Seven months after Hybern's defeat
The breeze was gentle and laced with the sweet smell of lilacs. The sun was warm, and all around me I could hear the sound of birdsong. Spring was a beautiful month - one I had always loved, even in my travels on the continent - but nowhere was it quite as breathtaking as in the Spring Court.
Yet there was a stillness to the air, a suffocating quiet hidden just beneath the melody of birds and the warmth of the sun. As if the sounds of spring were hushed, dampened.
I urged my horse forward, up the smooth gravel path leading to the manor house. No guards or sentries, I noted as the house rose into view ahead on the hill. Although the house was bathed in sunlight, something about it felt dark and shuttered. As I grew closer, I noted the quiet grew. My memories of this place had been positively alive with activity. The orchards - which were now untended and overgrown - had once yielded the ripest, sweetest cherries, apricots, and strawberries I'd ever tasted. The flower beds that had once been riotous competitions of bright pinks, deep blues, lush purples, and vibrant oranges were now choked with weeds. Even the horse sensed the disquiet, chuffing beneath me and skittering nervously at the slightest noise.
I reached the top of the hill, dismounting on the granite steps in front of the manor house. Just as Lucien had said, there were no servants or stablehands waiting to see to my mare or offer me a steadying hand. Instead, a bone-deep chill seemed to claw its way directly up from the stone beneath my feet and settle in my chest. The front door to the house was ajar slightly, and there were large claw marks gouged into the wood. I knew those marks; I knew who'd left them, and I knew him enough to feel the depth of despair he must have sunk into to mar his house in that way. My heart twisted in my chest, and I swallowed hard as I stepped inside.
Luciens' letters had warned me of what I would find here, but to see it firsthand was another thing entirely. The manor house was in shambles. The claw marks that had started on the door trailed through the house, etching a trail of grief into the wood moldings and wall panelings, beckoning me deeper into the house. Despite the bright, sunny day outside, inside it was cold and the air was still and damp. The house smelled faintly of mildew. Curtains were drawn over the windows and the furniture was strewn about like piles of skeletons.
I was struck by the house's similarity to a tomb. That cold feeling grew inside me like a parasite, and I wrapped my traveling cloak tightly around my shoulders.
He's dying by inches, Lucien had written to me a few weeks prior. Each subsequent letter I'd received from him in the half year since Tamlin and the other High Lords had defeated Hybern in battle had become more desperate. It wasn't until Lucien outright pleaded with me that I agreed to pay Tamlin, my oldest friend, a visit.
I have no one else to ask. Tamlin will wither away into something we won't recognize unless you help him. Unless you heal him.
He needs you.
Those three words were seared into my memory like a firebrand. I'd long hoped to hear those words, although not from Lucien, but from Tamlin himself. Even in the three centuries since I'd last seen Tamlin and the Spring Court, my heart had never faltered, oftentimes much to my own dismay. I had never been able to admit it to anyone aloud - and only very recently been able to admit it to myself - but I had left Prythian under the guise of learning more about life magic just to escape my ill-fated devotion to the hot-tempered High Lord of Spring. I'd left with the full intention of never returning, and until Lucien's most recent letter, I had held true to that conviction.
As I took a shaky breath in and followed Tamlin's claw marks deeper into the house, part of me regretted letting myself come back to this place. It felt like I was tearing at an old wound, scraping away the scar tissue and cutting into the flesh where a deep pain still lingered. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes and torrents of memories I'd long repressed flooded back to me, threatening to drown me. But I continued walking, continued searching. Room after room, all empty and hollowed out, the furniture in varying states of destruction. Deeper and deeper I went, silent and shaking, picking up the weight of new memories with each step.
I found him sitting alone in the basement kitchen.
Something brittle inside my chest shattered when I saw him. His flaxen hair was dull with dirt and hung in an unruly mat around his shoulders. His shoulders were curved in on himself, bowing under the pressure of his grief. His complexion was sallow and there were dark circles dyed into the skin under his vacant eyes. His clothing was disheveled and torn, dark blood dried on one of the sleeves of his tunic.
"Tamlin."
My voice broke on his name; I couldn't remember the last time I'd said it aloud. He didn't look up or even acknowledge that he was no longer alone. Truthfully, I wasn't sure that he wasn't alone, because I felt invisible next to the size of his heartbreak.
I took a halting step forward and saw his eyes flicker reflexively in my direction. Slowly - painfully slowly - he dragged his gaze upwards until his eyes met mine. I didn't know what to do when our eyes locked. Part of me wanted to smile, to beam at him and show him that there was still someone who felt the sun's warmth when he was around. Part of me wanted to rush forward and wrap my arms around him, to keep him from disintegrating in front of me. Part of me wanted to turn around and walk out, pretending I'd never been here and run away again.
