Some people like the cold. They like curling up in blankets, cuddling with the ones they love by the fire, and making snow angels on freshly fallen snow. They like wearing layers of thicker clothing while the brisk wind tries to snake its way down their collars and along their spines. Some people like the cold.I am absolutely, one hundred percent, not one of those people. I'd rather be thrown into another tree rather than sit another second in this cold.
"Oh, would you stop your pouting," Siscilla says, noticing my haggard face. "It's not that bad."
"Says the one who can literally keep herself warm."
"I offered to control your body temperature, but you said no."
"I'm not a child who needs coddling."
"Needing someone doesn't make you a child. In fact, admitting that you need someone shows that you are anything but a child."
I give her a glare, both because I hate her unending labyrinth of wisdom, and also because Julyan is currently laying on the couch with his head in her lap. She's currently keeping him warm while he takes a nap he claimed to have needed. The cold is still not our full winter, but it's like Marzanna, the Goddess of Winter and the Northern Wind, finally woke up after sleeping in. There's no snow, but it did rain last night. We all woke up to the sound of the pirates outside cursing as they ran to squeeze inside their tents. Some of the more drunk pirates just lay in a puddle and fell asleep or started rain dancing. I stayed up and continued to be entertained by them for most of the night. It's probably why my hands are pale and not warming no matter how long I tuck them into my armpits or between my legs.
Levi comes running out of the hallway with a giant smile on his face. He spots me sitting in the chair and makes a B-line straight for me. I barely have enough time to get my hands out from under the wool blanket before he jumps and tackles me. I pull him further into my lap and try not to groan when he wraps his arm around my neck, squeezes hard, and rams his knee into my stomach. A full takedown I'm sure Fauna would highly approve of.
He thankfully doesn't hold on too long and lets go of me before I can suffocate. "Tommy wants you," he says, using the nickname he and his younger sister gave Thomas after she stumbled over a few letters.
"Oh, and what for?" I ask him with chattering teeth that I clench together.
"He said if I get you before he counts to sixty, I get five pieces of candy."
"Oh did he now?"
"I'd smack that boy if he wasn't smiling more," Siscilla chimes.
Levi grins wider, probably thinking that Siscilla is talking about him. She sticks her tongue out at him, and he giggles and hops off my lap. I walk after him, pointedly ignoring Siscilla's wiggling eyebrows. Claritia, it seems, likes to gossip while her children are sleeping. Even more so now that Neven isn't here to keep her company. Don't quote me on it, but I think she's beginning to go grey with all the stressing and worrying she's been doing. Half of her family sleeps in her arms, the other half she can only pray she'll be able to hold again. If I were her, I'd be just as bad – probably worse. I'm mentally falling apart, and Lance and I only met months ago. Then again, I wasn't necessarily mentally stable before that.
Levi leads me to Fauna's room where I find Thomas awkwardly holding Aurelia in his arms while listening to Claritia talk about something about Allerick's eyes. He looks absolutely miserable for someone who's holding a fast-asleep child. I wish my luck were that good. I always get them when they're crying.
He looks at me and mouths the word "help," with a pointed look at Claritia. I'm half tempted to walk back out if only my legs weren't shaking. I end up sitting by Claritia's legs on the bed. Thomas doesn't hesitate and nearly runs over and to hand me Aurelia.
"Wimp," I whisper before he gets tackled by Levi who clearly still has energy to burn.
"Oh, Katarina darling, come sit back and look at Allerick's eyes," Claritia calls.
"You owe me," I whisper furiously to the biggest chicken I know. Rolling my eyes, I carefully reposition Aurelia in my arms before scooting back against the headrest alongside her mother.
"Look at them, don't they sparkle?" She angles Allerick towards me and I look down to watch him look at me and continue to chew on her finger.
"I suppose they do."
"You know, Darius's eyes used to sparkle. It could be the darkest night and he'd still find a way to make them shimmer."
"I'm sure all babies have the magical effect."
Her smile falters as she stares down at her newborn. "Oh no, Darius's eyes always sparkled."
"What happened?" Thomas asks, holding a cackling Levi by his ankles. I glare at him for a second, but then catch her usage of the past tense and understand his question.
"You tell me." She looks out the window with solemn eyes, her content smile fading until it's gone. "Every light in my son's eyes disappeared the day he ran into that forest. Fire may burn in veins, but I fear that is the only light that left that clearing. They're nowhere near as empty as my husband's but who's to say they won't become them."
