Page 243 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“It is called crying.”

She shook her tiny head and lowered to press her palm to my chest. “Here.”

“I don’t want it to melt,” I whispered. I steeled it to ice myself with the purpose of never melting.

“You were never the Queen of Ice, you’re the Queen of Skies.” She flew close to my face again, resting her palm on my forehead. “They are rainy and stormy, blue and black and violet and orange, they thunder and cluster in soft white clouds. They pour out snow, but they never freeze.”

“You’re awfully opinionated for such a wee thing.”

“You are big, yet stupid.”

I sneered at her and she giggled.

The spirits gasped and then fluttered nervously around me.

“It’s concerning,” Mal said, coming from behind me. “Befriending forest folk at your old age.” He came and sat cross legged before me. A black rose in his hand.

Mal had signed off the attack.

Mal.

Not Kilian.

He’d done it to protect his brother. His young brother.

Mal had been a child.

But so had I. Since when did I have a moral compass? All I wanted was my justice. I’d fought so hard for it. I’d lost nights of sleep and days with my loved ones to plan my revenge. This was not how it was meant to go.

“Is that for me?” I asked, extending a hand to him.

“They were created for you,” he said, handing me the flower and suddenly the delicate thing weighed the size of a brick. “He had a Hanai Aura create a seed with what he remembered of you—with what your brother had told him of you, what he’d studied, what he’d heard. All that he could gather. Kilian created the scent of the flower from what you reminded him of. The sun, the moon, the stars. Mostly everything that shone. And then made the colour black because it was what makes shine—the night inside you that made it all glow. My mother told me that a few weeks ago when she was in one of her…moments—I never knew. Perhaps if I did, I wouldn’t have found it so odd how much he admired them. If I had known how much he lost that day I would have never kept it from you.”

I stared at the flower, frozen at his words. It couldn’t be possible for one to feel like that for another. Not for me at least. Not for what I was. Yet…he’d felt all of that and still lied to me. He was going to let me kill him. He would have let me kill him to protect his brother.

“I don’t think I would have killed you, Mal,” I confessed. “But I would have found a way to hurt you. Perhaps I already have.”

“I did it, Snow.”

“Your brother did.”

His face morphed. “Snow,” he called with quiet terror. “Please.”

“I know no mercy, Princeling. And I will take what I am owed. From your brother. And eventually all of your people.”

Nothing had registered today. Nothing I’d done or said—I don’t know if I’d even done or said anything at all. All that had tried to talk to me had backed away eventually and left me alone with my tremulous thoughts. Thoughts that had always been sturdy. Thoughts that I’d carried for thirteen years and filled me with hope—hope that I’d get my justice one day.

It hadn't been him.

And in a perfect world where I was not forged with fire and violence, I would have gotten my happiness. In that perfect little world where he’d never been the man I’d sworn to kill, I would have perhaps loved him as he loved me. But my story never began with ‘there was a happy, little princess’. The princess was a villain. And as all villains do, I, too, would meet my villainous end. And I'd make sure that it was glorious. For the sake of the girl who’d been kept alive for thirteen years with the promise of retaliation.

There was one last thing that tethered the two of us together. Perhaps the last thing. And perhaps for the last time, I walked the Amaris castle corridors to his room—our room. Only to find it empty.

The candlelight on his desk was dying and flickering on the last bit of wax, a patch of ink had dried on a document he had been signing and his jacket hung on his desk chair neatly as he always left it.

He had left in a hurry. And my only prayer was that he was alright.

I kneeled before the jacket, running a finger over the dark velvet before I gathered the fabric and brought it to my face. It smelled like him still.