Page 92 of A Promise so Bold and Broken

Without thinking, she cast a final glance at Raine and followed her into the thick green, ignoring that she was barefoot with only a towel wrapped around her body.

“Frelina!” Lessia called out when she glimpsed her hair between the whistling grass. “Please!”

But her sister didn’t stop, and the greenery quickly swallowed the figure, the blades swaying back and forth in the warming breeze.

Halting, Lessia cocked her head to the side, training her ears as she listened to the spears of grass rubbing against each other, the shrieks of wind as it brushed the stems.

There.

There was a shuffling of feet to her left.

Without making a sound, recalling the training she’d had sneaking through the streets in Vastala to avoid drawing the attention of Rioner’s guards, Lessia swept some of the tufts to the side.

When she heard the sound again, she lunged.

Slamming right into her sister, who’d started creeping up behind her, Lessia straddled her and gripped her flailing arms, pushing them down beside her body.

“Stop fighting,” Lessia hissed through her teeth when Frelina slithered like a snake beneath her, her white canines glinting in the sunlight that broke through the grass. “I just need you to listen to me.”

“Why should I?” Frelina snarled. “I heard you were taking off again anyway.”

Lessia stiffened when tears flooded her sister’s eyes, even as she blinked furiously to rid herself of them, and she quickly released her arms.

She was immediately flung to the side, crashing into the ground beside Frelina, and her towel dangerously close to falling off.

Readjusting it, Lessia glared to her side.

Frelina’s chest heaved, but she remained lying on her back, her short hair splayed out with grass sticking up between the strands.

“I’m sorry, Lina,” Lessia said softly as a tear rolled down her sister’s cheek, hoping Frelina wouldn’t snap at her for using the old pet name. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you. And I am even more sorry I left you. I promise, there hasn’t been a day when I didn’t think of you, when I didn’t hurt for what I did to you… you and Mother and Father.”

Frelina clenched her jaw, her eyes staring straight into the brightening sky. “I have been so angry with you! You don’t understand what it was like waking up, seeing Mother and Father completely broken… And when I asked for you? They called back the healer because they believed I hit my head so hard I was hallucinating.Ieven started to believe them—believe that the memories of you were fabrications of my mind.”

Lessia closed her eyes for a moment, digging her fingers into the ground.

Frelina was right.

She couldn’t even imagine.

“I’m sorry,” Lessia whispered again.

“I know,” Frelina clipped. “When I was finally healthy enough to get out of bed, I overheard my mother and the healer talk and… that’s when I realized they weren’t just broken for me…”

A distressed sound left her. “Mother was dying. I stopped talking about you then. They were barely functioning as it was, and Father could only focus on taking care of her. He got so careless we even had several of Rioner’s men pay us a visit, as Rioner wondered where he’d disappeared off to.”

Lessia’s eyes widened, and she turned to her side, eyeing her sister closely.

Something about her tone—the monotone coldness of it—sent a chill racing down her spine.

“I killed them.” Frelina also turned on her side, her gaze hard. “I had to.”

Lessia bowed her head. “Of course. I-I have done the same thing.”

How she wished neither of them had to, though.

That her innocent sister—the girl who used to chase Lessia through the woods on her pony, laughing so loud she almost fell off the horse, and who started every day by singing with their mother in the kitchen—remained.

But Lessia could see there was something new in Frelina’s gaze.

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