“I promise, it’s the last time,” he had sworn.
“You said that last month,” she had whispered.
“Drae, please.” His hand wrapped around her cheek, thumb stroking her lips. “You know I love you.” His lips kissed her hands, and her heart fell for the promise he whispered.
Aydra nearly vomited in the street as the angst of the memory making her stomach knot. The flash of his ashen face from two days before entered her mind, and she forced herself to straighten.
Rhaif turned away from her then and pushed his hands behind his back, and Aydra was glad she had not allowed such a memory to rest in her features.
“What about these?” he asked with an upwards nod towards a bouquet of burgundy flowers.
Aydra sighed as she paid for the stem in her hand, and then she turned to see the flowers he was looking at. “Whatever you want, Rhaif,” she said, feeling sadness fill her core. “I’m sure it will be beautiful whatever you choose.”
The ache stayed in her stomach throughout the day. Each time he would try and get her to speak with him normally, she found herself unable, and when night came, she did not join he and her siblings at supper.
She bid Lex goodnight, urging her to look after Nyssa the rest of the night instead of herself, and she then retired to the silence of her bedroom. She had not seen Draven or Balandria since the morning, not even a glimpse of them in the hall.
Being around Rhaif for so long that day and having to act as though they were as they’d always been in front of people had been overwhelming on her core. She’d kept her facade, pushed her pain to the back of her mind, forced herself to smile in front of he and their people.
So when the water of her bath wrapped around her that night, her heart broke, and she wept into the warmth of it.
Her core emptied to a numbing she’d never wanted to feel again, and soon she fell asleep in the water.
The dreams that filled her were of her own past.
The first being the day after Dorian and Nyssa were marked, together—two months before Rhaif had been given his own marking and fire.
“She doesn’t mean it,” Aydra managed as they stood atop the cliff they liked to go to.
Rhaif’s brows narrowed. “Doesn’t she?”
The bow sagged in her extended arms, and she stared sideways at him. “Rhaif—”
“Drae, she marked our youngers before me,” he cut her off. “Both of them. Together.”
She could see the frustration in his face, his tense arms as he tugged at his hair, pacing back and forth at the edge of the cliff. She began to reach for him, but he jerked away from her, his hands in the air.
“You don’t understand,” he argued. “You’ve been her favorite since we were children. You’ve not had to work as hard as I, just to in turn be completely ignored. You don’t know what it is like to be humiliated in front of your own kingdom. To watch as your eight-year-old brother and sister are given a surname and powers before you are. Do you know what Vasilis said to me this morning?”
Aydra swallowed hard, her heart bleeding for him. “I was there,” she managed.
Rhaif’s hands ran through his hair, and he stopped abruptly, pausing at the edge of the cliff. Aydra sighed and sat the bow on the ground. She stepped up behind him and placed a soft hand on his shoulder. “Rhaif—”
—He seized her neck in his hand.
She struggled, slapping his taut arm beneath her hands, bewildered by the sudden turn in his attitude. “Rhaif, I can’t breathe—”
The darkness in his wide eyes poured through her.
“What is it you have that I do not?” he said in a lower voice than she’d ever heard of him, his head tilting just sideways. “You’re not special. Simply because you beat the Venari child in combat, you’re somehow more worthy of her love than I?”
Her breath wouldn’t catch. She dug her fingers into his arm. “Rhaif, please—”
But her feet were lifted off the ground.
“Look at you—”
Her eyes began to droop.
