EMME:JULIETTE. ARE YOU BLEEDING?
SUMMER:Is there a force majeure clause in your travel insurance?
ANNIE:Was it a bull or a matriarch? Context matters, Jules.
BRYNN:Local hero saves ice queen from five-ton wrecking ball. I’ve seen this movie. There’s usually a waterfall scene.
EMME:Please don't go near any waterfalls.
ME:I am not an ice queen. I am a pragmatist.
BRYNN:Same wardrobe, different throne.
ME:And there are no waterfalls. It’s a drought season.
ME:I am ending this conversation.
BRYNN:Send a picture of the ranger. For "safety" auditing.
Pragmatist, I repeated to myself. A solid, professional word. With edges. It did not account for the inconvenient pull in my gut every time a stupidly attractive man with a British-ish accent I’d known for forty-eight hours stepped between me and danger.
The vanity mirror held my reflection in unforgiving detail. My hair was still damp, my skin flushed from the heat and the adrenaline. Back in Maris Key, I was a series of sharp lines and strategic silences. Here, the dust blurred the edges of everything my sisters and I had built together over the past five years.
I reached for the only form of escape I trusted.
My book—The Crimson Crown, the newest fantasy epic and my only real vice—came off the nightstand. The spine cracked as I settled against the headboard.
The dragon did not burn the village.
It landed in the square, lowered its head, and bowed to the girl everyone else had come to hang.
Smart girl. Keep the dragon.
Time passed in the way it only does when you’re waiting for something—or someone. Outside, the valley was turning a deepening purple. The sun hadn't quite disappeared, but it was low enough that the shadows of the Tamboti trees looked like long, long shadows stretching toward the ridge.
My watch read 5:45 PM. The Ranger-in-Chief would return in an hour.
I was supposed to be practicing the “mindful breathing” Annie had highlighted in the retreat materials—some nonsense about centering the soul—but my lungs were still catching on the lingering mix of woodsmoke and sun-crisped leaves from the morning. My sisters had sent me here to prevent what Summer described as a “total systems failure,” claiming my cortisol levels were high enough to power downtown Maris Key.
The goal was restoration.
Unfortunately, the only thing currently being restored was my pulse every time the man entered my line of sight.
The suite gave me just enough room to pace, the horizon visible through the open canvas while my mind replayed the morning. I was supposed to be staring at the view until my brain shut off. Instead my brain kept returning to the way his field pants fit his frame with an authority that probably violated several international treaties.
I’d packed my vibrator as a contingency plan for this forced relaxation experiment.
At this rate I might not need it.
Just the memory of the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing had my pulse doing things that were extremely unhelpful for mindfulness.
He was a difficult man to read, but the pattern was there—written in the way he held a door and the absolute lack of apology for the space he occupied.
I really need to stop wondering what’s under that uniform.
I dragged my attention back to the page.
The dragon had just torched the village square when the light in the room shifted. I reached for the lamp on the nightstand, my fingers finding the switch just as the canopy lights gave a weak flicker.
