Hollis
Through the darkness, Candace's pale brow wrinkles. I clench my fists.
"Why?" she asks.
Hell of a question. One I have no idea how to answer.
"Eva gave you a chance to tell her everything. To make me look like the asshole." I study her through the gap I sliced in the side of her tent. "Why didn't you?"
She bites her lower lip and looks at the ground. Silvery moonlight casts her face in stark colors, but I can just barely make out some redness around her eyes. Was she... crying?
My mark screams.
"I didn't want to hurt her," Candace mumbles. "This way, I'm the only one hurt."
The pain redoubles. That thing in my chest jumps like a guard dog who heard a strange noise. She really believes she's the only one this is hurting.
Focus, Hollis. You came here for a reason.
And that reason is the look on her face when she glanced back as she left. It wasn't hurt or humiliation or even the want I spotted for just a second when she woke up this morning. It was concern.
When Eva and I returned to our tent after the celebration, everything was back to normal between us. She was teasing me about my two left feet, and I was complaining the music was impossible to dance to. Habit took over, and I started pulling off my tunic.
I came this close to showing her my mark. This close to ruining everything. Because I was having fun with her, the woman who should be my mate. Drastic times call for drastic measures, so I need the help of the woman who shouldn't help me with the one thing we agree about.
"I don't want to hurt her either," I say. "It's the last fucking thing I want."
Candace swallows visibly. "So?"
"So the mark isn't just hurting you."
She looks up at me, hope shining in her soft blue eyes.
"Physically, I mean." I rub my aching shoulder. "And we can't exactly talk to other people about this."
"You want my help figuring out how to break the bond," she says slowly.
Fuck. Every time I think the mark can't hurt any worse, it finds a new way, digging burning spoons in behind my eyes.
"Yes." I smile as confidently as I can. "So it stops hurting all three of us."
"Okay," she says.
"Okay?" My eyebrows shoot up. "Okay. Thank you."
She slides off her bed and away from me without a word. When she returns, she's wrapped a heavy robe over the white nightgown I was trying very hard not to notice. I help her climb out through the gap in the side of the tent then offer her my arm.
Candace stares at it for a long second.
"Eva talks about you a lot." She begins walking away.
"Good things?" I hurry to catch up.
She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. "Mostly."
I grimace. "Did she tell you the blueberry story?"
A smile pulls at Candace's lips that answers the question for her.
"She tells it wrong every time." I shake my head.
"Then tell me the right version."
I look around the silent campground. The moon is already dipping toward the horizon, the small hours of the morning creeping up on us. Almost no one is awake, and the few who are don't pay any attention to a couple more shapes in the night.
"Fine," I grumble. "You have to understand, this was a few weeks after my mother died."
Candace puts a hand on my arm. "I am sorry about that."
The strange feeling in my chest reacts, and I pull away from her touch. She tucks her hand into a pocket of her robe wordlessly.
"When I was even younger, she showed Eva and I this patch of winter blueberries. They grow on the mountain Kar Castle sits atop, but only in a few places. So, the two of us were sitting in this dead boring history lesson, and I looked out the window, and I could've sworn I saw the patch. The very one she showed us."
Candace covers her mouth to hide a small laugh.
I bump my hip into hers. "Don't laugh! I told you, Eva has it all wrong, so you don't know the end yet."
She nods seriously.
"Our history tutor was easy to distract-just tell him Kaiya, one of the maids, was nearby, and he disappeared. We got rid of them and snuck out onto the grounds." I glance at Candace. The moonlight turns her cornsilk hair to liquid silver. My heart skips a beat, and I plunge onward. "At this point, I could shift with some reliability, but Eva couldn't."
"So you shifted and let her ride you," Candace supplies.
I allow myself a small smile. "We did that a lot back then. Anyway, I put my nose to the ground, and we start running. In addition to winter blueberries, ice ivy also grows around the castle. And the berries look almost exactly the same."
"Except icy ivy is poisonous." She is clearly fighting to hold back laughter again.
