Page 79 of Dare

Yet that was not all. The shrewd jester had been right about my concerns. However, Poet had been wrong about my motivation—or whatever malignant conclusion he had drawn. Fair enough.

Disemboweling my knight on the parapet in Autumn. Allying with Poet and Briar to thwart Rhys. I’d had incentives, trade negotiating power among them. Not least of all, the golden woman who’d glamoured me.

But those hadn’t been my only reasons for snuffing out Summer and its spies. I had never worried for myself.

My voice hardened like steel. “As I said, no one harms my parents or my queens. If anyone touches what I treasure, they will suffer. If the court had leaked my affliction to the masses, the people would have rioted. They would have targeted my family for keeping this secret.”

For my welfare and the good of our court, my grandaunts and parents had guarded this information at their own risk. Should this intelligence have fallen into the wrong hands, it would have placed my kin in danger. That had been my greatest worry.

Moreover, it would have led to the breakdown of Winter. As it nearly had in Autumn.

Even now, the threat existed. Rhys hadn’t gotten wind of my secret, but he still could by alternative means. Or if not him, someone else.

Putting it mildly, my forbidden addiction to a certain female did not help matters. Though on that account, I did not give a fuck. She had always been my exception.

I finished my story, omitting that I’d lost the vial in the whirlpool. I could not go there tonight. Nor to other places having to do with our histories.

For as long as I could remember, I had made an enemy of sickness. I had been at war with it. But in doing so, I’d acted criminally. Trying to defeat illness—to cure my parents and myself—was not the same thing as trying to save lives.

All lives.

Including born souls. Like my peers, I had not taken Autumn’s crusade for humanity seriously. Yet it felt wrong to me now. So crucially wrong.

This woman knew emotional and physical misery in ways I could not begin to imagine. In ways I had caused.

She had also endured nightmares. She’d had a family too. She had her affections and proclivities. She had wild and peaceful moments.

Seasons forgive me. This woman was not a damn fool.

Speaking aloud didn’t atone for what I’d done to her or others. Forcing those people into labor, experimenting on them, condemning them. Expending selected individuals to treat the rest of the world.

Now it disturbed me to remember. More than that, it haunted me.

The past drained from my pores like contaminated blood. In my mind’s eye, I saw every face I had tortured.

A man throwing back his head and shrieking through his broken teeth. A woman begging for mercy while I calmly strapped her limbs to the table. People screaming while I cut into their skulls. Others sedated and lost in a stupor.

I saw the tools I’d used. I saw blood splattering the floor. I saw samples of their anatomy on my shelves.

I heard them wailing. I heard them crying.

Shame. Disgust. Both emotions grabbed me by the throat.

This whole time, Flare had trained those smoldering eyes on me. I had felt the burn of her stare even when I’d averted my own. Across the flames, I weathered her judgment, submitted myself to it, and awaited the verdict.

Where she had regarded me with disdain earlier, now her pupils reflected something profound. Compassion. I had never been the recipient of such a reaction, yet I recognized it within the gilded sheen of her irises. No one communicated their emotions as potently as she did.

Unlike me, Flare’s mercy proved stronger than her hate. The impact lanced through my sternum.

After a moment’s thought, she leaned over and drew in the sand. Letters formed the shape of a lost vial.

Flare

A vacant space rested beside her name. An invitation not merely for a truce but something that involved multiple possibilities over time. Sincerity. Honesty. Trust. Provided that I share one final thing about myself.

The surf washed in and out. The moon poured its rays into the lacquered sea.

Her finger paused on the empty space, ready to write more letters, to inscribe me beside her. She held my gaze and waited, commanding me to make a choice.

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