Page 133 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“But what if you do fail?”

Mal pushed from where he stood and squatted before the halo, studying the patterns. “Then I jump in.”

“It won’t be necessary,” Kilian said, now starting to lose his patience.

“And what if you fail?” Cai asked Mal.

The Night Prince raised a brow at my friend. “What’s with you?”

Cai’s gaze darkened. “Simply finding it hard how the two of you could possibly care to bring her back.”

Kilian’s head swivelled to Cai and stood, reaching my friend face to face. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

Cai straightened too, reaching closer to Kilian. “I simply cannot comprehend how you can care for her after everything you’ve done.”

“She felt safe enough to ask this of me, Caiden. If you find it hard to believe me then believe your friend.”

“If you wish to argue, please do it out of my chambers, you are bothering the dead,” Visha said quietly as she lit the candles around the room. Red flame spurted from the wicks, fluttering crimson light and darkening shadows. She handed me a piece of obsidian with a little white rune engraving on the top and pointed for me to sit inside the circle. “To trap their essence.”

Kilian sat as I did, facing me.

“Hold hands,” Visha said, settling just outside the circle. “Don’t let go during the trip back and forth, he is your grounding to this realm.”

I peeled off my gloves, throwing them out of the circle and held Kilian’s hands. They were warm—always so warm.

He rubbed his thumbs over my scars and his jaw tightened with tension, that little chin dimple flashing.

It was tormenting. My tongue darted to wet my lips and he looked up at me. The corner of his mouth lifted up when I couldn't help but look down at his chin again.

“Don’t gloat,” I sneered.

“Can’t help it, you’re leering at me. I like it when you leer at me. Keep leering.”

Visha began chanting in Borsich, the candles in the room fluttering like mad and a strange wind picked up and swirled around the craft circle.

My eyelids drooped, heavy with sleep, and suddenly I fell into a downward abyss. Spinning and spinning till the ground felt solid beneath my feet.

I jerked upright, breathless, reality settling around me again and I swayed on my feet.

Kilian stood beside me, studying our surroundings, a sturdy arm around my waist to hold me upright.

The room was familiar but dressed in the old beige colouring of my childhood. Isjord, but not quite the Isjord I remembered. Something was odd, the way time felt old and yellow stained like a memory but not quite.

The door opened and a soldier stepped in, passing right through me. He had long, red hair pulled half up in a tail, tall and strong features and donned the white uniform Isjordian soldiers wore on the solstice. We were in my memories of that night. The Solstice from thirteen years ago.

“Lin,” he called, searching the room. “Come out. Your father is asking for you.”

“Lysander,” I whispered, part overwhelmed and part guilty for ever forgetting how he used to look like.

He searched the room all over, under the bed and tables, the bathing chambers before he returned frustrated to leave. I knew what he was looking for. I knew what he had not been able to find that moment.

“The curtains,” my voice shook when I spoke. “You didn’t check the curtains.”

Moments after he left, a small form came from behind the large emerald curtains. The white dress that fell too low and hung a size too big still looked too big and long for my petite frame. No one really cared about me then. If I dressed or not, if I looked my part as princess or not. No one cared. Not that I had ever wanted them to care.

I’d recognise that little girl anywhere. Not from the dark hair we shared and the yellow stare that we both despised, but from the way she wiped her bloodied palms on the corner of the curtain and put a fresh pair of gloves on as if she was born without pain.

Suddenly, I remembered that now I had to share this memory with someone else and I turned to glance at Kilian. He stood lost in a world of his own. Staring at my young form in a strange trance. As if he too was visiting an old memory.