CIARA
The sound of his growl echoing from the mud was the best thing I had heard since arriving at the Blackthorn estate.
For three days, he had tried to crush me under the weight of his silent, tyrannical ego, treating me like an inconvenient transaction he regretted making. Watching the supreme commander of the northern ridges slide down three soapy steps and land knee-deep in a ditch of wet rose dirt was worth every single second of his freezing breakfast glares.
"You're glowing, Luna," Killan remarked dryly as I passed him in the grand gallery. He was leaning against a stone pillar, a cup of black coffee in his hand, looking at me with immense suspicion.
"Did you finally find a paragraph on potato yields that moved you to tears?"
"The agriculture text is standard, Killan," I repli
