Page 211 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“Tell you what?”

“What just happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

He tensed, his strong jaw ticking. “Thora.”

“Malik,” I said, righting my skirts. “Take us back.”

He stepped toward me, coming close—too close. I had to tip my head back to stare at him. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me tight against him. Hodr. I meant…Caelum. My whole body curled with flutters and warmth. “If I touch your back,” he said, running his other hand over my spine and then lifting a brow as if he expected something to happen. Something was happening, just not what he thought. “No? Hm, maybe if I touch you here.” His hand slipped on my arm before slowly gliding up my shoulder.

I swallow hard. “Malik.”

His fingers made their way through my hair and my whole body seized. “There. That.”

My eyes clenched shut and the air chilled and howled around me, bits of frost grazing my skin. “Please, please, please.”

“Woah, little bird,” he said, resting a hand on my cheek and everything felt lighter somehow, so I opened my eyes.

It was like a snap. Like someone ordered it to stop. “Do you use magic on me?”

He blinked a moment. “Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Oh, it works well.”

His mouth quirked up a little. “So I’ve heard.” He pulled back a little. “Will you not tell me?”

“No.”

“How about this? Let’s be friends, you and me. Friends tell one another everything, a silent oath of secrets. We both confess and we both never tell.”

“I’ve never had a friend before, how would I know that is how it works?”

“Let’s learn together.”

“What if you tell me a silly one?”

“I’ll make sure to tell you a good one, Thora.”

I swallowed. “You first.”

He sat down at the edge of the fountain, and I followed suit. Was he really going to trust me with a secret? Did he have to know my own so badly that he was willing to give up his own truth? What if I couldn’t keep it?

“When I was younger,” he started, “just after I’d bloomed my blessing, father found out I was more capable than most Empaths. In my sleep, I’d been able to call on the dead and we’d woken to an army of them waiting right outside my window. He’d never been prouder of me. He’d never been proud of me at all. I was the second son that his court had forced him to have, something he’d never even wanted. But he’d wanted me that day. And I knew shortly after why Kilian never liked the attention he’d given him. To be able to utilise those capabilities, I had to make friends with death. Know everything about it. Know it well. Know it before and after. So he locked me in a room with seven sick men, women, and children. For seven days. I had no medicine to give them, no bandages to wrap their bleeding wounds, he only gave enough water and food for me. I had no milk for the babes. For seven days, I watched and felt them die, one by one. I learned so much those seven days. That is how I became Eldritch Commander.”

I wasn’t breathing. I couldn’t breathe at all.

“Your turn,” he said, brushing it off with one of his grins.

“Back then.” I swallowed hard before continuing, “A priest called Murdoc would lock us up in a tower and…and—” My hands shook and I locked them together on my lap. Not even Eren knew this. “He would do things to us, like beat or flog us, and that was on a good day. He liked to use Crafter magic on us too. Liquid fire and elixirs of the same. I…I was much younger than Snow and Eren. It was thrice as easy for me to bruise and thrice as hard to heal. Snow would take my place. In the beginning it only was a couple of times, but then I stopped going all together—she had permanently taken my spot. One day, Snow didn’t return after Murdoc had come down from the tower, so Eren and I went up to look for her.”

“When we entered the tower,” I went on, hiding my shaking hands under my thighs, “Snow had climbed up on the balcony and was swaying back and forth on the ledge. Blood, so much blood. There was so much of it everywhere. She was bleeding everywhere. Her neck was marked, her face, her arms. There wasn’t a place in her body without a wound. She wouldn’t come down from there, no matter how much we called for her to. I think she didn’t want to come down. There was no more of my sister left that day, she was so given up. I begged and yelled for her to come down. But then she did turn. With a bright grin on her face when she said my name and came down to hug me, as if nothing had happened. I know if we had come any later, she would have…jumped. The thought of any height makes me sick.” Thick tears rolled down my face and I wiped them with the back of my hand. “It’s pretty stupid, isn’t it?”

When I turned to face him, I found his eyes already on me, they were completely black. There was something cold in them. Icy cold, like death. His chest rose at a terrifying pace, all too controlled as if he was preparing to hunt prey.

“Malik?”

“And the hair?”