Hand Selected #2
And then she looked at him.
The world stilled.
She held his gaze across the campfire, its low flames shivering in the space between them. He couldn’t breathe. Her eyes were firelight—dark, luminous, unreadable—and for a moment, the entire meadow fell away. There was no assessment. No aching muscle. No Arion.
Just her.
He wanted to reach across the fire and close the endless inches that separated them. Wanted to brush that strand of hair from her cheek, rest his forehead against hers, ask—quietly, desperately—what she saw when she looked at him like that.
Instead, he sat frozen, his fingers curled into the grass.
Then Hadria leaned in, said something low. Dragonfly blinked and turned toward her. The spell—if it had ever truly existed—fractured.
She didn’t look back.
Collin exhaled, sharp and silent, as the fire reasserted itself, the chatter flooding back in around him like saltwater over a wound.
Hadria tugged her up gently, and Dragonfly followed, her silhouette slipping out of the circle without fanfare. No one else seemed to notice. No one except him.
Nic’s voice swelled again, loud with bravado as he launched into a detailed retelling of the moment he’d fought off two guards at once.
Collin heard it all like background noise.
He stared into the dark, into the path she’d taken, his pulse still beating in time with her silent footsteps.
The platter of goat cheese eventually reached his hands. He took one without thinking—a ball rolled in spices—and bit down absently. The sharpness bloomed across his tongue, jarring him back into his body as if flavor alone could break the spell of his thoughts.
But his gaze never left the shadows beyond the firelight.
The girls had wandered only a few yards away, but in the thick gloom of night, they might as well have slipped into another world.
To anyone else they’d be invisible—shapes folded into the whispers of darkness—but Collin could track Dragonfly’s every movement with unrelenting precision.
His eyes had followed her so long they’d stopped needing light.
She stood caught in a narrow beam of moonlight, pale and spectral.
The breeze teased at her skirt and caught in her hair, which gleamed silver where the moon struck it just right.
He watched the movement of her hands, her weight shift from foot to foot.
Even from here, she was vivid. Even from here, she was too far away.
He imagined being a moth—light, quiet, unnoticed—resting on her shoulder.
Close enough to hear her voice, to feel the warmth of her skin rise through her clothes.
But the thought shattered as a real moth brushed his arm.
He swatted it reflexively, the tenderness of the image dissipating with the flick of his fingers and the pop of wings against his skin.
What were they talking about—Dragonfly and Hadria? The distance between them didn’t feel like space; it felt like a secret.
Was Hadria asking about the men in White Wood? Were they polished and charming? Did they court her beneath lantern-lit trees, speak poetry in drawing rooms, offer her gifts meant to be unwrapped slowly? Had she kissed any of them? Missed any of them?
Would she even tell Hadria those details? Or had she already?
Their friendship had always seemed impenetrable to outsiders.
Collin had watched it grow since they were children—an unlikely, defiant thing.
Montigo had chosen companions for his daughter carefully: daughters of stewards and captains, girls with groomed manners and spotless reputations.
And somehow, in the middle of that curated circle, Dragonfly had emerged—not polished, not pedigreed, and never, ever tame.
No one knew why she’d been chosen. But Hadria had clung to her like gravity. Despite the nurse’s clucking disapproval and the tutors’ stiff corrections, the girls had become inseparable—two halves of something larger than either of them.
Dragonfly came from nothing. Her family name carried no honor, only rumor.
Her father’s wages—when he found work—barely kept food on the table.
Her mother had been whispered about behind shutters, slipping from scandal to scandal until she left entirely.
After her father died, it was an aunt who took the girls in—scraping order from the wreckage of neglect.
Yet none of that seemed to matter to Hadria.
Collin sometimes thought that the fierce loyalty between them was forged not despite their differences, but because of them. Hadria had given Dragonfly access to a world of ballrooms and court etiquette. And Dragonfly, in turn, had dragged Hadria out into the woods and taught her how not to flinch.
He remembered seeing them by the lake when he was younger—Hadria nervously edging toward the water while Dragonfly dove in without hesitation.
The nurse hovered nearby, wringing her hands while the girls burst into laughter, soaked and mud-streaked and alive in ways no etiquette tutor could ever have prepared for.
They were opposites. Mirror images. One born to privilege but taught courage; the other hardened by hardship, yet unshakably generous with her fire.
