He pushes my sleeve up, revealing the ugly scar, the raised, jagged lines spelling my abuser’s name.
A thought rushes at me unbidden:I’m glad Kel killed him.
Ezryn places a featherlight touch over the scar. “I can heal this for you. If you want me to.”
“It’s so old. Can you really do that?”
He nods. “Spring’s Blessing is strongest in renewal. If you want a fresh start, I… I can help.”
I run my hands over each letter. Tears well in my eyes because that’s exactly what I want. A fresh start.
“Yes, Ezryn,” I say, voice catching. “I would like that very much.”
He nods again, more boyishly this time. I straighten my arm for him, cringing a little at how on display the mark is. I’d never allowed anyone to see it. “Do you need to get anything? Herbs or something?” I ask, remembering how last time he healed me, he’d used a combination of leaves and his own spit.
“No,” he murmurs and holds my arm with one hand and places the index and middle finger of the other on theS. “This time, the magic comes from within.”
My heart hammers in my chest as he bends over, helmet’s gaze intense upon my forearm. An emerald glow ignites on the tips of his fingers and streams down into the raised skin. A tingling sensation, like the taste of peppermint gum, follows each stroke.
My eyes widen in disbelief. The letters are disappearing. But Lucas’s voice rings in my head:She’ll always come back to me.
“Do you believe people can change?” I ask softly.
Ezryn glances up. “What do you mean?”
“The person we were a decade ago or a year ago or even yesterday… Are we stuck being that person forever?”
Ezryn is silent for a long moment, and I start to think he’s regretting offering to help me. But then as he moves his fingers over the A, he says, “As children, my brother and I would often play in the woods near our castle. He’d be off running and catching frogs, but I’d find myself sitting on stumps. Taking in the life encircling me.”
I blink softly as I watch him work, lost in the mesmerizing softness of his touch and his voice.
“In Spring, we’re taught rebirth is all around us,” he continues. “The seed becomes a sprout, becomes a flower. The egg becomes the bird, which dies and becomes the dirt that houses the worm that feeds the bird. The deer feeds the cougar, which then lays to rest upon the grass, which in turn, feeds the deer. And the stumps that I would sit on… There were rings and rings and rings, more than I could count. Ages upon ages of growing. It may all begin somewhere, but it changes, dies, renews.”
I hear the rasp in his voice and wonder what memories belong to him alone in those woods.
His fingers tingle over theC. “We are all a part of the cycle. And though the seed may always be a part of us, nothing stays the same.” He pauses, helmet downcast. “Nothing stays.”
“So, that person may always be a part of us,” I whisper, “but we don’t have to hold on to them.”
“Does the river hold itself back from running?”
“It’s sometimes hard to let go of that person,” I utter softly. “The one we used to be.”
“I’m still trying,” he says, then pauses for a long moment. “And I hope you know, Rosalina, he was the monster. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. Deep within me, I know.” I look down at my forearm. Half the name is gone, replaced by red flesh, raw and new.
I forgive you,I think. Not to Lucas. But to myself, the younger me. The one who didn’t know how to leave. Who didn’t know how beautiful the world truly was and didn’t think she deserved what beauty she could find.I forgive you, and I can let you go.
The moment passes in comfortable silence, the setting sun bathing us in its last warmth. And as Ezryn’s light illuminates theL, coaxing new skin to heal the old, I think,I hope you can forgive yourself, too.
Ezryn holds up my arm, examining it in the crimson sunset. “All done.”
There are so many things I want to say to him, so much emotion right on the tip of my tongue. But all I manage is, “I can finally wear those short-sleeved dresses Marigold loves.”
He tilts his head, then turns toward the door.
As he’s about to step inside, I call out, “Ez?”
