“More?” If Prevna’s eyes got any wider I was worried they’d fall out of her head.

  I stared back at her, all the bravery gone out of me. I could feel the temptation to say something cutting, to take it back, just so the tension would be a more familiar flavor, but this was Prevna so I couldn’t do that. Couldn’t repeat the mistake I made with Fellen, so I just stared at her and hoped she would take the lead so I wouldn’t say something we’d both regret.

  I needed her to answer. Or I needed to be the one to walk away now. I needed for something to happen other than her looking like I had just dropped a rock on her head.

  Prevna flexed her hands like she wanted to reach out to me but had suddenly forgotten how. “More?” That time she said it more to herself than me.

  She had to understand. Right? She had to. There were all those little moments when her touch had lingered or I’d caught her looking at my lips or like when we were on—

  “The beach.” Oh no. I needed to be in control but now my mouth was moving without any seeming consent from my mind and that never happened but I needed Prevna to understand. “I told you I was remembering you as a friend…but that wasn’t quite true.”

  Prevna’s gaze finally sharpened. “No?”

  The challenge in her eyes felt like a saving grace. Something familiar, something I could cling to in a world I had just shoved off its axis. Something I thrived with.

  I smiled back, my own challenge to her. “I have a place stuffed full of memories of you in my mind and it’s always about to burst open because I have to keep adding memories to it.”

  “What kind of memories?”

  “Different kinds. But the first one that started it all was when you wore your hair down for the Heartsong Festival in the Rookery.”

  She pulled her hair free of its tie and then ran her fingers through the braid on the left side of her head to loosen it. “Like this?”

  I nodded, mouth suddenly dry. Clearing my throat, I added, “And there was a time when you leaned in…”

  I couldn’t get the rest out as Prevna leaned in and her breath whispered across my ear and throat. “Like this?”

  “Like that.”

  She chuckled. “You’ve done this to me too and I almost—” She cut herself off as she drew back to look me in the eye, eyebrows raised slightly. “What else?”

  “What?”

  “What other memories do you have of me?”

  I couldn’t think of a single thing other than the way she was right in front of me, eyes teasing and bright with warmth, lips only a breath away, silken hair brushing against my arm as it framed her face perfectly. I reached up, and when she didn’t pull away, wrapped a piece of her hair around my fingers lightly and slid my hand down its length.

  “This would be a memory.”

  “Something to treasure forever?”

  “Remembered for eternity.”

  “Lucky me.” Prevna took a deep breath and broke from her teasing, challenging look to something more earnest. “More?”

  “If you’re willing.” My heart felt like it was going to give out, but my mark didn’t so much as prickle.

  Her gaze dropped to my lips. “May I?”

  “Please.”

  Prevna gently cupped my jaw with one hand, leaned in and kissed me.

  I lost all ability to think. To worry and plan and spiral about all the things I needed to do and hadn’t done. In that moment there was just Prevna. Her and nothing else…and that was enough when nothing had ever been enough.

  Some part of me tried to scream in warning. That I was in too deep and that this was dangerous and that she could hurt me but that part got swallowed in the roar of sensations of kissing Prevna.

  Soft lips, smooth skin, silken hair. That was all that mattered until we pulled apart and she smiled at me.

  “Have any more memories for me?”

  I was about to answer when shouts rose up in the distance in Bramble Watch and reality crashed back into our hideaway. There were still tribesfolk and fish fighting all around up us. The horde was still pressing in and I still didn’t have the answer I needed to stop them.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Prevna sighed and sat back as I looked toward the shouts, but she smiled again when I focused back on her. “Rest a bit longer and tell me what’s happening here. Perhaps I can help.”

  Somehow my head ended up in her lap as she worked her fingers through my hair and listened. I was grateful for the drink from the healer Ingrasia had given me, because my throat held out as I told Prevna everything from the proxy war to Juniper and the Water Frond Snake, and everything we had done to try and stop the horde in the delta.

  By the end of it, she gave me a look of exasperated amusement. “That’s a fair bit more trouble than you made it sound in our messages.”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Only so much I could say.”

  Prevna huffed. “And, in the end, you could become one of the Chosen?”

  I nodded. That possibility was something I wanted but it felt too distant and big to claim out loud just yet. I hadn’t accomplished much in this proxy war so far, so called farce or not.

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course, though I’m not sure I’d want to catch Her attention. Getting as close as we did in the valleys was close enough.”

