I swallow and squeeze my eyes shut. “There’s no need to act like it doesn’t hurt you. You don’t have to pretend, not in front of me. I understand the pain. I understand losing someone so close...” The flames immediately fade.

Braizen's mouth turns down into a snarl. His eyes are a void as he snaps at me. “What are you talking about, Sparrow? The pain of what? Torrent, Lorna, and Lin aren’t actually dead. I don’t know why I even said that, so spare me the lecture about what you know of grief. It isn’t necessary.”

I bite down on my lip as the reality of his sorrow crashes over me. I may know some about grief, but I’m a downright expert on denial.

“Braizen,” I whisper, and a cool draft wraps around me. Since we stepped out of the Wood, I’ve noted his anguish. The way his eyes sink in the middle of a laugh, or how he shakes his head after plunging too deep into his thoughts. I’ve done the same since my mother’s murder.

Instead of facing the pain, I doused myself in drink, slept with stable boys, and irritated Nurse Lydia until she couldn’t stand to stay in the same room with me. I push down the guilt. Down, down, down in hopes that it can be forgotten. So deep and far away that I can chase my temporary distractions without feeling pain.

Braizen looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to finish my sentence, so I say quietly, “Our friends wouldn’t want us to ignore their sacrifice.”

“Our friends?” He all but spits at me. “You think they’re our friends?”

I step forward to stop him, to ward off the venom I feel him injecting into my soul, but he doesn’t give me a chance.

“They’re not our friends. Is that clear? They’re mine. My family. My beating heart. You barely knew them! They didn’t care for you. The only thing that they knew about you was how much strife your very existence has caused our kingdom. If anything, Idalia, they only grew to hate you more.”

A lancing pain shoots down my arm. It’s not the discomfort that commands me to strike. It’s the recognition of this other side of grief: Anger.

He stares at the bottles behind me. “You can’t possibly know what you’re saying right now. You don’t know them. I do. They aren’t dead. They’re fine, do you hear me? Fine. They are. They have to be.”

“Of course. We’ll just keep pretending if that’s what you need.”

He laughs, a stark, arrogant sound that echoes off the stone walls. “That’s ironic coming from you.” He turns his attention back to the bottles behind him and takes generous gulps while he searches through the shelf.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”