Chapter 13
After that, we wasted no time. We stopped at Ivyhill only long enough to gather supplies for the journey north, then in the village of Fenwood, in the southern Mistlands, to collect Mara. Even a few miles from Rosewarren, I felt on edge as we waited for her in the village’s most popular tavern, even with all of us—Gemma, Ryder, Gareth, Talan, and I—in glamoured disguise. Gemma had used her power to touch each of us, excepting Talan, with the barest hint of a glamour—nothing dramatic, just enough to make our faces uninteresting and unrecognizable. Bland, sleepy patrons in a crowded tavern.
I tried not to worry about how that act of magic might have exhausted Gemma and instead distracted myself with random musings—such as how a town as relatively small as Fenwood could support multiple bustling establishments of drink and revelry—and forced myself not to think about my perhaps not irrational fear that at any moment the Warden would come bursting through the doors. She would demand news about the draft, about Yvaine; she would know at once what we’d planned and lock Mara up in the priory, separating her from us forever.
But Mara arrived safely, slipping silently into the tavern along with a cool autumn breeze. She wore the plain brown-and-gray garb typical of the Order of the Rose, and I tensed as I watched her, terrified that some drunken boor would notice her and make a scene, demand information about the abducted, demand to know what the Order was doing to prevent further incidents. But Mara was a Rose, quick and quiet, practiced at subterfuge. There wasn’t even a ripple of interest in the room as she crossed it, unremarkable as a shadow.
As agreed upon in our letters, Mara went straight for the innkeeper, who held court with her barkeeps behind a glossy countertop. She paid for a room, obtained a key, and disappeared up the stairs behind one of the inn’s housemaids. Not a glance at any of us, not a moment of hesitation. If the innkeeper had her own questions about the abductions, about the Mist, her desire for a customer’s money apparently outweighed her curiosity, at least for tonight.
Dizzy with relief, I gulped down a huge swig of my cider. The bubbles sparkling through my body helped me endure the agonizing half hour before I allowed myself to follow Mara upstairs. The inn was huge, boasting dozens of rooms. I passed the locked door to my empty room, my own key tucked away in my pocket, and searched for a room with a brown falcon’s feather wedged in the door. When I found it, I felt another giddy rush of relief and swiftly let myself in, catching the feather as it fell.
Gemma was already there, sitting on Mara’s bed and happily stroking the speckled white chest of Freyda, Mara’s falcon. Freyda’s piercing yellow gaze fell sharply upon me, as if to confirm that I was actually me and not some deception of the Mistlands. After a moment, her round eyes drifted shut, and she chirped quietly to herself, in obvious ecstasy from Gemma’s ministrations.
Mara came over and drew me into a quick, fierce embrace. I let myself savor the feeling for a few heartbeats—the warm, wiry strength of her, the smell of forest and old books that seemed forever woven into the earth-dark strands of her hair. As Gemma removed my glamour, I pulled back from Mara and met her solemn brown gaze.
“You weren’t followed?” I asked.
She shook her head. “My unit covered for me and will continue to, and anyway, the Warden’s more than occupied with her duties. I’ll have two, maybe three days before she notices I’m gone.” She gave me a grim little smile. “Is it wrong of me to hope for constant but minor invasions throughout the weekend to keep her nice and distracted?”
“Not at all,” Gemma answered from the bed. “ Minor is an important word here. The Order can handle minor . It’s not as though you’re wishing disasters upon them.”
“Fair enough. I’ll keep hoping, then. So.” Mara perched on the edge of the bed and fixed me with a grave look. “Tell me what’s happened.”
I settled on the bed along with them, my chest twisting with too many emotions to name. Being in the same room with both of my sisters was so rare an occurrence as to feel like something out of an Old Country myth. If only we could have used our time together to talk about anything else.
If only I could reach for Mara’s hand, and hold on to her, and nestle close to her as easily as Gemma was doing now.
But that was not the way of things. Gemma was the sweet one, who could say and act as she pleased, to whom everything of the body, everything of love, came easily. And I was the one sitting tensely apart from them, rigid as a brittle old twig. I tried not to glare at my sisters, who had done nothing wrong and deserved none of my strange, uncomfortable ire. Instead I looked hard at the worn quilt, bitter longing rankling in my chest as Mara, waiting for me to speak, began absently stroking Gemma’s golden hair.
