A Normal Day Part Two
1175 Words
Ashen.
I found bread in the kitchen, cold roasted meat, winter berries, a jar of honey, and tea leaves that smelled like mint and vanilla. Veyra watched me pack everything into a basket with increasingly suspicious eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“People who say nothing are always doing something.”
Solan sat at the table, one elbow propped up, pale but recovering. “He is making a courting basket.”
I froze.
Veyra gasped dramatically. “Oh. Emergency husband skills continue.”
“It is not a courting basket,” I said.
Ravenna appeared in the doorway wearing a dark red robe she had apparently found in her room and claimed as tribute.
“It is absolutely a courting basket,” she said. “Painfully rustic. Very wolf.”
I ignored her.
Solan glanced at the basket. “You need flowers.”
I looked at him.
He sighed as if I had disappointed his ancestors. “She said flowers, didn’t she?”
I said nothing.
His mouth curved. “Ah. She did.”
Veyra leaned against the counter. “There are frost lilies near the back stones. They bite if pulled wrong.”
“Flowers bite here?” I asked.
“Everything bites here,” Ravenna said. “It’s the only respectable thing about this place.”
Solan pushed himself up.
Veyra immediately frowned. “Sit down.”
“I am helping the boy court his mate.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I can stand beautifully.”
“You are leaning on the table.”
“For dramatic effect.”
Ravenna moved past him and plucked a knife from the counter. “I will get the flowers.”
Moon appeared at the doorway behind her.
“No,” she said.
Ravenna turned slowly, smiling. “Possessive already?”
Moon’s gaze moved from Ravenna to the basket, then to me.
Her expression changed.
She understood.
A warmth moved through the bond.
“You’re doing something,” she said.
I looked at the basket.
Then at her.
“Yes.”
Her lips parted slightly.
“I do not have money,” I said. “And we cannot go anywhere. And this is probably not the whole thing.”
Moon’s eyes grew bright.
“But I can give you dinner. And flowers if they do not bite me.”
Solan lifted one finger. “Mild activity can be not dying from frost lilies.”
Moon laughed.
A real laugh.
Soft. Surprised. Beautiful.
It went through me like sunlight through ice.
“That sounds perfect,” she said.
Ravenna rolled her eyes. “The standards in this room are tragic.”
Moon did not even look at her.
She was looking at me.
That was enough.
The picnic was behind the cottage, beneath a pine whose branches curved low enough to block most of the wind.
The frost lilies did bite.
Only a little.
They had tiny thorns hidden beneath silver petals. I cut three carefully and tied them with a strip of blue ribbon Veyra claimed she had not stolen from the guest room curtains.
Moon pretended not to notice.
We sat on a thick blanket I found in a chest near the hearth. The basket sat between us, filled with warm bread, berries, honey, meat, and tea kept hot in a silver flask.
It was not much.
It felt like everything.
Moon held one frost lily in her lap, smiling down at it.
“No one has ever given me flowers they had to fight first.”
“I did not fight them.”
“You are bleeding.”
I looked at my thumb.
A tiny bead of blood marked the skin.
“It was a disagreement.”
She laughed again.
I wanted to keep doing things that made that sound happen.
Moon looked up at me, and her face softened.
“This is my first date.”
I blinked. “Truly?”
“Yes.”
“You are a princess.”
“That does not mean I dated.” She looked toward the trees. “My life was always watched. Scheduled. Protected. Men who approached me saw a crown before they saw me.”
I understood that more than I wanted to.
“Did I?” I asked quietly.
She looked back at me.
“No,” she said. “You saw a girl in a courtyard who was late to a ball.”
I remembered.
Her breath in the cold.
Her eyes.
The way the world had changed before I knew why.
“I thought you were trouble,” I said.
“I was.”
“You still are.”
Moon smiled.
Then her gaze lowered to my mouth for half a second.
My heart stumbled.
The bond warmed.
I heard the cottage door open behind us.
Of course.
Moon’s smile faded.
Ravenna’s voice floated through the snow.
“Is this the date? Oh, how devastating. There are no musicians, no jewels, and no one has been poisoned.”
Moon closed her eyes.
I turned.
Ravenna strolled toward us with a cup in one hand and a blanket draped around her shoulders like a queen accepting tribute from a village she planned to tax.
“Ravenna,” Moon said.
“Princess.”
“This is private.”
“I am under a blood contract and bored. Privacy is a luxury none of us can afford.”
“You have your own room.”
“And yet no entertainment.”
Ravenna’s eyes slid to me.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
“For a wolf,” she said, “you clean up well under moonlight.”
Moon growled.
Not loudly.
But enough that the air changed.
Ravenna’s smile sharpened.
“Oh, that is a lovely sound. Do it again.”
I stood.
“Stop.”
Ravenna looked at me, amused. “Stop what?”
“Getting close.”
She paused.
For a moment, I thought she might push.
Then she lifted both hands.
“Fine. Look at us. Learning boundaries.”
She sat down on the blanket.
Right beside me.
Too close.
Not touching.
But close enough that I could smell the faint rose-metal scent of her blood and the sharp perfume she wore beneath it.
Moon’s eyes flashed.
Ravenna looked at me with false innocence.
“I’m just going to sit right here,” she said. “If that’s okay with you.”
I should have said no.
Immediately.
I knew that later.
In the moment, I did not know what to do with a woman who asked permission like a weapon and smiled like the answer did not matter.
She was too close.
Moon was angry.
Ravenna was watching me like my discomfort interested her.
And I was suddenly back in every room where I had been expected to know the correct answer without being taught the rules.
“I would rather you sat farther away,” I said.
“Progress.” Ravenna shifted half an inch. “There. A kingdom’s worth of space.”
Moon’s growl deepened.
- Writer
