What were the bleeding odds of that?
Lunara melted, then blurted, “I weave the moonlight, and make silly things out of it.”
Sweet baby Sisters in a cradle. Back to madness! Didn’t get revealing enough for you with the king? One person knows so it’s time to scream your truths from the mountaintops, is that it? Bleeding, fucking ninny.
She bit the inside of her cheek, wishing she could silence what was probably the wiser part of herself and enjoy this moment.
He was staring again. Even if her head hadn’t been cranked back to look up at him, she would have known that his piercing eyes were fixed on her. The sensation of it was unlike anything she’d ever known.
It was like stepping under a waterfall. No fear of drowning, no worry. Just the freedom of throwing her arms out and feeling it pummel into her before the cascade turned to a skimming caress down her skin.
Or you’ve cooked it all up with your harebrained imagination and are now spouting absurdly saccharine poetry about something that isn’t really there.
The need to fidget was overwhelming. It took all of her strength to resist the pull to worry a curl in her fingers or swing her dangling feet—anything to expel whatever was building up within her. She didn’t know where to look or how to be. Whether she should sway into him like she wanted to or sprint away like her mind was insisting she do.
It’s fine. You’re fine. Just?—
“I know Solyrian has held you captive today, but…” He reached up to catch a strand of hair fluttering in the breeze, his thumb barelybrushing the shell of her ear as he tucked it away. “You have your own light, Lunara.”
Oh… Well then. That’s…
“Thank you for sharing it with me.” He looked away. Back to the sprawling city and its luminous lanterns. To the silvered waves of the sea. “Just… thank you.”
Brand watchedthe door close behind Lunara and nearly collapsed right there in the corridor.
Weeping fuck. The things she’d said.
He wasn’t ignorant. He knew there were others like him. Creatures that suffered from whatever his affliction was.
Lunara was the first, though, to look at him and see the morass of shite and strangled breaths and say,‘Me, too. I feel it, too.’
To be understood so fully was… Shite, he didn’t even know.
He was still floating on the high of it, like he’d smoked some of Vann’s rolled herbs. Couldn’t stop smiling. Just grinning from ear-to-ear for so long that his cheeks hurt. Burning Solyrian, the way she’d made him laugh.
There was still something off about her, though. Something she was keeping close. He could see it in her eyes when they widened after she said something nonsensical. And she had fartoo much obvious power to be living alone in the Evesong’s wilds.
In a cottage she hadn’t quite built for herself.
“I’m not sure what the barmy look on your face is for, Your Highness, but we’ve got two fucking problems.”
Brand couldn’t even bring himself to be annoyed at Hedda’s tetchy interruption. He fell in beside her, tempted to sway to the hammering beat of their leather boots on stone. “Go on.”
“Lyriat has just informed me that the Sorcerit whose room you were stalking around is coming with us to the Westrealm.” She held up a crumpled piece of parchment.
“That’s correct. I don’t see the issue.”
She stopped dead in her tracks, a few feet before the doors into the main hall. “Is it the luminous beauty and wide eyes that have everyone acting like they’re living inside their own arseholes, or is there something I don’t know about?”
“Uh…”
“I get it. She’s pretty. She also hasn’t been within ten yards of a standard pub brawl. How am I the only one who can see she’ll be more trouble than she’s worth in Thodelebor?”
The only words Brand cared about wereluminousbeautyandwide eyes.Understatements. At this point, Lunara could ask him to take her to every realm for a month each, and he probably wouldn’t think it was more trouble than it was worth.
“That was only one problem, Second.”
“Well, if you all insist on her going, then someone needs to train her.”
