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“Or mayhap it’s not verse,” I ventured again. “Then perhaps something with lyrics.”
At that, she surged back into motion and continued working on the draft.
Very well. Some type of song hidden within an image.
I murmured, “My son has taught me that some words are meant only for the ones who understand them, for the people who can protect such words from the wrong eyes. Likewise, certain artworks have the same fate.”
Once more, the woman stopped. Her head lifted a fraction to listen.
I softened my tone. “It appears we each have tales to keep safe.”
Perhaps it was because I hadn’t asked, hadn’t pushed her to explain the drawing and corresponding lyrics, nor to describe what they meant. But after a moment’s indecision, the female scooted backward, scarcely an inch but enough for me and Briar to view the image closer.
We accepted the invitation and craned our necks. “Transcendent,” I mused. “In Spring, we believe artists don’t merely choose their creations. Rather, the creation chooses the artist. We become its fateful steward, entrusted with its mysteries.” My lips slanted. “I find it a rather fetching thought.”
The young woman swallowed, then her gaze tipped in our direction. Through that knotted curtain of hair, vitality brimmed in her features, a passionate and almost fanciful temperament. Her expression gripped me like an ocean current—fierce, vigorous, and with a depth one couldn’t see unless they dared to go further.
She mouthed something. Briar frowned and exchanged a puzzled glance with me before realization hit. The woman couldn’t speak.
Understanding our inability to read her mouth, the female swiped her drawing from the dirt pile, clearing out the lines and then writing on the surface. I hunkered next to Briar as we scanned the letters.
You’re back.
Briar regarded the woman. “Yes,” she whispered. “I have returned.”
“We’re both here for you,” I murmured. “If you’ll allow it.”
After a tense moment, the woman’s lips tilted. The motion drew my attention to her neck, where a sequence of black sunburst tattoos encircled the skin like a collar. Briar recognized them at the same time, her furrowed brow indicating she hadn’t noticed these markings before, likely because the woman had kept to the shadows until now.
The captive patted her chest. Then she mouthed the next word slowly, doing so a few times until we comprehended.“Flare.”
Flare. That was her name.
In the shadows, I inclined my head. “Poet, at your service.”
The princess rested her palm on her own breast. “I’m Briar.”
One of the guards stomped closer, his leery gaze tracking Flare’s movements, as if observing a feral animal. His approach snipped the moment in half like a cord. The woman’s grin dropped, her eyes threw fire his way, and the faintest sound of a growl curled from her throat. Turning back to the dirt pile, Flare withdrew into herself.
Fucking interloper. Briar and I glowered at the numbskull with such menace that he retreated, presumably out of range from her scowl and my tongue.
Good luck with that. Moreover, if he or any other brutes fucked with this woman—with any born soul—we would end them.
That night, I found the princess standing at her balcony, overlooking the panorama of harvest fields. Plant boxes overflowing with cattails projected from the rim, the stems swaying in the breeze.
Because of what she’d seen down there, Briar’s muscles strained beneath her pleated blouse, which was wrinkled and haphazardly tucked into a wide, belted skirt. Her fingers gripped the ledge, guilt and sorrow emanating off her like static.
Sauntering behind Briar in an open shirt, loose pants, and bare feet, I corded my arms around her middle. Brushing my lips over her crown, I spoke into her hair. “Let go.”
At once, the princess’s body unraveled. With a bereaved sigh, she twisted and fell into me, wringing herself around my waist. I pulled her against my chest, our heartbeats thumping with rage. Like this, I held her for an eternity, until both of us could breathe again.
And after that first day back, time passed with the force of a windstorm. Apart from fucking between dusk and dawn, soaking up precious hours with Nicu and the queen, and visiting born souls in the dungeon, the steadfast princess and cunning jester resumed their performance from before her banishment. Only now we changed course, powering through to restore the princess’s title, recoup widespread acclaim, win the court’s endorsement, and unravel the truth behind Rhys’s actions on the night I’d tried to rotisserie him.
At every assembly and dinner, we braved the people’s scrutiny, aiming to flip their intolerances inside-out by means of Briar’s intelligence and my wit. Not to mention, my sex appeal. Putting it mildly, it had worked in the past. Attraction often did, however much people denied it.
We added Reaper’s Fest, weapon training with Aire and his troops, the treatment of born souls, and raising a son to the ever-growing mountain of entanglements. Unspooling a black widow’s web would have been simpler, were Briar and I not equipped for the magnitude of intricacies that came at us daily. Half of which were self-inflicted, since we weren’t about to stop pushing buttons, albeit tactfully and gradually.
At night, once my son was tucked in, Briar and I would regroup alone to whisper tactics, drawbacks, and advantages.
