Page 101 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

He waved a hand at his men. “I better see you sweat those smug smiles off tomorrow.”

“Yes, Commander,” they said in unison, still chuckling.

“Where are we going?” he asked, taking a long chug from a water bottle.

“There is somewhere I think Aryan could be hiding my siblings.”

“Snow, I will take you all around all four corners of this realm,” he said. “But you will never know how far and wide these four corners of the realm are. Let Visha perform her craft on you.”

“No. I will do everything to find them myself. I can’t lose my mother to find my siblings.”

He rubbed his eyes, not in frustration it seems as he turned to look at me with the same pair of sad eyes he’d started giving me lately. I hated them. He wanted to say it, I knew. He wanted to tell me what most wanted to tell me. “Are you willing to compromise your living relatives for a dead one?” Except, as always, Mal didn’t fear me, and I suspected it had nothing to do with the fact that he thought I was the prettiest woman he’d seen.

I didn’t know why I felt like I needed to be sincere at that moment when I told him, “I don’t remember her, Mal. I cannot recall a single line of my mother’s face. Sometimes I hear her voice in my head, but I cannot match it to a face. Few times when I catch a glimpse of my reflection, I plaster that one on my memories, sometimes a random face I’ve seen in passing and sometimes I just leave it how my mind sees it—blank, sunken and bloodied. Before that night I hadn’t seen her in six months. The words she said to me were perhaps the longest she’d spoken to me in years. Nightmares are all I have of her. It is my only memory. So, yes, I am willing to sacrifice much for my dead mother.”

His stare faltered and dropped to the ground. “I…I am sorry, Snow. I shouldn't have said that.”

“I don’t need you to apologise, Princeling, but I am in need of your services,”

“Is that why you gifted my mother that necklace?” he asked, tying back his hair. “Or why you take her to the healing valley every time she goes to Taren.”

I flicked a bit of dust from my dress. “No idea what you are on about, Mal sweetheart.”

Mal’s attention went somewhere behind me, and I turned.

Kilian leaned on the court fence with Nia at his side. The fool still had little flowers on his head and droopy sleepy eyes that made him look entirely too…adorable.

“Did you get lost?” Nia asked, jumping on the court platform. “That’s the wrong brother.”

Mal flashed her a grin. “Perhaps the right one.”

My friend groaned, dropping her head back. “Do you never get tired?”

“Of being great?” the Night Prince asked. “Sometimes, it's a grand burden to bear.”

“Actually.” Nia pointed a finger between Mal and I. “You too suit one another perfectly. One massive ego next to another more massive ego.”

“The more massive ego was hopefully mine,” I said. “I don’t do anything unless it is the better, greater version.”

Nia shook her head, but Mal laughed.

I could feel his attention on me, like a brand on my skin—one that still burned. I turned to face him. “I’m taking Mal with me.”

He cocked his head back and glanced between his brother and I. “Mal will have to eat first, he has been on these courts all morning.”

I nodded. “He can eat first.”

“Settled then,” Kilian said. “We are all having lunch. Nia, you’re hungry, too, right?”

“Very,” my friend said, jumping from the court platform. “I could hear the rumbling of your stomach to Taren, Snow, come on.”

They had me in their trap.

Reaching him, I lifted on my tiptoes and extended a hand to his hair. He was too tall, so he had to bend down a little for me, and I grabbed the little daisy stuck between his thick dark locks. “Lost your flower crown, Princess?”

He chuckled and tapped my chin with his knuckle like it was all normal for us to act like this.

Then I panicked. The type of panic that envelopes you wholly, where you cannot recognise where you are or who anyone is, like the world is suddenly spinning too fast and not at all. Quickly, his reaction dropped, and I knew that I looked as dazed as I felt.