The third enclosure, straight ahead, was propped next to the fishing tarn: a tall embankment of rocks tapering to a wide circle of stone beneath an opening in the canopy. The basin captured rain and dew, never drying up. Water trickled into it now with a soft, rhythmic patter. Sporadically, fish leapt out and plopped back in with a splash.
This tent’s flap remained open, and Stain saw her leather pouch from earlier, which meant they had found her jars of night creatures. Her mind scrambled for some way to get them back. Moving carefully from one tree to another revealed more of the scene. The silhouette of a man in a white shirt and black leathery breeches—tight enough to conform to his sinewy, masculine lines—sat within the opening on a blanket. Beside him crouched a moonlit girl dressed in a soldier’s uniform. A long, silvery-purple braid curled from her nape to rest in her lap like a pet snake. She had bandages, reminding Stain of those holding Scorch’s wounded wing in place . . . her hands grew clammy at the reminder of how wrong this day had gone.
In the distance, the girl held a dagger over a campfire where the remains of their savory meal burned in the flames—fish scales and bones turning to ash. The girl’s silver blade burnished red, and the man mumbled something under his breath. He rolled up his left sleeve, exposing a metallic golden sheen along his forearm—either a vambrace or some similar piece of armor.
Everywhere else, his skin was the deep red gold of burnished copper, beautiful, but bearing no resemblance to a moonlit-kissed Nerezethite. He appeared instead to be of Eldoria, bronzed by the sun. So why was he riding with soldiers of the night realm?
Soundless, Stain eased from behind one tree to another and another, utilizing the dense growth until she was a few feet from the edge of the tarn. She stopped when she could feel the water droplets as they splattered and hear the man and woman as they spoke.
“I’m ready, Selena,” he said, gesturing to the dagger. Stain recognized the ravager’s voice at once. Although young, like she assumed, in other ways he looked very different than she’d expected.
His hood had been removed, and thick hair—as purply dark as the winter plums Dregs offered for purchase on special occasions—hung to his shoulders in messy waves. The skull-face paint was gone as well, revealing high, angular cheekbones with a long, aquiline nose that suggested regality. A straight, pale scar, raised and thin, started beneath his left cheek and ran to his strong jawline, disrupting his smooth complexion.
“Would you rather I do it this time?” the girl named Selena asked.
“No, dear sister . . . I still have use of my hands. It’s enough you have to watch.” His forehead was wide and expressive under tendrils of disheveled hair, and thick, black eyebrows punctuated his words, furrowing or rising in cadence with his deep, soothing voice.
He cringed, sliding the red-hot blade along the golden vambrace on his arm. Only it wasn’t armor; for where the dagger’s sharp edge skated along the surface, fine hairs raised in its wake as if magnetized. That metallic shell was his skin . . . a part of him, like a crab’s carapace.
This man was under some sort of bewitchment.
Stain covered her mouth as the knife stopped where the shell surrendered to natural, soft flesh on the back of his wrist. There the blade sank in, cutting a long slit. She expected beads of bright red to swell at the site, but instead, a stream of gold drizzled free—as radiant as the liquid light that clung to the trees at the ravine’s entrance.
A man who bleeds sunshine.
“Do you wish to use it for ink?” Selena wiped the golden blood from the dagger, then drew a small vial from one of the three saddlebags beside her. “I brought a quill and parchment.” She placed a stack of black paper next to him.
“No need to write anymore,” the man answered. “By tomorrow, I’ll speak to her in person. At last I’ll know her.”
His sister positioned the vial to capture the glittering stream at his wrist. “You know her already. You’ve been exchanging notes for years.”
“Yet she feels like a stranger. Doesn’t feel right, for a marriage. Do you remember Lord Father’s pet name for our lady mother?”
Selena beamed—a smile that transformed her delicate features from pretty to stunning. “His Northern Star.” Using a bandage, she blotted away some lustrous blood that had overrun the vial’s mouth. Her silvery eyebrows arched. “Perhaps their great love gave us unrealistic notions of romance?”
“Perhaps. But you will have what they did. Cyp confessed his affections today, when he thought you were both to die in the fire. And you didn’t for a moment question if it was sincere, nor did you hesitate to return the sentiment.”
“He told you?” Selena’s face flushed, making the bluish veins behind her thin skin more prominent. “He should’ve waited. We’ve more important things to think about on this journey.”
The ravager grinned gently. “Cyp told me because he knew I’d be happy for the both of you. There’s no shame in celebrating the discovery of love, especially between friends. You’ve walked alongside one another for years on the same terrain—carried one another through the loss of your fathers. You’ve shared goals and secrets. You always find middle ground, ways to compromise, even when you disagree. Friendship is a measuring stick for love. Would that my intended and I had such a tool to gauge our relationship. It would ease the responsibility of consolidating two such different kingdoms.”
Stain’s ears perked at the words intended and consolidating kingdoms. This was the night prince, come for his princess in Eldoria’s castle—wearing a disguise. How careless of her not to suspect . . . not to question . . . having played at masquerades for so long herself.
The prince’s sister drew back and corked the small vial now filled with effulgent liquid. “I think, because our people no longer practice arranged marriages, it’s harder for you. But even if a betrothal is nontraditional, the love that grows from it can still be real and true.”
He chuckled—a cynical gesture—and pressed a piece of gauze against his incision to slow the seeping driblets. “Ah, good to know. For there’s nothing traditional about my love story, to be sure.” His full lips pressed tight. “A flawless, fragile lady is supposed to be my missing half—to complete me—scarred and hardened as I am. Yet I know nothing of her. So often her letters feel rehearsed. As if she’s writing what she believes one of her station should say, or what she thinks I wish to hear. Yes, I want the romance . . . the poetry. But those are ideals a king can set aside, if only his queen will speak from the heart—as one confidante to another—responsibilities and status notwithstanding. I want my partner’s thoughts and feelings, in earnest.”
“That’s reasonable. Be patient. You’ve never even seen her face. I predict, the moment you meet and spend time together, all pretentions and doubts will fade. As Madame Dyadia said, you will know her by her voice.”
He sighed. “Once I hear her song, from her lips instead of a seashell, only then will I know that my people and I can be cured.” There was a ragged edge to his voice—as if he’d been holding out for such a moment for an eternity. “The truth of it? Only then will I know the foretelling was worth believing.”
The man turned his face to the fire, hiding doubts within the long shadows cast by his cheekbones and dark eyelashes. Stain ducked behind her tree, peering through a juncture of branches that brought her to his level. How profound, to see that dark gaze up close—as inscrutable as a blackbird’s. How had she overlooked that detail earlier? She’d been too busy comparing it to night shadows and crickets.
His lustrous blood attested he was truly forged of sunlight. All this time she and Scorch had made a mockery of the fairy tale. She’d never dreamed the descriptions could be taken literally: a prince with the eyes of a raven, to marry a princess who spoke like a songbird.
Stain cupped her barren throat. Ever since the day she’d awoken in Crony’s home, she’d accepted the inability to make sounds or speak. Yet the fairy tale had always left her covetous for a voice. Now, seeing those details coming to life, the envy heightened, coating her tongue with a briny-bitter taste.
It was just another reminder of how different she was from others in the world. Everyone other than Scorch . . .
She glanced at the thorny maze in the distance where a glowing spark glimmered behind some tangled vines.
“At least there’s one small triumph today,” the prince said, recouping Stain’s attention. “No more hiding behind ink and parchment.” He pushed aside the stack. The movement loosened the gauze on his arm and spurred a few remaining droplets to smear upon the paper’s black surface, a bright and glittering counterbalance to the darkness.