I shake my head, trying to remember what words are.
“The helmet. I want your perfect—” His words turn into a feral snarl.
My breathing grows labored, and I press myself down harder on his knee. Electric pleasure rushes through me, and his name is on my lips. “Ez—”
“Hello?” a voice calls from inside the bedroom. “Rosie? Ez?”
Immediately, we spring away from each other, and I’m left panting and on the edge of madness.
“Where are you?” Dayton’s voice. “It’s almost nightfall. We need to make sure pretty boy Caspian’s spell works on Fare!”
“C-coming!” I call.
Ezryn cups my chin. “Next time,” he growls, “you will be.”
Then his cape snaps in the wind as he turns away from me.