Kinlear Laroux
When she wrote him back, it was beautiful.
Brilliant enough that he carried the letter with him on his hardest days.
Kinny,
I think everyone feels that way at one point or another. It’s what we choose to do with our time in the shadows, and who we spend it with, that brings us one step closer to the light of day.
Life is short, and we’re not promised tomorrow, so why should we have to wait for the sun to shine before we get our chance to live?
If you’re a shadow, I’m a shadow, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So, dance, Kinlear Laroux.
Dance in the darkness with me.
-Soraya
Time moved on.
And in his dreams, he still died.
But he didn’t fear the monster near as much. Not like he had as a child. Their game of chase became a song, a dance, a pattern Kinlear knew to always remain true.
He slept...he died.
He woke, and he was a spare prince again, with a cane in one hand and a vial upon his neck.Thatlittle treasure had been the most anticlimactic birthday present he’d ever received.
Medicine.
Winterwine would have been better, for at least it made things more fun.
Still, the vial was his only defense against the incessant glass that grated his lungs. He carried it with him even on the good days, when he felt like things were better. When he had the tiniest glimmer of hope that maybe...he’d been healed.
It was a day like today. A day when--
Splat.
Kinlear looked to his shoulder and frowned.
“Lovely,” he said to no one. A bird had justshaton his shoulder. “Justlovely, you little winged bastard.”
A tiny finch landed on the bench beside him, as if it were happy to take the credit.
His mother’s enormous greenhouse was bursting at the seams with the tiny birds. It made sense, for Touvre was the safest place to be, in all Lordach.
Flowers and fruit trees filled the entire dome with the sweet smell of spring. Realmists walked about in beautiful, stitched garb in teals and pale peaches and delicate, cloudless sky-blue, tending to the plants. A far cry from the stark whiteness of the north.
Here, it was easy to forget about every threat. Every beat of war.
Shadow wolves couldn’t reach them in this place...at least not yet.
Touvre wassoft.Delicate.
Safe.
But Kinlear saw his mother’s home for what it truly was:
