He quirks his head in the way I’ve now learned means he’s smiling. If he ever takes off his helmet in the dark again, I’ll ask him to smile. I’ll feel it with my fingers, memorize how far up his face it goes.
He cups the little paper bird in his hands, palms sparkling with green light. He brings it up to his helm and murmurs in a language I don’t understand. The bird springs up, flapping its parchment wings, and leaps off into the breeze.
I gasp, then clap my hands. “Ez! That’s incredible.”
“It’s not very hard. A little trick my mother taught Kai and me.”
“Kai’s your brother, isn’t he?” Caspian spoke about him at our dinner.
“Yes. Kairyn,” he murmurs. “But I don’t want to think about him right now. I came because I wanted to ask you something.”
Heat springs to my cheeks. “What is it?”
Ezryn turns to face me. When we’re chest to chest like this, I remember how huge he is, how tall and broad in his armor.
He delicately takes my left hand. His calloused thumb trails over my skin to the wrist bone. I become conscious he’s drifting his fingers toward my forearm, and try to jerk back, but he holds me firmly.
With his other hand, he touches the cuff of my sleeve, then stares at me. My breath catches, eyes lost in the dark visor within his helm. He’s asking my permission to look at what I’ve kept covered for years, at what I can barely look at myself.
I nod.
He pushes my sleeve up, revealing the ugly scar, the raised, jagged lines spelling my abuser’s name.
A thought rushes at me unbidden: I’m glad Kel killed him.
Ezryn places a featherlight touch over the scar. “I can heal this for you. If you want me to.”
“It’s so old. Can you really do that?”
He nods. “Spring’s Blessing is strongest in renewal. If you want a fresh start, I… I can help.”
I run my hands over each letter. Tears well in my eyes because that’s exactly what I want. A fresh start.
“Yes, Ezryn,” I say, voice catching. “I would like that very much.”
He nods again, more boyishly this time. I straighten my arm for him, cringing a little at how on display the mark is. I’d never allowed anyone to see it. “Do you need to get anything? Herbs or something?” I ask, remembering how last time he healed me, he’d used a combination of leaves and his own spit.
“No,” he murmurs and holds my arm with one hand and places the index and middle finger of the other on the S. “This time, the magic comes from within.”
My heart hammers in my chest as he bends over, helmet’s gaze intense upon my forearm. An emerald glow ignites on the tips of his fingers and streams down into the raised skin. A tingling sensation, like the taste of peppermint gum, follows each stroke.
My eyes widen in disbelief. The letters are disappearing. But Lucas’s voice rings in my head: She’ll always come back to me.
“Do you believe people can change?” I ask softly.
Ezryn glances up. “What do you mean?”
“The person we were a decade ago or a year ago or even yesterday… Are we stuck being that person forever?”
Ezryn is silent for a long moment, and I start to think he’s regretting offering to help me. But then as he moves his fingers over the A, he says, “As children, my brother and I would often play in the woods near our castle. He’d be off running and catching frogs, but I’d find myself sitting on stumps. Taking in the life encircling me.”
I blink softly as I watch him work, lost in the mesmerizing softness of his touch and his voice.
“In Spring, we’re taught rebirth is all around us,” he continues. “The seed becomes a sprout, becomes a flower. The egg becomes the bird, which dies and becomes the dirt that houses the worm that feeds the bird. The deer feeds the cougar, which then lays to rest upon the grass, which in turn, feeds the deer. And the stumps that I would sit on… There were rings and rings and rings, more than I could count. Ages upon ages of growing. It may all begin somewhere, but it changes, dies, renews.”
I hear the rasp in his voice and wonder what memories belong to him alone in those woods.
His fingers tingle over the C. “We are all a part of the cycle. And though the seed may always be a part of us, nothing stays the same.” He pauses, helmet downcast. “Nothing stays.”
“So, that person may always be a part of us,” I whisper, “but we don’t have to hold on to them.”
“Does the river hold itself back from running?”
“It’s sometimes hard to let go of that person,” I utter softly. “The one we used to be.”
“I’m still trying,” he says, then pauses for a long moment. “And I hope you know, Rosalina, he was the monster. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. Deep within me, I know.” I look down at my forearm. Half the name is gone, replaced by red flesh, raw and new.
I forgive you, I think. Not to Lucas. But to myself, the younger me. The one who didn’t know how to leave. Who didn’t know how beautiful the world truly was and didn’t think she deserved what beauty she could find. I forgive you, and I can let you go.
The moment passes in comfortable silence, the setting sun bathing us in its last warmth. And as Ezryn’s light illuminates the L, coaxing new skin to heal the old, I think, I hope you can forgive yourself, too.
Ezryn holds up my arm, examining it in the crimson sunset. “All done.”
There are so many things I want to say to him, so much emotion right on the tip of my tongue. But all I manage is, “I can finally wear those short-sleeved dresses Marigold loves.”
He tilts his head, then turns toward the door.
As he’s about to step inside, I call out, “Ez?”
He stops but doesn’t turn around.
“Why did you leave? After you kissed me?”
“Rosalina…”
Heat trills through me. I run my hand over the raw skin of my forearm, a choking sensation in my chest. He gave me something I can never thank him for, and he’s going to walk away.
“I’ve seen you do this with Kel,” I say, voice breaking. “One minute you’re present, every piece of you bright and available. And the next… You’re gone. Sometimes literally, out running around the Briar or whatever you do. But sometimes you can be right in front of me and it feels like if I reached out and touched you, you’d disappear.”
“Rosalina,” he says lowly, “you don’t know who I am. What I’ve done.”
“Then let me in,” I whisper. “Plant your roots in me, Ez. I’ll keep you safe.”
He turns, body rigid. “We can’t do this.” But he’s stepping toward me.
“Why not?” My words are a breath, carried away in the bracing wind. I back up as he stalks closer, bumping against the railing. My heart hammers like a cornered rabbit.
He shoots an arm out on one side of me, seizing the rail. “Because I’m dangerous.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
He’s so close, I have to arch my back over the railing to avoid being pressed against him. There’s something inhuman about the way the helmet glowers down at me, his body made of steel. Electricity nips through my core, a desire to push that steel until it snaps.
He captures a loose strand of my hair and curls it around his finger. “You’re tempting the fates.” His head lowers to the crook of my neck, and I catch a glimpse of his skin between the armored collar and the helm. I inhale, taking in his familiar scent of leather, iris, and cedarwood. “And yet,” he murmurs. “I find myself doing the same.”
His other hand slams down on my opposite side, fully caging me in. I brace myself on the railing and breathe out, my bust pushing against his huge chest. The cold armor of his breastplate sends a shiver through the thin fabric of my blouse.
“You know,” I murmur, “I’m Kel’s mate.”
“Obviously.” His body pushes harder against mine.
“And Dayton and I like to fool around.”
His voice is a dusky growl. “I know that, too.”
“And Farron and I… Well, Farron is special to me. Very special.” Little gasps escape between my words.
“Why are you telling me this, Rosalina?”