Rachel Gillig

To the quiet girls with stories in their heads.
To their dreams—and their nightmares.

I didn’t miss the way Ravyn’s eyes jumped up and down my body. “Much better,” he said

His hands, broad and firm, met me at the dip of my waist, resting a moment on my hips. They were warm, his hands. And I caught myself wondering what the calluses along his palms would feel like against my bare skin.

“Just a small cut,” he murmured. “Nothing too deep. No need to scar these beautiful hands.”

I didn’t think about being soft with him. I was so tired of pretending not to want this

Finally, my darling Elspeth, we understand one another

He traced the curve of my chin. “I resisted, Elspeth, because I was already imagining how I might press my finger against your wet lips again, like I had in my room.”

“I resisted,” Ravyn said, “because I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that first night on the forest road. And I realized at Equinox that the closer I let myself get to you, the less I’d want to be the King’s Captain—the less I’d want to pretend. And it’s dangerous for me, for my family, to stop pretending.”

To the quiet girls with stories in their heads.
To their dreams—and their nightmares.

You know that—why bother taunting me?

His laughter dripped like water down the walls of a cavern, echoing, then fading into hollow silence. Because that, my dear, is MY nature.