Phaeryl had always heard about the Erast pre-festival celebrations the way you heard about places you'd never been, in pieces, secondhand, from people who'd been there once and never stopped talking about it, especially Espen, who couldn’t stop whining about Erast. Two full days of it, apparently. Food stalls lining every road, entertainers on every corner, the entire city shedding its usual weight like it was trying on something better before the full moon came.
She decided, without asking anyone like she could even ask anyone, that Xhanes was going.
He had grown up in the cold formality of Keld palace, stuck in the place he didn’t have much to say about what he wanted and the reality was he couldn’t leave Keld in the days leading up to the festival. She'd figured that out about him slo
