To Bleed a Crystal Bloom by Sarah A. Parker

Iroll onto my back and stare at a ceiling I cannot see, wishing it were lit with a fiery glow so I could watch light and shadow battle across it to the tune of crackling wood. A haunting lullaby that sometimes brings me a sense of peace.

At this rate, I’ll never sleep.

I sigh, reaching for the jar of night bark on my bedside table when a distant churn of heavy footfalls has me jerking up, sheets pooling in my lap, pillow slip clutched close to my chest.

Something’s wrong.

The boisterous melody swells until it sounds like I’m caught in the midst of an angry storm. Without even a pause in tempo, my door bursts off its hinges and crashes into my laden bookshelf, sending most of my books thumping to the ground.

A foreboding shadow charges through my room like a wild animal, snarling, tossing things around, the smell of leather and a winter wind smacking my senses.

My heart slams to a stop.

“Where is it?” Rhordyn roars, his silhouette lugging a drawer out of its socket and tipping its contents all over the floor. A box of knickknacks is the next tribute to his unbridled chaos; precious pieces I’ve collected over the years scattering atop the pile of clothes like pepper garnishing a meal.

My eyes narrow ...

This bastard.

“Where’s what?” I hiss, watching him tug another drawer free—his robust shape barely lit by the light leaking into my room from the stairwell.

A barrage of my underwear arcs through the air, and my cheeks blaze.

Here I am, clinging to a pillow slip bathed in his scent like it’s my most prized possession while he’s tossing my delicates as if he’s rooting around in a three-day-old pile of trash.

He strides toward the bed, dropping low and reaching under, before he pauses for a beat.

“Rhord—”

He leaps up and stabs his attention at my side table, the tense line of his shoulders seeming to soften as he snatches my necklace off the tray. Then, he’s grabbing my upper arms, pulling me forward with unforgiving hands and trussing the chain around my neck.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He’s never handled me like this before, like I’m nothing but a floppy doll.

The crystal bulb and conch shell land atop my chest, tinkling against each other while he manipulates the latch, fingers grazing my neck, sending shivers up and down my spine.

All over my skin.

He releases a deep sigh and pulls away, lumping onto the edge of my bed, elbows planting on his knees before his head falls into the scoop of his hands.

I can hear the trampling thud of his heart. Scent the deep, salty musk of his desperation.

There’s something so unsettling about seeing a man his size—a man who’s usually all hard edges and sturdy resolve—bent over himself like a felled tree.

I don’t recognize this male one bit.

“Rhordyn,” I whisper, reaching ...

The second my fingertips brush the brick of his shoulder, he jerks away, causing my hand to retract.

“There’s something I need to show you,” he rasps, the crumbled tenor of his voice lifting the hairs on the back of my neck.

Rhordyn doesn’t speak like that—like part of him is just as broken as I am.

Standing, he strides into the darkness, his heavy footsteps my only guide to his whereabouts. He strikes a match and lights a sconce near my vanity, bathing the room in a flickering light.

My eyes lap at his reflection in the mirror; his virile features pulled off an otherwise black canvas by the spill of golden light.

He drags a small, wooden stool out and gestures for me to sit.

My brow buckles.

“What are you doing?”

His gaze drops to the pillow slip I’m still clinging to, nostrils flaring, chest swelling. He exhales, his stare finding my own again—eyes hardened steel but slicing me in a gentle way, like the tapered edge of a shaving blade gliding across my skin.

“Come,” he rumbles, jerking his chin at the mirror. “Come see.”

For once, there is no challenge in the words. Just a simple request.

I wonder what hidden weight it holds for him to hand it to me so delicately.

I sweep my legs off the bed and stand, pillow slip clutched to my chest as I walk toward him.

There’s no point trying to hide it now.

It’s too late for that.

Rhordyn’s black button-down is rolled to his elbows, and the vision of his corded forearms glazed in firelight has my stomach knotting.

