Her stomach jumped as she began to spin in midair, spiders causing the revolutions—hundreds of them wrapping her in their webs, to protect her shadowy cocoon from the light filtering in through the latticework. A slit remained for her eyes and nose, enough to see flowers and vines creeping in from the gardens and meadows. The spiders grabbed them and wove them into their masterpiece, camouflaging her. In the distance, somewhere around the grove of wildflowers, came a beautiful sound. It pierced Lyra’s muffled ears—silvery and pure as a nightingale’s song—and numbed her pain for an instant.
Perhaps she imagined the song, being enclosed within the nightsky, being carried through the shrine’s entrance on a wave of flowers that glimmered with sunlight and multiplied at her touch. Yet Lyra recognized it, a soul-deep knowing: that voice that had once belonged to her. It was the song she would’ve been singing upon her walk along the sunny banks of the Crystal Lake, upon her first glimpse of her kingdom; it was the song she would’ve sung upon learning Scorch hadn’t died at all, but was the man she was promised to marry; it was the song she’d be singing right now, if only Vesper had opened his eyes and looked back at her like he did in the moon-bog, with a mix of adoration, irritation, and fascination—the eyes of a Pegasus on fire. The thought of flame snuffed out the music and any hope. Engulfing her, the agony returned tenfold; it was too much . . . too severe. Her brain broiled in her skull, a searing flash that made her question all she saw: Was she truly floating past everyone, encased by glowing flowers and vines glued together with web? Was she truly seeing her treacherous cousin and Selena race past as if she were invisible, stumbling toward the shrine upon hearing the prince cry out in pain? Was she truly only inches from the arboretum’s iron door when it flung open and her tidal wave of flowers knocked over the five guards keeping watch in Nerezeth’s tundra?
Perhaps it was all a dream, but dreams had never hurt so much.
A gust of frosty wind siphoned through spaces in the webbing as she felt herself, wrapped in her cocoon, being thrust headfirst into a powdery wall of something endlessly white and blissfully cold. In moments, the wall melted away to water, carrying her like a leaf on a swift current into more whiteness. Her hands escaped their binds, and she clawed at icy, thorny surroundings to slow her passage. With each touch, the world erupted into water, light, and color: petals, roots, leaves, and stems flinging out of her fingertips before the whiteness swallowed her again.
At last she’d spent all the sunshine she’d taken, leaving her hollow, aching, and weary. Everything around her had closed. Soggy and shivering, devastated by her failure, she curled up in her bundle of petals, shadows, and webs. Shutting her eyes against the vivid glowing flowers, she allowed her grief to drag her into darkness.
27
Tears of Ink and Flame
The song that once rang from an enchanted seashell—upon the clear unwavering voice of a nightingale girl—resonated throughout Neverdark, tugging at Prince Vesper’s spirit. When he woke, he shouted in elation and pressed his fingers to his lips. His rescuer’s kiss remained fresh upon them, just as her words echoed in his mind: I’m fighting for you. She’d said more than that, but that was all he could recall.
The instant his eyes pried open, he sought the one who had saved him—his princess . . . his betrothed. At first, all he could see was a trail of flowers and vines along the shrine’s floor; then his sister and Cyprian rushed into the entrance alongside a lady wearing nightsky over an orchid gown. She dropped a bouquet of wildflowers at her feet, drew off her hood beneath the latticework’s shade, and revealed flawless moonlit skin, long silver hair, and soft purple eyes.
Vesper’s breath caught and his pulse jumped. It was her: the embodiment of his youthful dreams, the exquisite princess he’d envisioned marrying and taking to his bed—as a man. Yet there was a wilder side to him now, and it remembered shorn, blackberry hair, scarred flesh, and lashes as long and sleek as the crystalized cobwebs that draped across the dais . . . a savage loveliness forged of wilderness and pain. That girl spoke with a different voice, within his head—no music, only words. Her voice grated like sandpaper when scolding his impulsiveness or contradicting his feral instincts with human wisdom, yet at the same turn it soothed like silk when his fury became too much to bear alone.
Both entities—songstress and thief—intertwined in his fuzzy memories. In hopes to reconcile the two, he took the princess’s hand then molded her fingertips around his jaw.
“My darling Vesper.” Her intimate, lyrical greeting should have brought him to his feet in triumph, yet he stayed flat on his back. There was no discounting the desire and astonishment on her face, but her eyes were wrong; they didn’t sparkle with that fractious intellect he’d always seen looking back at him in the ravine. Only one way to be sure . . .
He pulled her down, clutched the silken hair at her nape, and pressed his mouth to hers, drinking of her until her knees gave and she swooned. She saved herself from falling by taking a seat beside him, breathless and beaming.
However lovely a princess she was, she didn’t belong beside him. Those weren’t the lips of the one who had given all of herself—her moonlight, her fierceness, her hope. And the fingertips stroking his cheek weren’t the same as those that had snuffed out the fire meant to devour his soul.
Vesper sat up and looked pointedly at all those gathered around—his sister, his first knight, gardeners and guards alike. “She’s not the one who saved me.” A harsh sentiment that he couldn’t contain.
“What?” The princess scrambled to her feet, appearing more horrified than wounded. “You must know that’s not true! I’m your betrothed! All of the missives we’ve shared, the beautiful roses you’ve sent. The prophecy promised us a happy future. My song indeed saved you.”
Her rebuttal, spoken in that birdsong voice, felt as rehearsed and cautious as all the letters he’d read at her hand. She lacked the fire . . . that stringent honesty and raw emotions that had broken through the most guarded corners of his mind while he ran alongside an orphan in an enchanted forest.
“It wasn’t a dream,” Vesper assured himself as he sat up to catch the length of hair hanging across the princess’s shoulder.
She touched his hand, her features rearranging themselves to an expression of relief. “Yes, you can feel me. I’m real . . . I’m not a dream. I’m here.”
He winced. “The illusion of tangible things.” He lifted the strands of silver and let them fall in a lustrous cascade. “A braid of hair, a vial of tears, a snippet of song. And words on a page. But ink blurs and paper frays. Vials break. Hair thins and brittles. Songs fade once the final note rings. The only thing that lasts is trust and understanding, speaking without words spoken.” Holding her gaze, he felt nothing between them other than physical attraction. He attempted to tap into her mind with silent thoughts; but she didn’t answer, for she couldn’t hear. “Your songbird voice is to be just that. A song without words. No more, no less.”
“I’ve learned to speak over the years. All for you. Don’t you see?”
“Oh, I see. But eyes can lie. The heart doesn’t.”
Their spectators gasped. The princess gawked in stunned disbelief as clear tears streamed her face.
Vesper caught one on his fingertip and held it to a strand of light. “Clear tears . . . that’s wrong as well.”
Baffled and bemused, he nudged his betrothed aside so he could walk out of the shrine. He ignored the audience’s murmurs and the princess’s sobs. He didn’t turn back to comfort her. That brutality—once housed within a winged demon-steed—occupied him again, and only one girl had ever managed to gentle it.
Madame Dyadia arrived at the arboretum’s iron doorway just as he was stepping out of the balmy warmth and into the frigid, blustering wind. He said nothing to her, simply led the way. A small procession followed, growing to a confused and murmuring crowd. By the time they reached the door, his queenly mother was already there, crying inky tears of happiness upon her son’s miraculous reclamation of health.