“The Royal Conclave has placed the queen in confinement,” I began, and then I told Mara everything. The unrest in the capital, Gareth’s research into the Three-Eyed Crown, what the crown’s many carvings meant: three , over and over, in dozens of languages. And I told her about being banished from the Citadel, about Yvaine’s seclusion in my music rooms and the strange things she had said.
It was here that Mara stopped stroking Gemma’s hair and went very still. “What did you say?”
I hesitated, my skin prickling. Mara’s posture had changed from thoughtful attention to the bearing of a warrior ready for combat. Freyda fluttered up from the bed, Gemma’s caresses forgotten, and darted to the window, where she stood on the sill, glaring out at the world with her keen yellow eyes.
I glanced at Gemma, on whose pretty face realization was slowly dawning.
“I…” I swallowed hard. “Which part?”
“What Yvaine said.” Mara inched forward. “The exact words, Farrin.”
My heart sank, my mouth suddenly dry. This was the first time I’d repeated Yvaine’s words out loud; after my ejection from the Citadel, I hadn’t told any of the others. It had felt like a betrayal to do so. Yvaine wasn’t well; she wasn’t herself. Whatever mad ramblings she spouted off while in my company, believing she was safe, believing she could trust me, were not mine to share.
But that lie of omission had run its course. Though I was many things, few of them good, I was no fool. It seemed obvious that, whatever it meant, Yvaine and Talan had been speaking of the same thing, and now I had no choice but to share that terrible revelation.
“Moon by day,” I repeated, “fire by night. Come and dance. Don’t try to fight. The beauty of shadows, the garish sunlight. Spin for the watchers, their revels so bright.”
“That sounds so similar to what Talan told us,” Gemma said eagerly. “The stories he’s been hearing about the place called Moonhollow. It can’t be a coincidence.”
Mara glanced sharply at Gemma. “Moonhollow? You’re certain that’s the word?”
“Oh yes. He says he’s been hearing whispers of it everywhere, stories and rumors, but only here in Gallinor. And then there’s the forest he found in the far north, surrounded by some sort of powerful ward magic. A barrier he can’t penetrate. We didn’t want to explain any of this in writing in case our letters were intercepted.”
“Ah. That’s where we’re going, then. To see what this northern forest is hiding.” Mara looked back at me, her gaze steady and without judgment, but I nevertheless felt smaller with her attention upon me. “And you haven’t told anyone else about what the queen said?”
I shook my head, bristling at the unspoken reproach, even though it was more than warranted. “I didn’t plan on keeping it a secret forever. It just felt wrong to come out of the Citadel and immediately spill Yvaine’s secrets. She’s ill. She trusts me.”
“Yes, but unfortunately, in these circumstances, she is not simply Yvaine,” Mara said gently. “She’s the queen. And if we’re to have any chance of helping her, we can’t keep this kind of information from each other—”
“I know, I know,” I snapped. I rose from the bed and strode to the other side of the room. Freyda, still perched on the windowsill, turned to glare at me. Her sharp little bird face was far easier to bear than either of my sisters’ pitying expressions. I stared out the window at the black night beyond, blinking hard to clear my vision. Only a few miles from the inn stretched a faint ribbon of silver fog: the Mist’s southern border.
“I’m sorry,” I said at last. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I should’ve told everyone at once. It’s only that…” I blew out an angry breath. “I hate betraying Yvaine, and this feels like a betrayal. She has so few real friends, and here I am reporting on her like a spy.”
“And she might actually be glad of that, if she were in her right mind,” Gemma pointed out. “She’s said it herself: she wants us to help her. And this is helping her, even if the method feels—”
“Wrong,” I finished, turning to face my sisters with my arms crossed over my chest. A lump ached in my throat. “It feels wrong.”
“It would feel worse to do nothing in the name of protecting her and then watch the world crumble around us,” Mara said bluntly.
“Of course I agree,” I whispered. “Of course I’ll do what I must. I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize. We can’t look back and rue our mistakes, especially the ones we make out of love. That’s one of the first things I learned during Order training. We can only look forward. Anything else is a waste of time, an opportunity for evil to take root. To that end, there’s something you need to see.”
Mara retrieved a simple canvas bag from a chair in the corner. Out of it she drew a small leather-bound notebook. She opened it and began to read.