Every cautious step results in the hem of my shirt brushing against my naked thighs, but his gaze doesn’t drift to the bare show of skin, and I don’t bother attempting to hide myself. Don’t see the point when he’s already planted inside me in ways I doubt I’ll ever be able to explain.

I halt, staring up at his impeccably carved profile, internally cursing the world for sowing me in the presence of his baited beauty.

My attention roves to his bunched fists and white knuckles, as if he’s holding every ounce of tension in the tight balls of his powerful hands.

“Laith.”

Our stares collide.

There’s torture in his eyes, and I fail to draw a single lick of sense from it.

Slowly, I lower to the stool, bare ass colliding with the cold grain.

A shiver rakes up my spine.

I peep at the mirror; take in the man now standing behind me. Study the unfamiliar softness in his eyes.

Frown when I realize it’s not the sort of softness that tears down walls and lets other people see your true self ...

It’s sorrow.

I’ve seen that look before, years ago, but I can barely grasp the memory. Or perhaps I just don’t want to.

I clear my throat, hands twisting together in my lap.

Rhordyn draws a deep breath, then motions toward my hair. “May I?”

Curious, I nod.

My lids almost flutter shut as his fingers explore the heavy knot atop my head, unraveling the band, releasing a heavy curtain of flaxen locks that cascade around my shoulders and down my back. He gathers it all up, the calloused tips of his fingers brushing the delicate skin behind my ear, and I bite down on a shiver.

My thick waves are pushed forward over my left shoulder while he takes large gulps of my reflection.

I watch the ball in his throat roll, watch his chest swell, then deflate before he reaches for the latch at the back of my neck.

He fiddles with it, battles it, his regard finally splitting from mine to study its delicate workings, well-defined brows a pinched mantle above his stormy eyes. The chain falls, tumbles to my lap, and his gaze darts back to my reflection, those silver swirls becoming pools so wide they seem to dominate the room.

I hear his heart skip a beat, watch the color drain from his cheeks as a tightness peels off my face, down my neck, across my shoulders ... like paring the skin off a mandarin and freeing the fruit beneath.

Rhordyn releases a sigh that has its own chaotic tempo.

“Wh—”

Something glimmers in my peripheral, and I steal a peep at my own reflection, stilling the battered organ in my chest.

My stomach flops.

There’s a person staring back at me from the world behind the mirror. A woman with opaline skin and a storm of iridescent hair cascading down the left side of her body like a waterfall glistening from the sun’s touch. Her exposed ear tapers to a tip, the outer scoop lined with delicate prickles that shimmer. And her eyes ...

Her eyes look to be carved from crystal, glittering with an ocean of iridescent facets.

Freckles dust her nose like a miniature map of the stars, so similar to the ones I painted on my bedroom door. I reach up to brush one and my fingers collide with glass.

Fingers that belong to a hand I’ve never seen before.

The skin is fine and pale, like the petals of a delicate, ivory flower. I touch the back of it, recoiling from the feel—soft and silky and not like my own.

A sharp gasp cuts into me as realization empties my waning well of composure.

No.

Please, no.

The ground seems to tilt, and I grasp the edge of the vanity, eyes wide ...

“What ... what ...”

What the hell.

A tear rips a glistening path down my cheek, leaving a trail so bright and clear it’s hard to look at. Batting it away, I notice a mark creeping up the side of my neck and across my right shoulder—a black, inky stain that looks like the tapered tip of a crawling vine.

Temptation to touch it fizzles in my belly as my lids sweep shut, blocking out the view, sending more wetness darting down my cheek ...

A nightmare.

I’m trapped in one of my nightmares.

“Orlaith ...”

My eyes snap open, but I ignore my reflection, turning my sharpened ire onto the man behind me.

I jab a finger at the mirror. “Who is that?”

“The girl I saved from a Vruk attack when she was two years old,” he grates out, and I barely recognize his voice. It’s just as hard as it usually is, but these words have cracks in their faces. They’re tarnished with age and chipped in places.

