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February 28 - April 27, 2025
I’ll find you, I say through my numb bond. I won’t ever stop. Your love is my guiding light through the darkness. No force in the Vale can keep us apart.
If I have to tear the mountains from the earth, the clouds from the sky, the water from the sea, I will do it. Nothing will stop me from finding Rosalina.
“My foot got caught in the rope. I was just trying to follow your orders.”
Yahhh fucking right.
My gaze catches on one shell in particular. A nautilus shell, gifted to him by the acolyte for saving her in the river.
Is the shell necklace the reason for the bond??????
“You’re not the most graceful, with that form of travel, are you?” Wrenley grumbles.
Grrrrrr don't shade Rose
“Tomorrow, my touch could keep him fae all night,” I manage. “So, I’m sure it’ll be you on the floor.” Caspian licks from the corner of my lips to my ear. “Why don’t I join you both and find out how big the bed really is?”
Cas tosses the wine from hand to hand. “My sister, the Nightingale, dabbles with potions. This wine is infused with her truth serum. One sip, and you won’t be able to lie. Thought it might be fun for some of your games.” He sets the bottle down and strides from the room. “Not that any of you have anything to hide.”
He is such a pot stirrer. Haha. He knows Wren is sus.
“Well, I’ve never—” Wrenley starts confidently, but then it’s like the rest of her words won’t come out. The truth wine. I’d almost forgotten we’d taken it. She shakes her head, her expression going from confused to angry. “No. I’m not in . . .” Astrid and Marigold exchange a wary look before Astrid ventures, “Maybe your mate bond makes you fall in love.” “It doesn’t do that,” she snaps.
Kairdyn
No, Wrenley. That’s right. I suppose I should know it now that she’s Dayton’s mate. I start to look away from her, but something in her gaze makes me pause. Her short brown hair falls over her blue eyes, but her stare remains transfixed on Rosalina and her father. There’s a sense of bewilderment to her, as if laying eyes on a gryphon or a winged horse or some other make-believe story from a children’s tale. With hesitant steps, she creeps out from the doorway and enters the hall, staying behind all the staff waiting to greet George. Her movements are stiff, as if she’s in pain as she takes
...more
Is she the Nightengale? Making her Rose's biological sister? So George her dad?
“Oh, Sunshine, I live to touch your mate.”
Rose not Wren
You don’t have to be a great hero. But for once in your damned life, you don’t have to be the villain.”
It’s been weeks since I’ve spoken with the Nightingale alone. Not many things surprise me, but finding my adopted sister here, lurking about Castletree, is one of them. I can only imagine she’s shocked to see me too.
I fucking knew it
“You look beautiful like this,” I murmur. “Shut up,” she says.
Sibling ribbing. When the nightgown thing happened I was like wait a minute and thought the same thing.
Don’t say it.” “Birdy.” Tears fill her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re joining them.” “I’ve only ever stayed for you, Birdy. You know that. I would have run away twenty-five years ago if it weren’t for you.”
I turn, unable to say the words I wish I could. Goodbye, little sister. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do right by you.
“It’s like being stuck in the eye of a storm you can’t escape. It’s suffocating, consuming. It’s waking up every day with a weight on your chest, wondering if today will be the day it crushes you entirely. Love is continuing to drink poison because it’s also the only antidote. For me, it is a battle that if he wins, I lose, and if I win, somehow, I still lose. Love is the only reason I still choose to draw breath.”
I stay there watching her in the dying light for a moment more, hating the world for turning my sister into a monster. Hating the world for making her fall in love with one.
“I promise. Use me however you want,” he pleads. “Just please, don’t ask me to leave.”
“You too, Rose. But not too careful. Take risks when you’re ready and rest when you need to. But most of all,” he
pulls away to hold my gaze, “don’t be afraid of the fire within. It’s never led you astray before.”
“We’ll be back here before we know it, won’t we?” I ask. “You and I, together?” “Nothing in this world or the next could keep us apart,” he vows.
“One day, I will get vengeance for what he did to you. I vow it.” “Don’t you understand?” she yells. “That’s the problem! If you’re constantly meeting his storm with your own, you’ll only bring the whole world down with you.”
