“Well?” the Prince of Thorns prods.
He’s beautiful, I think, but somehow, I know better than to say that out loud. Nausea curls within me. How can I even think that? Think that when the most beautiful, perfect man in existence sits right above?
But now that I’ve had this thought, I can’t banish it. It’s taken root inside me. I can’t tear my eyes from him. There’s something else. His scent…it’s the same as the stuffed lion on my bed.
A man standing in a crowded market, trading a vendor a coin, and tossing the toy into my hands, the most brilliant smile on his face…
But the man coming toward us now isn’t smiling.
“He’s like…” I quirk my head, answering my master. “He’s like the sun.”
The Prince of Thorns chuckles and leaps from the branches toward the stranger.
But he’s not a stranger. I feel it inside me, this root growing. He’s like the sun. Like daylight.
The Prince of Thorns stands before him, and the man drops something into his outstretched palm.
It’s a rose.
Not one of the beautiful roses I dream about but a strange, almost glassy thing, with red petals and silver filigree along the stem that shines in the dim light.
My whole body goes cold. My mind begins to scream at me:Sira must not get that rose. Sira must not get that rose. Sira must not get that rose.
Holding my hand out, I notice I’m shaking. Neither the Prince of Thorns nor the man pay attention to me.
He did it. O’Connell. My name. My father’s name?
But why? Why can’t I remember?
Why does it matter? It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t involve the Prince of Thorns.
He’ll never be saved if?—
I shake my head. It feels like wandering through mist within my mind.
The Prince of Thorns pockets the rose in the sleeve of his cloak and walks to me, looping an arm around my waist. My mind soothes. It feels so good to be close to him.
“Now that my thrall has served his purpose, he’s only a liability,” the Prince of Thorns muses. “You see, my father could intervene and turn him against us. The only choice is to dispose of him. Submit, thrall.”
The man drops to his knees, golden hair falling across his face. Green flames sprout in a circle around him.
Caspian tilts his chin. “Goodbye, Sunshine.”
Yes, the Prince of Thorns agrees with me. He’s like the sun. Like daylight.Cas called Dayton “Sunshine.”
My body trembles. My mind hums. I’m about to vibrate out of my skin. There’s too much light in my vision, bright and green and terrible.
“Let your last moments in the Vale be with the awareness of how you failed everyone…again,” the Prince of Thorns hisses.
And then the eyes of this man—Dayton, his name is Dayton—flash from green to teal.
Teal like waves under the burning sun, like a siren’s tail glittering beneath the sea. The eyes of a man I love.
His scream tears through the rain as the green flames writhe up his body. I feel as if it’s my own. Because it is passing through our mate bond, this connection that can fight through anything.
A fire blooms bright in my heart, burning away the fog that has clouded everything that I am. Like a dam being broken, it floods into my consciousness.
My mates. Dayton, Farron, Ezryn, and Keldarion.
