I need more time, more training, but instead, I'm stuck waiting.
Waiting to find out whether Ahria chooses me, whether Ezzy will ever speak to me again, or whether Talen will finally stop trying.
And god, I hate waiting.
I need something I can actually do. Something I can control.
Even a stupid scrap of it.
By the end of the week, I’m so desperate, I drag Neeve and Ezzy into the Combat Tent just to feel like I’m doing something, anything. I figure maybe if Ezzy hits me hard enough it might help break the tension between us.
It doesn’t.
“Does that happen often?” I ask Neeve as we make our way back to the tent. It’s still early, but both girls are exhausted from training, and with Reya returning tomorrow, I’m more than happy to turn in early before I have to visit Dave again. “After people bond... they get new things like Reya's ability to Dreamweave?”
Beside her, Ezzy’s attention lifts for the briefest moment, not much—but it’s the first sign of anything I’ve seen from her, and hope warms painfully in my chest.
“Sometimes,” Neeve replies, twisting her gold nose ring. “But I think bonding merely amplifies certain talents that you already had, because Darren hasn’t shown anything.” She pauses, focus shifting to Ahria who glides ahead. “Well, at least not that I know of.”
Makes sense, Rowan was a Loomreader but he never bonded.
Neeve lifts the tent flap and a flash of green slips past as Ahria darts inside, the three of us following behind her. With the shorter autumn days, it’s already dark inside, so she crosses to Ezzy’s bed and strikes a match for the lantern. The flame catches, throwing a warm golden glow over our faces, but when she shakes the match out her elbow clips the box. It tips off the crates, sending matches scattering across the ground and skittering under my bed.
“Oh, Stars,” she mutters, already on her hands and knees, trying to scoop them back up. Bending down, I join her, but then Neeve suddenly stops and sits upright, pulling something from under my bed with her. “Hey, I found something...”
My whole body locks up.
Shit. The Letter-threader.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” rushing, I lean across to grab it, but Neeve is already on her feet, unwrapping the cloth I kept around it and revealing the gold contraption inside.
Awe floods her eyes as she stares at it. “What is it?” she breathes, turning it slowly in her hands, the metal catching in the lantern light, sending beautiful rays of gold dancing across the tent.
Standing up beside her, I open my mouth but another voice beats me to it.
“It’s a Letter-threader.” Ezzy murmurs from her bed, her gaze just as wide and fixed on the device.
“A what?” Neeve whispers, unable to take her own focus off it.
“A Letter-threader.” Ezzy’s tone is so soft, almost distant. “I didn’t think there were any left. It’s...” Pushing herself up from the bed, unsteady at first, she crosses the small space toward us. “It’s beautiful.” She lifts a hand and brushes her fingertips over the gold petals before starting to ease them open.
Panic catches in my throat, the instinct to stop her hitting me hard and fast.
I haven’t opened it in over a month and I don’t know if Talen has written. I could snatch it back, keep it hidden, keep all of this shoved safely under my bed where no one can touch it. But Ezzy is talking. Really, actually talking. So I bite my tongue and force myself to stay still, because if this is what keeps her here with me, hell, I’ll let her pull the whole damn thing apart.
“Before the Treaty they were used as a way of communicating without people knowing.” Ezzy goes on, turning her bright blue eyes to me for the first time as the Letter-threader slowly unfolds. “Where did you get it?”
“Talen gave it to me.” I try to keep my voice calm, careful not to scare that spark back out of her. “Said he and Merrin used it as a way to keep in touch when Talen was younger, before he joined the Citadel.”
In front of us the last petal locks into place with a soft click and the central stem ignites.
“So cool,” Neeve mutters.
For a moment, nothing happens, and the space inside my chest contracts as I nervously wait.
Then, one by one, notes start to slide free, fluttering down from where Neeve holds the device and landing softly across the ground between us.
“Wow.” Neeve’s mouth falls open, watching them fall. “Are they all for you? From Talen?”