Instead, I did nothing but stare back. I wasn't sure what he saw in my eyes, and I couldn't name what I saw in his. I held his gaze for a few breaths before I saw the glaze in his eyes clear for a moment.
"Sirona?" His voice was hoarse with disuse, and my name sounded foreign when he spoke it. Part of me wondered if he'd forgotten me, he said my name so cautiously and with such uncertainty. I nodded, a lump forming in my throat. I felt my magic stir deep within me, my proximity to Tamlin's obvious pain awakening it.
"You came back." I couldn't tell if that was an observation or a question.
"I came back," I eventually said simply, taking a small, unsure step towards him. He recoiled ever so slightly like a cornered animal. "I came back, Tamlin," I said again, my voice a bit stronger this time. My magic was stretching inside me, and I could feel the whisper of its warmth in my fingertips.
Once again, his green eyes flickered up to my face. This time, I could read the expression in them clearly. Disappointment. I wasn't the face he'd hoped to see; it wasn't me that he hoped would be coming back for him. Another fragile piece of my heart splintered and lodged on the inside of my ribs with an anguished burn.
He needs you.
The three words I'd wanted to hear in Lucien's letter hadn't been his last, however. My friend Lucien had seen enough of my heart to know its deepest desire. He'd known the cost I'd pay in returning to Tamlin, he knew the pain it would cause me. And he wouldn't have asked if there were no other options. And, although neither Lucien nor I had ever said such things with clarity to one another, I'd known that embedded in his final words was as close to an apology as I'd ever get from him for what he'd asked of me.
He may not know it, but I do.
I realized in that instance, as Tamlin's disappointment screamed at me from across the darkened kitchen, that he would probably never know that he needed me. Lucien knew it, though. And I knew it.
And that would have to be enough.
Steeled with purpose and tamping down my own grief, I yielded to the insistent burn of my magic. My palms warmed and glowed with the life magic in my blood as I strode confidently across the space between us. Tamlin watched me dully as I placed my hands gently on his temples. He didn't recoil from my touch - either from sheer apathy or from familiarity, I couldn't be sure. I pushed against the soft, warm barrier of my magic, willing it across the places where my skin connected with his. A poisonous and acidic wound festered just beneath Tamlin's skin; not the kind of wound that you get from a knife blade or a fist, but a wound of a deeper and harder-to-heal variety. The wound of a broken heart, of shattered hopes for the future, of unquenchable regrets. It gaped like a dark chasm, bottomless, with walls of splintered, shattered glass that tore at the edges of my thoughts. One warm surge of my magic wouldn't be enough, I knew. I'd expected as much from Lucien's letters. But as I probed gently around the wound that gaped across Tamlin's soul, I wondered falteringly if my magic would ever be enough.
He needs you.
With Lucien's words ringing in my ears, I let a bright shaft of my healing magic flow into Tamlin, felt it soothe the smallest edge of the wound he carried.
As my magic waned and dwindled like a setting sun, I pulled my palms away from his face, fighting against the urge to trail my fingers down the side of his jaw or smooth the dirty hair off his brow.
When his eyes flickered open and came back to mine, the disappointment was still there, but it wasn't alone. In the corners of his gaze, I saw a faint, fleeting glimmer of gratitude.
"Not too fast," he croaked cryptically. I furrowed my brows in confusion down at him, unsure of his meaning.
"Don't help me too fast," he clarified. "I deserve every moment of this."
I couldn't think of what to say, didn't trust myself to speak over the lump in my throat, so I only nodded in silence. His eyes glazed over once more as he slid back under the surface of his grief. The reprieve from his attention left me free to turn my mind to instinct as I spent the rest of the day inventorying Tamlin's severely depleted food stores and beginning to clean the kitchen for daily use. I tried to push more life magic into Tamlin over the course of the afternoon, but each time he refused, giving me a halfhearted shake of his head. Overwhelmed by my own pain to find him so utterly dismantled, I didn't argue, and left him to his own musings. When night sank over the Spring Court, he eventually rose from his seat and retreated off into the manor house without so much as a word. I doubted sleep found him easily, but I tried not to let it eat at me as I dragged one of the servant's beds out from their quarters and wrapped my traveling cloak around me in front of the small fire I'd made in the kitchen. My own sleep was fitful and punctuated by dreams of falling into a never-ending blackness, his impassive green eyes watching me the entire time. In between isolated pockets of rest, Lucien's words echoed in my mind:
He needs you. He may not know it, but I do.
It felt like a prayer I recited the words so many times. But in them I found a purpose, a sense of direction amidst the wreckage of both our griefs. And with that small piece of hope, I finally found a peaceful sleep in the minutes before the sun slipped over the horizon, heralding my first full day back in Prythian, back in the Spring Court.
Back home.