Lyana woke bleary-eyed and exhausted, but feeling better than she had in weeks. Maybe even months. Maybe…ever.
Finally, she wasn’t just sitting around, dreaming of something more, waiting for her life to find her. Finally, she was out doing something, something good, something with her magic. They’d only made it to four homes, but that was still four people who would wake up this morning miraculously healed, thanking their god, alive when they otherwise might not have been. And Lyana had made it happen.
Well, she and Rafe.
They’d made it happen together.
“What’s got you grinning like a buffoon this morning?” Cassi asked as she slipped through the door between their rooms and collapsed on Lyana’s bed, looking a little bleary-eyed and exhausted herself.
“Nothing,” Lyana murmured, sighing. Try as she might to arrange her face into a more appropriate expression, her lips remained resolutely wide.
Cassi stared. “Nothing.”
“It’s a beautiful day,” Lyana gushed, attributing her enthusiasm into something that might make a little more sense.
Leaving Cassi in bed, Lyana jumped to her feet and threw the curtains open as if her body had too much energy and could do nothing but explode with motion. The sun was high, higher than when she usually woke up, though she normally went to bed much earlier. And the sky was a clear, bright blue, reminding her of something else, someone else. She had the sense that she was exactly where she was supposed to be—a wonderfully foreign yet comforting feeling.
“Did they slip you some sort of herb for the pain? I’ve heard rumors that medicine isn’t the only thing they brew in the House of Paradise…” Cassi frowned, watching her in confusion.
Lyana pranced back to the bed, hopping from foot to foot. “Nope, nothing. My leg feels fine.”
Cassi watched her warily, nonetheless. “You’re a little too happy, even for you.”
“Honestly, Cassi,” Lyana said, hands on hips. “Can’t you just wipe the frown from your face and join me in this marvelous, wondrous, beautiful morning?”
Cassi watched her for another moment, then rolled off the bed to take a step toward the tray in the corner of the room, which Lyana hadn’t even noticed. She lifted the lid of the kettle, sniffing it. “What did they put in this?”
Lyana was prepared to argue with her friend some more, but her door crashed open, banging against the wall with a thunderous boom.
“Lyana!”
It was Xander.
An out-of-breath, smiling, excited Xander, as full of awe as she was. He paused, and his body jerked as though he suddenly remembered where he was. His eyes popping, he offered her a low bow before rising slowly. The sight made her feel even lighter.
“I mean, Princess, pardon my intrusion, I just— Have you— I thought you’d want to hear the news.”
“What news?” Cassi asked, a wary edge still on her voice.
Xander spun in her direction, surprised by her presence. Then he shrugged, switching his attention between them. “It’s all everyone has been talking about all morning. Four of the injured children we visited yesterday, a boy and three girls, they’re all— Well, somehow, they’re healed!”
Lyana didn’t need to meet Cassi’s glare to feel every suspicious, accusing prick in it. The left side of her body tingled with heat. She kept her eyes locked on Xander, feeding off his energy instead of her friend’s because at the moment, his emotions matched hers. “Really? Xander, how? It’s a miracle.”
“No one knows,” he explained with a shake of his head as words eluded him. “The people are saying it was a gift from the gods to thank us for our devotion. Someone claimed to have seen a cloaked figure pass beneath one of the spirit gates last night—they’re saying it was Taetanos himself.”
Lyana bit her lips to keep from squealing.
“Thank the gods,” Cassi drawled.
Lyana ached to throw a pillow at her face, but she restrained herself…barely.
“Thank the gods, indeed,” Xander said, not noticing the sarcastic undertone of Cassi’s statement. He was pure of heart, and Cassi, well, wasn’t. But that was one of the reasons Lyana loved her. “I’d like to think that maybe…” Xander mumbled with glowing eyes, reaching out to hold her fingers. “Thank you for coming with me to say the blessings yesterday. I think, maybe, it did something. Maybe, somehow, we helped.”
“We did,” Lyana said, squeezing back.
The words were true. If Xander hadn’t taken her out into the city yesterday, she would have never even conceived the idea in the first place. Would have never known where to go or which steps to make. This was all because of him, because he’d taken the time to include her, and she was grateful. But not so grateful that she was ready to tell him the truth.
She released his hand.
He took a hasty step back and cleared his throat.
“Well, anyway, you missed breakfast, so I wanted to come and tell you the news myself.” He paused to eye the leg which clearly caused her no pain or hardship, then looked up with a charming wink. “I’ll tell my mother you require a day of rest to recover from your wounds. Shall I come back to escort you to dinner?”
“Please do,” she murmured.
He left with another bow. Lyana winced when the door clicked closed.
Three, two, one—
“What were you thinking?” Cassi hissed, charging toward her the way Lyana imagined bears in the great plains of the House of Prey might charge toward a rabbit. But she was no rabbit.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Lyana countered, turning to meet her friend head-on. “I was acting, I was doing, and it was amazing, Cassi. If only you’d been there to see, you’d understand. But I didn’t want to risk getting you into trouble.”
“Since when?”
Lyana sighed. “Since we’re in a foreign house and trouble here might have real consequences, unlike back home when I knew I could talk our way out of any punishment my father might have threatened.”
Tension left Cassi’s muscles. Her shoulders fell and her wings folded as all her edges softened. “You should have told me.”
“I know,” Lyana admitted. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Cassi said, stepping close enough to put her hand on Lyana’s arm. “I don’t blame you for wanting to help. You’re a healer—it’s what you were born to do, to be. It’s just—” She broke off.
“Just what?”
Cassi looked away, studying the rich fibers of the carpet instead of meeting Lyana’s probing eyes. “You need to be careful.”
“I was.”
“So many people are counting on you, Ana…”
Lyana nodded along with her friend’s words, because Cassi was right. The ravens. Xander. The queen. This entire house and all the houses, they were all counting on her to do her part, to be the princess she was supposed to be, the queen she was supposed to become. Not this. Not the person she was, magic and all.
“Just promise me,” Cassi said. “Promise me you won’t do anything else that might get you into trouble, at least for the next ten days.”
Lyana frowned. “Ten days?”
Cassi didn’t move for a moment, and then she gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah, ten days. Because after that, you’ll officially be mated, and you won’t be my problem anymore.”
Lyana shoved her gently. “I’ll always be your problem.”
Cassi snorted. “Ain’t that the truth. Now come on, I’m starving. Let’s see if we can find some food, and you can tell me all about your little midnight expedition, all right?”
Lyana agreed, following Cassi out the door, but her mind was still stuck on those words.
Ten days.
You’ll officially be mated.
You won’t be my problem.
She’d tried not to think about the ceremony too much. About the fast-encroaching future. The vows she had to make—vows before the gods, vows she would never break, not once they were spoken.
Ten days was all she had left to be herself.
To be Ana.
A girl of magic and wonder—the girl she was with Rafe.
Not Lyana Taetanus, Crown Princess of the House of Whispers.
A woman bound by duty.
Ten days. It hardly seemed enough, so she planned to make each moment count, no matter what she’d promised Cassi. There was no time to be afraid. No time to be nervous. No time for anything at all.