Where Hadria once wept at the sight of a dead bird, Dragonfly was already cleaning fish with her bare hands.
One had learned bravery from books, the other from bruises.
It was Dragonfly who helped Hadria disappear the first time—who smuggled her knives and clothes, who lied to guards and placated stewards.
She was the one who told Collin and Aries that teaching Montigo’s daughter to hunt wasn’t just a favor—it was a necessity.
And when the boys hesitated, it was Dragonfly who stood before them with unwavering eyes and asked them to trust her.
She had always known what Hadria needed.
Just as now, Collin knew—without understanding how—that she was saying something important out there in the dark. Something she wasn’t saying to anyone else.
And it stung, how badly he wanted to be the one she trusted like that.
The late morning sun brought no reprieve from Collin’s anxieties, only a different kind of waiting. Noon had come and gone.
More than an hour later, still no captains, no stewards, not even a single guard appeared in the square.
The crowd shifted restlessly beneath the harsh spring sun.
Whispers swirled—nervous speculation turned communal: reevaluations, indecision, impossible rankings.
Good signs? Bad ones? No one knew, but everyone had a theory.
“They probably all overslept,” Nic muttered, shielding his eyes with one hand. “Wouldn’t be the first time my future was delayed by someone’s second nap.”
Aries gave a slow, exasperated nod. “Or maybe they’re just arguing over which of us is the least disappointing.”
Collin didn’t look up. “They’ll probably just post a sign that says ‘Everyone failed.’ Save us the suspense.”
The hum built slowly into a relentless thrum—low and anxious, like a wasp’s nest disturbed. It seeped into his marrow, made skin prickle and breath come shallow.
Collin sat on a sunbaked bench, sweat gluing his shirt to his spine.
He tried to ignore the rising tide of nervous chatter, smoothing his hair pointlessly, his hands damp with sweat.
He shut his eyes, willing the world into quiet—but all it did was make the discomfort louder.
His ears burned. His stomach twisted. Hunger, probably. Or dread. Maybe both.
“I’m starving,” he muttered.
“Me too,” came Aries’s gravelly reply. He dropped onto the bench with a tired sigh and nudged Collin’s shoulder.
Collin scooted over, making room on the other side for Dragonfly if she wanted it. He hunched forward, elbows on his knees, pressing his palms to his queasy belly as if he could coax it into silence.
A young woman stood nearby, her back to them, hips swaying idly. Her skirt rippled as she rocked side to side, as though she heard music no one else could.
Lekyi slid into the open spot beside Collin and leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper. “Trying to distract yourself too?”
Collin gave the faintest nod. His gaze had wandered there—but only distantly. Distraction, not desire. The motion was simply...mesmerizing, like leaves rustling just before a storm.
Lekyi smirked and tilted his chin toward Aries.
Collin glanced over. Aries was staring at the same woman with a blank, almost reverent expression.
Collin felt marginally less guilty.
Lekyi leaned in again, lips parting—
A loud groan cut the air. The heavy double doors of the meeting hall creaked open.
Collin straightened instantly, the heat and hunger forgotten. The waiting was about to end.
Captain Sol and three of his highest-ranked captains appeared suddenly on the steps. The chatter strangled into silence. Collin forgot entirely about the swaying woman in the crowd—the square shifted all at once into stillness and heat.
The old head captain stood with arms folded, surveying the restless bodies before him with cool, dangerous detachment. The captains behind him looked carved from stone.
Sol cleared his throat and snapped the roster open. “When I call your name, you will go—immediately and silently—into the meeting hall.”
The quiet that followed was unnerving. Collin heard everything: the flap of a bird’s wings far above, the slow grind of his own shoes on the stones, the quiet tick of his watch. And behind him, Dragonfly’s soft, measured breathing—so close that if he leaned back just a little, they’d be touching.
Without thinking, his own breathing synced with hers, each inhale deep and steady, as if drawn from the same lungs. She smelled faintly of flowers and sunlight and something sharper beneath—the way narcissus grows by the lake's edge. Her presence blurred the edges of the moment.
Suddenly, they weren’t in the square. They were barefoot in the shallows, fingertips brushing, the lake lapping at their ankles. Her breath was at his neck, her hand in his, her lips—
“Gravis of Nereid.”