A younger Sylene—fourteen, clothes torn, wounds from rose thorns spreading across his skin, bandages wrapped around his head and face. Melchior was sent back to the memories of that night when they first met, under a full moon so bright it washed everything in silver. The boy almost seemed to melt into the light, becoming part of it.
His trembling fingers clutched an ice sculpture to his chest—as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling apart. Fragile, ghostlike, as if he belonged to the moon.
Those round, dazed eyes lifted toward him—unfocused, exhausted.
"Is this really… for me?"
A voice small and numb, belonging to a boy who had just watched his twin's shriveled corpse be buried beneath the rose garden's soil.
Melchior had dug that grave himself, hands still raw, nails bleeding, voice rough from years of disuse.
"As an apology for the thorns," he'd said softly. "I didn't trim them enough."
