Chapter 8 Rosalina
Rosalina
Ezryn keeps his hand on my arm as we walk through the halls to my guest room.
Distantly, I notice servants staring at us as we pass.
Ezryn bows his head, averting his gaze. When we get to my room, he closes the door behind us.
I walk over to the bed and sit on the edge.
My mind is hazy, a numbness overtaking my body as if I’ve been out in the cold too long.
Thankfully, with Ezryn, silence never feels weighted or awkward. He leans against the door, chest rising and falling, a tousle of dark hair shading his eyes. We don’t need to speak. Don’t need to do anything. He lets me sit, and I let him lean.
After some time, Ez shifts. He walks to the window and draws the curtain. It’s late afternoon, and dusky sunlight spills over the snowy horizon.
“You got one of the best rooms in the keep,” Ez murmurs. “You can see all the way to Mount Rhuvenmark.”
“Hmm?”
“Come look.” He gestures for me to join him. I know it’s a ploy to get me moving, to stop this numbness from spreading from root to tip, but I do it anyway.
Ezryn sweeps an arm around my shoulders, and I rest my head in the crook of his neck. He smells like night air, rich with jasmine and teakwood. His other hand points in the distance. “See there? That peak? That’s Mount Rhuvenmark.”
Past the wall caging Keep Wolfhelm in, past the city of Frostfang, past the barren snowscape, I do spot a summit, white and jagged as a claw.
“Quite a trek to the summit,” Ezryn murmurs, leaning his chin on the top of my head. “When we were boys, Kel and I used to race each other all the way up. We’d tell the other lads that making it all the way was the sign of a hero.”
I snicker, and Ez squeezes me.
“Hey! Back then, it was the hardest thing we’d ever done. When you’re a boy, a trek like that feels like a godly quest. It’s a volcano, you know.”
“A volcano?” I narrow my eyes. “It’s so close to the city. Isn’t that dangerous?”
“No, it’s dormant. Though that’s not what we told the other boys.
We pretended a great lava monster lived at the bottom, and only the two of us were worthy enough to commune with it.
” Ez snorts a laugh, but his voice softens.
“Kairyn always tried to follow us. Every single time. But he could never make it to the top.”
My hand drifts to my chest, to the bud of magic beside my heart. Spring’s blessing, passed to me by Kairyn as he lay dying. Find someone who will do better with the blessing than I did.
“Is he dead, Rosalina?” Ezryn whispers. “Did my brother fall in Hadria?”
I turn in Ezryn’s arms and stroke a finger over his ragged ear, the tip nothing but scar tissue, then down his cheek. His dark brown eyes shimmer. “Can you feel it?”
His rough hand runs from my neck, down over the velvet bodice, before lying flat on my breastbone. “It calls me.”
We both know what he means. What once was his now lives within me.
“He’s not dead,” I say. “But he was dying. In that moment, he and I were alone. He asked me to pass the blessing on for him. With its magic, I mended his body. Sira took him back down Below. But the blessing is mine. As Aurelia’s heir, it is my duty to name the next high ruler of Spring.”
The smallest smile creeps into the corner of his mouth. “Am I mad to say I’m relieved he’s alive?”
“No, Ez.” I stand on my tiptoes and lace my arms around his neck, pulling him as tight as I can toward me. Wishing I could soak up all the years of hurt between him and Kairyn. “You’ve always had a gentle heart.”
He buries his face in my hair. We stay like that, in our comfortable silence.
“It belongs to you,” I whisper. “It’s safe with me, Ez, but it can’t live here forever. Spring needs a true leader. The blessing wants to go home.”
“There is no one more capable of choosing the next worthy ruler than you, my queen.” He pulls away, putting distance between us.
“Ezryn.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Ezryn!”
“Don’t start, Rose.”
I storm over to him and grab his arm. “Isidora chose you as her successor. The blessing wants to return. I feel it!”
“Look at my legacy,” he growls. “A broken realm. Shamed and humiliated. Banished. I abandoned my people. Gave the blessing to a tyrant. I can’t even control the magic! I murdered my mother and nearly killed you—”
“You saved Dayton’s life with this blessing,” I snarl back.
“Saved my life. You saw the princesses of Summer and Autumn across the Ribs and earned the loyalty of the Huntresses of Aura and the Queen’s Army.
” From around my neck, I snatch off the necklace, pulling the token out from where it was hidden within my bodice.
A small wooden chip, carved with floral runes that resemble falling cherry blossoms. “You defeated Kairyn and retrieved the queen’s token.
You are ready to lead your realm.” I put my hands on his chest, eyes pleading up at him. “Ready to break your curse.”