I roll my eyes. "By the time I tracked down a patch of anything, Eva was freezing, and I was starving. Because I'm a gentleman, I made us a fire while she picked the berries."
"She picked them?" Candace's mouth opens in shock.
"Skipped that part, huh?" I grin triumphantly. "She always does. The rest is true-we ate about a dozen each before starting the trek home then made a pie with the rest when we got back. Both of us got violently ill, but not before the cook convinced Father to have a slice of the pie." I expected him to be furious, but he never actually said a word about it. He would've been furious before Mother died.
"Eva described the illness in a little more detail." Candace giggles. "But you're correct, she doesn't tell it right."
"See? You can trust me." An impulse to take her arm again sweeps through me, but I squash it. People might not be listening, but anyone could see us.
"You grew up together, didn't you?" she asks.
I nod. "I never had any siblings, and there weren't many other children in the castle. We spent all of our time together."
"She's your best friend," Candace says.
I've never put it like that, but she's not wrong.
"Do you love her?" she asks quietly.
I open my mouth, and nothing comes out. Eva is my promised. I care about her more than almost anyone in the world. She's the person I go to with good news and bad, the one who makes me laugh. And I'm going to fall in love with her when the Haze-
Well. I should have fallen in love with her. Not that I know what falling in love feels like.
That strangeness in my chest twinges again. I've never gotten that with Eva. I've never looked at her and thought about what the moonlight did to her hair or how kissable her mouth looked. Fuck.
"I didn't ask you out here to be put on trial." I pull away from Candace-when did we get so close?-and a dark shape catches my eye. The prison wagon. "I might as well ask you how you're out here celebrating when your mother is imprisoned right over there."
"That's the least of my concerns," Candace mumbles.
For the first time in a long time with anyone other than Eva or Father, I want to know more. "What do you mean?"
She jerks her head up like she forgot I was here. "Oh. Um, just with the bond, and the ritual not working fully...." She toes some dead grass.
I peer at her. "You're lying."
Her mouth tightens. "Those are significant concerns of mine."
"But there's something more." Somehow, I can already tell in the pinch of her brow and the way she won't look at me.
"It doesn't matter." She shakes her head. "If you asked my siblings, they'd tell you it's just something I made up in my head."
We pass the wagon and approach the newly vital tree. Lights still hang from its branches, burning low, but the rest of the celebration is abandoned. There's just us. I remember all my failed attempts at getting information out of people here. Subtlety isn't my art.
I lean against the tree and cross my arms. "I'm not like your siblings. Give me a shot."
She stares at me for a long moment. "You're not going to use this to make fun of me the next time you feel uncomfortable?"
I stiffen. "No."
She keeps staring at me, like she's taking me apart, climbing inside my head. How does she already know me so well?
"I won't," I say less defensively. "I promise."
"All right." She takes a deep breath. "Since I was a kid, I've been getting these... dreams. The royal family of Dun's Crossing doesn't have any magic, but somehow, I do. My dreams-some of them-come true. I can tell when I'm having them. They feel different. More real." She shakes her head. "I dreamt of you. Down to the blood."
"Holy shit," I murmur.
"I knew you wouldn't believe me." She starts to turn away.
I grab her wrist. Her skin is warm and smooth under my hand. "I do. Magic is strange, and no one understands it as well as they say they do. But why is that a problem now?"
She studies me like she's searching for signs I'm making fun of her.
"I'm not a good liar," I say.
A small smile softens her face. "That, I believe." She turns back, but I don't release her wrist. The pain in my mark finally fades.
"I've been having a new dream. One that prophesies war worse than anything my father started." She swallows. "And once the dreams start, whatever they're predicting usually happens soon."
I reel back a step. War. It would be a chance to prove myself to my father-and a guarantee of thousands of deaths.
"You believe me," she says incredulously.
"Of course." I exhale slowly. "We need to-"
"No one believes me." She takes a step closer. Gold and silver play over her skin like a dance.
Candace kisses me.