Rachel Gillig

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

She didn’t pretend, Ione. She simply was.

I envied her that. I was a spooked animal, so rarely calm.

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.”