Cassi couldn’t sleep. Her legs bounced. Her fingers twiddled. Her heart pounded in a frenzied, uncontrollable way. She was acting more like Lyana than herself. Every sound made her jump. Every whiff of magic in the air made her pause. Every muscle in her body was tense and taut and ready to fly into action.
The sign would come.
She didn’t know what or when or how, but it would come. Because Lyana was the one they’d all been waiting for. The queen that would save the world. The one who was prophesied.
She was.
Though, to be fair, she hardly looked like a woman of legend as she catapulted into Cassi’s room in the soft light of dawn, flying through the curtains at a breakneck speed and stopping dead at the foot of the bed, wide-eyed and in a panic. No. She looked like absolute hell.
Cassi jumped to her feet immediately, reaching for her friend.
Lyana crumpled into her waiting arms. “Cassi, I— I— Please, just…help.”
They tackled the easy things first—her messy hair, her puffy eyelids, her wrinkled gown. And though Cassi wanted to tell Lyana there was no reason to cry, no reason for all the hurt, that there would be no vows today, that bigger, better things awaited, she kept her mouth shut. She did as her king bid.
She waited, because the sign was coming.
Any second.
Any moment.
It was coming.
It had to.