Chapter 4
In the ninety-ninth year of summer, when Naia was twenty-two, she and her mother visited the trader again.
The rains had dwindled, and this time, the cart lumbered past wilted fields. The sheep barely stirred. Fruitless apple trees baked in the heat, and the grass lining the roadway had browned at the tips.
Naia slouched in the cart and watched her mother count out a waterfall of coins—spoils from the many venison scraps her father had sold, plus the extra washing her mother had taken in.
She didn’t ask what it was for. What did it matter? Money couldn’t buy her a chess companion, or someone to walk beside. She still wandered alone in a forest that felt wider and emptier every year.
And all the while, Elias’s name echoed in the hollow place beneath her ribs.
When they reached the village, her mother shouldered through the crowd, but Naia hung back. She told herself not to look for her prince, but doing so came as naturally as breathing. She spotted his flaxen hair long before he sought her out.
“Hello there, Naia.” Elias smiled as he joined her in the shade.
She resisted the urge to cover her butterflies with a hand. These days, the heat made wearing a shawl impossible.
But Elias had stationed himself on her unmarked side, as always. “How’ve you been?” he said. “Not getting too thirsty up there on your hill, I hope?”
She tried to match his smile. Ever since she’d healed Elias’s brother with rare herbs found only near her home, he’d treated her with kindness. But he’d never again looked her in the face. Not like he had that first day, before the fire in his eyes had cooled to pity.
Naia felt it changing her. Each time Elias stood beside her instead of facing her head-on, each time the villagers whispered as she passed, something within her twisted. Sharpened.
Meanwhile, her longing for Elias only deepened. He still looked like the cure to every lonely dream she’d ever had. Like the answer to every wish she’d wept in the dark.
“I’m good.” Naia cleared her throat and forced her lips to curve. “At least, our well’s still producing. For now. I don’t know what we’ll do when it runs dry.”
“You’ll come to me, of course.” Elias’s smile was warm, but distant. “Our well’s the deepest in the village. And I’d never let the girl who saved Remy go thirsty.”
Her heartbeat faltered. The girl who saved Remy. That was all she was to him. All she would ever be.
Eventually, he wandered off, but Naia stuck to the shade. Part of her ached to chase after him, to beg him to kiss her. Another part wanted to push him down a hillside. Anything to make him look at her. To make him see.
For the millionth time, she wished her butterflies would fly away and never return.
On the way home, her mother stared straight ahead. Naia slouched, Elias’s words sitting in her chest like stones. The girl who saved Remy.
After a few miles, she said, “You still didn’t have enough?” She didn’t actually care, but couldn’t tolerate the brittle silence much longer.
“Actually,” her mother said, “I did.”
Despite herself, Naia straightened. “Really? What did you buy, then?”
Her mother sighed. “I wonder now if I should’ve kept you so sheltered.
Maybe if you’d grown up with the villagers, they would’ve been more accepting.
But that’s the thing about being a parent.
You do what seems best, and you never find out if you were right or not, because you can never go back and try it the other way around. ”
Naia frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
Her mother pulled a sparkling vial from her skirt pocket. “This is a salve. Made from winter blossoms.”
Naia squinted. She couldn’t imagine all that gold buying something so tiny.
“It’ll make your butterflies go away.”
Naia’s breath whooshed out. “What? Forever?”
“Yes.” Her mother pressed the vial into her hand. “And I’m not saying you should use it. Just that you have the choice. But if you do, Naia, don’t forget. Don’t let it blind you, too.”
The warning barely registered. Naia was too busy deciding the vial wasn’t tiny after all.
No, it was the most monumental thing anyone had ever given her.