I’m disappointed to find it isn’t any of those things.
And how ridiculous is that? To know that I’m dead and not be saddened by the fact that I’ve left everyone I love behind. Knowing that there is nothing and no one waiting for me on the other side. There is just darkness cradling me, a mother with her babe. And what I wouldn’t give to see my own. To converse with her and learn who she was. To ask her what it might have looked like if things were different—if she and my father would have lived.
An ache takes root in my chest, but when I try to touch it, all I see is blinding white light. It fills my body as if I ammadeof it. The power of the sun, the moon, and the stars flows through my veins like my very blood, though the life it gives me is not that of any world.
This is the cost. It comes as a whisper, gentle in my ears and silky across my skin.And the price you must pay. The light within me pulses, warm and bright.This is the cost.
My awareness shifts to something in the distance, a different flickering light. It’s not quite a flame but something thinner. Something…golden.On instinct alone, I reach for it. Even as that voice trickles over me, commanding that I am the price to pay, I still reach.A golden thread. My fingers brush along it, plucking it like a stringed instrument. Instead of music, it glows brighter, matching the intensity of my own light. A thread… Atether.
It is the price you must pay, the voice whispers, deep and resonant.
But I don’t want to. My chest begins to burn, forcing a hiss through my teeth. I glow brighter, light seeping from my body and into the darkness that surrounds me. I clutch that golden tether, and a jolt of longing and love—suchdesperatelove—sears me from within, pushing more light out until it almost overtakes my vision. But there, in the center of it alland reaching out from my chest, is a second golden thread. It connects with the first, sending a cascade of warmth from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes.
The scent of autumn woods fills my lungs. Silver-speckled eyes flare open in my mind. In my ears, a heartbeat not my own echoes. The threads pull taut, and my back arches.Rhea…I know that voice—his voice. I would know it anywhere. The thread pulses, a connection just on the edge of forming, and then everything goes dark.
“Lady Rhea, are you awake?” A feminine voice rouses me this time, and though my eyes are closed, I know where I’ll be once more when I open them.Alive. I’malive, and that should be a good thing. Except all I feel is a great sense of loss, a mourning for something I don’t understand. It takes great effort to pry my eyelids apart, soft glowing light from a small chandelier coming into focus when I finally do. “There she is.”
Her sigh of relief draws my gaze to her, and though it takes a few moments for my groggy mind to catch up with who I’m seeing, eventually, it does.
“You might remember me. My name—”
“Erica,” I interrupt, earning a bright grin from her.
“That’s right. It is lovely to see you again, though I wish the circumstances were different.”
Her comment sobers me quickly, and I cast my gaze out to the room. Though the walls are painted a shade of white, the gray of the stone beneath peeks grimly through. A reminder of where I am.
“They’ve caught the man who hurt you,” Erica says, her fingers gently wrapping around mine and giving them a squeeze.
I nod, though I don’t feel any solace.You killed my brothers. My throat constricts, and screams echo in the back of my mind. “Will you help me sit up?”
Letting go of my hand, Erica eases me into a sitting position, and my head screams in protest at the movement. Fragmented memories surge as I look down at myself, the nightgown I had seen stained with my blood now replaced with one a light pink color. Only a slight tenderness remains beneath my ribs, signifying that my magic healed the worst of it. A thought crosses my mind, and I dive my hand beneath the blanket and the soft satin I’m wearing to the brand on my hip. My hopes fall flat when my eyes trace the rough lines still on the skin there for a few seconds before I push the nightgown down.
“The healers and I washed and changed you prior to the king visiting. Though he was unable to stay long, as rumor has it he is preparing to make a spectacle of the man who hurt you.”
Of course he is.
Only when Erica snorts do I realize I said the words out loud. She eyes me carefully, blue eyes piercing through me in a way that makes my skin burn, before she walks to a nearby pitcher of water and fills a glass for me. “I’m sorry,” I murmur between sips.
“Whatever for?” she asks, tucking a lock of her blonde hair behind her ear. She’s dressed in the same uniform that I last saw her in, the day after Alexi’s death. The memory is a visceral noose that I fight to loosen.
“Tienne was a lovely woman, and were it not for the king’s interest in me, she would still be here.” I had hardly allowed myself to think of Tienne—her death setting off the chain of events that ended in my capture.
Erica looks down at the bed, smoothing her hand over the wrinkled dark green comforter. “She was my best friend. The epitome of kind, but fiercely protective of those she cared about.I loved her very much.” I glance down and away from the grief that’s as evident on her as it was on me the last time she saw me. “But you do not bear the weight of her death, Lady Rhea. That stain belongs onhim, not you. You will release yourself of the pain of that burden. If not for yourself, then for Tienne. She would be outraged if she learned that you feel that way.”
I’m overwhelmed by the gentle sternness of her voice, and how it commands me to do something that I’m not sure that I can. So, like a coward, I bring the glass up to my lips and hide behind a drink of water.
“Now rest,” she says when I hand the glass back to her, and though the last thing I want is to lay in bed while my mind roams, I nod and sink lower, pulling the covers up to my chin. She ensures there is water close by before pausing at the side of the bed. “I always thought there was something different about him, you know,” she starts, tilting her head to the side. “And then he suddenly was asking for excuses to bring you things. ‘Do you think she would want a treat from the kitchens?’ he’d ask. ‘When was the last time she got anything other than supplies?’” She mimics a deep male voice, moving about the room as if it needs any sort of tidying. It doesn’t; in fact, I’m sure this space is the cleanest room I’ve ever been in. “Tienne suspected there might have been something going on, and she made sure to relay to him that if he hurt you, it would be the last thing he ever did.”
“Who are you talking about?”
She chuckles, pausing to look over her shoulder, her smile brighter than before. “Flynn. Or, should I say, His Highness, Prince Nox.”
The quirk of my lips is small. “He always told me the gifts were from you both. In fact, he even insinuated you were using him as an errand boy.”
“I imagine he wanted us as scapegoats if you decided you wanted nothing to do with him,” she says, facing me fully as she joins her hands in front of her. “Is he good to you?”
If you’re in pieces, I want every fucking one of them.