“‘I dream of gardens that go on forever,’” she said. “‘I dream of dancing with bleeding feet, but I feel no pain, and my steps paint the world red as rubies.’”
She turned the page and continued. “‘My father disappeared three days ago. I don’t think it was like the others, who were taken all at once. I think he meant to go. I found a letter in his desk two days after he left us. I’ve been chosen. I must go. Don’t worry for me. There I’ll be a king. I’ll be a pet of the gods’ true children.’ ”
Mara turned another page. “‘I have to find it,’” she read, the words made all the more horrible by the matter-of-fact calm in her voice. “‘I have to go to Moonhollow. Don’t you understand? They’ll paint your body with starlight from head to toe. They’ll feed you petals drizzled with honey, every drop squeezed from the bones of the gods. Let me go. Let me go!’”
She closed the notebook. “That last one,” she said, “was the testimony of a woman from the village of Cawder, on trial for murdering her brother. She’d been sick for some time, plagued with visions that left her bedridden. They were driving her mad, leaving her unable to work or walk or eat. Her brother, who was tending to her, tried to feed her lunch one day. She attacked him and fled through the village, laughing, covered in his blood, until neighbors managed to apprehend her and bring her to the local arbiter’s council.”
My heart pounded. I couldn’t think of what to say. The words she had read wriggled through my mind, restless and repulsive.
“So it’s gotten worse, then,” Gemma said solemnly. “Everything you showed me in the caves earlier this summer: the Mistfires, the spreading sickness, the visions…”
Mara nodded. “But as the visions grow in strength and numbers, so does our knowledge of what the people suffering from them are seeing. Moonhollow.” She frowned. “And Talan thinks this northern forest could be hiding such a place?”
“He can’t be certain, of course, but—”
“But it’s worth investigating.” Mara tucked the notebook back into her bag. “I’ve not heard of this forest myself, but the Order seldom sends me that far north of the Mist. And if it’s powerful enough magic to keep even a demon from passing its borders…”
“What if Kilraith is there?” I said quietly. None of us had yet said his name, and the moment I did, we fell silent and waited, listening for approaching malevolent footsteps. But the only sounds were that of the bustling tavern downstairs, faintly jovial.
Mara broke the tense quiet. “If he’s there, we’ll do our best to apprehend him,” she said briskly. “The Warden will want to question him. Even if he isn’t behind the abductions himself, I suspect he’ll know who—or what—is.”
I stared at her. “Apprehend him? We barely managed to escape from him during our last encounter.”
“We’ll kill him if we have to, then. Clearly we’re capable of besting him. We’d just have to do it again. And though I’d hate to lose the opportunity to question such a creature, if he’s dead, that means one less demon-enslaver in the world. So even if he knows nothing of Moonhollow, if we can’t safely transport him back to the priory, I for one will be glad to be rid of him. Anyway, this is merely a fact-finding mission. We’ll investigate the forest, try to unearth at least one more piece of this puzzle. We won’t necessarily be battling anyone.”
“And if we do have to fight, we can, and we will,” Gemma added, “just as we did in the Old Country. Our fae blood—”
“Oh, please don’t start with that right now,” I burst out angrily, and my desperate panic must have flared in my voice, because Gemma said nothing else on the subject. She exchanged a pointed glance with Mara; I wondered if both my sisters had been secretly corresponding with Aunt Felicity and gods knew who else from our mother’s family, trying to find answers to questions I was too frightened to ask.
After a long silence, Mara said simply, “We should sleep now. It’s late, and we must leave at dawn.”
She was right, of course. Both of my sisters seemed more and more often to be right, as if they’d each grown in ways I hadn’t yet managed. The feeling left me mortified, and I yearned for solitude, but I couldn’t bear to leave them here without me. I would miss something important, something irreplaceable; the last time we’d been together like this had been just after returning from the Old Country, all of us exhausted and wounded. At least tonight—at least for one more night—we were well. I’d be a fool not to cherish it while I could.
So I lay flat on my back in the bed between them, letting the low sounds of their voices wash over me. Mara told a funny story about a laundry mishap at the priory; Gemma laughed quietly into the darkness. Freyda perched on the headboard above us, a tireless sentry.
Just before drifting off, I reached out to either side of me and touched my sisters’ arms, too tired and full of longing to be afraid of my own awkwardness, my own bashful, uncertain way of showing love. Gemma wrapped her smallest finger around mine. Mara folded my entire hand into her own. I fell asleep with an ache in my chest, a small, contented hurt.
