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Not with you, Daein, no matter how much you protect me.
And home … It is not with you, my Flower.
I would leave you both if only I could.
4
APRIL
Daein released his princeship when he chose to tie his life to mine in order to save me from certain death. He married me and divorced his high status. Still a royal, but no longer a prince in the dark lands.
Yet,for the purpose of the takeover, he is recognised as a dokkalf prince here, in the light lands. He is treated with as much fear and respect as his brother, Elden. So when I picked out the sunshine palace to live in while he performs his temporary duties here, Princess Skye not only welcomed us with as much false pleasure as she could muster (I’m certain, to protect her children and lovers), she offered us the master suite in the palace.
Daein would have taken it. But I had my eye on another room.
It’s been so long since the dokkalves overwhelmed the litalves on the battlefield, long before my time. Much has changed in these once-light lands. It hasn’t had the time to exactly adapt, but much has been brought in from the dark lands—like the glowflies I like so much.
That’s why I chose the cosy room with the small balcony in the left wing of the palace. It overlooks the field where the glowflies were first released. They swarm the place now, forever emanating a constant, white beam of light.
Daein doesn’t voice his complaints, but I know he’s no fan of the light constantly pouring in from the window, despite closing the curtains. There is no true darkness in this room. I adore it, he despises it.
Light in the dark.
Brings a small smile to my lips as I stand at the open balcony doors and fix the lace straps of my slip over my shoulder. Daein’s scent is all over, painted over every bit of my flesh, his essence still within me.
The dokkalf himself leans back against the banister of the balcony, watching me with lust still burning in his shadowy eyes, despite how many times he had me in the ruffled bed throughout the Quiet.
He extends his hand to me, fingers gripping a steamy cup of blue tealeaves. My favourite in these lands.
I wander over to him, feeling the touch of his gaze gliding all over me until I reach him. As I take the cup from him, he’s already hooked onto me—his arm slipping around my waist, bringing me to him, his head dipping to the nook of my neck where he ghosts his gentler kisses.
But my eyes are on the field I crane my neck to see. My cheek is smooshed against his hard bicep as I watch the constant stream of light dance over the field like a pearlescent river.
It’s early in the Warmth—the same time shifts here in these lands as back in the dark ones—and I feel the heat rising in the thickening air. It caresses my skin, soothing the Quiet’s leftover chill down my spine. I relax against the warmth, my body melting into Daein’s. His grip tightens, and I suspect he thinks it is him who relaxes me.
I don’t tell him otherwise.
Though I watch the glowflies, the way they hover above the thick and long blades of midnight blue grass, and don’t exactly fly off anywhere, my mind is elsewhere. It drifts off into the events of the First Wind before the Quiet: the ball, the carriage ride home, the rumours of the Wastelands, Elden’s early departure.
It’s all so much that whirls around my mind, but the tea certainly helps soothe me enough that I don’t get dizzy or feel the tension start to wind around the muscles beneath my skin.
Though, one of my thoughts deserves to be addressed. Outright. Aloud.
I loathe to question him about his protection of me, but I still ask, “Why did you strike her?” My voice is a gentle murmur, soft in the stagnant, warm air.
Against my near-limp body, I feel the sensation of muscles bolting up with tension like a ribbon winding the opposite way. Mouth on the crook of my neck, his breath pauses and holds for a beat.
“You haven’t done that in years,” I add, drawing my head back, untangling his face from my neck so that we are forced to look at each other.
Still, his eyes carry the storm of last Quiet, the news he was told that he thinks I know nothing of, the possible rumours that I do so hope are true, and yet am terrified of all the same. The Wasteland lights.
But right now, I steel my mind, forcing its focus on Ensley.
“It makes her resent me more,” I go on, unwavering under the stormcloud stare aimed down at me from a hardened face. A face so beautiful it makes me want to melt into a puddle of adoration and affection—and yet one that still haunts my dreams in terrible ways.
I might love him if I wasn’t so afraid of him.
Finally, he speaks, his voice cool and detached, considering me. “Did it upset you?”
