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“Then, I don’t understand.”
“Solskari magic feels like sunlight.” He drew a careful breath and forced himself upright. “Like the first warmth of summer touching your skin in the wake of months of darkness.” His gaze scoured my face for something I couldn’t identify, though some part of me knew I was supposed to. “It feels like freedom. Like forgiveness you could never earn, but would die trying to anyways.”
“Intense?”
“Yes.”
“What was its purpose?”
“Hope, Blythe. Its purpose was hope—to spread the promise of a better tomorrow through a world betrothed to suffering.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
SAD STORIES
ALVARA
“Tell me a story?”
“It’s too late for stories, sweetness.”
“I like your stories,” I whispered, closing my eyes as my sister ran the brush through my hair. The gentle drag of it sent a pleasant shiver down my spine, and I sighed. “They’re… exhilarating.”
Her laugh was low and warm, as though I had amused her. “You need your rest, love.”
I rolled my eyes but didn’t push. Arguing seemed futile. I never won anyway.
“I’ve got one,” a familiar gravelly voice offered. I turned and found a male reflection of our sister.
I didn’t like our brother’s stories. They left me feeling hollow.
“Perhaps she’s right,” I whispered. “Sleep sounds nice.”
“Just a quick one, then.” He smiled, but the sight of it scraped against my nerves like sandpaper over teeth. Our sister gently swept my hair over one shoulder before slipping from the bed.
A needling sensation prickled through my mind, like blood rushing back into a sleeping limb. Moros crossed the room, hair nearly as white as the walls behind him, and stopped at the table. Everything here felt wilted, as though the room itself had been drained of life.
Everything except their clothes—and that music box. He traced the bronze-carved details before gingerly lifting it into his hands and opening the ruby-inlaid lid. The ballerina within sprang upright, her unitard carved from the same vibrant red stone, bronze vines curling up her legs and around her waist.
With a cunning smile, he turned the box over, wound it three times, and returned it to its perch.
Familiar. Achingly so—the melody the box sang, the cadence of it.
But I had no time to place it. No time to understand.
Because icy talons plunged into my skull, my mind screaming in agony.
Burning, burning, burning, my vision went white—white as the room around me, white as the endless expanse of the other I so often glimpsed. Something roared awake inside me—an inferno, rising like a wall of flame to meet the pain.
A forgotten thing.
Instinct personified.
Not instinct. Something… practiced. A shield of some kind?
“Come on, Ally, push yourself.” Warm. Low. Safe. A rumbling tenor that felt like love. Like being wholly seen and cherished.
“Come on, baby, show them who you fucking are.” This voice was warmer still, like woodsmoke and laughter—a blanket of pine and sage wrapping around me, pushing against the searing in my mind. “We face this together,” he demanded.
