Page 210 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Your sister would probably say the same.”

I laughed. “Then you know nothing of Snow. She’d rather you knew just how burning red her anger is. Or how…dark her hate is. It would terrify a person or two. It was terrifying to most back then.”

“Hate is not dark.”

“What is it then?”

“Love.”

“Odd.”

“It is dark for a reason,” he said, picking the end of a long hair strand that had blanketed the stool rest. I tensed, my whole body going taunt while phantom memories tugged me back to moments I wished to forget. “Love is never just one emotion. It is lust, jealousy, anger, care, happiness and when you blend so much colour on a palette, what do you get?”

My attention is entirely too focused on his finger twirling my hair and barely managed to murmur, “Something dark.”

He nodded, looking up from my hair to my eyes. “Quite right, little bird. Something dark.”

Noting his distraction, I yanked my hair out of his touch. “Don’t call me that.”

He cast a side glance at me. “It suits you.”

I'm neither little nor a bird. But what would I know, I hadn’t had a single decent friendship or relationship with another human being in forever—or maybe never? The bare thought of someone breathing near me made breathing difficult.

“Where did you fly off to?” Malik asked.

My attention caught on my sister and Kilian again. He had his forehead rested on hers as they swayed slowly in a circle.

Malik startled me again when he rested a single finger between my brows. “Why the frown?” He followed my line of sight. “Ah. They’d make a monk frown, too.”

“Malik.” His name shivered in my lips and the man turned so close to my face, I could tell apart each of his lashes, the split of umber and russet in his irises, how he smelled like misty mornings and roses.

His brows bunched together and he regarded my face with curiosity. “You’re redder than a tomato.”

“You’re too close.” I pushed away from him only to almost slip from the edge of the stool.

Malik hooked an arm around my waist, pulling me back on the seat before pushing himself to the other end of it. “Why did you frown?” he asked, pointing to my sister and his brother.

It felt comfortable to confess because I told him the truth, “I’ve seen much of my sister. Never that. I always trailed after her like a tail she never wanted. She faked smiles and laughter, sometimes care, too. And love. Not because she didn’t care or love us, but because she didn’t know how.” I feel a tear slide down my cheek again. “I’m thankful and regretful at the same time.” But I was angry, too. Angry at the world for denying me my peace. At my father. At my uncle who died before I could kill him. My mother who I couldn’t even remember. I was angry. So angry at the world that had moved on when mine had stopped.

Pushing from the table, I stood and hurried outside before I’d blister the place with ice. The tavern was inconveniently overlooking a large cliff falling miles downwards and my insides churned while my head spun with panic. Immediately, I turned my back to the height, facing the tall mountainside that rose so high up it disappeared among clouds. And he stood there. Hands on his pockets, blinking slowly.

I waited to read the judgement. Waited to see him mock me. Yet he didn’t do anything, just watched me as I watched him.

“You don’t like heights, do you?” he said, closing the distance between us while I stepped back. He appeared in front of me in a blink and clasped my shoulders, anchoring me in place. “Why do you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Can we please move away from the cliff? Please?”

One moment we stood before the tavern, the next between a cluster of grey stone buildings. Drava was melancholic at night. If you shut your eyes, you could hear the distant waves crash against rock. Streets were empty besides elderly men playing chess in the candle-lit night. Their laughter and cheer warmed my heart and hearing them speak the language I’d long forgotten broke it altogether. We reached a fountain twirling for feet upward, sputtering water around in the shape of a rose. The breeze carried a sense of blue too. And just like that, my sight blurred and tears burned trails over my cold cheeks.

Malik rested a hand on my back in comfort, but the moment it touched my hair, my breathing seized.

I froze. Panic crawling like hot coals over me.

“Thora?” Malik asked carefully.

I pushed back from him, wiping my eyes with the corner of my sleeve. “Shall we go back?”

“Will you not tell me?”