From the moment that her jade eyes sweep over the colorful mural that is Paradise, Chelle hates it as completely and irrationally as she hates the silver King. From the lush emerald jungle to the idyllic peace of its beach, it is the sort of place she’d once dreamed of living— but no matter how beautiful her surroundings, they are not home. Not in the way that the drab, barren lands from which she is torn have become. Of course, it isn’t until that moment for the amber mare recognizes how deeply her attachment has grown over the course of only two seasons. And— her tear-filled gaze connecting briefly with Cain’s, the desperate defiance driven from her by Rougaru’s snaking neck and nipping teeth— she recognizes that it isn’t only the Desert that she holds fondly in her heart.

She should be frightened in the long hour that follows, facing uncertainty at the end of an arduous swim through a storm-roughened sea. But she isn’t. Instead, Chelle finds that her anger has burned away everything else— the flames of it carving a hollow in her heart that hatred is quick to fill. And though the impulse to fling that resentment in her captor’s face is there, the cinnamon girl holds it within herself instead. Letting it build within her, even as the sky above them and the sea around them yield to the building violence of the storm. It isn’t until they ascend the bone-white beach together that Chelle turns her wroth upon the chocolate stallion, spitting venomous words that would haunt her with regret and shame in the lonely days that follow. But not then.

And when the storm of her anger has passed, she turns and flees from Rougaru, losing herself in the beautiful, gilded prison that is Paradise’s jungle.

Days have passed before the mare emerges again, a creature more slender and hollow-cheeked than she’d ever been in the less-hospitable Desert. And it isn’t guilt or loneliness that drive her, though both have gnawed at the edges of her thoughts until she is left to feel like the most wretched creature on this earth. No, what calls to her more strongly than the darkness of her emotions is the hope that begins to bloom in her heart. Because surely Cain will come for her, once he is recovered from the wounds that he has taken in battle. As indifferent and ungrateful as she’d been towards the large painted stallion, she can’t believe that he will leave her to languish here. He made a promise to protect her, after all.

And though she’d never spoken it aloud, she has her own promise to keep.

But Cain does not come, and Chelle begins to grow weary of the pattern that her life has taken. Watching the sea from the shore, ducking into the jungle’s shadows whenever the wolf-King’s wanderings bring him near. Becoming emptier and emptier with each day that passes, until she can hardly remember important details like the color of Cain’s eyes or the tickle of warm sand against her skin. It is then that she finally breaks— crumpling in the sand like the wilted blossoms that surround her— and yielding to the undeniable force of her sorrow with a primal scream that fades to a whimper.