These words have been chained inside him for so long they’re wary of their freedom.

“This is you,” he continues. “This is who you really are.”

Who I really am.

I shoot to my feet and stumble a step. His left fist unravels, twitching at his side as I grip the vanity to steady myself, that silk pillow slip discarded on the floor.

“How?”

No answer.

“How did you hide me from myself?”

He responds with a hard stare that says so much more than his absent words do.

I swallow, like forcing glass down my throat, which I swiftly realize is the jagged edges of betrayal slicing me up on their way down.

“You lied to me.”

“I would have lied to you forever if I thought I could get away with it.”

The admittance strikes me like a stone to the head, and I waver, blinking rapidly, trying to clear my blurring vision.

The words were said with such cold, detached certainty.

“Why?”

“Because I made a promise to a dying woman.” He slides forward a step, a half-lit shadow lording over me, boring through my ebbing stability. “A promise I intend to keep.”

“And what was that promise?” I ask around the swollen lump in my throat.

“To keep you safe.”

Safe ...

“And that’s it?” Every cell in my body seems to pause. “That’s the only reason?”

“Yes.”

His reply is instant, the word a lash that severs something vital.

My eyes shutter, and I feel my heart do the same—the single word a needle that bleeds my bubble of uncertainty.

I lift my chin, watching his eyes widen as I harden my own. “Well. Consider this me formally releasing you from that pledge.”

I stalk toward the bed, but a hand whips out and snags my wrist, halting my retreat and making my head whirl around.

“Lai—”

“Get your hand off me.”

He drops it with a sharp hiss, then snatches the other and yanks—pulling me so close I can feel the beat of his anger in the rise and fall of his chest. He dips his head and plants his face right in front of mine, so I’m assaulted by the draft of his icy breath.

“You’ll never be rid of me. You may not have a shadow, but you’re chained to mine for eternity. You think this has any weight?” he says, waving my wrist around—the one shackled by Cainon’s cupla—and a vicious sort of chuckle rolls out of him that smarts my skin. “You can run off and tie yourself to your pretty High Master, but I’ll hunt you to the four corners of the continent. Not because I want to, but because I can’t fucking help myself.”

My wrist is tossed at me with such force that I stumble back three steps. He traces those same steps until my back collides with one of the poles on my four-poster bed.

I suck a gasp as he pulls so close I can feel the press of all his hard angles, all the bulging pockets of muscle. His thigh slides between my legs and notches into place, pressing against my most private area ...

That bare, exposed part of me that’s suddenly flushed and aching.

I should be afraid, pinned to a pole by a man well over twice my size wearing eyes glazed with ire.

I’m not.

I’m trapped somewhere between wanting to claw his face off and wishing he’d lift his thigh—put a little more pressure on that hot, swollen spot between my legs.

His gaze cuts to the side, and he sneers, snatching Gypsy and the Night King off the edge of my bed. “You want a fairy tale?” he spits, waving it in my face. “I’m your fucking fairy tale. I’m nailed to your soul, Orlaith, and believe me when I tell you there is no happily ever after. Not for me, and certainly not for you.”

He tosses the book on the bed and retreats a step, leaving me gasping for air and clinging to the pole.

My world has tipped on its axis. I don’t recognize myself, and I have absolutely no idea who this man is standing before me, looking at me like he despises me. Truly despises me.

Right now, the feeling is mutual.

I hate that he’s lied to me all these years—hurt me in ways that are unforgivable. And I hate that even now, after everything he’s done, my body is still hot and so fucking raw for him, my muscles throbbing with need for him to dig up into me.

I’m confused, scattered, and done.

I’m. Fucking. Done.

“Get out,” I mumble, barely loud enough to hear.

The words are fragile, dented things, and I watch something in Rhordyn’s eyes shatter. Even the sturdy breadth of his shoulders softens as he heaves a sigh and massages the bridge of his nose.

