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The most honest thing about a liar is his dreams. In them he can not hide or evade, his silver tongue useless against the mirror of truth.
Under the moonlight he walks through a field of thorns. They choke wildflowers--violets, still deep blue and fragile--that grow underneath. He takes another step and realizes that the thorns are colored silver, his blood. He doesn't feel the skin of his ankles break but something churns in his gut and he doubles over.
In the field of silver and blue there is a speck of red. It is a rose, more beautiful than the tiny violets. He thinks it regal, strong and powerful in the field of delicate blues, so he reaches out. Suddenly the rose is a hand and she pulls him up. He can't make out the features of her face, not in the dim luminesce, but he knows who she is. They are dancing now and his mind claws at the feeling that this has happened before, only now he is not just a spectator. He is filled with warmth and his face stretches into a genuine smile. It feels good and he realizes he hasn't felt like this in a while. She falls into him then, and they are on the ground. He is laughing beneath her. She is laughing with him. He brings his hand to her cheek, moves his thumb over her lips.
A pause.
He closes his eyes, closes the distance--
Fat, hot tears hit his face. Rain? No, he opens his eyes and she is sobbing. "I thought you were better than him," she strains against her cries. It comes out a soft whisper but his ears ring anyway. He flinches and she is gone. In his hand, a crushed and withered rose.
The thorns are no longer stained by his silverblood. He is alone in a pool of red and he screams.
But dreams are fleeting, and his nightmare disappears before he leaves the bed.
He is a great--the best--liar and the greatest lie he tells is to himself when he wakes up. This pang of guilt, a sharp knife into his heart, is because they esca--he let them go. The regret, the twisting motion, is that they, she, are still alive. He shoves these aside and they transform into anger and he burns up. Those can be rectified.
The sun rises, penetrates red into the King's chambers. Even as a burner, as a scion of Calore, as the bearer of the Burning Crown, the sunlight still warms his hot body. Its warmth hits his face, under his eyes where cold and sticky trails have manifested when he was asleep.
Dreams are fleeting but she is not. These feelings he has allowed to grow are not. He blinks and she is the sunlight, burned under his lids, red as the dawn.