  I could agree that the lava had been terrifying, but part of me couldn’t help but think that was because we had been below Her notice. She had no reason to care about us, but if I was one of the Chosen…well, at least then I had proven I had the means to catch Her attention and I could capture it again. In the end, that could be ill advised, but I wasn’t about to languish in the common ranks of whisper women if I could help it. I needed to prove that I could reach higher than that.

  Silence enveloped us for a while before Prevna asked, almost a whisper, “Was the net worth it?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. I haven’t heard how it held up or what happened with the broken pathway.”

  A thumb skimmed over my throat and a bruise before she held both sides of my face so I had to look up at her, not that I would have hidden away, not now. She asked again, “Was it worth it?”

  I reached up and squeezed one of her hands, trying to be reassuring, before I sat up and faced her. “It never even crossed my mind to leave the water. I did everything I could. That’s always better than giving up.”

  “Of course you’d say that. You’re unstoppable.” Prevna considered for a moment before adding, “Like the horde that keeps pouring in.”

  I wasn’t exactly keen on being equated with the fish but I interested to see what she would say. “So what would you do to stop me?”

  Prevna drew close again, like she was going to kiss me, before suddenly something tart burst on my tongue. She had slipped one of the bramble berries into my mouth. Somehow they were still growing despite the cold season. A mystery I would’ve been more drawn to at any other time.

  She winked at me. “Distract and redirect.”

  I licked my lips and then laughed at the way her focus got stuck there. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I even put the tactic to use right away. Rather than dwell on the situation I couldn’t fix yet, I remembered to ask her to tell me what she had been up to. She gave me a look that she knew exactly what I was doing, but Prevna still told me about her training.

  Apparently, the Beastwatchers sect took their time teaching their recruits all about the different environments in the goddess’s territory. They started with the goddess’s great forest in the south and then switched to other locations, but they spent months at a time living in and learning about the different plants and animals in each area. They learned how to tell when an area was healthy and different environmental hazards to keep an eye out for. How to find, track, and hunt various monsters and beasts.

  Prevna was still supposed to be in the great forest, learning all of its intricacies, but her new mentors had bowed under the weight of the Lady of Calm Waters requesting her presence to help a Chosen candidate. I suspected Esie had used our patron’s name rather than the Lady of Calm Waters actually making the request, but the result was the same.

  Prevna was here, and my name was once more swirling through the ranks of whisper women and tied to my patron’s. A Sapling as a Chosen candidate? I wasn’t sure why Esie would tip her hand so early with that information, but I knew that Jin was likely even more eager to kick me out of Seedling Palace so I couldn’t break even more norms.

  I did know that there would truly be no fading in anonymity now. Even if I wasn’t Chosen, no whisper woman was likely to forget that I had been nominated. Just like the fact that even though I didn’t have much choice in the matter, I didn’t want to waste the rare opportunity. Still, most of the regular activities of a Hundred Eyes sect member, as I understood them, would be beyond me with infamy following me around like a flashy cloak.

  Then again, if I did go beyond the border into Azabel’s territory, no one would know me there. I could gather information and trust without the person weighing all the stories attached to my name—at least once I learned what Ingrasia and the others did so our black lips didn’t give us away to the locals.

  “Gimley?”

  I blinked and came out of my thoughts. Prevna titled her head in question, “Are you thinking about everyone knowing about you?”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you came.”

  She gave me one of her knowing smiles. “I was going to say that you should give them something to really talk about.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Take a risk?”

  She ran her gaze over me from the crown of my head to my toes and I had to fight off the flush that wanted to rise up on my neck and cheeks. “Sometimes they’re worth it.”

  “What makes me a risk?” I narrowed my eyes at her, half truly concerned and half teasing.

  “Your ability to find trouble.” She touched her forehead to mine. “But I’m glad you found me.”

  I almost argued the point that she tackled me first and then followed me around everywhere before I remembered that I had found her eyes in that bush right before the ambush and let her have her point. I was good at finding trouble, even if sometimes it found me first.

  We talked for a bit longer, teasing and settling into our new dynamic. On one hand, it seemed as if not much had changed. We were still comfortable with each other, still swapped between earnest and joking conversation. Everything was easy. On the other hand, everything had changed. There was a new tension between us, a new awareness of looks and movement and what might be an invitation for a touch or kiss and what might not. All things we had shared and still hadn’t yet said that got us to this moment. A sense that there was now an “us” rather just “her” or “I” and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle that feeling. I had no precedent. But it was something I hoped I could settle into without smothering her or myself. Something for us to figure out together.