Page 76 of Dare
28
Jeryn
I found her at our cove. On the crescent shore, she had built a fresh pit, threads of smoke lifting into the air and swirling around her. Although I had never taken mysticism seriously, with the blaze sketching her profile, she resembled a divinity. An empress of fire.
Propping myself against a fern tree, I watched her silhouette until nightfall. Hearing the shark’s mercenary screech carry through the ruins, thoughts of this woman had consumed me, and I’d launched into a run. Despite the fear icing my veins, protectiveness had eclipsed terror.
I … hated the thought of anything harming her.
Flare, she’d said. Her name was Flare.
A moniker that burned brightly. It had a temperature, like something hot and bold. One could light a match to the name and watch it ignite the world.
Pushing myself off the wall, I strode toward her—toward that name. My shadow extended over the fire as I joined Flare, seating myself adjacent to her.
While adding kindling to the heap, she said, “Campfires make it easier to tell a story.”
“Mine is not a story,” I said. “It is a fact.”
“I hate what you’ve done to born souls,” she muttered. “I hate you so much for that. You didn’t know anything about the ones you hurt, and you don’t know my tower mates. Pearl and Lorelei and Dante. You don’t know what they’ve suffered, or what they dream of, or what they love. They have hearts and tears, but nobody asks them questions, and nobody cares about them, because the nobodies like you don’t see them, because you don’t understand any of us.”
Moonlight lit the surf. Flames licked the air.
Flare considered me, her gaze nothing short of imposing. “But the rainforest has accepted you, and you faced a siren shark for me. Like it or not, I’ll listen.”
Was that the only reason she would listen? Was I entitled to any other?
Rhetorical questions. She was not sitting here to be nice. Nor was I sitting here expecting that.
True, I didn’t know anything about the ones she’d spoken of. Yet I wanted to know her, more than I cared to admit.
I leaned forward, incapable of meeting her eyes, intimidated by them. Despite her past—rather, because of it—she showed more endurance than I ever had. This woman clamored, but she didn’t make herself into a victim.
I weathered that gaze. “Your story is more important than mine.”
“Then earn it,” she answered. “Earn what I decide to tell you.”
I consulted the scratches across my fingers. “I was thirteen when it happened,” I murmured to the fire.
Thirteen years old. Too soon. Too much had changed that year.
Kingdom of Winter. A landscape where needle woodlands were pockmarked in snow and citizens traveled by stags, sleighs, and sleds. A court where the residents wore layers of fur and blew frost tendrils from their lips. A land where stillness and contemplation prevailed.
The sleet tundra. The monolithic alps. The glacier province.
The chalet castle looming over a frozen lake. Tapestries flossed in silver and cobalt. The scents of cooked venison from the great hall and fresh blood from the medical wing.
I had lived in the stronghold with my parents, my father the sole nephew of the Winter Queens, who had no children of their own. For my birthday, Mother and Father had given me the pendant, the vial weightless and attached to a chain.
“For me?” I had asked, gazing at my parents.
“For you,” Mother whispered, her fragile smile an incision across her face.
“For our boy,” Father said, his voice brittle as if crushed by forceps.
A talisman for me to keep close. A vessel in which to place something special.
Something that would keep me safe, they had said.