To Flame a Wild Flower (Crystal Bloom, #3)

by Sarah A. Parker

“I know the hurt is loud, but it won’t always be.” He holds my hands, like they’re butterflies caught in a warm hug. “One day it’ll stop screaming at you. It’ll become nothing more than a whisper.”

“Small seeds grow into big, strong things.” He blows heated air onto my hands. “But they need sunlight and warmth to set their roots in the soil.

He may have been a monster hewn from a dark and bloody era, he may have been a murderer once upon a time, but he was my monster. Mine.

He has been speaking … I just haven’t been listening. The bluebell heads … The sheath … This … Trinkets of affection passed to me with silent hope I slashed and stabbed.

He saw me … yet he still came to Bahari. Stood before me and absorbed my blows. Tried to sponge my pain and stop me from hurting myself. Me? I took one look at his monster and murdered him.

I know the hurt is loud— His past words—once a balm to my wounds—now anchor my heart somewhere deep and dark where there is no light. Was this his loud hurt that still whispers to him now?

I look into his hollow eyes, and all I see is a lost, lonely boy desperate to prove his worth. He’s reaching for a love that isn’t his, and I understand that brutal beast too fucking well.

Listened to another man speak, then silenced the one I love.

“We’ve both been forged by a conditional love that broke us into crumbs people still manage to choke on. Perhaps there’s something poetic in that? In us.”

Breathe, Orlaith. Find a quiet place inside and chase the silence.

I’m not sure why he’s painting me such a pretty picture. In my experience, some of the prettiest pictures tell the deadliest secrets.