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.”

Just like the bird of his namesake, there was pronounced intelligence in Ravyn Yew’s gray eyes. When he looked at me, I felt seen, known. There was a line between us, drawn by fate and magic, that stretched out over space and time. Ravyn and I had walked that line our entire lives, unaware we were headed straight for each other. I saw myself in his cautious eyes and in the darkness that swam in my veins, and though I had not realized it until that very moment, there was magic between us that had nothing to do with blood or Providence Cards or anything in between.

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