Page 68 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

I picked the list he held out for me. Atlas was there but I knew none of the rest. “Where is Mal’s name?” Did he think I would trust a single name on that list to search for my siblings?

Kilian rubbed a hand over his eyes, looking tired. “He will not join it.”

I crushed the paper on my hand and stalked out of his room. The corridors were almost identical to one another and so were the doors. It took me many tries and turns to find his bedroom.

When I flung the door open, Mal only stirred a little. The idiot had not even made it on the bed because he sat on the floor, his back on the edge of the bed, head hung low with his long, unbound hair covering half of it while he snored fast asleep.

“Wake up,” I said, kicking his leg and he jumped to attention.

“Sister-in-law,” he mumbled with a loopy grin, stretching his arms, the shirt riding up to reveal a sliver of skin marked with tattoos. “Welcome to my domain.”

“Get up.”

He cocked his head back and stared at me with those sad eyes he had given me since my return. “I can hear you fine from down here.”

I leaned down to his face. “Get up, Malik or I’ll give you something else you can see pretty well from down a six-foot grave.”

He stood on wobbly legs and headed right to the drink stand, forgoing the glass altogether and chugging the whole bottle.

The moment he lifted the bottle to his lips, it froze. “I need you sober.”

He sighed, lowering down the brick of ice I'd turned his drink to. “I’m much fun drunk. The world, too, is much fun when it’s spinning.”

“Malik,” I gritted out.

He cocked a brow up. “Snowlin? Are we going by our ministerial names now?”

“Your brother says he’s picked out a team to search for my siblings. I don’t want a team. I want you to look for them.”

He waved a hand, dismissing me. “Nia can surely lead the team.”

“Nia is in Eldmoor where she will be for the foreseeable future. She is also, might I remind you, fairly new to her magic. Besides her you’re the next I’d think of doing this.”

“That you can trust?”

Well…if it took a lie to convince him. “Sure.”

“But do you trust me?” I hesitated and he grinned. “You will threaten me with my mother, won’t you?”

“Yes.” It was better if he already knew my intentions. “Your brother, too.” The seal on my hand burned a little and I winced.

“Since I am at such a crossroad I will have to obey, I suppose.” With no warning, he pulled the edges of his shirt up and over his head, tossing the thing aside. Like his brother, he was corded in muscles and little scar striations. Different from Kilian, Mal’s torso and arms were all covered in black tattoos. They extended everywhere and dipped to the waistband of his britches. He rubbed a hand over his chest and turned around to what looked like a bathing chamber.

I nodded to myself and let out a low whistle at the artwork on his back. “Wow.” Shortly startling out of my skin when I turned around to find Kilian leaning on the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and a smug look on his face. He cocked his head back and did that tongue in cheek thing he always did.

“What?” Kicking away a few pillows from Mal’s bed, I sat down and leaned back on the poster. His space was not what I’d imagined it to be. It was all soft edges and pale colours, light and sweet. When I tipped my head back, I gaped a little. The ceiling was a mural of bloom. From one end to the other, all sorts of flowers were painted in the most colour I’d ever seen.

“He’s done them himself,” Kilian said, taking a seat beside me and dropping his head back on the poster to stare at the ceiling. “Mal used to love painting. If he was mad or sad or angry, it was all he did—never lashed out his feelings. Instead, he poured them into paintings. He managed to convince me to convince our father to get him a scaffold to do all that. All the ones in my chambers are done by him, too.” A beat of silence followed before he added, “Then it stopped. His hands were no longer stained with paint. His actions were.”

I turned my head to look at him. “Why?”

He turned to look at me too. “I think colours dulled for him when he learned what they meant. Human emotion is ugly whether it is in rosy shades of happiness or navy shades of malice. They will always have ugly undertones. Happiness is often shaded with blues of selfishness, and malice sometimes wears pearl shimmering clouds of innocence. It is never simple. And never innocent.”

Yet when Mal had spoken of his brother’s, they seemed like they were the most vivid he’d ever seen. Pure, too.

“What?” Kilian asked after I remained silent, pushing a strand of hair out of my face. A touch so gentle from such a poisonous hand.

“The way you speak about Mal—you really care about him. Really, really care for him. The type of care that would turn to harrowing pain if he was to be gone.”