***
The next day, Mara took all of us north through a series of greenways belonging to the Order. At every exit, my whole body tensed, ready to fight or run depending on what greeted us—patrolling Rose or Olden foe—but we passed through each greenway unbothered. Clearly Mara knew which passages to take, and when, so as to evade her fellow shieldmaidens. By the time we reached the northern village of Vallenvoren, which sat tucked into a valley choked with huge pines, I was exhausted from the sheer strain of constant apprehension, though we’d left the Mist behind ages ago.
We stepped out of the last greenway into a tangled thicket overgrown with brambles. Mara hissed in apology and whacked at the mess with her sword.
“Clearly, no one has used this particular greenway in quite some time,” she said. “We’ve been too busy nearer the Mist to maintain our typical northern patrols.”
Gareth hurried after her, wielding his own sword—one of several weapons we’d brought with us from Ivyhill along with food, clothes, and healing supplies in case of disaster.
“Here, let me help you,” he said, with a gallant sweep of his blade—but it immediately caught in a snarl of thorns, and he had to jerk it free rather clumsily, his face flushing with embarrassment.
Mara glided past him with a look of wry amusement and pointed through the trees at a building’s silhouette. It was on the far side of town, perched on a rocky rise. Smoke unfurled from its chimneys, a soft black against the violet evening sky.
“There it is,” she said. “The Torch and Thorn. We’ll stay there for the night.”
“And you’ve been there before?” said Ryder, pushing his way through the thicket with his bare hands. Thorns caught on his clothes, but he seemed oblivious to their teeth.
“Not for some time, but an old friend of the Order lives in Vallenvoren and has vouched for the new innkeepers in recent correspondence,” Mara said. “We’ll be safe here for the night. Vallenvoren is quite friendly to the faithful.”
Ryder looked unconvinced. “Even six faithful all arriving at once?”
“Those making pilgrimages to the Altivar Cloisters usually do so in groups,” Mara replied. “The journey north is not an easy one. The closer you get to the Unmade Lands, the harsher the terrain becomes.”
“As if warning you to turn around while you still can,” Gemma said quietly. She was leaning hard on Talan, her wan skin glistening with sweat after passing through so many greenways.
“Exactly,” Mara said, almost cheerfully. “Come on, let’s go down. I’m starving.”
As we followed her into the valley, I hoped dearly that she was right, that the arrival of five Anointed humans and a demon would arouse no suspicion. But of course we would be disguised, and I did believe Mara that this route was well-traveled by faithful citizens on their way to the Altivar Cloisters, where they would pay homage to the gods. I had never been this far north; the land was harsh and cold, nothing but rocks and pines and mountains as far as the eye could see. The sky was vast and full of stars, and on the horizon twisted bands of brilliant color.
I knew what they were—the Echoes of the Gods, a natural phenomenon left behind after the Unmaking, the day centuries past when the gods had died. The lights had never hurt anyone or shown themselves to be anything but remnants of the gods’ death, a sort of beautiful scar upon the world, but the sight of them, of all of this, left me uneasy. I felt exposed and vulnerable, as if phantom eyes were everywhere, watching me bumble down the hill toward the cheery lights of Vallenvoren. When we reached the Torch and Thorn and obtained our three room keys from the innkeeper—a jolly man named George, tall and pale and plump, with soft, friendly eyes and a roaring laugh like a lion—I wanted to run upstairs at once and hide until it was time to leave.
But Mara wouldn’t allow it. “We’re going to eat and drink together,” she said firmly. “We’re going to sit here in the dining room and have fun. That’s another thing the Warden taught us during training. Being part of the Order isn’t just about training with weapons and strengthening your body. It’s about being part of a group, fighting as a unit. And the more frequently a unit does ordinary things together, the better they’ll fight together.”
Gareth nodded a little too eagerly. “I agree. Entirely sound logic.”
Ryder grunted his own assent. Then he slapped his palm on the countertop and told the barkeep, “Six pints of the best ale you’ve got.”
