Then she just lay there, hollow and spent, watching the light change.
The sun crept across the floor, marking hours she couldn't feel. Orange to red to purple to gone. The room fell into darkness, and she didn't move to light a candle. The dark feltappropriate.
Through the wall, she heard Eliam's door open. Voices—his and Thaine's. She couldn't make out words, just tones. Eliam sounded irritated. Impatient. The voice of a king dealing with tedious matters he didn't understand.
Was she a tedious matter now?
Her chest ached where the warmth used to live. Not because it was gone—that absence she'd grown used to. But because it was so close, just beyond the wall, inside someone who didn't want her anymore. Who didn't even know to want her.
The door to her room opened quietly. She didn't look up.
"Oh, child." Síocháin's voice, those strange musical tones. "Thaine told me."
The bed dipped as the fae woman sat beside her. Those impossible fingers smoothed her tangled hair back from her face.
"He doesn't remember anything," Briar said into the pillow. "Not the bargain. Not the marking. Not—" Her voice broke. "Not any of it."
"The mind is a strange thing," Síocháin said, continuing to stroke her hair. "Especially when magic tears it apart and puts it back together. The reunification saved his life, but perhaps it cost him something else."
"Everything. It cost him everything."
"No. It cost you everything. He doesn't know what he's lost."
The distinction made it worse. Briar turned her face deeper into the pillow, fresh tears coming though she'd thought she had none left.
"You must be strong," Síocháin said gently. "The court needs—"
"I can't." The words came out muffled but firm. "I can't be strong anymore. I've been strong through everything. Through the bargain, through the hunt, through Malus, through watching Arion die. I can't."
Síocháin was quiet for a long moment. Her fingers never stopped their gentle motion through Briar's hair.
"Then don't," she said finally. "Tonight, you grieve. Tomorrow, we see what comes."
"What if he never remembers?"
"Then you decide if you can live with that. If you can stay here, seeing him every day, being nothing to him. Or if you leave."
Leave. The word sat heavy in the darkness. Leave the Forest Court. Leave Eliam. Go back to the human world where she belonged.
"My sister," Briar said suddenly, remembering. "The bargain. If he doesn't remember it, is it still valid? Is Allegra still healed?"
"Magic doesn't require memory to function. The bargain was made. The price was paid. Your sister remains whole."
Small comfort, but comfort nonetheless. At least her sacrifice hadn't been entirely erased.
Through the wall, she heard Eliam's footsteps again. Pacing. He'd always paced when something bothered him, though he probably didn't remember that about himself either.
"Is everything lost?" Briar asked into the darkness.
Síocháin's fingers stilled in her hair. "I don't know, child. I truly don't know."
The honesty was worse than false comfort would have been. Briar closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn't come. She just lay there, listening to the king she loved pace in the room next door, a stranger wearing the face of someone who'd once wanted her.
The hours stretched toward dawn, and still she didn't sleep. She just existed, suspended between what was and what could never be again.
Day flowed into day and Briar found herself wandering halls that had once felt alien and now felt empty of anything but pain and sorrow. She wasn’t sure how she ended up there, but the conservatory was exactly as she remembered.
Glass walls reached toward a winter sky, trapping warmth that had no right to exist in this season. The fountain still bubbled its too-dark water. The vines still reached for anyone who passed, desperate and hungry. And the roses—the roses still grew on the pillar, black-thorned and beautiful.
