Page 187 of Dare

Regardless, only one woman existed for me.

Three years since I last saw her, touched her, tasted her. The day after my coronation, I knelt in the snow, to write something there. Something that Flare might sense, wherever she was. Something that called out to her. However, I knew.

I fucking knew. I could do much better than this.

***

When Mother and Father sent for me, I entered the room and sank to my knees before them. They looked older than they should have. Settled in their chairs beside a fire and with furs draped across their laps, their bodies appeared as frail as twigs.

As the nearby flames crackled, my parents clasped their hands with mine. Our three signet rings glinted in the morning light.

“Son,” my father said, his blue hair threaded with strands of silver.

“Father,” I replied. “Mother.”

My mother grinned, her eyes the mirror image of my own. “My Jeryn.”

The words ended on a hacking cough. Gingerly, my father patted her fingers while I rushed to hand Mother a steaming cup of herbal tea, the drink soothing her throat.

Always ill. Never cured.

Nevertheless, they were lucid and mostly happy. And they knew me. They knew what I’d been yearning to say, the truth I loathed to conceal. As they glanced at my vial of sand, then at me, they understood.

“You’re in love,” Mother whispered. “And you’re waiting for her.”

Not a day had passed that I hadn’t yearned for my little beast. Not a night that I hadn’t reached for her in my empty bed. Not a second when her parting words hadn’t replayed in my head and lacerated my chest.

I love you.

In dreams, I saw her. Those burnished eyes. Her face flushed, the blood rushing to her cheeks as I stroked my cock deeply into her. Her vivid gaze worshiping a place that we’d once called home.

And fuck. Her hands.

Mother caressed my jaw. Before I could make a reply, Father prompted, “Then stop waiting.”

Hope infused my blood. Winter was reinventing itself. As such, my kingdom knew I’d evolved as well.

Summer was shifting too. Because of her.

Flare had become a legend. Although her drawings didn’t move everyone, because no person could accomplish that feat alone, she elicited reactions from this continent.

A conversation. A shift.

A sand artist whom none had ever seen. People tried to decode her travel patterns, to gauge which coast she would visit next, but failed because they lacked patience. Because they did not observe.

Because they had not lived and survived with her.

I consulted the locations where Flare’s renderings had been discovered, as well as the dates when they appeared. The days and times were unpredictable and seemed random to most, but not to someone familiar with her wandering nature. I consulted atlases, researched Summer’s shores, recalled what she’d told me about the culture of sand drifters.

I dove into my own memories of her. I might be wrong, but I had chased this woman once before. I could do so again.

On the pretense of business, I sent a dispatch to a coastline several days north of Summer’s castle. Timing was crucial. The missive must be left shortly before she got there. The messenger’s task was to find the appropriate shore and write a note by torchlight, scripting into the midnight sand.

I handed over a sealed note containing a cipher—my own pathetic excuse for a drawing, which indicated a place, day, and time. That, and two words camouflaged in the design.

A call. A plea.

If she wanted to. If she wanted me.