Cassi snorted behind her. “Oh nothing, just another day like any other.”
Lyana tried to glare over her shoulder without moving her head, which was a pretty difficult thing to do. “Nothing you want to talk about?”
“Not really,” Cassi responded, but her tone was too playful by half. “Not unless there’s something you want to talk about.”
“Of course not,” Lyana countered, while silently grumbling in her head.
“Because if there was something you wanted to talk about,” Cassi continued, as methodically as she worked on Lyana’s hair, “something maybe that you expressly forbade me to let you talk about, or someone rather, then we could talk about him. It’s just that you have to tell me, because otherwise I’d be defying a direct order from my princess and, well, we both know what sort of trouble I could be in if I do that.”
“No trouble you haven’t been in before,” Lyana muttered under her breath.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing."
Her tone was sweet, but against the floor, her fingers curled into fists and she bit her lips to keep from talking. Cassi began to hum quietly, an annoyingly cheerful little tune that made Lyana’s blood boil. An image gathered in her thoughts, the image of the raven as he’d rounded the corner, eyes glued to Cassi, so enthralled by her friend he’d smacked right into his own brother, the crown prince.
It shouldn’t have bothered her.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
She was supposed to forget everything about him.
But a sensation clawed at her gut, digging and digging and digging, until suddenly, the words burst up her throat as though freed from some deep, dark place and propelled themselves into the world.
“Fine, fine.” She spat the admission and raced on to the rest, “Why was he training you? What were you doing together? Why were you covered in mud? What did he say? What did you say? Is he— Are you— What—”
“Relax, Ana,” Cassi teased. “Contrary to the sordid thoughts I know are racing through your mind, the raven and I did not, in one afternoon, begin an illustrious affair behind your back.”
Tension oozed from Lyana's body, making her wings droop—in relief, this time. “You didn’t?”
“No!” Soft laughter escaped Cassi’s lips, and Lyana could envision the way she was shaking her head while the rest of her body trembled with quiet mirth.
“Then why was he teaching you swordplay?” Lyana asked. “You know, the thing you did with Luka when I wasn’t around that eventually transitioned into, well, other kinds of swordplay, if you know what I mean?”
The hands against the top of her head fell still.
Lyana winced. She hadn’t meant to bring up her brother. Not really. Not as a weapon against her friend, whose heart was fragile at the moment. The words had just slipped out.
“Cassi—” She tried to turn around.
“Don't move,” her friend chided, tugging at the strands of hair gently, yet hard enough to keep Lyana from twisting. Her voice was more somber as she continued, “I wasn’t—”
She broke off with a sad sound that made Lyana’s soul hurt for her.
“When I woke up, you were gone, and no one seemed interested in me, so I got dressed and wandered the halls for a bit," Cassi said. "Before long, I found myself at the practice yards with my bow, itching for something to do. He was by himself at the opposite side of the grass, hurling a blunt sword into a bag of beans he’d strung up to a post. The other people there seemed wary of him, watching from a distance. And he seemed very lonely, and then sort of desperate as he flung his sword to the grass and started punching the thing with his bare hands. And I had nothing better to do, so I went over. You know I can use a sword. I know I can use a sword. But he didn’t, and he seemed happy to show me, so I just went with it. Then we had a bite to eat, we ran into you, he dropped me off here, and I’ve been in the room ever since, reading one of the books I stole from the crystal palace before we left home. That was it. That was all. And I should’ve said so right when you walked into the room, but…” Cassi paused. “You know how much I love to watch you squirm.”
Lyana gasped and drew back her elbow, searching for resistance. Cassi lunged to the side, wings flapping to keep her from rolling off the bed. Lyana spun, but the second she met her friend’s eyes, all the indignant suspicions faded away, replaced with a bubble in her throat that came out as pure laughter.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Cassi,” Lyana whispered as she pulled her friend in for a tight embrace.
“You won’t ever have to find out,” Cassi replied, voice earnest and certain. “That’s a promise.”
40
Xander
The princess was bored. It had been three days of lessons and meetings and dinners, and with each passing moment Xander saw the light seep away from her gaze, eyes no longer filled with wonder but with fatigue.
He was determined to do something about it.
“I’d like to take you somewhere,” Xander said as he led her out of the dining room after the daily ritual of breakfast with his mother was over. They had an hour before the dressmaker was supposed to fit her for her mating gown, and there was a place he’d been waiting to show her.
Lyana immediately perked up. “Where?”
Xander shrugged, unwilling to betray his hope. “A surprise.”
Her grip on his forearm tightened. “Let’s go.”
They kept the conversation light as he guided her through the castle halls, up and around, closer to the royal quarters, the place she’d call home in just a few short weeks. He was only half focused on what he was saying. The other half of his mind concentrated on holding the enthusiasm for his dreams at bay. He knew, he knew, Lyana’s personality didn’t match that of the mate he'd always envisioned. She was a mover, a doer, not satisfied to sit still when the other option was to fly. But dreams had a bothersome way of ignoring the truth, and hope made the impossible seem within reach. So, as he neared the room, his heart thundered and his mind dared to wonder, "What if?"
Xander wrapped his hand around the knob and slowly twisted. He stopped to look at his mate with his complete attention, waiting for her reaction as the door slid open.
His private library was in the tallest spire of the castle, a narrow circle three stories high with bookshelves lining every open wall and the windows in between them. Still, the many volumes he’d collected spilled out of the shelves and onto the ground, into piles that teetered on the edge of collapsing. A long narrow table in the center of the room acted as his workstation. The only other pieces of furniture were two leather armchairs, one worn and one intact, that sat before the oversized hearth.
Lyana stared at the room, mouth dropping open as she inhaled excitedly. Her wings fluttered as she raced inside, eyes lifting and turning and circling. Xander felt a rush of pure gold, like the richest hummingbird nectar, sweep over him.
He waited for a moment before he followed her inside, trying to blink away all the dreams drifting to the surface. But the feat proved impossible. Xander glanced around the room more familiar to him than any other in the castle as though seeing it for the first time. Because when he looked at the chairs, he no longer saw just chairs, but he and Lyana sitting in them, a book on their laps, a fire blazing as the windows frosted with the winter chill. And when he glanced at his desk, it wasn’t empty but covered in parchments as he and Lyana bent over scrolls and books scattered over the scratched wooden surface, debating the topic at hand. And when his gaze roamed the shelves towering thirty feet into the air, he saw Lyana flying up the narrow space, darting between the stacks, grabbing more volumes than her petite arms could carry.