He didn’t have the heart to ask in full what she meant.
So, he squeezed her hand, and said, “You should have taken First.”
“No,” she said. And it washerthat stepped forward,herthat closed the space between them.
He stood still as a statue when she put her arms around his waist. When she laid her head against his chest andhuggedhim.
Held him.
“Some people are worth losing for,” she whispered against his chest.
He wanted to wrap his arms around her. To hold her there forever...because he’d never felt anything like this. His body was warm and his magic sizzled, embers desperate to blaze to the surface.
Was this what it was like to find a Matching? To be understood by someone...as if without her, the very best parts of him might not exist?
But then she pulled away. And he was left cold, and wanting something he hadn’t really understood to begin with.
“Take the gift,” Soraya said. “Accept it, because I wouldn’t have given it if I didn’t believe in you, Arawn. If I wasn’t proud to serve at your side. Proud to follow my Crown Prince.”
His heartthumpedagain.
He was about to step forward. To bring her back to him, to ask her how she felt...if perhaps maybe, just maybe...their hearts were meant to be more than just friends.
Please,he prayed to Vivorr.Please...I’ll do anything if you let her be my Matched.
Because a Sacred could ask. They could ask the Master, just once, to place their union before a vote, and see if it would be blessed.
He was about to ask her for a chance, about to be trulybrave...when a voice suddenly broke through the woods. His father’s servant, rushing towards him, a letter in his hand.
“Sir!” the boy shouted, robes settling around him as he paused, breathless.
“Can it wait?” Arawn asked, heart sinking to his toes.
Because he could feel the distance growing between him and Soraya. He could feel the moment fading, gone in a puff of smoke, and he wanted so badly to reel it all back in.
“No,” the servant said. “It’s not that!” He took another heaving breath. “It’s your brother, Crown Prince! Kinlear...he’sback.”
It wasn’t Arawn who gasped...but Soraya.
Soraya, whose face shifted, whose eyes left him.
And she ran. From the woods, sheran,as if she’d sprouted wings of her own. As if she would not be second in this.
To race towards the finish line, and it was not Arawn...buthim.
The other twin.
9
He was sixteen now, praying in his room when a knock on his bedroom door sounded.
It was his day off. He wasn’t to be bothered, not for training or for war, because today was the Day of Remembrance. One by one, Arawn went through the laws of the Five, reciting them as he always had, then finishing them off with the steps he must take when his father passed on.
A sword in the snow.
A reciting of words.
A sacrifice.
