Chapter Twenty-Nine
St. SebastianPresent Day
I’m to have a head start.
Stripped to the waist, I’m facing the forest and holding my headdress in my hand. Delphine made it earlier this week with a surprising and hitherto unrevealed ability for crafting, and Auden helped by gleefully unscrewing and sawing into the old velvet mounts they’d been attached to. Watching the two of them work together at the library table, Auden making low, witty remarks that had Delphine erupting in peals of laughter, I could see why they’d been engaged. They made each other happy in an easy, friendly kind of way. They knew the same people, the same places, the same jokes.
I knew then, with as much jealousy and relief as anyone can know something, that if Delphine hadn’t ended things with Auden, they’d stil
