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“I thought it a blessing… at first.” He sighed. “I was there when he was born, you know, standing guard outside. He came out of his mother without a single cry, the entire chamber filled with nothing but soft croons. When he was a little over a month old, he smiled for the first time. At four months, his laughs filled the Winged Keep with pure joy.”
A flutter hushed through my chest, similar to the one at the cliff, when Malyr had told me how he’d tried to steal honey from the larders, telling me about a time when he’d been so different from what he was now. I stroked over his mouth once more, over those severe lips I’d rarely seen smile and never laugh.
“He was a jolly little boy, but it all changed the day his gift revealed itself,” Asker said. “That very first night, I woke to Malyr’s hand shaking me awake. His shadows had attacked him, but ultimately killed his dog. So afraid was he of his king father’s reaction, he made me promise not to tell. And so, I buried the dog. He had run away, we agreed we would simply say, and speak of it no more.”
A piece chipped off my heart at the thought of this little jolly boy having lost his beloved pet to his own shadows. “A curse, then.”
“One I witnessed taking its toll on him. With each passing day, that jolly boy faded under the weight of his shadows. He no longer laughed, and he rarely smiled. He barely played anymore, hiding himself away between books, much to his father’s displeasure.” A deep, sorrowful frown. “Every morning, he brought one of his feathers to the shrine at the Winged Keep in offering. ‘Please make my mate a void,’ he prayed. ‘My very own void, who will relieve me of my shadows.’”
“Let me pour my shadows into your void,”Malyr’s words whispered through my memory to the sinking sensation of my heart.“I just want to siphon into you.”
He’d struggled under the weight of this curse, hadn’t he? Had desperately sought relief in my void, only for me to deny him. Twice. Maybe more.
“For an entire summer, that boy could not fly properly because he had plucked his ravens bare,” Asker continued. “Utterly, wretchedly, unforgivably selfish, his father had scolded him, such a wish was.”
My heart gave a strange thud.
“I have three reasons,”Malyr had told me when I’d accused him of solely wanting to bond with me to strengthen his power,“all utterly, wretchedly, unforgivably selfish.”
If his amplified power was one of them, and finding relief from his shadows the other… Then what was the third? Should I dare wonder?
“His shadows grew stronger,” Asker said. “Malyr grew… angrier, at times falling into fits of destructive, deadly rage whenever he could contain his shadows no more, his eyes… pitch black.”
Pitch black.
My throat narrowed at the terrifying memory of that familiar sight. The day Malyr had ripped through my maidenhead, when he’d found me kissing Sebian, behind the waterfall… Each time, those shadow-infested eyes had foreboded his most atrocious acts.
“They are… vicious beings, eating him from the inside.” Asker ran a palm over his braid, his lips pinching until they paled for a moment. “I cannot imagine what it must feel like to carry this plight for nearly a lifetime, only for it to… strip you off your agency, leaving you behind to deal with consequences not entirely of your making.”
It caused a twinge in my chest, the way I could relate to having no agency, to being pushed and pulled at the mercy of another entity. “I had no idea.”
“Few do,” Asker replied, his voice gravelly with a depth of emotion he seldom revealed. “For the sake of his family and the kingdom, he carried his burden quietly. Much is expected of an heir… even a spare.”
“It was an accident, was it not? The blast at Valtaris?”
“When your father’s—pardon me—whenLord Brisden’scatapult struck, it buried Princess Naya under rocks and debris. Malyr was… disoriented, having escaped death by mere inches. I still remember how he lifted the rock off her shattered skull, the way he trembled… That was when it happened.” Hetsked.“So much death and misery in one day, causing a lifetime of grief and shame.”
My heart clenched painfully, understanding intertwining with my disdain for Malyr, a complex tangle of emotions too knotted for me to unravel. Maybe he was not the monster I’d made him out to be, but its prey.
“This will restore your strength in no time,” Marla said as she entered the tent, crossing toward our nest of shadowcloth with a steaming wooden cup between her palms. She reached it me. “Drink this. Sebian searched the forests for hours in the dark to find what we needed.”
“Thank you.” I took the mug, letting the sweet broth-like mixture with hints of honey run down my parched throat, emptying it swiftly. “What of Malyr?”
She knelt beside Asker, who immediately took her hand into his. “We took care of his wounds the best we could, but… there is only one who can rid him of the shadows that still infest his organs.”
Nodding, I put down the mug and gave a tug on his black tunic. Shadows veined down along his throat, darkening where they spread across his chest, turning nearly black where they disappeared behind fabric. On his face, however, where I’d touched him, they’d faded nearly completely.
“We have to get rid of the fabric,” I said. “Help me undress him.”
When Marla made quick work of peeling Malyr out of his clothes, I focused on my own, undoing the ties on the front of my dress. If skin against skin was what we needed here, then so be it. Malyr and I had done things together in the past far more outrageous than that.
The moment I shoved my dress down, Asker shot to his feet, spun around, and strode off. “I will stand guard outside.”
“Always so proper, my Asker,” Marla said with a grin, then pulled the tunic out from underneath Malyr, only for something reddish blue to fall from the fabric’s folds.
I lowered myself against Malyr, my chest pressing against his, and pinched the thing between my fingers. “What’s this? A… bracelet?”
It had to be with the way several strands of blue silk ribbon had been braided into a loop, the ends fashioned with black clasps. Shards ofaerymeldangled from it, catching the glint of the flames from the nearby fire basket. It was beautiful, even though stains that could only be blood speckled the fabric.
