There are far worse places to wait. In this moment, we’re free to wander these sandy shores, to lose ourselves in the beauty of the fading day. Soon, the wolf will take him again. I turn my head to the sinking sun, letting its warmth seep into my soul like I’m one of the trees in the lush forest.
“Want to watch the sunset from here before we go back?” Dayton asks.
“Sure.” I take a seat on the silken sand, knees drawn to my chest, toes just touching the ebb and flow of the waves.
Dayton collapses beside me. He isn’t wearing a shirt, as usual, just loose cropped pants. He stretches his hands over his knees, dangling the token of Summer from his fingertips. I notice he hasn’t strung it back with the rest of his shells, instead just corded it on its own with a thin piece of twine.
“Damocles wouldn’t have had any trouble wielding this trident,” he says softly.
“Your brother had the Blessing of Summer before you, didn’t he?”
Dayton nods. “Yes, my mother passed it to him before she became pregnant with Delphia.”
“Dayton,” I say cautiously, “you’ve never told me what happened to your family.”
A muscle feathers in his jaw. “I don’t talk about it, not with anyone. People know what happened, but it’s not a pleasant story, Rosalina.”
It’s almost like I can feel it within him, festering and coiling. Something eating him away from the inside out. Slowly, I reach out and place a hand on his arm. “Your family seems to be on your mind a lot since returning to Summer. If you’d like to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”
Dayton shakes his head, hand clenching around the token. “I know what everyone thinks of me, the drunken Prince of Summer. A coward who let his brothers die. But the truth is, it’s so much worse than all of that. I feel like I’ve lost you once already. I can’t lose you again to this truth.”
It takes me a moment to register his words. Lost me once … lost my love. Lost the chance to love me. Waves of grief flow through me.
I crawl in front of Dayton, wet knees sinking in the ground. I grab his face and force him to look at me. His teal gaze blinks open, tears clinging to his lashes like dewdrops on morning petals. “I’ll always stay with you, Day, I promise. You’re not going to lose me.” His tears fall over my fingers, but I hold on, making him believe it. “We’re a team. Help me understand what you’re going through.”
He places his large hand over mine. “That better be a promise, Blossom.”
“Promise.”
Dayton stares at me for a moment longer before flashing a lopsided grin. “You know, water nymphs are feisty creatures, but in my youth, I happened to have a special friend and—”
“Oh, come on.” I roll my eyes. “What does this have to do with—”
“I’m getting to the point. She happened to teach me a unique trick with my magic, one of memory and water. Come here.”
He widens his knees and I position myself between his legs, facing the water. Dayton reaches around me, and with a flick of his wrist, a wave rises before us in the shape of a shimmering fan.
“After Caspian created the Great Chasm and attacked the Winter Realm, the War of Thorns began,” Dayton says. “All the seasonal realms against the forces of the Below. Hadria, the capital of Summer, has always been nearly impregnable, with its high walls and back to the sea.”
Colors and images flicker across the fan of water, showing a large wall. A fae that looks almost like Dayton, but with short cropped golden hair, stands atop it.
“What’s this?” I whisper.
Dayton’s breath brushes my ear. “It’s my memory.”
“That’s Damocles,” I say.
In Dayton’s memory, the former High Prince of Summer gleams golden as a god, tanned skin, with hair the color of honey. A helmet with a red plume is tucked beneath his arm. His breastplate is beaten gold, and he wears a skirt crafted of red leather strips. His eyes are blue, so similar to Dayton’s. But where Dayton’s gaze is all the depths of the ocean, Damocles’ gaze is still as a pond with no wind.
“We’d received a report that forces of the Below were planning to march on Hadria through the Suadela Sands,” Dayton explains.
“Was it Caspian?”
“No,” Dayton says. “He was preoccupied with Winter. This was Sira’s own force. Damocles wanted to march our army out of Hadria and meet them in the open before they got a chance to lay siege. Decimus claimed we’d have power over them in our own land, that we knew the sands better than they ever could.”
Another figure appears in Dayton’s memory. A shorter man, but broad of shoulders, with dark brown skin and short black hair.
“Decimus,” I say. “He has the same smile as Delphie.”
