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May 29 - June 7, 2024
The girl will be gone, and the season will begin again. I’ll be newly eighteen. For the three hundred twenty-seventh time.
“Would you stop calling me that?” “It is meant as a mark of respect. When you travel with me, people will assume you are a lady, a servant, or a whore.” His eyebrows go up. “Would you prefer one of the latter?” Now I want to punch him. “Get off the horse, Rhen.”
“I’m not going to fall in love with you,” she says. Her words are not a surprise. I sigh. “You won’t be the first.”
for one brief moment, I remembered. I remembered what it was like to want to touch a girl, not as part of a carefully planned seduction designed to lure her into breaking this curse.
His loyalty should inspire me. It does not. I have done nothing to earn it. I find that I regret his oath. “Leave me,” I say. The door whispers shut. Grey has always been good at following orders. And for the first time, I wish he wasn’t.
And then, because fate seems content to surprise me this season, she steps forward, presses her face against my chest, and wraps her arms around my waist.
“My father once said we are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose—just as a poor hand can win—but we must all play the cards fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.”
“In matters of the heart, I am clearly hopeless.” He puts down his final card—a prince. A wild card. I stare at him, stunned. It didn’t matter what I played. He would have won anyway. “In matters of strategy,” he finishes, “I am not.”
“Yes.” I pause. “You are not angry about what Lilith has done?” “Oh, I’m furious. But not about my face.” “Then what?” Her voice fills with steel. “I’m mad I missed.”
“When my sister died,” Freya says quietly, “it was very sudden. I had no time to say goodbye. But she knew I loved her. I knew she loved me. It is not the moment of passing that is most important. It is all the moments that come before.”
“I am always surprised to discover that when the world seems darkest, there exists the greatest opportunity for light.”
find it amusing that she keeps asking, as if I would not do this a thousand more times.
Maybe fate has finally found me worthy of mercy.
She trusts me. I trust her. This feels more monumental than love. More precious. More earned. I keep my hands to myself.
I wish she had. Not because of the curse, or because of Karis Luran, or because of Emberfall. Because I have fallen in love with her.
