He improved quickly after that, and strangely, it pleased her.
Even more strangely, he seemed to enjoy pleasing her.
When he said something that made Roa smile, he smiled twice as brightly. When he made her laugh, it was like he’d solved a puzzle he’d been working on for months. It lit him up from the inside.
The more they played, the more her pact with Essie got harder to keep and soon she didn’t hate this annoying boy from Firgaard. In fact, she didn’t find him annoying at all.
Traitor,whispered a voice inside her.
One day, Dax asked Roa to come with him and Essie to the cliffs. Roa never went to the cliffs. She didn’t like watching her sister and their friends jump from the heights and into the water. It made her queasy, watching them fall and fall and fall.
But Dax convinced her.
It was that day at the cliffs when she realized her sister was a traitor, too.
Dax begged Roa to jump with them, but Roa kept her feet planted firmly on the ground. So they left her behind. She watched them from the grass. The way Dax made Essie laugh... it was just like the way he made Roa laugh. Only Essie laughed louder and freer.
Essie was like that. Uninhibited. She could tell a secret to someone she’d just met and not think twice about it.
Roa didn’t know how to be like that.
If she and her sister were two books in their father’s study, Essie would be the one lying open on the desk, enticing you to read it. Roa would be the one stuffed between a dozen others, high up on the shelf.
It wasn’t just Essie’s laugh, though. It was the sight of Essie and Dax having fun without her, teasing and splashing and racing each other up and down the rocks. It made Roa realize something she didn’t want to realize.
She got up from the grass and left.
Essie came after her.
“What’s wrong?” Her sister trailed her down the dirt path through the cliffs, dripping wet and shivering.
“Nothing,” said Roa. “I’m bored, that’s all.”
Since when did she lie to her sister?
“Then come jump with us.”
Roa thought of the way Essie flung herself from the cliffs. Of the way Dax flung himself after her.
Roa kept walking.
“Dax is right,” Essie said to her back. “You hoard your thoughts like a dragon.”
The words hurt—not because they were untrue, but because they meant Essie and Dax were talking about her when she wasn’t there.
Roa turned to face her sister.
“I didn’t realize you were such close friends,” she said, her voice wobbly.
Essie’s lips parted. Her wet curls dripped.
“Roa...”
She didn’t finish, though. She didn’t need to. Essie was that open book on the desk. Easy to read. Everything there on the surface.
In her sister’s eyes, Roa saw the truth. It was like the day of their earning. Essie had been keeping another secret from her.
EssielikedDax.
