To Celena
Young, and yet her face … It was an ancient face, wary and cunning and
limned with power. Beautiful, with the sun-kissed skin, the vibrant
turquoise eyes. Turquoise eyes, with a core of gold around the pupil.
Ashryver eyes.
The same as the golden-haired, handsome man who came up beside her,
muscled body tense as he assessed whether he’d need to spill blood, a bow
dangling from his hand.
Two sides of the same golden coin.
Aelin. Aedion.
They were both staring at her with those Ashryver eyes.
Aelin blinked. And her golden face crumpled as she said, “Are you
Elide?”
It was all Elide could do to nod. Lorcan was taut as a bowstring, his
body still half angled over her.
Aelin strode closer, eyes never leaving Elide’s face. Young—she felt so
young compared to the woman who approached. There were scars all over
Aelin’s hands, along her neck, around her wrists … where shackles had
been.
Aelin slid to her knees not a foot away, and it occurred to Elide that she
should be bowing, head to the dirt—
“You look … so much like your mother,” Aelin said, her voice cracking.
Aedion silently knelt, putting a broad hand on Aelin’s shoulder.
Her mother, who had gone down swinging, who had died fighting so
this woman could live—
“I’m sorry,” Aelin said, shoulders curving inward, head dropping low as
tears slid down her flushed cheeks. “I’m so sorry.” How many years had
those words been locked up?
Elide’s arm ached, but it didn’t stop her from touching Aelin’s hand,
clenched in her lap.
Touching that tanned, scarred hand. Warm, sticky skin met her
What did you get into
The torchlight dances in his dark eyes as he stares down at me. “Let’s
start with your name.”
“I’m Severine.”
“No. Your real name.”
“That is my real name.”
He cocks his head, and a lock of ebony hair falls before one of his eyes.
“If I desire, I can wrap you in a dream, girl. And in that dream, you will feel
compelled to say your real name a thousand times. You will say it for days,
for weeks, until you starve half to death, until the word no longer has
meaning. So, let’s try this again. What’s your name?”
Thunder rumbles outside, rattling the diamond-shaped glass panes.
I feel it then, a touch of his velvety power, brushing at the edges of my
mind. Threatening to wrap around me, to envelop my reality. He really will
do it unless I act fast. The shield in my mind isn’t strong enough. There
wasn’t enough time to practice.
Lying works best when it is laced with truth. I can give this evil fucker a
crumb.
I narrow my eyes at him, jaw tightening.
I should be acting like a meek girl, intimidated by the crown prince. But
Raphael’s words still echo in my mind, and the state of his ravaged, tortured
body burns my thoughts like a brand.
“Fine, it’s Nia.” I spit out the words. “Vaillancourt.” My words come
out sharper than they should, while my mind is whirring, making up a story
that would work, that would convince him I’m not worth his time.
“So, Nia. What are you doing here?” His voice is so uncannily familiar,
and the sound of his deep, velvety voice as he speaks my name sends a
strange rush of heat through my blood.
My pulse is racing out of control. Some Fey can hear a heartbeat while
standing nearby. I wonder if he’s one of them.
I lift my chin. “My family and I are tenants on farmland we don’t own.
Reklam
First Sparks
What happened to your family?” I ask, deflecting.
He winces nearly imperceptibly. “My mother raised me. My father was
never in the picture. Auberon considered my human mother an enemy of the
crown, even though she hardly had any money. I don’t understand what he
had against her, except that he blamed all his failures on humans. And she
was human.” He leans back against the wall and stares out at the river.
Sensing he needs a drink, I hand him the flask.
He takes a sip. “We didn’t realize how far he was going to go. This was
before the invasion of France, when our world was still secret. And we
never imagined…my mom thought if she just kept quiet, he’d leave her
alone. So, we kept to ourselves. But one day, Auberon’s soldiers raided our
home. There was no trial, no jury, no chance to repent. Dawn broke, and
they slaughtered my mom in the garden.”
His jaw clenches, but he keeps talking, as if he’s forgotten I’m there.
“We’d all been in bed, then someone knocked on the door.” He takes
another sip. “They wanted to kill everyone in the house. My sister screamed
at me to run to the forest, that Mom was gone, and they were after us. I ran.
I thought she was behind me.” A line forms between his eyebrows. “She
wasn’t, and I ran back to find her, but I couldn’t find her anywhere.”
My chest aches. “How old were you?”
“Nine. My sister was sixteen.”
I swallow hard. “And you never found her?”
He hands me the mead. “I kept searching the forest, living off berries
and water from the stream. She never came. I think I was half-dead when a
demi-Fey family found me and took me with them to France. It was really
amazing luck, I suppose. I was heartbroken, but they brought me to the
château with them, and I started working, picking grapes.” He glances at
me. “You know the rest. And now this
In the cradle of our past, I lay upon my back in a cave so shallow I could penetrate it only by squirming, not by crawling. There, by the dancing light of a resin torch, I drew upon walls and ceiling the creatures of the hunt and the souls of my people. How illuminating it is to peer backward through a perfect circle at that ancient struggle for the visible moment of the soul. All time vibrates to that call: “Here I am!” With a mind informed by artist-giants who came afterward, I peer at handprints and flowing muscles drawn upon the rock with charcoal and vegetable dyes. How much more we are than mere mechanical events! And my anticivil self demands: “Why is it that they do not want to leave the cave?”
Mitch feels like he's standing between a pair of full-length mirrors facing each other at a shallow, hundredth-of-an-arc-second angle, so that there are millions of his exactly identical alternate selves arrayed out in front of him, and they're racing away, dragging him along, bursting seamlessly through each mirror just as an exactly identical self bursts out of the mirror behind to replace him.
How time goes by with so many shallow things. It goes by one way or another. What's left behind? What does it leave you with? That is the biggest issue to consider.
Reklam
Reklam