As we wove our way through the mass of crowded tables, I felt the cold ripple of Gemma’s glamouring magic slide over me, accompanied by the warmth of Talan’s demonic power, which brought everyone we passed a jolt of oblivious cheer. Hopefully the combined strength of their abilities would disguise our faces from anyone this far north who might know us, but the sensation was unnerving nevertheless. Then I noticed Gareth hurrying after Mara and recognized the look on his face, even glamoured as it was—one of curiosity, questions, professorial enthusiasm—and suddenly all I could think about was stopping him before he did something stupid.
I grabbed his arm, directing him none too gently to sit beside me and not beside Mara, as he clearly intended to do. He shot me an irritated look as we all took our places around a small table tucked into a corner. Torches in wall brackets and candles in small iron chandeliers that hung from the ceiling cast a soft glow over everything. A strapping barkeep with brown skin and black shoulder-length curls came to deliver our drinks, and as he set them down, I leaned close to Gareth and whispered angrily, “If you don’t stop mooning over my sister, I’m going to—”
“I’m not mooning over her,” he replied. “It’s just that…” He trailed off to gaze across the table at her, watching everything she did—shifting in her chair, raising her cup to her lips—with something like reverence. Apparently her glamoured appearance did nothing to diminish his interest.
Before I could say anything else, Mara caught him staring and lifted one eyebrow. “Just say it, Professor.”
That caught Gareth off guard. He blinked at her and awkwardly adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “I…what?”
“You’re fascinated by me—not just me, but my kind. The Roses. The binding magic, how we transform, the mystery of us. I can practically see the wheels of your professor’s brain spinning from here. You have questions.” Mara took a long drink from her cup, then set it down. “So ask them.”
“I…” Gareth recovered quickly, hiding his surprise with a small echo of his familiar dashing smile. “Well. If you insist. You Roses are indeed as canny as everyone says you are.”
If Mara was insulted by his attention, she didn’t show it. Instead, she looked amused, as if she were humoring a child. “And what exactly have you heard about us Roses , Professor?”
“That your physical prowess is unmatched by any other being in Edyn. That the magic binding you to the Mist is woven into your very bones by some dark ritual carried out by the Warden after your trials. That the transformation from woman to beast is agonizing every time.”
I was too horrified to speak. Mara sat back in her chair, still with that unruffled look of mirth on her face. Talan cleared his throat as if preparing to interject, but Gemma, still ashen from our journey, hushed him with a kiss to his cheek and whispered words into his hair. Talan’s concerned expression softened to one of such affection that I could hardly bear the sight of it. He turned to receive more of Gemma’s kisses, one on his brow, the next on his mouth, and even with their plain glamours disguising them, they looked so beautiful there in the corner, so utterly wrapped up in their own tender world, that I had to stare at my hands, my cheeks flaming and my body suddenly all too aware of Ryder’s thigh touching mine under the table.
“Woman to beast ?” Mara was saying to Gareth. “That’s how you think it works, then, Professor?”
“If it isn’t, please tell me how it does,” he said with a sort of oblivious earnestness that might have been endearing had I not been so mortified. “I’m fascinated, truly, and nothing more. I’m a student of the arcana, you see, and you are the closest thing to a being of the Old Country that exists in our world. You are…” He ran a hand through his glamoured brown hair, giving a helpless little laugh. “You’re a marvel to me. And please, you can call me Gareth.”
“I’d rather not,” Mara replied evenly. “If you’re going to treat me as a specimen to be examined, then I’ll treat you as an examiner and nothing more.”
That remark probably would have shamed any other person into silence, but Gareth remained unperturbed. He flashed Mara the same charming grin I’d seen him flash at a hundred other women, which made me want to kick him hard in the shin, but Ryder touched my arm before I could. The press of his hand against my wrist sent a shock of heat jolting through me, as if I’d received a charge of energy from touching metal on a dry winter’s day.
“Don’t kill him just yet,” Ryder murmured, his glamoured gray eyes sparkling. “You would deny a grieving man his entertainment?”
This made me bristle. “And what would Alastrina think of your choice of entertainment ?”
“Oh, she’d think we were all most decidedly beneath her,” he replied at once, “but she’s not here, is she?” A shadow passed across his face, and his amused expression closed. He took an aggressive drink from his cup. “So please, let her destroy him, and let me enjoy it.”