"Darius is not Neven," I reassure her.
She shakes her head. "Neven went from the hand of a kind God to the dull puppet of a cruel one overnight. Darius went from pure love to a faint shadow of it made by moonlight, all in the span of a few seconds and the destruction of a forest. I love the sparkle in my children's eyes because I know all too well that they could disappear with the snap of my fingers, no warning to tell you that it's going to happen. I love the light in my child's eyes because one day this world will blow them out, and I won't be able to light them again."
She pulls Allerick closer to her, burying her nose into the crook of his neck. Thomas and I share a concerned look. Claritia wasn't the only one who noticed the change in Darius. Everyone was afraid to speak to him that day after he exploded. He had this dead look in his eyes that made his eyes look so dark that they could've been obsidian stones. Not even Claritia did more than say a quiet goodbye to him when they started their search. If I'm being honest, I was a little scared that he'd burn down the house if I tried talking to him.
I used to be scared of Darius because I was a servant and he's a Prince. I knew that he, Claritia, or Neven could have me killed at any moment if I misstepped. Now I'm afraid of him because he's afraid of and for someone else, and he has a power that will run off of his emotions and do Gods know what. We've seen what Darius can do with the elements, and even though it's hard – or rather impossible – to trust Sibella, I don't doubt her when she says his outburst was only a thin slice from the whole three-layer cake. This world is made up of the four elements, and he has the power to burn down the world and its partner in crime that can feed it further to mass destruction. I don't fear that he'll be the one to reign hell. I fear that if things go wrong, he'll succumb to the monster inside him and give Xaxias what he wants.
Thomas and Levi plop down on the bed, which is surprising for the younger considering he usually can go the whole day running around.
"You may not be able to be the one to make Darius light up again, but that doesn't mean that someone else can't." Claritia looks at Thomas oddly, but I know where he's trying to go with this, so I jump in.
"My Queen, did you ever notice the way he looked at her?"
She stares at me distantly, a shadow unmistakably passing over her face. "Trust me, my dear, I know exactly what shined between them when they looked at each other. The question is, does he know? Do you know?"
Her question has me second guessing my own proposed one. "Know...know what." She doesn't answer, and Thomas avoids my eyes which means he knows exactly what she's talking about.
Everyone knows that Darius and Fauna are more than friends who started off as odd enemies. I say odd because she loathed him and loved to push his buttons. Darius, however, disliked the idea that one person was trying to take the responsibilities of his twelve best friends, but he liked the idea of getting beneath her skin more. They were enemies of a sort, turned to friends who loved tag-teaming their evil schemes to piss people off, and then to closer friends who could know what one person was thinking by the twitch of their eye. After that...well...then came the way they both stared at each other too long, always gravitated to one another in a room, unconsciously tapping their fingers or feet when they couldn't see one another.
Even when I was helping dress her and Thomas was helping Darius in the bathroom, she'd always glance at the door when she thought I wasn't looking, but servants are always looking. Those two were absolute opposites who clawed at each other's throats. Now...even with the world going to shit, those two will move mountains and rage the wind from the four corners of the earth to get each other back. If that's not how you describe love, then I don't know how you could describe love.
Well, I guess you describe it in several other ways. You could say that it feels like swimming in starlight and living heaven on earth. You could describe the honey-warm feeling in your chest as the feeling of falling in love with the same person over and over again. The butterflies that fly in your stomach tell you that it's real, that what you're feeling couldn't be anything more than all the happiness in the world.
Nothing in this hell-bent world could make you feel so much love and indescribable emotion as when you're looking into your soul mate's eyes and seeing everything you feel, reflecting back at you. You could describe love – true love – as more than watching as a man whose heart just broke, turns over every rock, and blows down every tree to find the one he loves. We can't see Darius or Fauna's deep feelings towards each other, but we sure as ten hells can feel it. Just ask my numb toes.
"Kat!" I look at Thomas and he gives me a look that tells me I seemed to have missed something. "You okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I was just..."
"Reminiscing in the thoughts of love?" Claritia says, giving me a knowing look.
I advert my eyes from hers. "I don't know what love feels like."
"No? And what would your knight in shining armor say to that?"
