Page 103 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Nia,” my friend said coldly.

Nesrin looked deliciously uncomfortable. “You never liked that nickname when we were younger.”

Nia leaned back. “You never liked me much when we were younger, it is beyond me how you would know such a thing as what I liked or didn’t.”

Nesrin glanced at Kilian again. “We were young…Nia. Very young and our situation was a very difficult one.”

“For you. Difficult for you.”

“For the both of us.” She reached for Nia’s hand across the table, and I stabbed the butter knife on the table, quarter of an inch from her finger, stopping her.

I gave her terrified face a smile. “Do that again, please. I very much so would like to hear what sounds you make in pain. How that face will twist when I pull each bone out of your skin and end all our collective woes with a grand symphony of screams. I know how to orchestrate just the perfect piece.”

She pulled her hand away and almost imploringly looked at Kilian whose attention was entirely focused on my friend. “You will have to.” Nesrin swallowed hard. “You will have to forgive me and help us move forward.”

Nia tilted her head to the side, taking her time to answer. She nodded after a while and Nesrin perked in her seat. “No, I don’t think I will.”

I smiled while Nesrin’s face fell. “You are being childish,” she bit out with a sneer.

“Nes, Nes,” I crooned, waving my knife in the air.

She scoffed and turned to my friend with a threatening stare. It was so patronising it almost made me want to carve each of her muscles out by hand. “What, will you have her kill me like she did with our father?”

The amount of energy I used to hold back gave me a headache. But for Nia’s sake I endured.

Nia leaned forward on the table. “No. I am entirely capable of doing so myself. But, sister,” she said calmly, “be mindful. I don’t kill. I poison. I think I like seeing little flowers wilting a thorn.”

Nesrin flinched a little—she would have flinched a lot more if she knew Nia the way I did—if she knew what my friend was capable of. “Is that a threat?”

Nia nodded. “It is. I’d prefer that you be aware of what happens the next time you approach me. I well left you in the past, don’t cross my present again. Especially going as far as to seek me.”

Nesrin pushed out of her seat and made to leave before Kilian called out, “Councillor.”

The woman turned with a bright smile on her face like she’d not been part of the previous conversation. “Yes, Kilian.”

Kilian? Is that what all members of his court addressed him?

His look was grave, a stoic mask he always wore around others. “Don’t interrupt me and my family having lunch or dinner and breakfast at that. It is a precious time. Especially when none of your interruption is a matter of emergency or concerning our kingdom's state of affairs.”

Family. The word made me stop chewing and look at him.

She gaped at him, reddening to the tip of her ears. “Apologies, it wasn’t my intention.”

“I wish it not be your intention for the sake of your future in my court, Councillor,” Kilian said, dismissing her.

A small smile pulled on the corner of my mouth when Nesrin retreated with unshed tears in her eyes.

The moment she was out of earshot and sight, Nia turned to Kilian with a small bow of her head. “Thank you.”

I linked an arm around her neck and kissed her cheek repeatedly till she was fighting me off. “Nia Drava,” I said, “indeed likes to poison.”

She scoffed and covered her face with her hands. “Let’s not celebrate the fact that I acted as a completely terrible person.”

“That you acted as I would have?” I asked, chewing the delicious olive bread. Not offended. I liked how I acted. It was liberating. This bread, gods, it was good.

“With less stab wounds and overall bloodiness of it all,” Mal mumbled around a mouthful of food.

She shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like that. Perhaps she was right, we were just children.”