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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I find the package leaning against my doorframe before the sun has fully chased the night off the parapet. Brown kraft paper, rough twine, oddly anonymous in a place where nothing stays anonymous for long. I stand for a long time with my hand on the latch, listening to the dormitory breathe: low snores, the creak of someone turning in their cot, the distant clink of armor training already underway.
It says things about Basgiath that I immediately assume someone's trying to poison me. It says things about me that I hesitate anyway.
I glance down the corridor.....empty......and back at the parcel. Then I close the door, pad to my desk, and set it there like it might explode. I pace. Twenty minutes is generous; I hit the floorboards hard enough they're starting to complain.
"What's the worst that could happen, little bird?" Ryuu's voice threads cold and amused through the bond.
"Death, disfigurement, lethal toxin," I argue out loud, because theatrics suit me. "Honestly, the possibilities are endless."
He chuffs. "You are a strange girl."
I unwrap the paper slowly, fingers curling from habit around the familiar weight of wood and leather. Inside: a leather-bound sketchbook, thick cream pages, a set of pencils tucked into a slim roll. A note slides out, small and neat. My name on the front in a hand I've watched carve sunlight into the ridges of wood.
Wren,
You said you were taught drawing was a distraction.
I disagree.
Not everything has to make us better riders to be worth our time. Some things are allowed to make us happy.
Thought you might need the reminder and somewhere better to put all those dragons you keep hiding in the margins.
—Liam
My chest tightened as I read the note again, slower this time, letting my eyes linger over the few lines Liam had scratched across the page.
Not everything has to make us better riders to be worth our time. Some things are allowed to make us happy.
It shouldn't have been the sentence that got me.
The part about the dragons in my margins should have done it. That was the part that proved he'd noticed me doodling during Battle Brief, that he'd apparently paid enough attention to remember something I'd mentioned once and connect it to the half-finished wings and ridiculous dragon profiles I left scattered between notes. There was plenty there for the stupid little crush I'd been nursing to grab hold of and torment me with for the rest of the morning.
Instead, I kept coming back to those two sentences.