He shudders a breath and closes his eyes. I know him. He always has to think so thoroughly. But he’ll hear me. He knows this is his path—
“Whoever you choose as the next high ruler of Spring, I will do everything I can to support them and bring peace to our people,” he says. “But that person is not me.”
I open my mouth, but he whispers, “Please, Rose. I have proven too many times the power within that blessing is beyond me.”
“It’s not the power, it’s your fear. You think you need the wolf’s rage to protect you. But you can protect yourself. Trust me, Ez. Have faith.”
He shakes his head and moves away from me. “I do not even have a helm. Look at me! I thought I could bear to show my face, but every time someone besides you looks at me, I feel as if I will wither from the shame.”
“You can forge a new helm—”
“No,” he says roughly. “My helm was taken from me. I can’t hold the blessing, Rose.”
I drift toward him and grab his calloused hand. Within it, I tuck the token of the queen. “Can you start with this?”
He looks down at the token as if I have placed a deadly weapon in his hand. I suppose I have. His brother wielded the Hammer of Hope with vengeance, hatred. Emotions Ezryn himself fought with once in the Hall of Vernalion.
But I have to have faith too.
He closes his fist around the token, then slips the necklace over his head. He nods.
The blessing seems to do a little flip around my heart, curling and blooming like flowers on a vine.
“You have so much trust in us,” Ezryn murmurs. “I’m not sure it’s deserved.”
I raise a brow, feeling as if the conversation is shifting direction. “You agree with Kel, don’t you? That Caspian deserves to be locked down there, in the dark.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think about Caspian anymore. He’s your mate.”
I study Ezryn, trying to read his body language, his expression. He may as well be wearing a full suit of armor.
He walks to the bed and puts a hand on the post. The muscles of his back ripple through his dark linen shirt.
“I never imagined myself as one to share a lover. Though I never imagined sharing my life with anyone at all. But your mate bonds with Kel and Dayton and Farron—they tie us together. A family. Your love for them flows through me. It carves its way through my stone until my bones are etched with your love for them. And I am stronger for it.”
Tears spring to my eyes. Never in my life did I imagine having multiple partners either, and I know how lucky I am to have so much love.
But witnessing—feeling—their love for one another?
It’s like Ezryn said. Etched in my bones.
I’ve been so changed by their love, I can barely remember who I was before it.
“If Caspian is your mate”—Ezryn holds up his hands, staring at his skin—“then he’s here in me too. Making up the sinew of my soul.”
“My connection with Caspian is not just a mate bond,” I say. “I love him, Ezryn. For who he is. I truly, deeply love him.”
Ezryn squeezes his eyes shut. “Monsters, the five of us. How do you find it within yourself to love us?”
I walk over to him and take his hand. “Ez, you of all people should understand. I’m not the only one who’s loved a monster.
You’ve protected them your whole life. Been a mentor to Farron when his own mother shunned him.
Acted as an older brother to Dayton when he needed one most. And when everyone else forsook Keldarion, you loved him in that darkness. ”
Ez’s eyes squeeze even tighter, and a tear runs down his face.
“I understand it now,” I whisper. “Why you gave your blessing to Kairyn. It’s the same reason I saved Wrenley when I had a chance. Because your heart is gentle and so full of forgiveness.”
His eyes open, their depths swirling with unspoken words. “As is your heart, Petal. It is why I love you so much.”
I throw myself into his arms. He pulls me tight against his chest and sweeps me up. Our lips meet, breath mingling with desperate urgency. I kiss him harder, with everything I have, because I do not have the strength to tell him the truth. My heart is not so gentle anymore.
Our kiss breaks apart suddenly as Ezryn stumbles away from me. He slams his hands against the wall, stare distant, breathing rapid.
“Ez?” I call.
That faraway stare… What is he thinking?
“Ez, tell me what’s going on.”
Then he shuts his eyes, the strangest expression of sorrow and resolve on his face.
“I just… I realized something.”
“What?”
He sighs deeply. “I have one good reason,” he murmurs.
I raise a brow, but before I can question him further, he crosses the distance between us and kisses me hard and quick, then paces to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To return to Keldarion. I will not let him suffer as a beast alone.”
“Will he hurt you?” I ask.
Ezryn shakes his head. “He is not so far gone, I think.”
I nod and cast my gaze to the window. Gray clouds have covered the sun, and snow has begun to fall, obscuring Mount Rhuvenmark. “Farron heading to Autumn, Day and I to Castletree, Keldarion here in Winter. Ezryn, what will you do?”
He opens the door. “What is best for you, my queen.”