Page 31 of To Fight and To Fold

The grass hissed beneath her boots and she wished she could understand its secrets. Did it tell of lovers' trysts hidden amongst the trees? Or perhaps a runaway, trying their chance at a better life elsewhere?

Did they know where Starspark was, and just couldn't tell her?

She scoffed and continued her trek, wishing it were so easy. Instead she awaited word from the prince. As if he knew better for her dragon than even Aaryn did, who had cared for him more days than not.

She was so lost in her thoughts, her growing frustration, that she didn’t hear the crunch of the grass behind her until it was too late.

As she stepped over the protrusion of a tree root, a hand covered her mouth. Aaryn gasped as she was ushered into the shade beneath a plush canopy of branches and leaves. The scent of heather and earth filled her senses just as her back met the rough trunk of a thick tree.

“Don’t shout,” Thea warned, half her face hidden by a dark hood.

Aaryn blinked at her, surprise and something adjacent to that but…warmer filling her.

Thea leaned her whole weight into the palm pressed to Aaryn's lips, her hand hot, cheeks giving way beneath her fingers. Her body pressed against Aaryn, thigh to thigh, chest to chest. Inches separated them.

It was likely the closest they'd ever been.

These were observations, if anything.

Their eyes met, and Aaryn forgot what emotions she was supposed to feel. Was that a—no, it wasn't a scar newly slashed into her left brow, but a shaven mark.

Thea eased her grip, and her eyes glinted warily from beneath that hood. "You know, when I used to daydream about us in a different time, meeting under different circumstances, it happened somewhere like this."

She daydreamed about us? Me?

Thea waved her other hand around them, at the branches above and the red, shiny apples, the only witnesses to their interaction.

"We bumped into each other at a place like this. An orchard. Your apples tumbled to the ground and I, obviously, graciously…" Thea released Aaryn's mouth to place her fingertips to her own chest, puffing it out proudly, and it never occurred to Aaryn to scream for— "...Help you pick them up. You'd thank me profusely, and our eyes would linger a little too long." Like they were doing just then, as Thea described something close to one of Aaryn's own fantasies. Thea sighed, and their chests brushed again. "Then we walk together and I spend infuriatingly too long wondering if your side glances are filled with the same longing curiosity that mine are."

Her gaze softened as she spoke, and it dipped to Aaryn's lips, who suddenly had the urge to wet them, and flicked her tongue out to do so. Thea followed the movement.

Things seemed to fall away around them beneath the heat of Thea's gaze, the intensity of her presence. She forgot the prince, his warnings, her own anger. Instead she felt something akin to offense that Thea apparently did not remember their first meeting with such fondness as Aaryn did.

Aaryn huffed. "I thought our first meeting was plenty romantic."

What the tear am I saying? Who even mentioned romance?

Then Thea smirked, but there was something sad about the twist to her lips. "I'm glad you thought so. It took me weeks to plan it."

Heat filled Aaryn's cheeks and it had nothing to do with the sunshine speckled down on them between the branches and leaves.

She leaned a little more against the tree, as if that would give her any extra space away from Thea, any clarity.

It didn't.

No wonder Thea did not hold that day in the market in as fond regard as Aaryn did. It was never real to her.

Not like it was to Aaryn.

It was her own embarrassment that hastened her reply, the edge of a defensive blade in her words. "Well, if it was fake to you anyway, I can assume the only reason you'd be here is to return my dragon. Where is Starspark?"

Thea rolled her eyes. Aaryn hated that she found it attractive. "Don't go putting words in my mouth."

Which words did she refer to? She didn't ask it aloud, but Thea must have read it in her expression anyway.

"It was never fake to me," she said softly.

"But it was just a ploy." A plot to get closer to Aaryn, just like the prince and the investigator suspected. "Why me? Just because I had a dragon? Why not any of the other Tethered?"