❛in which they grow to love and learn❜
Briar Desilva hated. She hated the Cursebreaker and the High Lord of Spring. She hated her mind and she hated her body. She hated the memories that danced beyond her reach and the past that was and always has b...
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'go on, burn a while.'
❀❀❀
THERE WERE MOMENTS of Briar Desilva's life that she could not quite remember. Their edges were torn just enough to be blurry and details spoiled with age. It was these memories, these murky and fog-riddled moments, that heckled the back of her thoughts like an angry audience to an out-of-tune musician.
If she tried hard enough, she was almost sure she could sort out the clear from the hazy. Perhaps she could remember exactly which shade of brown her mother's eyes were - because sometimes she was certain they were the darkness of fresh soil and sometimes they were the green-stained bark of the weeping willows that decorated the river-valleys of her home. Her father may have had a pure ebony beard and it may have been flecked with silver, too. But Briar was sure his arms were speckled with scars and freckles and she knew that she had once spent hours tracing constellations over his skin while they giggled over warm milk and stories. She couldn't remember exactly which constellations she had mapped out.
Very vividly, she could recall watching with glee as her father would reenact the stories of how he received the scars that littered his skin. She remembered his joy and rowdy, booming voice and her mother's pink scarf that he would wrap around his head when he imitated her. His voice would rise in pitch and her mother would roll her eyes but the corners of her lips always twitched up in amusement.
Yes, she remembered their love very vividly.
But there were still details that evaded her and time that muddled certain memories. That forgetfulness nagged at her, tore at her, reminded her of all she had once had and now lost. Because there were moments that were gone and moments she had forgotten as soon as they passed, as if she was moving a pace too slow or too fast for the rest of the world.
As she drew back her elbow and inhaled with the whirring of wood against bowstring, that out-of-sync feeling tickled her brain yet again. She wasn't quite sure if it was the pine needles tickling her cheek and neck or the golden-streaked head of hair that her arrow was aimed at that had done the trick.
No; it wasn't that head that was nagging at her memory. There wasn't a damn thing about that head that she could ever forget, not even if she tried. The pure loathing and hatred for her coated Briar's heart much too thickly and lined her soul much too deeply to ever slip away.
So perhaps it was the redheaded male walking alongside the brunette, chatting merrily as they strolled through the winding streets of Velaris. The male was significantly taller than her and his fiery hair only a few inches shorter. Her mind whirled and for a moment she saw her father, then an old lover and then a lost friend. Her lips parted in confusion and her elbow dropped a fraction.
