Page 43 of Wicked Prince of Shadows
His eyes dipped. I felt it more than saw it—the slow sweep over my mouth, the curve of my jaw, the pulse fluttering at my throat. “We remember. So long as the memory exists, some part of it carries on.”
His mouth tilted, not quite a smile. Something smaller. Slower. Like he hadn’t decided yet whether to mean it. He shifted his weight toward me.
I bent to reach for the scattered pages, needing a break in the tension—or an anchor in it. My fingers grazed parchment. His brushed mine.
I flinched. Not from pain, but from the shock of coolness. His skin against mine startled me, but I didn’t hate it.
He stilled.
So did I.
When I looked up, he was watching me—eyes sharp, unreadable. But not unfeeling.
“What do you call me in your mind, Sabine?” he said, voice barely louder than a breath. “After all that has happened, what am I to you? Wretch? Hollow? Evil? Bastard?”
There was more to the question than what he was saying. I remained in place, hands on my knees. “What would you have me call you?”
“Vetle. I am Vetle.”
“Vetle,” I repeated softly. I’d heard the others use his name with his title, though he had simply said it now to me as if his name were equal to mine.
The name tasted strange on my tongue, sharper than I expected but not unpleasant. Not the title of a monster or a curse or a king. Just a man.
He inhaled as though I’d struck him but made no move to pull away. His hand hovered near mine.
“What does it mean?” I asked, trying to focus more on the pages in the rubble. I shifted a little to the left but closer to him to reach some of the pages that were under the table leg.
“Nothing impressive. Simply 'winter traveler.' For an uncle who passed into the north and never returned. What does Sabine mean?”
I paused, my fingers brushing against a torn edge of parchment, a rueful smile tugging at my mouth. “Sabine? It just means 'of the Sabine people.' My mother…she heard it from a traveling merchant, and she loved it.”
“But you did not?”
I frowned at his question. How had he picked up on that? The truth was I hated it. I’d only come to terms with it after her passing because it reminded me of her and her zeal for life and how one small thing could delight her. “I would have preferred a name with deeper meaning. But…it has grown on me.”
“You have the kind of spirit which gives meaning to your own name.”
My gaze snapped up to his once more, startled by the gentleness in his voice. The way he said it—without mockery, without that sharp edge—caught me off guard. I ducked my head, pretending to study the scattered pages more intently. "That's... kind of you to say," I managed, my voice smaller than I intended.
He made a low sound in his throat, not quite a laugh but close. "I'm rarely accused of kindness these days. Ah. Found it." He pulled free a roll of parchment, unrolling it carefully. The edges were worn, and the surface was covered in strange symbols and markings. “It isn’t damaged much. You can see what it says.”
He turned the parchment over and then spread it out on the broken slab of table where both of us could see and gestured for me to come closer.
I moved closer, kneeling beside him with care as he smoothed the parchment flat. His shoulder brushed mine, and I caught my breath. There wasn’t time for this. Even if he and I married one another on the last day of the blood moon’s cycle, it wasn’t as if there was anything between us. He’d likely send me on my way as soon as his people were freed and restored to the Waking Lands. I forced my focus onto the page.
The symbols etched across the page were unlike anything I'd seen before. It was something between pictographs and hieroglyphics. It was done in three parts with a great figure stretching over the top.
“Your Queen Tanith said that the Witheringlands was formed because a demon lost his love, but it was an eidon,” Vetle said, tapping his claws against the parchment. “You know what eidons are?”
I nodded. I’d seen them a few times, always hard to spot unless you knew how to look for them. They were spirits who walked through the layers of the realms, never fully present in a single one. Not so high as the Maker or his warriors but cultivators of the natural world. “My family has always drawn strength when they are near. It’s why I asked if there was one. They seem to love plants.”
“Well, there was once one here,” he said. “But now it is her tomb.” He gestured toward the open window as the moon rose higher. “Chaori and Aerithyn. I’d heard legends before our kingdom was brought to this place. In the one we were told, a war broke out among the eidons and perhaps others, depending on which version you hear. Chaori and Aerithyn loved one another beyond all knowledge and reason. Some warned them against the all-consuming nature of their love and the danger of cutting themselves off from their communities, especially when war was tearing everything apart. But their love overcame that, and they escaped to some place quiet and peaceful. But war is not so easily escaped.”
As he spoke, the glass on the floor started moving. It rolled back toward the mirror as the table slowly shifted. Slowly the pieces were moving back together, but as he had said before, they were smoothing out, losing traces of imperfections and nuance that had once made them what they were. I shifted away and stood as the table started to push up. My skin crawled, this active magic uncomfortable to be around. “The war found them then?”
He nodded. “It did. And somehow in that conflict, Aerithyn was struck down. Her body formed the Witheringlands that trapus here now and Chaori enacted the curse when no one would help them.” He stood as well, lifting the parchment and stepped back.
"Why did no one help them?" I asked, surprised.
