Page 29 of Somber Prince

“But what would lessen the pain of loss for you?”

Her chin trembled, and her eyes turned glossy with welling tears. She broke our eye contact, glancing aside.

“Right now, it feels like nothing will, but they say time heals all wounds. So…” She snapped her gaze back at me, as if spurred by a sudden thought. “If you really want to make it better, let me go. Let me and my friends go back home.”

That could never happen, of course. But it shocked me that for a fraction of a second, I actually wished there was a way to fulfill her request, just so I could no longer see her tear-filled eyes.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

“Why not?” she insisted, her cheeks flushed with energy from the idea. “Whatever you did to get us here, do it in reverse. Have the Joy Guardians open another portal.”

“Only the queen can give that order.”

“Ask her, then. She is your mother, isn’t she?”

The sweet little Joy Vessel was clearly under the impression that being the queen’s son meant having access to that woman’s favor. How badly she was mistaken.

“I cannot send you back,” I stated. “It requires strong magic to open a portal and to keep it open long enough for a person to pass through. The power that Joy Guardians used for that is finite. And for now, it has all been used.”

“How can it be ‘used’? Isn’t magic supposed to be…well, all-powerful?”

It intrigued me how much her knowledge of the world differed from my own.

“Do you know so little about magic?” I asked.

She blew out her breath, running a hand over her face.

“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that magic even exists. Honestly, it’d be so much easier if it turned out I was just dreaming about you and all of this…” She waved a hand around the room. “It’s just too hard to absorb it all, you know.”

She looked lost and more vulnerable than ever. My heart pinched with compassion. It couldn’t be easy to be uprooted like that, especially since she likely hadn’t even been aware of Nerifir before coming here.

“I take it humans don’t know about the existence of other worlds?”

“No. Most of us are just happily staying in our own little bubble, thinking our kind is the only one in the Universe, utterly unique and unmatched.”

“There is a certain satisfaction in ignorance,” I agreed. “Learning new things carries a risk of upsetting one’s state of mind.”

She looked at me closely, as if trying to read me, like I was a source of questions to her, the way she had become to me.

“What’s your name?” I could no longer think of her as simply a Joy Vessel. She’d become unique to me, different from the rest.

“I’m Dawn.”

The sound of that word scraped against my nerves like metal on glass. “Really?”

She tilted her head.

“Yes. Why?”

Her name was horrible. Almost as bad as her eyes. It represented that unpleasant time of day when the sun was about to rise and start scorching the black sands of the desert with punishing heat.

She kept staring at me, expecting an answer, but I could no longer hold my curiosity back.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” I finally asked.

She blinked. “My eyes?”

“They don’t match. Are you sick?”

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