Page 58 of Burn

At best, it was a distortion of the truth, meant for only public consumption. At worst, it was a denial of the Season’s real nature.

Recently, I had spent a brief vacation here, enjoying the amenities after Rhys’s death had nearly become a reality. Prior to that epic failure, my son had languished in a shithole like this. The difference was that atrocity had occurred in Spring, a nightmare also provoked by the Summer King.

My boot heels thumped against the bricks as I stalked beside Briar. Her eyes shimmered, not with tears but flames, the mounted torches reflecting in her pupils as she beheld the prisoners. Behind cages, they hunched in corners or stared into space.

With her jaw set, the princess rounded on the guards. Her clipped voice could have sheared through iron. “The provisions we ordered,” she reminded them. “The food, water, and blankets. Are these people receiving them?”

One of the wardens purpled, disconcertment suffusing his flabby face. It could have been from Briar’s question or her use of the word “people.”

“Yes, Your Hig … Daughter of Autumn,” he corrected. “We’ve been supplying them as requested before—” Again, the man cut himself off from referring to her banishment, prior to which Briar had instructed the guards to provide the born souls with the necessities all humans deserved.

The man’s eyes clicked over to me, his complexion turning ashen at the deadly look I gave him. He swerved back to the princess and tried for a second time. “We’ve been tending to the prisoners.”

Bull. Shit.

I’d maintained Briar’s request whilst she was away, making sure every inhabitant received proper nourishment and sanitary linens. Yet apparently the wardens had stopped carrying out those orders from the moment I’d left to find the princess in The Lost Treehouses.

Either that, or these guards had sought out loopholes. In which case, food could mean scraps. Drink could mean muddy water. And blankets could mean coarse rags infested with insects.

Coming from a skilled tongue, words became malleable, capable of being shaped like clay. Unfortunately for this fuckwit, he didn’t know an effective lie from an ejaculation.

Briar’s eyebrows shot up. Her features sharpened on the man, her silence drawing the same conclusion and letting him know it. “I suppose Poet and I shall need to increase the frequency of our visits. Expect us here more often and our visits unannounced.”

I stepped from the shadows and into the firelight, emerging beside Briar. My boot sole crushed an errant twig, producing a loud snap that sounded like a cracked bone. The noise echoed off the dungeon’s blood-stained walls.

We stared at the man until he bowed and shuffled backward, along with the rest of the guards. At which point, the princess and I broke apart to check on the captives. The dungeon had expanded in capacity, housing additional born souls as well as the maddened ones from Summer.

We requested the provisions these wardens had been too negligent to dish out. With the help of a servant, Briar and I passed out flasks of fresh water and baskets of meat, cheese, fruit, and bread. Several prisoners sat listless, their glazed eyes uninvested in the offerings, having lost the will to believe it would make a difference.

Approaching a few angry but rare exceptions, I loomed over the princess, my fingers resting on my dagger as she attempted to communicate. They scarcely responded beyond glaring, repeating her words, or staring back with cool detachment.

Amid the lucid and more welcoming souls, we swabbed their wounds, doled out clean bedding, and murmured hopeful words. Still they didn’t respond, other than to devour chunks of sourdough and guzzle from the flasks.

The princess took her time at each cubicle, but I sensed her urgency, the eagerness to reach a particular compartment. At length, Briar neared a cell where a young woman hunkered over a mound of dirt. She must have swept the mess from the corners of her cell, creating enough of a pile to work with.

Crossing her legs, the female leaned forward to flatten out the granules with her palm, then glided one finger through the filth and drew something there. Despite the torches mounted to the walls, my view was limited.

The young woman had to be around Briar’s age. She wore a moth-eaten shirt and grain-sack hose cut off at her thighs, with threads coming loose from the hem. Muck caked her fingernails and blackened her bare feet like soot, and matted hair hung in waves to her shoulders.

The scent of salt, reminiscent of an ocean floor, wafted from her. And from what I could tell, the female’s complexion was lovely, deep olive and burnished like a bronze coin. ’Twas as if she’d spent her life on an island, drenched in the sun’s rays.

Now I remembered. Briar had interacted with this captive before and mentioned her again after the courtyard battle, when the princess ventured here for the last time. She’d told me about it, had talked about the drawing.

Briar had also developed a fleeting kinship with this prisoner and hated to leave her down here. She’d loathed abandoning any of them. As for my brief stint in this jail, I hadn’t been located close to the female. And during my subsequent visits, she’d routinely kept her head down, signaling no desire for company or comfort. Otherwise, I’d have engaged.

“I’d be wary of that one,” another guard cautioned from across the lane. “That creature has got fangs.”

Briar ignored them. I stood close by, watching as the princess knelt, her profile mustering a grin. “Hello again.”

At the sound of her voice, the woman paused. Her finger froze, arrested in the soil. Yet instead of dismissing the princess this time, the prisoner swerved toward Briar, the motion blasting us with light. A pair of golden eyes burned through the darkness like explosives. Almighty Seasons, the irises hardly seemed authentic. They blazed so intensely, they might as well be combustible.

She didn’t smile, but she didn’t have to. Those eyes glimmered at the princess, then registered me. Hesitating, the woman swiveled toward the lump of dirt and resumed sketching.

Disappointment sagged Briar’s face. I lowered myself beside her, my gaze returning to the drawing, each line meticulously illustrated. To the untrained eye, the etching made no sense. But to a Spring native, its artistry was striking. Words appeared to be camouflaged within an unknown shape, which proved harder to determine, which made it even more impressive. Especially when I noticed a certain element about the text.

Inspecting the sketch, I raised an eyebrow. “You fancy poetry.”

The woman’s fingers stalled. Yet she didn’t reply to my guess.

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