Page 13 of A Chill in the Flame
The princess walked toward her as if approaching a mirage. One wrong move, and surely the dark-haired fae would ripple away and leave her all alone once more. Ophir was a step away from waking up to a fresh sense of abandonment. Any moment now, she’d jolt awake and find herself entirely empty.
Each step she took filled her with increasing confusionas the silhouette grew and Dwyn’s features sharpened into reality against the oranges and pinks of late evening. Was Dwyn truly here? Ophir took a seat beside the fae on the reddish dust. Her hands pressed into the grime and sand of the cliff to support her weight.
“It’s not,” she said, finally answering the question that had been asked of her. Her voice was quiet. She rarely spoke. Her throat was only exercised through the night terrors that shook her from her sleep, dragged and shredded by the thorny stems of roses that ran up and down her vocal passages each and every night.
The siren nodded. “So I hear. The walls have ears, as do the cliffs, and the waves, and the birds.” The wind coming off the sea moved her dark hair around her face and neck as if it were kelp under the waves. Her hair did not tangle or knot against the salt in the air as the hair of so many others did. Instead, she seemed to have a dark halo of cloud-like hair. Dwyn had so many deeply unusual features that one did not typically find on the continent. Ophir hadn’t noticed the shape of her eyes or the gild of her skin the last time they’d been together. She’d been too numb to absorb details. The events following the massacre at Berinth’s home had been a bizarre, dreamlike sequence that she hadn’t been sure if she’d imagined.
“It seems like you haven’t taken my advice very seriously.” The woman’s voice had a musical, foreign quality to it. She spoke the common tongue with a peculiar spice and flavor that Ophir hadn’t remembered from their time together.
“I’ve prayed for vengeance,” Ophir replied.
“I didn’t think you were religious.”
“I’m not.” The princess deflected. “Are you from the Etal Isles?”
Dwyn smiled. “Sulgrave, born and bred. I did come south for the fabled isles, and yet here I am on the cliffs of Aubade. Have you ever met anyone from the Etal Isles?”
Ophir hadn’t. She’d never met anyone from Sulgrave,either. While the people of Farehold tended to possess pink undertones and colorless hair, the only other races of humans and fae she’d known on the continent were the bronzed fae from Raascot, and her time in the throne room as a child when ambassadors from the Tarkhany desert had visited. She’d played with a young Tarkhany boy who claimed he was Prince of the Sands. Dwyn wasn’t from Raascot, nor was she from Tarkhany. Her skin was not the deep northern tan, nor was it the rich, dark browns of the Tarkhany people. There was a faint gild to the undercurrent of Dwyn’s skin, and a tilt to her eyes that Ophir had never seen before. Truth be told, she didn’t give a fuck where Dwyn was from. Any citizen from any kingdom willing to dive into the deepest waters to save her might as well have traveled from the moon.
Dwyn pressed on. “Do you know anyone who’s gone there? The Isles, that is. Does your kingdom conduct any trades with them?”
They didn’t.
“It’s odd, yes. But do you know the strangest part of the Etal Isles?” Dwyn arched a manicured brow as she looked at the princess, studying her face. “The most peculiar thing about the Isles is that no one else finds them unusual. Everyone seems to act like it’s perfectly reasonable for there to be a kingdom and its people a short sea vessel trek away, and yet they’ve never visited. No one from the islands comes to the mainland, just as no one from the continent goes to the Isles. We all pretend it’s not suspicious.” This was clearly something that had been on Dwyn’s mind for a long time.
Ophir didn’t have the energy to argue. She offered, “We don’t trade with Sulgrave, either.”
Dwyn’s laugh was like tinkling bells. “Of course, you don’t. Sulgrave is nearly impossible to reach. Crossing the Frozen Straits is a suicide mission for mortals and fae alike. No one expects trade between our kingdoms. The Etal Isles lack an excuse. They should be only a few days of seafaring from Aubade.”
“Is that why you were in the water that night? The Etal Isles?”
She shrugged. The wind whipped Dwyn’s hair in sharp, dark lines across her face as she gazed at the horizon. “Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. Maybe it’s why I’m in the water every night. For all the world knows, I might be the leading scholar on the Isles. First, I have to figure out how to get there.”
Ophir looked off into the horizon as if she might see the distant shape of a mountain that she hadn’t noticed in her decades of life by the sea. “Is that what you need me for? You want me to get you a ship?”
Dwyn giggled at that as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d heard. Her gaze flitted away from the princess as she watched another seabird bank against the cliffs, plunging for the water. “No, Firi. There’s nothing you can do for me. This is about what I can do for you.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ophir muttered. The scabbing wound on her soul was reopened and salted by the nickname.
Dwyn’s brows pinched ever so slightly in the center. Her voice softened. “Isn’t that what your friends call you?”
Ophir was quiet for a moment. “I don’t have friends anymore.”
Dwyn clapped her hands together, attention fully present. “Yes,thisis what brings me here. There are three paths forward after a tragedy, and you have already attempted the path you’re on. You tried giving up. You swam into the waters with the intent to die, and I saw you in the moment you realized you wanted to live. I witnessed your struggle to keep your head above water. I know there’s a fighting spirit in there somewhere. Though”—Dwyn scanned her body slowly—“it may be buried rather deep.”
Ophir looked over her shoulder to where Harland continued to rest against the wall. He hadn’t let them out of his sight. Perhaps she should take a lesson from his caution.
Her eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, Dwyn? It’s been months. I haven’t seen you, or heard from you, or so much as—”
“Tell me, Firi: what do you want?” She swung her bare feet over the cliff with a fairy-like levity. She was perfectly unbothered by their interaction. Ophir found it refreshing to be around someone whose heart wasn’t broken and who didn’t see her for the husk that she was.
“I want Caris back.”
“Well, that’s not helpful. Try again.”
Ophir felt hot tears threaten to spill over her lids and was glad of the salt spray, as it gave her an excuse for watery eyes. “I want to have been a better daughter and a better sister. I wish I hadn’t been such a bastard. I want to go back in time and—”
“You’re not even trying.”