He softened his words with another touch to my wrist, but as sweet as the sensation was, I suddenly couldn’t stand to be there anymore. Gareth and his awful behavior, and Mara tolerating it when he didn’t deserve it, and Gemma and Talan holding hands in the corner, their heads bent close together in some kind of lovers’ conference—I felt suffocated by all of them and by the lofty raftered room’s buzz of noise and laughter. And then there was Ryder: too close to me, so big and warm on the bench beside me that it didn’t take much for my mind to start imagining what we would look like if we huddled together like Gemma and Talan were doing. Ryder’s muscled body looming over my thinner, smaller one; his calloused hands touching my face as Talan was touching Gemma’s. What would he whisper in my ear? What would it feel like to be so utterly enraptured by another person that I couldn’t be bothered to notice the world around me?
“I’m going to bed,” I announced. “I’m tired, and I don’t need to be here for this.” Indignantly, wearily, I waved at the whole table and clambered out from between Gareth and Ryder, the latter of whom quickly moved to accommodate me. I grabbed the key from Mara, shooting her a look of thanks for not pestering me to stay.
Upstairs, I found the room I was to share with Mara: room eight, clean and tidy, with a huge rickety bed set against the wall and a small hearth crackling warmly in the corner. The bed looked inviting, the chair by the fire cozy, but all I could do was pace across the floor, my body such a snarl of annoyance and longing and confused anger that I had no idea how to begin untangling it.
Then came a quiet knock at the door.
I stormed across the room to fling it open, expecting to see Gareth, come to apologize, or Mara, concerned for me and abruptly tired of Gareth’s unforgivable intrusiveness.
But instead, Ryder stood there on the threshold, looking grave and abashed, a thoughtful frown under his fearsome beard. Gemma had released his glamour, and mine too.
“I’m sorry for behaving like that,” he told me gruffly. His blue gaze traveled over my face, then fell to the floor. “Forgive me.”
“Forgive you ?” I was momentarily startled enough to find what remained of my tattered wits. “You weren’t the one fawning over my sister like some lovestruck boy rather than a grown man who ought to know how to control his selfish impulses.”
A corner of Ryder’s mouth quirked up. “No, but I dismissed your concerns. I made light of them. And I shouldn’t joke about my sister.”
“You can joke about whatever you like. I’m certainly not one to tell you, or anyone, how to grieve, how to be afraid.”
“Still, it was in poor taste.”
I laughed a little. “That’s never stopped you before.” Immediately I winced. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I really am just tired.”
I turned away from him then, resumed my furious pacing.
Ryder observed me for a moment. “You don’t look tired. You look like you want to punch something.” He paused. “Perhaps you’d like to?”
“No. Yes. Yes. ” I didn’t dare stop pacing; if I did, I wasn’t sure what I would say or do. I suspected I would start crying out of sheer bewildered rage, the thought of which was appalling. “Fine. Close the door.”
Ryder obeyed, then began clearing the center of the room, deftly sidestepping my warpath. He rolled up the tattered rag rug, pushed it to the side, then assessed the space with a critical eye. “I wonder if we can move the bed,” he mused.
The thought of Ryder doing anything near or with the bed I was meant to sleep in made me burn. I altered my path so he couldn’t see my face, feeling angrier, more confused, more annoyed with every step. I couldn’t put out of my mind the sensation of Ryder’s hand on the tender skin of my wrist—such a little touch, not something that would send anyone else I knew spiraling into such a state, and yet it had completely unraveled me. Unbidden, the thought sprang to mind of Ryder kissing me in his stable—his hands lifting me up against him, his lips feathering gentle kisses down my neck.
Remembering the sensation left me feeling shaky, uncertain. My chest drew tight with longing. “My enemies won’t make nice and move furniture to make room for me,” I snapped. “Leave it.”
He grunted in agreement. “Fair enough.” I heard him shift, saw him raise his fists out of the corner of my eye. “Now—”
“No. Wait.” I paused, staring at the corner, then turned and went to him before I could stop myself. Maybe it was the memory of his kisses driving me to do a mad thing, or maybe I truly was just exhausted and therefore vulnerable to ridiculous urges. Whatever the reason, I marched over to him and stopped only inches away. I lifted my arms as if to draw him into an embrace, then put them awkwardly down at my sides. He stood watching me, a question in his eyes, his fists still half raised for a fight.
“Farrin?” he said quietly.
I took a breath, let it out. Made myself look up at him. Told him, my chest aching with sudden, blazing need, “I want you to kiss me.”