A Dawn of Onyx (The Sacred Stones, #1)(4)

It was shallow, but the first thing that came to mind when I heard his name was Halden’s hair. Sometimes, especially in the moonlight, his blond curls looked so pale they nearly glowed. It was actually what first drew me to him—he was the only boy in our town with fair hair. Amber mainly produced chocolatey brunettes like me or dirty blonds like Leigh and Ryder.

I had fallen for that ice-blond hair at the determined age of seven. He and Ryder had become inseparable right around then. Certain I was going to marry him, I didn’t mind trailing their every adventure and clinging to their scraped-knee-inducing games. Halden had a smile that made me feel safe. I would have followed it anywhere. The day word of conscription came to Abbington was the only time I ever saw his smile falter.

That, and the day he first saw my scars.

But if I’d been enamored with Halden since I was little, why didn’t it feel like love when he finally saw in me what I had seen in him for so long?

I didn’t have a good answer, and certainly not one fit for a ten-year-old. Had I not loved him because I’d never seen it go well for anyone, namely our mother? Or because sometimes I’d ask him what he thought of Onyx’s expansion of their already sprawling land, and his dismissive responses would make me feel prickly for some reason I couldn’t quite place? Maybe the answer was far worse. The one I hoped wasn’t true but feared the most—that I wasn’t capable of such a feeling.

There was nobody more deserving of it than Halden. Nobody else whom Mother, Ryder, or Powell would have wished me to be with.

“I don’t know, Leigh.” It was the truth.

I swept my attention back to the dinner preparation and sliced vegetables in silence, Leigh sensing I was finished with that particular line of questioning. When Mother’s medicine was done boiling, I moved it to the counter to steep. Once it cooled, I would fill a new vial and place it in the pouch by the cupboard as always.

Maybe I could do this—take care of them all on my own.

The savory aroma of stewing vegetables mixed with the medicinal notes of Mother’s medication drifted through the home. It was a familiar scent. A comfortable one. Amber was surrounded by mountains, which meant the valley we were nestled in always had chilly mornings, crisp days, and cold nights. Every tree wilted brown leaves year-round. Every dinner was always corn, squash, pumpkin, carrots. Even the harshest of winters brought only rain and bare branches, and the hottest summer I could remember had a mere two trees of green. For the most part, it was brown and blustery here every day of the year.

And after twenty of them, there were days when it felt like I’d had enough corn and squash for a lifetime. I tried to imagine my life filled with other flavors, landscapes, people… But I’d seen so little, the fantasies were blurred and vague—a cluttered constellation of books I’d read and stories I’d heard over the years.

“It smells divine in here.”

My eyes found my mother as she hobbled in. A bit worse for wear today, her hair was tied back in a damp braid at the nape of her neck. She was only forty, but her thin body and sallow cheeks aged her.

“Here, let me help you,” I said, walking to her.

Leigh hopped off the table, leaving one candle unlit, to come to her other side.

“I’m fine, I promise,” she clucked at us. But we ignored her. It had become a well-choreographed dance at this point.

“Roses and thorns?” she said, once we had seated her at the table.

My sweet mother who, despite her chronic fatigue, pain, and suffering, always genuinely cared about what happened in our days. Whose love of flowers had made its way into our nightly routine.

My mother had come to Abbington with me when I was nearly one. I never knew my father, but Powell was willing to wed her and take me in as his own. They had Ryder less than a year later and Leigh seven after that. It was rare in our traditional town to be a woman with three children, one with a different father than the rest. But she never let unkind words cloud the sunshine she radiated daily. She worked tirelessly her whole life to give us a home with a roof, food in our bellies, and more laughter and love each day than most children get in a lifetime.

“My rose was saving Mr. Doyle’s finger from being amputated,” I offered. Leigh made a retching sound. I left my thorn out. If they hadn’t realized it yet, I was not going to be the one to share that our brother hadn’t written to us in a year.

“Mine was when Jace told me—”

“Jace is the boy Leigh thinks is cute,” I interrupted and gave my mother a conspiratorial nod. She shot back a dramatic wink, and Leigh’s eyes became slits aimed at both of us.

“His cousin is a messenger in the army, delivering plans directly from King Gareth to his generals where even ravens can’t reach them,” Leigh said. “The cousin told him that she saw a man with wings in the Onyx capital.” Her eyes went big and blue as the sea.

I looked to my mother at the absurdity, but she just nodded politely at Leigh. I tried to do the same. We shouldn’t poke so much fun at her.

“How curious. Do you believe him?” Mother asked, resting her head on her hand in thought.

Leigh contemplated this as I sipped my stew.

“No, I don’t,” she said after deliberating. “I guess still-living Fae are a possibility, but I think it was more likely some kind of witchcraft. Right?”

“Right,” I agreed, even though I knew better. The Fae had been completely extinct for years—if they had ever been real at all. But I didn’t want to burst her imaginative bubble.