Wren never expected her life to change the moment she set foot in the Riders Quadrant at Basgiath War College. But everything shifted when she met Liam Mairi. Loving him was effortless, bright, and full of promise. Losing him was shattering.
His dea...
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There are certain things you learn quickly at Basgiath.
Never challenge Ridoc to anything involving common sense, because somehow you'll still lose.
Never eat whatever mystery stew the kitchen serves on Thursdays.
And never, under any circumstances, develop a hopeless crush on the most observant rider in your wing.
I had managed to fail spectacularly at the third.
Not that I'd intended to.
If someone had asked me a month ago what Liam Mairi looked like, I probably would've answered with something embarrassingly poetic about blue eyes and wheat-colored hair before pretending I hadn't spent entirely too much time watching him dismantle opponents in the sparring ring. That had been simple enough to survive. Admiring someone from a distance was safe. It required nothing from either of us beyond the occasional stolen glance when he wasn't looking.
Actually knowing him...
Gods, that was infinitely worse.
Because now I knew he carved little wooden dragons during physics lectures whenever Professor Emmet started droning on about wind resistance. I knew he absentmindedly rubbed the scar along the inside of his wrist whenever he was thinking through a difficult problem. I'd learned that his smile appeared long before his laugh did, one corner of his mouth lifting just enough to reveal the dimple that had become an increasingly persistent distraction in my everyday life.
The truly infuriating part wasn't that I'd noticed those things. It was that my friends had noticed me noticing them.
"You've looked over there three times."
Rhiannon's voice drifted through the crowded mess hall before she'd even reached our table, amusement already dancing through every syllable. She slid onto the bench beside me with Violet following close behind, both balancing trays piled far higher than Basgiath's food deserved.
"I absolutely have not."
"You did."
"I didn't."
"You looked four times." Violet reached for a piece of bread with infuriating calm before tearing it neatly in half. "Rhi just missed one because she was arguing with Ridoc."
"I was winning," Rhiannon corrected.
"You were loud," Sawyer said as he joined us, setting his tray down with a weary sigh. "There's a difference."
Ridoc dropped onto the bench beside me so dramatically the entire table rattled beneath the impact.
"I, for one," he announced, pointing triumphantly across the dining hall with his fork, "support our tiny menace's terrible life choices."
I didn't have to follow the direction of the fork to know exactly who sat at the other end of it.