"My knight has had his heart torn to pieces once, he's not going to be so happy-go-lucky about giving it out freely again. Especially to someone who's only been a year into adulthood."
"And what's that got to do with you knowing what love is?" Thomas asks.
I shift Aurelia's weight in my arms. I swear every day that she gets heavier. That or I'm getting weaker, which is an entirely strong possibility. "I've lived most of my life in rags and keeping my head down so much that my neck aches to hold my head up now. Arthur is the first person I met who gave me hope that I wouldn't die alone."
"What?"
"Oh shush, Thomas. We all know that you were just a distraction," Claritia states.
Her jab doesn't land and he keeps staring at me, his brows furrowed but eyes piercing. I know he heard my accidental slip of underlying truth that the Queen didn't. He always seems to hear what you don't say. I talk before he can demand that I explain. The last thing I need is for the Queen to grow the fear that one of her children will attempt to commit suicide or harm themselves one day. She's practically hysterical and hormonally staggered as is.
"I don't know what love feels like because I've never felt it before. The day I figure out what that feels like, I'll let you know, but until then I won't label my feelings as something which they haven't yet become."
"And how will you know when to call it love if you don't know what love is?" He challenges.
Claritia dramatically rolls her eyes. "You weren't listening."
Thomas's brows dip more and I have to stop myself from laughing. It's not often that Thomas doesn't follow a conversation or already knows what's happening. Though I will consider him now thoroughly distracted and mentally high-five myself for avoiding an entirely awkward conversation.
When Claritia doesn't go to explain, I do. "I don't know what love feels like, but I know what love is. All anyone has to do is look at our past."
"Our past..."
Thomas is thinking way too much about our one-time thing. I can't help the hint of a smile that forms on my face. Maybe I got his confidence up with the whole storytime Fauna put me through. Read. My. Lips. Bucko.
"Our past," I repeat, waving my arm in a big circle, motioning to everyone around us. "The Queen was willing to trust the two most feared assassins in all of Ker to keep her loved ones safe. The Bhaltayr aren't protecting their Prince, they're protecting their brother. The night that the Jade King died, both the Ebony Nightingale and the Sinister Fox stepped into the castle for the first time, and even with death coming off of their fingers, they didn't lay a hand on anyone who didn't deserve it or couldn't take the blow. They would've tumbled into Gods know what kind of darkness had we not given them people to lean on. I shouldn't even have to bring up what got us here."
"For someone who's only a year into her adulthood, I'd say that's a lot of knowledge on a subject you claim to know nothing about." Confusion gone, his smug smirk tilts his face into one oh-so-punchable.
Gods save me from strangling him in the middle of the night.
"Wait, what day is it?" I ask the room, suddenly getting a weird sense of deja-vu.
"Um, I believe it's Veneris, fourth cycle in the month of Rawky – I could be wrong, so don't quote me on it," Claritia answers, glancing out the window as if the sky will somehow tell her what day it is.
You have got to be kidding me. A cycle! On Veneris in the third cycle in the month of Rawky, the twentieth day in the month, I was so overwhelmed with thoughts running in my head about Siscilla telling me about Sibella that I forgot the one thing I've always remembered. Being a servant, I didn't really have anything to celebrate but this, and I always managed to swipe a pastry from the kitchens when someone wasn't looking. It's not the birthday celebration others have, but for me, it was enough to make one of my rare smiles find itself peeking out from my shell.
"Kat? You okay?"
I snap my mouth shut and blink a few times at the sound of Thomas's voice. "What? No – I mean, yes. I'm fine."
"Does the date mean something to you?" Claritia asks.
"Um, sort of, it just...I lost track of it, is all."
"Well, that's no surprise. I only remembered because of the notebook that's in the other bedroom I sleep in. It has all the days of the year scribbled in it. I started putting checks by them as the days went on, just in case-"
"By the Gods..." I avoid Thomas's gaze, knowing very well that he too remembers the date. It was, after all, on my birthday that we shared a bed.
He had somehow found out it was my birthday and decorated my small closet of a room with flowers and little notes wishing me great things in the days and years to come. We shared the loaf of sweet bread I snagged and then started talking, and one thing lead to another and...yeah. A girl just turns seventeen, a year past the age of adulthood, and she loses her purity to celebrate. I'm not entirely proud of it, but...not many regrets from that night.