“You have me, Rosalina,” I breathe. “Wherever I go, you have me. Whatever desert I leave my footprints in, whatever wilderness I inhabit or mountain I scale. It was set by the Fates and bound in the stars. You have me.”
“Whatever it takes, I will return to
you, my Queen. If I have to crawl, I’ll crawl. If I have to swim through rivers of fire, I’ll swim. If I have to defy the Fates themselves and rearrange the stars, I will do it.”
Dayton, you’ve always been the midday sun to me, warmth and power and everything they both were combined.”
“You can’t keep dwindling your own flame just because you’re afraid of what it might mean if you burn brighter than both of them.”
“Dayton, it’s not safe up there!” Wrenley yells after me. I ignore her.
She is awful. She causedthe storm and made Rosaline tk get hurt. UGH. And eventually she will get a redemption arc. No thank hou. Let me hate Ursula (lot's of similarities).
“He knew my mother.” His old trident. “He knew your mother,” I say, as it finally dawns on me. “Because he was never a goat herder, just as he was never actually Justus. He’s Aeneas, the first High Prince of Summer.”
One wrong move and the Autumn Prince could be discovered. A chill runs up my spine despite the heat. Not that I care what happens to Farron, per se, but I am giving this hero-thing a try. It wouldn’t do to lose my partner so quickly.
Haha. Reminders me of Lucifer (the character and show).
Kairyn doesn’t want her to touch the bow because he’s afraid she’ll turn to ash. But I know if she touches that bow, it’s the realms that will burn.
I knew it.
“You know, I only ever wanted you princes to see the real me, to feel something when you saw me. I think, for a long time, to be hated was enough because it was something. It was better than nothing.”
“Home is more than the roads you’ve walked before or the walls that once sheltered you. You will find it within the bonds you’ve forged and the love you’ve shared. That is something that can never be taken from you.”
There must be another way to protect those I love. A way that doesn’t result in me losing myself in the manner I’ve done before.
Quickly, I unfasten Dayton’s seashell necklace. “If they look too closely at you, they might discover the token. Best to take this off.”
I bet the Nightengale's control is going to drop now
“In the night’s tapestry, I would know you as a star or as a bloom in a field of flowers. Did you know there is a particular cadence to your heartbeat? Especially when you’re around me. I could pick it out in a symphony.”
“What were you thinking? Your creed!” He grabs her hands and brings them to his lips. “I don’t care. My honor was forsaken long ago. You are my creed now, the temple that I worship. I have nothing else to offer you, to make you stay with me, but this.” He places her palm on his cheek. “Please take it.”
I turn, expecting to see a charred acolyte and the bow . . . but there’s no sign of either. Only a patch of prismatic briars.
Roe she isso obviously your sister
“The bargain was thus: if I were ever to love anyone more than George, that person would belong to Sira completely: mind, body, and soul.”
Well that was just stupid
“I could have possibly forgiven the fact you four were useless at keeping the realms stable, protecting your people, and upholding everything Castletree stood for, but you committed an even worse sin.” Anger flashes in her gaze at the memory. “You were my daughter’s mates. I can feel these things, you know. Many from the Above can feel the deep magic, like mate bonds. For my daughter to be mated to such pathetic, pitiful, ineffective, futile, disappointing—”
NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE!
“You have a sister.
“Wrenley is my sister.”
“Steady, Farron, Autumn-blood,” he says, voice radiating from all around me. “There is much work ahead.”
WHAT!!!!?!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!
Warmth floods my body, rushing down my arms and into my hands. Green flames erupt atop each of my palms.
He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s dead!
NOOO
“They say a bargain is one of the most powerful forms of magic in the world, and the stronger the love, the stronger the bargain. Rosalina, I did love Kel. I loved him like the night sky must love the moon, to have been denied forever the promise of sunlight, yet still get to gaze on something so bright. Even now, every part of me aches for him, even though our love has always been a constellation of unattainable dreams. I love him because of it and despite it.”
“You believe that love is strong enough to reach even down here? Strong enough to send me to Winter?”
“It felt like my heart was caged in shadows, but something burst forth when you crawled through the rosebush. I followed that feeling straight to you.”
“Rosalina, I would betray every god in every universe just to feel like this with you.”
