As evening approaches, the younger kids grow rowdy with anticipation for their first full moon revel. Mika is quieter than usual, a reflection of my own darker mood, but he still smiles over the others from a corner. When the sun dips low and the sky streaks with violet, it’s time to gather the silver shackles.
Chapter 25
Talvie
“We kissed again.”
I’m too loud in the quiet glasshouse. The words tumble out, slipping off my tongue without permission.
Daria doesn't even blink. Just keeps trimming wilted mint leaves, as if confessions before breakfast over frost-burned herbs are an everyday occurrence. Maybe they are. I can’t be her only employee whose life is a mess. A delicious mess.
“We’re getting very good at it.” I spin with my shears and accidentally clip a bit of hanging arguta vine.Oops. I hope Daria missed that. “He is, anyway. I mean, he’s always been good at it. And at acting. It makes sense I keep forgetting it’s fake when he makes it feel so real.”
Daria raises a silver brow. Just the one.
“Notrealreal. I mean, not actual feelings, because I can’t—” I press a hand to my forehead to stop the avalanche, forgetting all about the shears until they catch in my curls. “It’s not realfor him. Obviously. For me either, of course. I’m not getting attached.”
Her other eyebrow joins the first.
I untangle the shears, taking some hair with them. “But we talk, too! Which is almost as good as kissing. Close second, anyway. And I don’t think that part’s fake. At least, the stuff he tells me is real. Not that I don’t share too, Daria! I do. It would be weird if I didn’t.”
I think Daria regrets her lack of a third eyebrow.
“Right. You don’t care about all that. Why would you?”
“Girl—”
“I know. I’m stopping now. Although you did say you thought this would be fun to watch, which must be why I keep telling you too much. But I’ll stop. I’ll quit boring you.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Daria goes back to gathering mint with a faint twitch of her lips.
I grin. “I’m so glad one of us is enjoying this.”
“Mm hmm…”
“Okay, yes, fine. I’m enjoying some of it too.”
The truth is, I keep tucking away moments with Lark like shiny pebbles to hold when this is all over.
His rough voice when he says goodnight after we kiss. The way he holds me until I fall asleep. The catch in my breath every time I find him cradling Eevi to his bare chest, singing her to sleep. How the bedside lamps burnish his white hair in streaks of gold and warm his pale skin, and how I want to wrap my arms around both of them and sway to his tune.
The sheepish grin he gives me when he catches me swooning. And how my heart answers with a smile of its own.
All the bits that feel real.
There’s a cadence to Lark’s presence—music in every word and a beat underlying every movement, as soothing as a summerbreeze. I can’t help but sway to the rhythm of Lark and want to lose myself in that secret song only I can hear.
That’s real.
And it’s not just him.
That conversation with the kids about the queen shifted something inside of me. There’s light now, dancing through the cracks in my darkness. It’s like my time with them is shaking off cobwebs from my soul, and I’m remembering happier times back home. I remember my stepmother before she became the Ice Queen. She had a sparkle in her smile, a lilt in her laugh when I made faces behindIsä’s back, and the patient care of a mother when she fixed my braid for full moon revels.
It makes me want to give those same moments to these kids, and more beyond them.
Taking my basket, I drift to the rear of the glasshouse, where hillaberries cluster like turquoise pearls, waiting to be plucked.