“Mila—”

“Get. Out!” I bark, and this time my words are no longer delicate. They’re loud and obtuse—boulders tossed to maim.

Shields harden his eyes, and I watch him detach. It feels like a slap to the face, but I relish the sting.

He nods, stuffing hands deep into his pockets as he moves away, keeping his gaze trained to me the entire time. “As you wish.”

He makes his way to the door strewn across the floor, picking it up and leaning it against the wall before pausing.

I glare at his broad silhouette, waiting for him to cross that line so I can fall apart in peace.

He peers at me over his shoulder. “The necklace. I need you to put it back on.”

It’s not a request, but there is a vulnerability in his stare that would burrow into my inquisitive heart if I let it.

So, I don’t.

Instead, I douse it with a bucket load of bitter.

“You didn’t use your manners.”

His eyes widen, shadows slithering across them as his upper lip peels back from his teeth. “I will not beg you to protect yourself, Milaje. Put the fucking necklace on. Now.”

His voice is thicker than I’m used to it being—more weighty, almost bestial. But I hold his gaze, refusing to blink or shift or soften, wondering how he likes the taste of his own medicine.

He wants me to hide—to protect myself—and I’d love to understand why. But he never tells me anything.

I, too, refuse to beg. To dash the remaining droplets of my pride at the feet of a man who left me in the dark for nineteen fucking years. And I will not put that necklace back on while he’s standing there, watching me. Perhaps the old Orlaith would’ve done it by now, but that girl is gone.

He made damn sure of it.

“Leave.”

I swear I hear his knuckles pop.

He rumbles low, shaking his head in sharp, unbridled motions, before stalking out the door, leaving an encroaching emptiness that flattens my lungs.

I crumble to the floor, letting my head fall into the cradle of my trembling hands.

I’ve been living a lie.

No wonder it felt like my skin was too tight to fit my jutting bones—like my colors didn’t sing for my soul. How could they when I’ve been trapped inside the shell of a woman who isn’t me?

Rhordyn’s seen me struggle, yet he kept me wrapped in my barbed-wire skin.

Hands pushing through my hair, I stare across the room to the chain and stone and shell left discarded on the floor.

No concrete explanation or a single lick of remorse.

I force myself to stand on unsteady legs and walk toward the vanity, retrieving the necklace on the way, ignoring the pillow slip lying in a crumpled heap beside it.

All this time I’ve been fawning over this piece of jewelry as if it were Rhordyn’s heart hanging around my neck, but it was just a pretty ruse to keep me contained.

My fist tightens around the chain as I steal a glimpse of the woman in the mirror ...

She’s a masterpiece; the most exquisite rose given shape and life and a fluttering heartbeat. She’s the sun and the soil and light that bathes the world on a beautiful day.

She’s broken, lonely, and hiding from her past.

But it’s hard to keep hiding when I’m staring at the unveiled truth.

The shape of my eyes ...

The cut of my chin ...

The map of my freckles ...

I look like him. Like the little boy I’ve painted too many times to count—the one who lives in my nightmares.

Onlyin my nightmares.

Wide eyes that stare at nothing.

My lids flutter closed, twin tears darting down my cheeks as I sever the sight of my loss.

I survived. He didn’t. And something deep, deep inside is bellowing through the blackness that it should have been the other way around.

How am I supposed to handle that?

I can’t.

And I just know that tonight, while my consciousness is sleeping, my subconscious will end up perched on the edge of that shadow-filled chasm that exists in my dreams, trying to force my hand. That it will threaten to jump.

Again, I’ll refuse because the monster you know is safer than the monster you don’t.

I open my eyes, lift the necklace, and yield to the invasive gulp that suffocates my skin as I drape the chain around my neck ... watching all my luster bleed away. It only takes a few seconds before the real me is gone—painted over by a plain ruse that chafes my soul and hides the person I really am.

The beauty.

The pain.

The coward.