I keep my eyes on Aurelia, running my thumb over her hand as her tiny, chubby fingers grip my pointer finger. She's still asleep, but I hear that sleeping babies are more likely to cry than those awake. Not sure if I believe it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to test the claim.
"Kat-"
I snap my head up, locking hard eyes on Thomas. "We have bigger things to worry about."
"It's not like we're doing anything," he protests, gesturing to the house as I did earlier.
"Doesn't matter. It was a cycle ago, Thomas, let it go."
His face settles into a calmness I don't like. "If I recall correctly, you never seemed to let go a year ago."
I never understood how Fauna could go so still with rage so quickly until right now. He better be thanking the Gods left and right that I'm holding a toddler in my arms, otherwise, I'd be leaping over the bed to strangle him, not jump his bones.
"It's a beautiful day today." Squinting my eyes, I turn to look at Claritia wondering just how obscured her definition of beautiful must be to look out the smudged and fogged window and say that the clouded sky, howling wind, and the drizzle of rain are delightful.
"I have seen worse, my queen," Thomas says with a tone that clearly implies he's talking about me.
Little prick is going to regret that. "Blaise!"
"What do you need her for?" I look to Claritia, placing an innocent smile on my lips.
See, what most of the people here don't know is that in the first initial cycles of being stuck here, Blaise and Thomas had quite a number of disagreements. One day their not-so-silent feud turned into a yelling competition during one of our walks in the forest. Isolation was nagging on my legs, so I forced both of them to come with me on a walk. I brought Blaise because I needed someone who could hold a knife without cutting themselves, and she was, at the time, my only murderer friend. Thomas looked all too happy to finally sit down while Levi took a nap, and I just couldn't have that kind of joy dusting up the cabin.
We walked into the forest, and not five minutes from leaving the cabin they started bickering. I didn't bother stopping them, just kept leading us aimlessly through the forest. Despite her being keen on beating Thomas in their several arguments, I knew Blaise was paying attention and would know how to get back, so I just hummed to myself and kept going. Soon enough their argument became pointless and I was just about fed up with it, so I spun around on them and shamed them both until they agreed to do nothing but avoid and ignore each other as much as possible. Considering Blaise is trained to hide in plain sight, I figured it wouldn't be that hard, and it hasn't been.
They haven't fought or done more than share glares a few dozen times a day, so I'd say it's progress. However, after Thomas stormed back into the cabin and buried his feelings in some food, Blaise and I went to Darius's clearing so she could get some energy out. We talked, and we came to an agreement. Should Thomas or anyone else ever push either of us too far, we'd say a word – a single random word – and the other would instantly understand. We made a sort of pact, and I'm so thankful that we did.
She walks in with her normal sashay that makes her cloak move in the dramatic wave she likes so much. I swear to the Gods and their Saints that in the House of Jade, each of them takes a drama one-o-one class. She even tilts her head as she stops in the doorway, casting the top half of her face in the shadows perfectly to where her eyes become the only thing shining. I watch as Thomas glares at her feet and turn my smile into one that hopefully mimics Fauna's closed devilish one.
"Darya."
Blaise finds my eyes, the careful question of whether I'm sure or not. One nod and her eyes go hungry and her mouth twists. She looks slowly over to Thomas and I tap Levi with my foot and motion with my hand for him to come over to me. He does so, catching Thomas's attention. He's too focused on the child that he doesn't see Blaise launch from the doorway until it's too late.
She jumps right on top of him, grabs his collar, and using her momentum, she rolls and flings him off the side of the bed. Claritia screams her distaste, frantically trying to keep Allerick from crying. Aurelia still sleeps soundly, making me like her even more. Levi, however, rushes to go help his favorite person, but I gently catch his arm.
"They're only play wrestling. It's alright. See, Blaise is laughing." He glances at them and then looks back at me with a doubtful expression. Okay, so her laugh is more maniacal than joyful, but it's still a laugh. "Why don't we go get that candy you were promised."
He perks up at that and I slide off the bed after him. Julyan and Siscilla appear in the doorway, both wide-eyed and looking ready to jump into the fight. I tell them no to stop Blaise from her fun and just make sure Claritia doesn't have a heart attack, and then obey Levi who's tugging on my arm begging to go get the candy with one last glance to my safety net. Siscilla yells something about giving Blaise a cold if she breaks one bone in his body, but Blaise just gives her a short snark and pins Thomas.
Best birthday present ever.