A roar of rage and betrayal ripped from her throat. “You dare?” Her voice shook. The glass window panes rattled. “You dare claim what is MINE?”
Autumn and Dilys turned to face her in shocked surprise.
Autumn held out a hand. “Summer... wait! Wait!”
But it was too late. The Rose on Summer’s wrist went white hot and flames licked at the edges of her vision. Her barriers shredded as magic held long-dormant erupted with cataclysmic fury.
Autumn’s eyes widened, then turned blood red as every tiny blood vessel in her eyes burst. Her mouth opened on a strangled scream as her body began to convulse. And all that gorgeous famously red hair turned to flame of almost the exact color.
Gabriella came awake with a cry, skin hot, heart pounding, her body aching with unsatisfied need so sharp it was a physical pain.
The distinctive smell of smoldering fabric made her swear and leap to her feet. She ripped the sheet from her bed and plunged it into the basin of water she’d left by her bedside for just that purpose. When the immediate threat of fire was gone, she held up the sodden sheet and regarded with grim dismay the charred marks that, when wadded together, formed the unmistakable shape of her hands clenched tight around the linen.
Swearing to herself, Summer folded the wet, scorched sheet and stuffed it the bag she was using to collect scraps of fabric and trim materials for her school’s costumed history projects. This was the second time this week that she’d set fire to her bed while dreaming dreams that had become both increasingly erotic and increasingly violent, and while her maid, Amaryllis, had believed Summer’s story about accidentally dropping a lit candle on the first burnt sheet, she was unlikely to believe the same excuse a second time.
Gabriella grabbed a fresh topsheet she’d pilfered from the laundry yesterday and began quickly remaking her bed to hide the evidence of her accidental flame.
“Damn it. Damn it. Damn it,” she muttered as she worked.
In the ten days since the Calbernans’ arrival, she’d successfully managed to keep her power under control during the day, but her barriers were clearly no longer strong enough to keep her magic in check while she slept. And it wasn’t just burnt sheets Gabriella was worried about. Her sisters—Autumn, in particular—had died numerous times in numerous gruesome ways in her dreams. It didn’t take much analysis to figure out why. All this week, Dilys Merimydion had begun to show a marked preference for Autumn’s company. Summer’s subconscious clearly considered Autumn a threat in need of elimination.
Afraid of manifesting that violence in real life, Gabriella had taken to avoiding Spring and Autumn as well as Dilys, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by her sisters. They weren’t at all happy about it, but their concern and dismay only unsettled her further and made her avoid them even more.
Summer’s plan to expose Dilys’s use of Persuasive gifts—and thereby eliminate him from her and her sisters’ lives—had come to nothing. The enormous wagonload of books and papers Uncle Clarence had sent from Seahaven’s royal archives contained nothing that even hinted at Calbernans’ ability to manipulate minds. And although Uncle Clarence had sent Summer a private eagle with a clear warning to keep her powers hidden around Calbernans because they did possess those gifts, the actual message itself—“I know for a fact that Calbernans can be very Persuasive, so I urge you and your sisters to be cautious around them.”—was too vague to be of use against them.
It was just as well. Had Wynter thrown the Calbernans out of Konumarr for using mind-controlling magic—which he most definitely would have done—she wouldn’t be able to use Dilys’s obvious preference for Autumn’s company as an excuse to get away from Konumarr. And now that she was far enough gone into madness that she’d begun burning her bedsheets in her sleep, leaving her family was no longer a future possibility, it was an immediate necessity. The longer she stayed, the more dangerous she would become. She’d never forgive herself if she hurt her sisters or Wynter—or anyone else, for that matter.
With her bed now remade and rumpled to look as if she’d slept on the new linens, she flung open her balcony doors to let in some fresh air and spritzed a bit of perfume on her bed to mask the slight charred scent that lingered in the fabrics. Then she rang for Amaryllis to help her get dressed.
Just hold it together a few more days, Summer,she told herself as she waited for Amaryllis.Just a few more days.She’d already planted the seed with Wynter, making him aware that Dilys’s preference for her other two sisters was the latest in a long line of rejections, and leading him to believe those rejections had caused her a deep emotional wound that was becoming too painful to bear. Tomorrow she would once again mention her desire to visit the Skoerr Mountains and see the sun that never set, only this time she would include a little push of Persuasion—one subtle enough to escape the Calbernans’ detection—to help Wynter realize that a solitary trip to the icy, remotest reaches of Wintercraig was exactly what Summer needed to help her get over this latest suitor’s rejection.
Once there and away from the Calbernans, with their Persuasion detection, she would use the full force of her gifts to arrange some sort of tragic accident that would claim her life. Before, when she’d contemplated going away and not coming back, she’d thought she would fake her death and live out the rest of her life in seclusion. But now, considering how quickly the madness was claiming her and the way her fury had fixated on her sisters, her plans had changed.
Even if she isolated herself in the remotest reaches of Mystral, there was no way to guarantee that in her madness she would stay there or that the people she loved would be safe from her. Khamsin had been sent away to Wintercraig, after all, and their father had still pursued her there and tried to kill her.
No, there was only one way to make sure she never harmed anyone. She no longer intended to fake her death. She meant it to be real.
After a morning spent sailing the fjord with Spring and Autumn Coruscate, Dilys lay on his bunk in his ship theKracken’s spacious captain’s cabin, staring up at the well-fitted beams of the deck overhead while he tried to make sense of the feelings that had cast a pall over a day he should have thoroughly enjoyed.
“Dilys?”
Dilys turned his head as the door to his suite opened, and his cousin Ari entered, ducking his head to clear the doorway.
“They told me I’d find you here.” With a casual intimacy that bespoke a lifetime of friendship, Ari snagged one of the cabin chairs, flipped it around and set it down beside the bed. He straddled the chair and rested his arms along the back. “What’s wrong, cousin? You were very quiet this morning and then you left the palace after dropping off themyerialannasthis afternoon and came out here.”
Dilys stifled a grimace. He should have known his odd behavior today wouldn’t get past his cousins.
“What happened? Are things not going well withMyerialannasSpring and Autumn?”
“Ono.” If only his problem was so simple. “I mean, things with them are going just fine. That’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
Dilys linked his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. Calbernans were, by nature, very social. They needed the close connections with friends and family, the confidences and interactions that built intimacy and nourishing emotional ties. But Dilys hadn’t confided his growing disquiet to Ari or Ryll all week, and that wasn’t like him. Maybe it was time he did. Maybe talking about it would help solve the problem.
“Spring was the Season that was chosen for me. You know this.”
“Tey.Or Autumn. Lucky son of the sea.”
