Page 96 of Burn

Unlike Rhys, Jeryn was no volatile idiot who let fury override his logic. The cerebral prince knew better than to swallow my bullshit.

He strode up to us, his gaze carving into me. “Your Autumn mercy treads a fine line.”

“You don’t say,” I parried. “Lucky for me, I’m an acrobat.”

“You suspected that man of disloyalty,” Briar muttered, horrified by the puddle of blood fifteen feet from us.

Her conclusion made sense. This prince excelled where his counterpart didn’t. Instead of acting impulsively like Summer, Winter observed deliberately. To that end, Jeryn must make a shrewd habit of watching his subjects at court.

Briar’s assumption about the knight’s limited knowledge had also been accurate. Few mortals could have endured that much torture and still held back if they possessed additional information. In any case, Rhys must have recruited some group of academics to shovel his shit in Winter.

“You knew and said nothing.” Accusation laced Jeryn’s baritone voice. “Refusing to divulge information is grounds for conflict between Seasons.” He slanted his head, those crystalline eyes sparkling with hostility. “Do you want conflict with Winter?”

“Do you wish to waste time having conflict with Autumn?” Briar argued. “We’re telling you now.”

In the distance, the harvest fields shivered. The briny reek of blood and the bitterness of charred skin clotted the atmosphere. Along the parapets, crenelations stood out against the night sky like teeth.

Once more, Jeryn showed no sign of astonishment at Rhys’s actions. Rather, his countenance reflected only cold malice and something else.

Something guarded.

Aye, he’d already suspected this. But until now, he hadn’t been able to confirm it.

Jeryn nodded to his soldiers, who set about collecting the body. The wordless exchange between the knights and their prince signified loyalty. Despite what he’d just done to one of their own, they fathomed why it happened. Their comrade had been withholding treasonous information. And despite the treachery of one warrior, Jeryn maintained eye contract with his troop, the respect between them mutual.

Never mind how he’d gotten wind of the lone soldier’s duplicity. It was highly unlikely this Royal would expand on the identities of these spies, mainly because I doubted that he knew enough yet. Otherwise, the man would have walked away by now.

There, we had something valuable to offer. As such, my tongue prepared itself for a match.

“Tell me what you have on these spies in Winter,” Jeryn requested. “Tell me what Rhys has told you.”

After trading a look with me, Briar said, “We don’t know the particulars of Summer’s conspiracy in your court. But we managed to root out Autumn’s traitors.”

Speeches wouldn’t work on this bastard. As we’d plotted out earlier, Briar let the answer trail off, prompting Jeryn to fill in the blanks. That sort of glamour, he responded to more.

The implication wedged itself into the space between us. To maintain order among the Seasons, we were obligated to inform the prince. And no matter how he felt about it, that placed Winter in a position of debt.

“You’re here to negotiate,” Jeryn intoned. After a moment’s deliberation—in which a hundred outcomes must have entered and exited his mind—he wiped the bloody knife against his velvet-clad thigh. After shoving the weapon into its case, he strode toward the rampart’s edge whilst murmuring, “State your terms.”

Gladly. Converging beside the crenelations and away from prying ears, we laid out the bargain, presenting our agenda like a variable to an equation. Briar had lobbied for this method of communication, having vetoed my suggestion for a tinge of embellishment, or at the very least a smidgen of enticement. To my sulking disappointment, the prince favored transparency over ambiguity. Because he wanted things spelled out, it forced me to neuter my vocabulary and speak like a mathematician instead of a trickster.

Discussing Rhys’s downfall should have been orgasmic, tantamount to knotting a noose around his neck. Instead, I consoled myself with fantasies of jamming my dagger through the man’s gullet and listening to him squeal like a pig when this was over.

Jeryn kept his back to us, with his silhouette bookended between merlons. As he consulted the horizon of wheat fields, the man listened to Briar speak. For my part, I lounged my shoulder blades against one of the brick intervals and interrupted her at the precise moments we’d discussed.

The gambit was this: Winter and Autumn would stage an elaborate deception. We’d fake a united front, showing everyone that our courts had established an affinity for one another. Casual, without need of some arbitrary and random contract, to be more convincing.

Although Briar hated to flout Autumn’s tenet of honesty, our actions would protect this nation from whatever else Rhys had planned. Also, it presented a tougher fight. Binding documents held weight, but those were technical and could be amended. Whereas an actual kinship would be more difficult for Summer to dismiss.

Our methods would revolve around pleasure rather than politics. Our weapons would be revels instead of blades.

For now, at least.

On that score, Briar issued an invitation. “Stay for Reaper’s Fest.”

“And the revels leading up to it,” I added.

Jeryn stiffened, then twisted our way. “This is your deal. For Winter to attend a bonfire ball.”

---