Page 34 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Kicking the body away, I tried to straighten my leathers, tucked loose hair behind my ears to tidy the locks that I had not combed in days and gave the soldier a smile. “Good?”

He blinked all of me in. “Maybe don’t smile.” When my grin fell, he winced. “Or do. Moderately.”

The corridor light assaulted my vision, and I rested a hand on the wall to keep me from swaying. It felt like blood shot right down my legs all at once and I almost toppled to the ground had my soldier not steadied me.

Driada stood before me, gaping and eyes wide. “Snowlin,” she whispered my name almost with anguish, her russet stare she shared with Mal coating with tears. Pity. The damned pity.

My mouth pulled to a smile, but only for a moment because the soldier beside me shook his head. “Who do I owe this pleasure to?”

She shrivelled a small step back. “I wanted to give something to you.”

“Sure,” I said, lifting a hand to her. “Give it.”

She glanced at my extended hand with horror streaking her delicate features. “Perhaps clean up first.”

I looked down at my palm thick with blood and then slowly retracted it behind me.

The figure blinking back on the mirror was not hollow like me. What stared back at me had not missed any of the meals I’d fed to it. What stared back at me was a healthy version of what my father had wanted me to become.

My eyelids drooped with sleep and exhaust as I braced myself on the sink counter and exhaled slowly in an attempt to control the tremble over my body. “Mirror, mirror on the fucking wall. Who’s the maddest of them all?”

I snorted, my laughter bouncing around the empty space.

I’d really lost it, hadn’t I?

I must have truly lost it because what stared back at me, those black shadows quivered and neared, whispering, You.

Snow, my Snow, wake up, my mother’s voice brushed past my ear, and I shook my head, attempting to ward off the dizziness before pulling away and draping on some dress Pen had left for me on the bed.

Driada had patiently waited for me in the great chambers overlooking river Taren that flowed on the valley between the two sister mountains where the castle was located.

She smiled and shifted on her seat a little when I approached, her eyes glowing at the teal dress I wore. “That was your mother’s favourite colour.”

“I’d rather you don’t mention her,” I said, taking a seat on the settee opposite hers.

Her smile faltered a little, but it didn’t drop. It never had dropped in my presence, always so radiant. As if she was greeting an old memory. “I see Nia is not with you, not that lovely boy either.”

“Both busy. As I was.” I hadn't seen them in days. Cai never left Myrdur, not even for a moment. Nia had sent a letter yesterday that she was going to stay longer in Eldmoor to follow around a few Isjordian soldiers travelling down to Heca. Visha was attempting every locator craft in her cookbook and had locked herself in her cave. Pen was too scared to utter more than a sentence after she’d seen me drag a councillor’s body to the terrace and feed it to the crows piece by piece. Tristin was dealing with the Fogling attacks. And I'd been avoiding Alaric. Perhaps he’d been avoiding me. But I had not been lonely. Not one bit. Not when that gravelly voice in my head had been answering all of my conversation and even entertained my jokes.

“Have you eaten at all?”

I tilted my head back. What was this, torture by small talk? “Plenty.”

When she’d dried all motherly questions, she brought something from behind her. A stack of stained and worn out pearl-coloured envelopes wrapped in a little violet bow. “This—I’ve wanted to give you this back when you were marrying Kilian.”

What trick was this?

When I didn't make a move to get them from her, she lowered them to her lap. “I couldn’t think for the life of me where I’d stored them.” She touched a shaky hand to her head, and I noted her nails that had turned a shade of violet. “But I was searching for a pair of my pearls and found them in one of my jewellery boxes. They are my exchange with…her.” She brushed a thumb over them. “We were young then and we said nothing smart, but they are a piece of her.”

A piece of her. I didn’t want a piece of her. This is how hunger began. And I knew this one hunger could never be satiated. My mother was dead.

She pushed up from her seat and sat next to me, leaving the envelopes in my hand.

Reaching the stack, I decided to pull one out. The black ink had faded and murked in places, but I could recognise that handwriting better than I remembered her features. The prettiest handwriting I’d ever seen. I retracted my fingers from the paper, afraid my touch could sully her words. Afraid I’d dirty this memory with hands that had trampled all over it—sullied her memory by doing all that she’d been against, sullied it by touching with softness the man that had killed her.

My dear Driada,

The weather has been kind to our lands, the sun, too. Anemones have bloomed on every brick they could find, and they remind me so much of you, of your violet silks and laces that your father trades. They make me long for your presence in Olympia. My brothers treat me well, but they would rather spend their free time with ale on one hand and a woman on their lap.