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I wanted to forgive her even that.
Because she was beautiful beyond words, rousing a reaction in my body that made me feel dirty, filthy, reminding me of how tainted I was. So unlike her. She was but a child, flat-chested and scrawny, not a single sway of a feminine curve in sight. So why did I keep staring?
“Oh child, what are you doing? Your hair. Your hair!” the woman chasing after her shouted, trying to grab the girl but failing each time she slinked away. “Put those ribbons back in this instance!”
“No! I hate it pinned back and want it open! Look, Risa! Up there!” She pointed at a bird soaring in the sky above her, its flight seeming to mirror the girl’s dance. “You see how fast that white seagull is?”
My ears pricked at something in the tone of her voice, and I looked up and over at the sky that hung over the bay. Not a seagull… a white dove.
Like her.
“Oh, child, if you as much as cut your toe on a seashell, your mother will get a megrim over it. Back to the castle with you, right—oh no, don’t you go running away from me! Your mother does not permit you to run!” The woman struggled behind the girl toward the rocky path that led up here. “Galantia!”
That name wafted upward from the beach, searing into my consciousness like a branding iron, burning through it like a fever dream, the four syllables a death knell to the strange enchantment that had ensnared me.
Galantia.
Brisden’s daughter.
I’d heard her name in the dungeons, and that realization crashed into me like a tidal wave, the icy shock of it stealing my breath, replacing the odd heat with a raw, scraping coldness. The dichotomy was jarring, a violent clash between the serene vision of her and the nightmarish echo of her name. How could the goddess show me such a mesmerizing creature bearing the name of my personal demon?
She’s a Brisden.
The moment shattered at the mere thought of that name, the shards of a broken illusion biting deep, sowing the seeds of an ire that quickly bloomed into ferocious loathing. A hate I hadn’t known before ignited within me, fueling my loathing for this girl. For how she had frolicked and thrived mere feet from me while I had repeatedly been used, spoiled, broken beyond repair.
My gaze followed Galantia’s sprightly figure as she danced away from the lapping waves, taking a meandering path that led her straight toward me. My pulse thrummed with predatory anticipation. With hope that the girl might wander close enough for me to act on the icy fury that gnawed at my heart.
“Malyr, we need to go.” Lorn’s voice was a desperate whisper, but her plea fell on deaf ears. “Someone’s coming.”
Yes.
Shewas coming.
To me.
The world around me narrowed down to the singular path Galantia seemed to be drawn toward, a little white dove for prey that was growing closer with every blissfully ignorant step she took. I could almost feel the fragile weight of her skull in my hands, the imagined snap a cathartic symphony playing in my tormented mind.
I wanted to kill her!
A dark satisfaction stirred within me as I nestled deeper into the underbrush, pressing my sweat-damp body barely covered in rags against the trunk of a birch, whispering to myself, “Come to me… Just one more step, and I’ll break your fucking neck, little white dove.”
I stood quietly, poised on the knife’s edge, the girl’s life hanging by a thread, my hands aching to sever it where my shadows had grown too weak to do it. The sweetness of her laughter rang through the air, a bitter taunt in my ears, fueling the consuming need for revenge. Galantia of House Brisden would pay for the sins of her father. A Khysal would be her demise.
The world seemed to slow, suspended in a paradoxical moment where time was both irrelevant and everything. Galantia was close, so close I could reach out and touch her if I chose to. I could hear her breathing, feel the vibrations of her joy as they seeped into the ground beneath my feet.
My arm stretched out.
My balance shifted.
“Oh,” she said and knelt by a patch of clover, her back now turned on me, plucking a lonely white flower. “A pretty daisy like you shouldn’t be all alone out here. You’ll like my room.”
“Galantia!” the woman shouted from somewhere nearby, fueling my hate. “The hounds are out. We have to get back before your father finds us here!”
Oh, he would find his daughter… Would find her little body unmoving on the ground, her head strangely angled, her eyes desolate.
I leaned forward.
I lifted my arm.
